Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

Hey ganainm, thanks for the response!
No, I don't suggest these sites are chalked full of industry insiders but it is far more prevalent than just a few years ago and seems likely to get worse. The very nature of forums like this makes it easy to disguise the true nature of a party so predisposed. I feel it's a fair point to raise in this day and age. I also don't intend to insult any participants. Being so new here, perhaps I should use my eyes and ears a great deal more before tapping the keys.
Your point about AG is well taken though. I hadn't realized that AG was as much about selling stuff. Admittedly, I'm very new here and still looking around, getting my bearings.
I'm glad to have met you and look forward to your opinion on various matters in future. Any other advice you wish to provide on site conduct is certainly welcome.

OMG, I can’t believe what I’m reading here. Speaker cable burn in? Are you kidding me? In this universe, what magical, non-scientific process are these speaker cables going through that’s going to change their physical characteristics? Basic physics people - there is nothing you can do to speaker wire by hooking it up from your amp to a speaker that will ever cause it to change itself. You can get your cables cryogenically frozen, add batteries to them, twist in a few "feedback loops" and it won’t change the wire or the manner in which it carries a signal in any way.
Yes, speakers go through break-in periods and electronic components do go through what one might term a "burn-in" but wire is wire. Some good 10ga stranded copper wire is all you need to effectively get the signal from your amp to your speakers. If you actually saw the wiring used inside your speaker to go from the terminals to the crossover and the various drivers, you’d probably faint. You can spend all you want to get that signal to your speakers but on the other side of that terminal you just connected to is much lower quality wire heading to the crossover - industry standard stuff. Don’t get sold on all this hype and snake oil that’s out there.

What?? There is tons of empirical scientific data on this topic, all over the world, over many, many years. It's long settled - basic - physics. 
Do certain audiophiles have some innate pseudo-scientific knowledge that only their finely honed hearing can determine?
Signal purity, strength, degradation is easily measured and demonstrable. These are well established, scientific FACTS.

We're not talking about the nature of the universe or time travel.

The industry absolutely loves the idea that some people are sold on the idea that they need to spend $200 a foot to get a better quality signal to their speakers. The finest, most expensive speakers in the world still contain simple 14 or 16 gauge internal wiring. Do you really believe that companies who manufacture $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 speakers have just been missing the opportunity to improve the sound of their product by simply improving the quality of the few feet of wiring inside their own products?

A forum like this should be a place to provide the community with helpful and correct information so people can spend their hard earned money in places that will truly enhance their listening experience and feed their thirsty ears. -not support an industry that has gotten fat, dumb, happy and very rich because they can sell a phony bill of goods to a certain percentage of the population. We should be putting an end to this nonsense and not perpetuating these myths.

Thanks maritime51.
This is way beyond ridiculous.
Citing an article by a high end cable supplier with zero scientific data or support as some sort of proof of change in the properties of a wire to carry a given signal??

Electromigration? The following is from AMI/IDC

"Electromigration is an electrochemical process where metal on an insulating material, in a humid environment and under an applied electric field, leaves its initial location in ionic form and redeposits somewhere else. Such migration may reduce isolation gaps and ultimately lead to an electrical short circuit. The process begins when a thin continuous film of water has been formed and a potential is applied between oppositely charged electrodes. Positive metal ions are formed at the positively biased electrode1 (the anode), and migrate toward the negatively charged cathode. Over time, these ions accumulate as metallic dendrites, reducing the spacing between the electrodes, and eventually creating a metal bridge. 1. Electromigration is closely related to corrosion, with the anode being attacked, but which circuit element is the anode is determined by the applied field rather than the oxidation potential of the metal used. Whilst most often seen as a surface effect, vertical migration can also occur when moisture has penetrated into the bulk of a porous material."

This article goes on at some length and it has absolutely nothing to do with speaker wire or the signals it's required to carry.

I'd need several hard drives to contain all the empirical scientific data available on this topic.

As to the opposing view on the mysterious and magical process of speaker wire burn-in, no such data exists and the idea has been debunked countless times. One doesn't have to look hard at all to find the proof of this.

"Relaxed" cables - give me a break! I believe I heard a rumour of a new speaker cable made of silver coated graphene with gold plated contacts. It's wound with a single copper strand and coated in a special oxygenated dielectric coating to prevent all forms of interference. It's cryogenically frozen and has a "special" electrical signal passed through it after it thaws out which "pre-burns" the cable eliminating the time and hassle of burning it in at home. It's $1,000 a foot and the company recommends replacing it every 5 years after its prime performance declines. No, there's no such thing - yet. As one can see from this thread, there is clearly a market for it though. Believers rejoice!

Leaving this thread before I start with the blonde jokes, gremlins, ghosts in the machine, wire fairies and yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Should've taken that left at Albuquerque.

Be sure to check out all the references and source material on this one. This is far and away the most comprehensive examination (with tests) of the subject in the modern age. Who is Roger Russell? Author, Artist, Engineer, Inventor, Photographer, Collector, and formerly Director of Acoustic Research at McIntosh Laboratory, Inc. and the originator of McIntosh Loudspeakers.
The Mark Twain quote at the beginning is a bit telling and very true. The "Logical Conclusions" are "illuminating". I know most of you are going to skip all that sciency engineer stuff and scroll down there anyway.
http://roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
This next one is very simplified for those who don't care to delve into measurements and scientific data, explanations.
https://www.machinedesign.com/blog/5-myths-about-speaker-wire
Here's one with YouTube videos so you can avoid the reading altogether.
https://www.audioholics.com/gadget-reviews/speaker-cable-and-audio-interconnects
I have not included articles, promotions, opinions from those connected to the wire, cable, interconnect industry, including articles from equipment or review magazines who's advertisers include same.
If you do go through what is here, you'll be busy for a while. Again, a quick google will reveal unlimited data provided you're willing to discount non-scientific, self-promotional material provided by those with a financial stake in the industry.

Now, please feel free to provide the empirical scientific data by an engineer which not only proves a measurable difference but a factual, objective audible one, which, by the way, can be measured with actual equipment so we don't need to rely on anyone's ears.

I'll sign off with a recent observation by New Scientist Magazine at the London Heathrow Hi Fi Show, saying that "among the cables selling for up to £30,000 for 6 metres, they found Quad demonstrating their latest speakers to great enthusiasm. The orange cable to the speakers looked oddly familiar. When asked about it, Tony Faulkner, the recording engineer demonstrating them (who'd used the speakers as monitors while recording Saint-Saen's complete works for piano & orchestra, Gramophone's Record of the Year), said of the cables:

"Yes, they would look familiar if you have a garden. Before the show opened we went over the road to the DIY superstore and bought one of those £20 extension leads that Black & Decker sells for electric hedge-cutters. They are made from good, thick copper wire, look nice and sound good to me. The show's been running for three days and no one in the audience has noticed..." - New Scientist Magazine"

I'm outta here!

geoffkait -

Obviously you can't or didn't read, listen or interpret the information I provided. It more than covers this so called "burn in" issue. It's real empirical data from real engineers, not unsubstantiated jibber jabber.

Even the article you provided as Breaking News! -from Galen Carol Audio is specifically addressed in the material I sent you - which you would know if you actually went through it.

Not only is there a raft of empirical data but also, properly conducted listening tests.

The only references you can provide are from cable manufacturers who've conveniently omitted any empirical data much less truth. Why would they say otherwise? Their very existence depends on the suckers who believe that crud.

Burn in is debunked! There is zero proof that it has any basis in reality.

It seems Mark Twain's quote is correct, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

It seems you and blueranger are having a good deal of fun in feeding your bs unsupported opinions, completely unhelpful to those who want to know the facts and the truth. If you're just here to crank up the rhetoric merely for the fun of it, I find that wholly disappointing. It lowers us all who are serious about the hobby.

And now, back to the same ripe tomato..

geoffkait

I love them tomatoes. They exist, they're real, unlike speaker wire burn in.

I think I'm finally seeing the light - that exists between your ears. From now on, I'm taking my new speaker cables to the holy land and drag them on the ground from West to East. Then, I'm bringing them to your place so you can breath on them and correctly mark them for directionality before I even try them in my system. My main concern is how to counteract the magnetic field of the northern hemisphere. Is it possible to get your cables coated in lead or should I buy them from a shop in the southern hemisphere?

As more and more products go wireless including speakers (blueranger thinks we'll still have point source, wired speakers 50 years from now, at least his descendants will), how will we deal with burn in then? There's got to be a way to manipulate that Wi-Fi to make it sound better?

We need to keep this thread going. Eventually, enough people will read it that 30, 40, 50 years from now, they'll realize how stubborn and obtuse we were. But then, thanks to time travel, someone will have the good sense to come back to erase this thread.

Hi glupson. You're certainly right to be confused about burn in if you're following this thread. BTW, love your suggestion about DACs. I did a quick check and found over 75,000 references to DACs on AG. DAC chips have already evolved well beyond on our ability to resolve all that they can do. My problem has to do with the pricing on stand-alone DACs which is far beyond what it needs to be. There are really only a few manufacturers of the chips and different companies either specify the parameters they want for their own or usually just buy from a selection of available chips. I still find it mind boggling, the processing power that's available in these chips that fit on the tip of your finger. When you consider the processing power and speed that's required for the new 8k displays, even 20 years ago, it was hard to fathom the capabilities of these little wonders today - and it continues to increase so rapidly.

As to the latest article from Audioquest, see below from engineer Gene DellaSala, owner of Audioholics, written back in 2004 when Audioquest made the same claims.

"Cable Vendor Claim
"'Breaking in' a cable has everything to do with the insulation - not the wire itself. The insulation (or dielectric) will absorb energy from the conductor when a current is flowing (i.e. when music is playing). This energy-absorption causes the dielectric's molecules to re-arrange themselves from a random order into a uniform order. When the molecules have been rearranged, the dielectric will absorb less energy & consequently cause less distortion." - Audioquest

Audioholics Response

Thus their conclusion is the dielectric , not the wire causes distortion! Claims regarding insulation molecules "aligning" with a signal, skin effect, strand jumping, etc, are anecdotal at best. Let's not forget that an audio signal is AC, and effectively random from a physical perspective. Nothing can align to a random signal by being anything other than random - exactly the state they claim is "cured" by injecting a signal.

"Break In" is not a proven audible or measurable phenomenon. The perception of changes in sound quality with time is likely attributable to the classical placebo effect, i.e., a listener anticipating a possible audible difference is predisposed to hear one whether or not it exists. Note that Audioquest isn't the only exotic cable vendor that claims cables "Break In". This is actually quite a popular myth touted by many other exotic cable vendors and cable forum cult hobbyists alike."

So, glupson, don't give in to the dark side. Far and away, the part of your system that most requires break in are your speakers and there's plenty of legitimate information easily available to you on that subject.

Happy listening!

glupson, you're certainly right about the emotional level raised over cable issues. While I've been late to this party, it's been entertaining at the very least. I've admittedly enjoyed this thread and ALL the commentary offered herein.
I'm actually awaiting a DAC to arrive today to play my .wav files from my laptop. Once it arrives, I intend to retire to my listening room, enjoy some legal Cdn product and feed my ears for a few hours.
Wonderful meeting you all and look forward to more in the future - different topic though.
May your ears and bellies be full! Be well all.