Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

:-)

catmandude4 posts10-27-2019 8:42pmI read somewhere that soaking your speaker wire in cat urine for 24 to 48 hours will eliminate the need for "burn in". Something about the pheromones in the urine acting as a catalyst that causes the copper to deionize allowing the copper atoms to perfectly align in a way that provides purer harmonic resonance. Be careful not to let them soak for too long though, otherwise they begin to produce an annoying hiss.  

Yes, the real world, where people don't burn in AC power supplies in production with $5,000  Keysight or Chroma loads, they use the least expensive way they can ... even just a resistor.

100W class-D stereo amplifiers are < $100 each. A bank of those with resistive loads could burn in 10 sets of speaker cables at a time. Could even do double duty burning in AC cords at the same time. So let's call it $100*100 + $1000 for miscellaneous cabling = $2000 to burn in 10 sets of speaker cables and 10 AC cords a week, or say 450-500 a year (mom and pop shop remember). Time to put them in and take them out is likely < 2-3 minutes per unit, tops.  If we amortized the equipment in the first year, that is $4-5 / unit. $2-3 over 2 years.  A system for interconnects would be even cheaper.  If you have the resources in house to manufacture 50 sets / cables a week (or 10), then the extra few minutes to put them on and take them off the burn-in system is not going to be a burden.  If I was doing 50+ sets a week, I would likely do something a little more sophisticated and lower cost on a per unit basis, not to mention less hungry for electricity.


Now realistically, running 100W continuously through a cable is likely far more stress than what anyone would do at home, so it is likely the time could even be shortened, even considerably for the speaker cables and you could similarly load up the interconnects much harder.

You don't have to be Apple to do mass production. For many companies, 1000 units/year is "mass production".

If I was making a thousand a week the cost to burn in would drop to <<$1.00 per cable.


This is the real world. Many products are burned in and they don’t just turn them on, they monitor them too, even inexpensive items. That is manufacturing and is done day in and day out and none goes out of business because of it. If some companies are doing it, they obviously feel there is marketing value in it. It would be a upper mid to high end feature sell, not a Blue Jeans cable sell, i.e. > $500. $80 cable vendors are normally not talking about burn in at all, nor are their customers.


There is nothing fantastic about this. It is done day in and day out.

I have been involved in products that sell for <$10-20 that were burned in for 24 hours. Equipment costs are amortized over say 2 years, variable costs are electricity, facility overhead, and the labour to put the cable into the equipment, and take it out. Given the claims of technical prowess by these companies, it should not be hard to put together equipment to do this. If it is a high dollar, low volume shop, the margin should easily cover this cost. If it is a high volume, low dollar shop, then the per unit amortized costs should be low.

I don’t think there is a lot of excuse for not doing it, at least for a reasonable amount of time, say 144 hours (1 week).

That is because, as you have illustrated, you are not very familiar with manufacturing and the costs involved, and how little per unit amortized costs can be.

Since you believe I am wrong, why don’t you show me how? ..... use some real numbers, I will even allow you to guess at values. I don’t have to guess. That is why I have a company (not a single consultant) that consults to the audio industry and several others. We even manage contract manufacturing and do some low volume work ourselves where it makes sense.

You are long on ad hominems, short on useful content.

andy2802 posts11-19-2019 10:33pm

I don’t think there is a lot of excuse for not doing it, at least for a reasonable amount of time, say 144 hours (1 week).

Except nobody is doing it except probably for some high end cables which the cost has already taken into account.

I am getting scared for whoever you’re doing consulting work for. That is if that’s your actual job.

Oh well ... if you want in indulge into your own wet dreams, who am I to stop.

I think we are adults here, and obviously there is a cost to everything, but the question is and that is being discussed, is what is the real cost to a MFR, and is it justified for a reasonably priced cable. I have shown that with minimal equipment, a burn-in cost of a few dollars per cable is reasonable at fairly low volumes, and hence could easily be incorporated into product price of a cable in the mid-hundreds, not mid-thousands.

Free burn in on all cables on their custom cable burn in unit (and they are not $7,000 cables):    https://www.avantiaudio.com/cable-conditioning.html

Cable loaner program (prices start at $700). Cables are burned-in before shipping:    https://www.taralabs.com/cable-loaners

Only charges $10 using off the shelf device (one built for MFG would be much less):   https://completecableconcepts.com/collections/cable-conditioning

That was just a quick search. It is a marketing decision, and it could be done very cheaply in production.

That's almost as good as this video with all the cables in the wrong direction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4mHPeMGTJM