Cable Burn In

Honestly never bought into the cable burn-in thing. It's a piece of WIRE!! There's nothing to burn in................Try this, take two brand new identical cables. Keep one set aside and run the other set continuously in your system for a week, a month, however long you want, then have your wife or a buddy swap them back and forth, double blind, so that you have no idea which set is in the system or even if they swapped them around. I'd bet you good money that you can NOT reliably tell which is which or even if they've been swapped. You may guess right a few times, but I'd virtually guarantee that you can't honestly and repeatedly tell which one is in the system.......................Dude, it's WIRE.................45 years in electronics.........doesn't make me an expert, but I do understand a few things better than many hobbiests

Spent 45 years working on top-shelf military electronics and have been an audiophile for just as long. I don't buy into the cables need to be burned in BS. It's a wire, it won't change tomorrow or next week or next year unless it breaks, shorts or opens. I honestly think that mega-cable vendors want you to hang in there until you essentially get used to their "wonder cable" and have time to talk yourself into believing that it just keeps getting better every day. ........All military grade gear gets "burned in".....usually at high temp, or alternating hot-cold cycles........to find out if it will fail under stress, that's it. The specs don't get better or worse with use..........if anything they get worse over time as components age............Wire doesn't "age", it's just wire.........If you don't believe me, pick up two identical sets of cable. Put one in your system and let it "burn in". Set the other aside during that time. Then have someone else swap back and forth between the burned in cable and the virgin set without you knowing which cable set has been installed or even if they changed anything at all. I'd bet good money that you will NOT be able to reliably and repeatedly tell which one is in the system..............You'll guess right some percentage of the time, law of averages, but you won't reliably be able to tell one from the other..............It's just wire my friend. If you don't like the way it sounds when you first hook it up, it won't sound better a month later, unless you talk yourself into believing it does.

Sorry for the double post, not intentional.

I'm wasn't implying that different cable may or may not sound better or different in a hi-rez system, although in a pure sense, properly designed and built for the application, they should do nothing at all to the sound except get it from A to B. If you can reliably and repeatedly hear a difference, better or worse, go with what sounds better to you in your system.

 As both an audiophile and a career tech I am sometimes at odds with myself over WHY this or that sounds better, worse or simply different, when technically I can't explain why there should be any difference.  Electrically and mechanically gear does "settle in" after use, that I buy, speaker cones, amps, what have you, but WIRE?? Maybe it does and I just can't hear it. I've never had the funds to buy multiple expensive cable sets  and play with them. 

As for high end MIL gear, if different wires made it "better", trust me, Uncle would be only too happy to buy it with your tax dollars. Much of the gear I worked on in my career costs more than my house and cars together. Purely from a technical standpoint, wire is wire as long as it's applicable to the intended use................Does one "sound" different than another, yes I've heard that myself. I simply can't fathom why a hundred hours of usage should change the way it behaves or sounds..........call me ignorant, I've been called worse :)
 
Our hobby is to a very large extent, subjective, and there in lies the source of many of these debates. In the end, buy what you like and can afford. If it sounds good or better to you, enjoy the music. Wasn't trying to "P" on anybodies corn flakes here, just expressing my personal opinions and professional experience.

If you REALLY want to improve the sound of your system for a fraction of its cost, address your room acoustics. Little room for debate on that one and the audible difference is obvious and significant.