Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

Do cables need burn in?

Depends on your standards of evidence.

If audiophile anecdote is good enough for you, then yes they "need" burn in.

But by this same standard of evidence you'll find people who say everything needs burn in, and every tweak works, and everything makes a difference. 

So, it's your time and money.

Maybe you can start with a cable cooker ;-)

Sure thing!   

I'm afraid the results will be behind a paywall, geoff.  You'll have to sell a few more pebbles to afford it ;-)

As you can see gawdbless: lots of anecdotes coming your way, but not much in the way of objective, measured evidence showing differences between "burned in" cables and new cables. 

again, I just want to hear one fact-based argument for “burning-in” speaker cables.

Join the club.

Don't let it keep you from dinner waiting for an answer though ;-)

In other words, nonoise, you like to drop in occasionally with a strawman.  ;-)

Yes, they are much more friendly to your own view, than actually dealing with the details of someone else's actual position. 

@andy2

I think in order to make a valid discussion, ones have to agree on some basic level which is our ears can identify differences in what we here. If you say that all differences are psychological then there is no point to further the discussion.

Agreed.

But if we want to understand reality, we also have to not ignore that our perception can be flawed, and influenced in any number of ways towards error. So, ideally, the most careful approach when we *really want to be sure* of a result, would be a method that reduces the variables, including the well known forms of bias.

Next, the argument that break-in is mostly psychological only works for the average buyer since he can only purchase a set of cable so he has to rely on his memory to tell the difference. This argument does not work for manufacturers since they have a lot of identical cables some old some brand new so they can listen to them side by side, therefore there is no need to rely on memory. So if they hear the difference then it’s not psychological.

But that analysis leaves out the whole point: that people can honestly be mistaken in their perception! The choices for explanation don’t sit between the false dichotomy of: "The phenomenon people claim to perceive is real OR they are lying."

The other option is they are MISTAKEN.

This is why controls for bias is foundational in scientific testing.

Cable manufacturers are just as human and prone to bias as anyone else. Bias influences, or just mistakes in perception, can happen whether you are switching quickly between A and B, or slowly over time.

That’s one reason why objective measurements are so helpful, which provide some evidence there IS a physical phenomena involved, and not just changes in our perception.

Would you agree?

Cheers!

cleeds,

What I do think is odd is that those who clamor for others to pursue measurements or blind testing seem so reluctant to undertake the work themselves.

Like who?

I defend the validity of blind testing, and I have performed a number of blind tests.

But first, let's deal with an implication one could take from your statement (whether you meant to imply this or not):

The idea that if someone critiques X method over Y method, that they have to be involved in performing those experiments themselves.  It should be obvious that isn't the case.   

You don't need to be a scientist yourself, to understand why a scientific approach to treating a new pathogen is more sound than, say, appealing to dreams, demons, magnetic bracelets, or ground up rhino horns are less sound approaches.  You just need to understand well enough the reason science operates as it does, and how this explains it's success relative to the failure of the other models.

It's similar to why you don't have to be a brain surgeon yourself, to rationally conclude if you are having signs of an aneurysm,   that you should see a brain surgeon not a vacuum salesman, no matter how enthusiastic the vacuum salesman may be about using vacuums to cure your problem.   You have enough knowledge to recognize from which direction sound and successful results derive, vs more dubious methods.

Same for audio or any other domain.  As long as you recognize the existence of the variables of human bias, you are in a position to ask who is taking that problem most seriously in their methods of evaluation.

People who say "I know there is a sonic difference between A and B simply because I believe to have heard it" are not taking the problem of bias seriously, whereas people attempting to verify phenomena through objective measurements and listening tests that attempt to control for bias at least ARE taking it seriously in their method.

As I've said this DOES NOT mean that everyone needs to be blind testing, or can't just go on what they think they hear.  No one is forcing, or should force, such a thing.  We are all free to buy on whatever criteria we want, as it should be.  But if someone wants to CLAIM there is an objective  phenomenon happening - like cable burn in - then it's completely reasonable to look at what type of method they are using to demonstrate the claim.

As to my own blind tests, I've used bind tests between CD players/DACs, some audio cables, power cables, video cables, and digital servers.   

I don't do this all the time - far from it - because as I've said no one is compelled to make decisions via such methods and frankly while sometimes they are fun, they can be a hassle.  It would be a different case if I had a lab and all the right expensive measuring tools, not to mention more technical knowledge.  But, I don't. That's not my field of expertise.  

When I want to blind test something, I  simply do the best I can within my meagre means, and I don't make claims that extend beyond what those meagre means can actually imply for me personally.  

@andy2,

Again, I believe you are missing a third alternative:

I (or "we") don't know who is right.

Say we want to know if it's raining outside, and we can not tell from the windowless room in which we sit.  One method is to get up, open the front door of the house and check if it's raining. Another method is to flip a coin and say "if it lands 'heads' we know it's raining."

If you use the coin method and flip heads it may in fact be TRUE that it's raining outside.

But that doesn't get around the problem that method used isn't one that, on examination, actually deserves our confidence.

It's the same when we are talking about audible differences that are either very small, or exist in areas that are controversial.   It may BE that the manufacturers who claim their cables need burn in are right, and that it's a real, physical, AUDIBLE phenomena.   But, if like flipping a coin, they are simply using the same anecdotal methods as any other audiophile....and more to the point....essentially the same subjective, anecdotal method as used by any other pseudo-science or fringe belief system (e.g. alternative medicine, psychics, etc) THEN it makes sense to point out these conclusions are not being supported by a reliable method.

Surely you accept that an unreliable method, or 'explanations' that haven't been vetted in a careful manner, used by many people, can lead to many people being wrong?  

200 million people use homeopathy on a regular basis.  Can they all be wrong?  Of course.  Same goes for any number of beliefs born of little objective, repeatable data and supported by subjective impressions.
It's why vast numbers of contradictory beliefs about the world arise in the first place.  And it's why science arose as a method to help us separate the wheat from the chaff. 

BTW, not all cable manufacturers seem to make claims that cables change with burn in.

And those include some of the most experienced and respected manufacturers.  You don't see for instance Belden or Canare cable claiming cables need "burn in."  And yet they cater to a massive, critical, often professional customer base.   For professional industries, a cable - or for that matter capacitor etc - has to perform as one expects from the physical specifications.  

It seems telling that the claims regarding long burn in times - "the cable is only going to sound better over time!  Keep it in your system!" - come from high end cable makers who are selling at boutique prices....to audiophiles who are relying on subjective impressions. 

As to your second accusation, it sounds more like projection on your part, as it presupposes only you can be right. Now that's a straw man

Yes you have indeed have created another strawman.
Habits are hard to break I guess.

@andy2

Again in order for you to be right, everyone else must be wrong.

And I just explicitly said I’m not proposing that I have an answer "that I am right about" in regards to cable burn in. I just wrote that I DON’T claim to have that answer, so I’m wondering why you are ignoring the actual content of what I’m writing.

I guess you’re saying our hearing is not a valid way of measuring. If you cannot trust your hearing, then what else can you trust? Once in awhile a person hearing can be fooled, but what you’re saying is everybody hearing on earth has been fooled.

No, I haven’t said or implied any such thing, which is why I specified: "It’s the same when we are talking about audible differences that are either very small, or exist in areas that are controversial. "

Clearly our hearing is to a significant degree reliable! It helps us successfully survive and get through every day, after all. And we can reliably identify all sorts of sources where the characteristics are large enough to reliably distinguish. For instance, we reliably identify the voice on the other end of the phone as our mother, our friend, etc.

But as audible differences become ever more subtle, our ability to discern and remember those differences tend to reduce as well. If I played you an audio file at 40 dB and you went away for a day, and when you came back and I played the file at 80 dB, you would have no problem identifying which session was played louder. But if the difference were only 1 dB, you’d have a MUCH harder time (essentially impossible) having confidence about whether which session was louder or not.


To the degree we are talking about subtle sonic differences, it makes sense to take this in to consideration, wouldn’t you agree?


(This is why being able to switch quickly between A and B is helpful for reliably identifying subtle differences - where audiophiles often presume that they can identify identify subtle differences over much longer periods of time - "that trumpet sounds a bit more burnished with these cables than it did the last time I listened to this piece, a month ago with my old cables!")

Most of the audible differences we discern in life are those we would EXPECT to be reliably differentiated, based on the gross timbral/spectral/harmonic characteristics we are talking about, and given what we know of human hearing. Grossly audible differences can be measured between, say instruments (or even the same instruments played differently).

Speakers fall in to this category. The measurable differences between speakers tends to fall well in to the category we know to be audible to human hearing, so when someone talks about hearing a difference between speaker A and B their claims are entirely plausible.

In contrast, we have little to no measured differences being shown between things like an audio signal using different high end AC cables, or burned in vs non-burned in cables. And the technical explanations made on behalf of these claims, aside from often being all over the map depending on which manufacturer or audiophile you are talking to, are disputed among those with the credentials to know better. (E.g Electrical Engineers who are not trying to sell you expensive cables).


So there are grounds on which to be cautious about some of the claims of audiophiles and the high end audio companies - the ones in which the technical grounds are dubious or in dispute, in which objective measurable evidence seems missing (unlike that which can be shown for any number of audible differences we know to exist), and in which the claims are vetted almost entirely in a subjective manner susceptible to bias.

Is this position clear enough, and I hope, reasonable to you now?

Thanks.

@andy2

Ha, as a bit of a philosophy nerd, yes Hume is one of my favorites!

*nerd hat on*

Yes, best to assume most people are telling the truth - which is justified inductively (most of the time people tell the truth), by the principle of parsimony (prima facie acceptance of truth-telling tends to explain people’s behavior without the additional hypothesis they have a motive for lying) , and in discussions by the principle of charity (if we didn’t accept that people believe what they are claiming to believe, and instead presumed the other side is lying, conversation would be impossible, not to mention it seems special pleading if we hold ourselves to be truth-telling but do not presume this for others).


See what happens when you bring up philosophy?! ;-)


But that idea was already taken care of in my previous replies as a red herring.

Second, we have to assume that our ears are reliable after all they are transducers just like any other sensors.

The assumption of the general reliability of our senses. Yes. But of course not wholesale. We need to recognize their limits, and where they are fallible too, right? That’s why I have a carbon monoxide detector in my house.

Now let’s say somebody gave me some data that prove cable burn in does exist, I could very say "I don’t trust your equipment. It’s possible that the equipment is not accurate." The person would say it’s not possible because the equipment has been calibrated. I then would say how do I know the calibration was accurate because the equipment you used to calibrate is not correct. That person then told me it’s not possible because that piece of equipment that he used to calibrate was already calibrated by another even more accurate equipment. I then would say I don’t trust that either. It’s possible that equipment is not even accurate. I want you to prove to me beyond any doubt that the data is absolutely accurate.

But it’s not simply good enough to raise possibilities in negating a claim; we need to raise "plausibilities."


If my peanut butter sandwich disappears from my picnic table, and I know my dog is around and my dog likes to snatch food from the table, and likes peanut butter...AND my dog has bread crumbs now around his mouth...then this is a plausible explanation for the missing sandwhich.

If someone suggests that Kim Jong Un’s secret agents "could have" stolen the sandwich for him to eat, that’s logically "possible" but hardly "plausible."

Now, presuming that the type of data and measuring techniques your "somebody" used are IF WORKING appropriate to the task (if not, the whole analogy fails anyway)....then there is already plausibility on the side of the measurements and conclusions. If you raise an objection that the equipment "might have been" out of calibration, it’s up to you to show that’s plausible, not merely possible.

As it happens, you probably could raise some case for the plausibility, in the sense that equipment can go out of calibration and this is one reason we want to try and repeat our results - especially by other parties trying to replicate your results or prove you wrong. (If this person was presenting his data as decisive, I’d be already dubious about this).

So it’s fair to say something like "this data looks sound for your hypothesis...and constitutes some evidence in favor of it. However, given what can go wrong it terms of equipment or experimenter error, I’d like to see these results replicated."

(There’s also background assumptions and facts that will demand more before we assent to a conclusion in some cases over others - the infamous Opera Experiment yielding faster than light particles being a good example - but will leave that for now) .

The problem is that each time you raise the ante by saying "But THIS could have been out of alignment, but THAT could have been out of alignment" you raise the burden ever further for the plausibility of your alternative explanation. Are X, Y and Z measuring systems USUALLY out of calibration? The more you add, the less likely your alternative explanation.

Presumably your friend is starting off with a plausible hypothesis derived from what is generally known and generally accepted about the properties of electricity and cables, which makes his hypothesis "there shouldn’t be an audible difference with burned in cables" plausible in the first place. And as an alternative hypothesis to explain the reports of cable differences with burn in, we have mountains of established evidence for bias/perceptual errors making that alternative plausible.

If you wanted to raise objections, mere skepticism isn’t enough, you’d have to show there are actual good reasons to doubt the results, not raise mere "possibilities" that "something might have gone wrong."


And if your friend is using in his tests generally accepted methods used successfully and reliably elsewhere, then you have the harder road to plow in defending your skepticism.


And nothing is "proven beyond any doubt" in the empirical method.

Cheers, and thanks for the conversation!

(Will a bunch of people find a conversation like this a bore? For sure! But as analogluver pointed out, some people will no doubt find it interesting).

taras22,

So what is your answer to the dilemma posed by the claims in high end audio?

Do we just accept that any hypothesis can be floated, and then decided by appeal to subjective impressions?

If so, that puts high end audio on par with Mesmerism, and any other pseudoscience.

Surely the phenomena in audio are in the same physical world as science is dealing with, so why should audio be just exempted from the concerns, and controls, that we’ve found to be justified in science?

But if we are going to say that we aren’t going to allow magic, but point out it’s engineering and we are dealing with technical problems, then we would want plausible technical hypothesis, right? That is, hypothesis based on plausible extrapolations from other known phenomenon, to explain the new phenomenon - e.g. if a manufacturer is going to give an explanation for cable burn in, it should be at least plausible based on some technical explanation. If the explanation appeals to completely unknown processes, then we have to ask why it is plausible in the first place! And at the very least, an explanation appealing to unknown processes should have quite a high bar to pass when being tested, beyond "I feel convinced I heard something."

And if you are giving a hypothesis that is appealing to known, measurable phenomena, then it makes sense your hypothesis would involve physically testing/measuring to see whether you are right, and if you offer a "solution" to a measurable technical phenomenon, you should be able to provide measurement data showing you have SOLVED the problem.

Once you allow pure subjectivity to vet all these claims, you are in to the world of Mesmerism and all the other pseudosciences and fringe belief systems, because THEY ware justified by the same "method."

We see this suspicious disconnect between the claims and explanations of cable manufacturers, vs the claims that would pass muster scientifically, all the time. They throw out a techy-sounding "problem" their method "solves" but for some reason it’s never shown technically - via measurements showing the problem is solved. They move from the techy-sounding hypothesis, to subjectivity, to...of course it worked!

And the types of "explanations" cable manufacturers often give for phenomenon are incredibly sketchy in making claims, with little evidence.

Take Nordost’s page "explaining" cable burn-in:

https://nordost.com/blog/what-is-cable-burn-in/

For years now, manufacturers have been aware of another practice that drastically improves upon performance that has recently been gaining acceptance from hifi enthusiasts: cable burn-in.

.....

Any listener will be able to identify a marked change in audio equipment within the first 100 hours of use

Note the claim cable burn-in: "DRASTICALLY IMPROVES UPON PERFORMANCE"

That’s a BIG claim. If there is a DRASTIC change in performance from a burned in cable, that obviously should mean some significant physical change is occurring (we aren’t appealing to magic, right?) that should be measurable.

Why don’t we GET those measurements for the claims Nordost has just made?

Instead, we get this:

During the manufacturing process, as insulation is extruded over the conductors, gases can become trapped. This combined with the high electrical charges often found in new cables, result in a brittle and bright sound that lacks the detail and depth desired for music reproduction.

Look at all the ways this is utterly insufficient as an "explanation."

Where is the actual technical explanation, and evidence, that such trapped gases would results in the sonic defects - "brittle bright highs etc" - they describe?

I don’t see any in that statement. But Nordost goes on:

When cables are first put into use, their directionality is not securely established. However, once the Vidar begins running current through the cables, the trapped gases are dissipated and small impurities in the conductor’s metal begin to act like a diode, favoring current flow in a particular direction. By using extremely wide bandwidth signal as well as a range of both ultra-low and high frequency sweeps, the Vidar stresses the conductors, neutralizes charges, improves the way that signals pass through metal and ultrasonically conditions the surface of the conductors. It is these changes in both the conductor and insulation material that refines performance in audio cables.

So they say. But this explanation proposes:

1. A number of technical, physical changes claimed to occur in burning in a cable. The obvious question is, if they can’t measure the phenomena they refer to, then how can they tell us they occur in the first place as a problem to be solved?

But presuming all the technical issues exist described in pre-burned in cable exist as claimed,  and are measurable, WHERE ARE THE MEASUREMENTS SHOWING CABLE BURN IN ALTERS AND FIXES THOSE PROBLEMS? Why is that so conspicuously missing from Nordost? They make a technical claim based on measurable phenomena, but don’t provide experimental measurements showing they have FIXED the problem. We just have to take their word, apparently. How convenient for marketing!

2. If it is mere subjective impressions that Nordost is using to vet, and sell this "solution," then this is no different from any other pseudoscience, where fanciful techy-sounding hypotheses are floated, without any objectively experimental protocol offered, no measurable, repeatable data offered. But which rely on the human ability to fool ourselves or be led via biases to think we "hear" what may not actually be there.

Certainly many audiophiles just don’t seem to care about this, going with the "if I think I hear a difference, there is a difference" heuristic.

But you can’t say that there is no basis for reasonable doubts about many claims made by cable manufacturers, and in particular cable-burn in, if the evidence for it does not escape the level of pseudoscience.

Besides, it’s not like burning in cables is a product or anything give me a break!

LOL. The very link you are referring to as "puffing" is promoting just such a product:

"However, the best solution is to treat your cables using a designated cable burn-in device such as Nordost’s Vidar.:

Geoff, do you ever just slow down to test your claims with reality?
I noticed the post you removed was rather rashly inaccurate as well.
(Uh...it was Nordost’s "blog" on Nordost’s official site, promoting a Nordost product) ;-)

geoffkait: One can’t help wondering why in the world anyone would pursue this issue so strenuously, so verbosely, so relentlessly.

..........

I’m serious. What drives these people? What a waste of time.

Says the guy with 11,776 posts ;-)

Many of them trolling and insulting people on the forum.

If we are going to wonder about motivations, geoffkait would seem the place to start. 
(Though, admittedly, the motivations aren't that hard to infer).

taras22,

Prof: " Do we just accept that any hypothesis can be floated, and then decided by appeal to subjective impressions? "

taras22: Uhhhh, no.

Then, your solution to the problems I posed is...?

But throwing around claims gleaned from the application of half-baked and mis-applied protocols isn’t the answer either.

Sure. Obviously. But I don’t know that you’ve identified such misapplications (at least in what I wrote). And even when you do identify an error, isn’t that a way of suggesting how protocol CAN be tightened?

At least attempting to base claims on measurable phenomenon, and produce measurable support for a claim, as well as take the problem of bias seriously in listening tests, would be showing effort in the right direction of taking the problems seriously. (That is after all why science has been successful).

Rather than throwing out dubiously supported technical claims and just vetting them by methods known to suffer bias effects.

andy2,

Prof,There have been a lot of measurements been made. It’s called our "ears" and the data has been recorded by countless of listeners all over the world. Unless you call them all liars or you say our ears are not valid instruments.

That is a repetition of the same assertion you made before, including repeating the strawman false dichotomy of the "liar" or that "therefore all our inferences based on our hearing is unreliable."

I already dealt with those assertions in detail. Since I don’t see how your reply interacts with the arguments I’ve raised against it, I’m not sure how to respond.

How about this:

Millions of people around the world attribute their health to homeopathy.
Does that mean that homeopathic claims are correct?

Millions and millions of people, and practitioners, believe that the explanations for all sorts of naturopathic therapies are vindicated based on their subjective experience of the therapy.

Not to mention the millions in thrall of any number of treatments based on bogus ideas, but which "subjectively tested" are claimed to work. Ready for your coffee enema yet?

Not to mention the countless contradictory supernatural belief systems vetted on similar grounds.

Don’t you think that millions of people actually be wrong about something? And can that explanation not be put down to a problem in the method they have used to reach their conclusion?

Can I presume you do at least agree that people can be wrong - large numbers of people! - in the conclusions they reach based on their subjective experience?  If so, pointing to "countless" people believing they have experienced audible cable burn in isn't really getting us anywhere.  (And, how many people do you actually think have advocated for cable burn in?  Also, what are you doing with the negative results?  I don't hear any difference in "burn in" whether it's cables or other devices I've bought, and I'm far from the only one.  Get outside the confines of the typical audiophile forum to other audio/video enthusiast forums, and you'll see plenty who guffaw at the audiophile claims of "burn in" and who have not experienced any such thing.  Does your method entail ignoring negative results and only counting the positive claims?

Can I presume you do not reject all the data we have on human biases and how they sway perception?

Can I presume you do not reject that this applies to all our senses, including that people can be wrong even about what they think they hear?

If so, how are you accounting for the facts of human bias in this method where you are appealing strictly to subjective reports?

I have already, in detail, dealt with the "problem" you felt you raised, suggesting that my argument denies the utility of all subjective reports, or of our hearing in general. I showed why that is a strawman, and made a case for why it makes sense to provisionally accept reports based on hearing (e.g. in the realm well-known to be audible) and when it makes sense to be more cautious and ask for better evidence (those claims in the realm of the subtle, or in the realm where the technical/audible claims are controversial).

Prof was incarcerated for fighting the conspiracy.

When you erect a monument in memory of my valorous fight, please get the likeness right - I look like a cross between prime era Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt, if that helps  ;-)

@andy2,

Cables are definitely worth the asking coins.

Really? Is that an across the board statement? Are ethernet cables costing $10,000 (Audioquest) "worth the asking coins?" If so, why?

Is the Siltech Emperor Crown cables at $40,000 "worth the coin?"
Or any of the others in a similar stratosphere?

I’m just wondering what metric you are using when deciding "cables are definitely worth the asking coins" and if you use any discretion in judging this, and what that would be?

BTW, some people like to respond to such questions by saying things like "a piece of audio gear is ’worth’ whatever someone will pay for it."

But the market value of something is a different question from the one being asked, which is more along the lines of "How much do you have to pay to reach a certain level of PERFORMANCE and why?’

Cables are like car tires. A car needs a good set of tires for optimal performance.

Sure. But at a certain point, the practical limits of tire design are reached, not to mention diminishing returns before that.

You can buy cables from very knowledgeable, experienced manufacturers that are vastly less expensive than the prices often charged by high end cable manufacturers. So the question is: on what grounds do you NEED to spend that extra money for the expensive high end cables?

Even if you’ve spent many thousands on expensive speakers and amplifiers, why wouldn’t cables (selected with suitable specs for the system) from a very experienced cable company like Belden, far cheaper than the audiophile brands,  be good enough?

I believe Blue Jeans cables use Belden.

Correct.

I bought a set of QED for not a lot more money than Blue Jeans cable but easily better considerably.

So you had Belden cables and thought QED sounded better?

It sure would be interesting to see if those impressions held up if you didn’t know which cables you were listening to.  I'd also wonder about your explanation for why one would sound "better" than the other.

I was subjectively "sure" my new music server sounded distinctly brighter and different from my old one. But in a blind test I could not tell one from another.

Same as when I blind tested some expensive AC cables against a cheap one. The expensive cable at one point seemed to alter the sound of my system. As soon as I didn’t actually know which cable was being used, the "obvious differences" between it and a $15 ac cable disappeared.

Blind testing can be sobering, and educational, that way ;-)

You didn’t really answer my other questions, though.

@andy2,

Your analogy to a Ferrari and a Toyota is begging the question. (There are obviously gross physical differences in design and well-attested technical reasons why a Ferrari can outperform a Toyota in various ways - and since we are talking about the real-world, they are measurable. If you suggest high end cables outperform belden cable in an analogous way, can you tell us how this occurs, and provide or point to any measurable data for the claim?).

But I don’t see how we can get anywhere the way this is going because you just keep asserting claims when I’m asking what justifies your claims.

Maybe one more try:

Do you think the "higher end" cables, such as your QED, transmit sonic information that the Belden cable is incapable of transmitting?

@andy2

Like I said, manufacturers have a lot of cables lying around so they can do A - B between new and old cables so there is no need to recall something many days ago.

And that is exactly why it is suspicious that they do not (that I'm aware of) produce any objective measurements showing the physical changes between a burned in and new cable.   Let alone tests correlating such changes to their audibility. (The only, rare,  attempts I'm aware of to measure for burn-in in finished audio products, either cables or other devices e.g. CD players, were negative for burn in effects).

Even in this thread people have appealed to the idea "high end cable manufacturers recommend burn in, so it must be a real thing!"

Yet when you check out the claims, e.g. on the Nordost page (one of THE most well-regarded cable companies in high-end), anyone with a critical-thinking neuron in their head can see how dicey and unsupported the claims are. 

Look how many cable companies there are.  None (that I know) provide objective,  repeatable data demonstrating their claims and you'd think they have the equipment!  Lots of them just tell you it happens, which entails that it is "only fair" that you keep the cable for the allotted "burn in" time.    And that is a good marketing move - salesmen know about the "get the foot in the door" approach, where once you can say "look, just take it and try it out" the sale is more likely than if the customer doesn't even take the product.


Why do things like "cable burn-in" operate like pseudoscience, where the companies (or audiophiles or hi-fi salesmen) make some technical-sounding claim that is never actually supported by measured data, but only by anecdote? 

Andy, could you answer the question I posed before, because I'm sure it has consequences for the assumptions you've made about cables, that perhaps you have not thought through:

Do you think the "higher end" cables, such as your QED, transmit sonic information that the Belden cable is incapable of transmitting?

cleeds,

This isn’t a scientific group.

I understand, but please make sure are not closing ranks too tightly; I and others who share my skepticism about some areas of high end audio are part of this group (insofar as you mean members of the audiogon forum).

But the seemingly endless demands that posters provide upon request some set of scientific data to accompany their listening observations isn’t going to get anyone anywhere.

I’m not asking anyone here to become a scientist and do all the testing themselves. I only ask sometimes in the more controversial areas of high end gear: "is there any data from anyone ELSE you can point to, to support what you are claiming?"

I’m not a scientist who has worked in the field of evolution, but if I say evolution happened I can certainly point you to all sorts of data supplied by those experts who HAVE done the work.

Nor am I chasing down everyone in every thread on the forum, cable forum included, demanding they justify their subjective claims. If I debate this at all, it’s almost entirely in threads that people create, like this FOR THE DEBATE on the subject.

As I’ve said before in other such threads, my system uses a mish-mash of cables; ones I bought long ago, loaners from friends who have gone through the high-end cable thing. So for instance, I recently needed another pair of interconnects and a pal has loaned me some Nordost interconnects. Will I blind test them in my system? Very unlikely - it’s a hassle, I’m busy, my pal is busy, I just need some interconnects. I might do a brief sighted shoot out to see if I perceive a difference from my other interconnects. And who knows, it’s possible I’ll hear something that sounds distinct, and I’d be happy to say "When I switched out my old cables for the Nordost, I perceived X, Y and Z change in the sound."

But, personally, I will not promote that beyond the level of "evidence" it really is. I’ll say it seemed to me to make a difference, but not that my anecdotal evidence gives me utter confidence. I’m just too aware of the facts about human bias and perception to warrant such a claim.

But here, you often get subjective impressions as some inviolable measurement. If someone hears cable differences and you say you don’t, well because their experience PROVES cables obviously make a difference (or burn in) then YOU must have bad hearing, bad gear etc.
The person maintaining skepticism is cast as a fool or a dogmatist.

That’s an attitude that I think really doesn’t help any forum, this one included.

Ok andy2, lesson finally learned.  I attempted good faith interaction, but I won't attempt any more to draw serious replies from you.  


Enjoy the show.

Admittedly with the lack of seriousness in the thread, combined with many of the weird things claimed in the audiophile domain,  we can get in to a Poe's Law situation.  That said...

nonoise wrote:

The same goes for fine, tonally textured base compared to one note base that can be introduced by an inferior cable.

May I ask (just in case you were serious):  How in the world do you think a cable could cause "one note bass?"   

(That is a cable that wasn't flat out defective).

nonoise,

Do you think that a 30 something gauge, single silver wire IC in a basically air dielectric can’t sound demonstrably different form a run of the mill, copper stranded Blue Jeans IC?

Do you mean is it possible to choose a wire that simply has the wrong specs for the job demanded of it, such that it will alter the signal vs one with sufficient specs? Of course that’s the case. Choose a 50 foot long 30 awg speaker wire vs a 10 awg wire and of course it's possible to experience audible attenuation at certain frequencies.

That is so obvious I’d hoped I didn’t have to add that caveat (which is why I left it out).

I’d presumed you were talking about sonic differences between cables assuming they all have similar specifications necessary for where you are going to use them.

Presuming that is what you meant, can you explain how a non-defective cable would alter the sound to "one note bass?"

I get that you *think* you have heard this; I’m asking what could possibly explain it (aside from incompetence in choosing the right cable for the job?)

taras22,

Gotta say that is a very odd thing for a fundamentalist to bring up.

That was lame the other times you tried that approach; it doesn't get any better with time.

You couldn't accurately articulate the position I have argued if you tried.  (because if you could, anyone would see that "fundamentalist" pot-shot couldn't stick and you'd look foolish).   

Taras,

A bog standard cable should at the very least be adept at transmitting something as simple as pitch and duration but dealing with more complex timbre, transient vibrato and envelope modulation is a much more difficult undertaking and requires something more refined than a bog standard cable because these qualitative items demand a better phase coherence and freedom from reactive elements such as skin effect than a bog standard cable can offer.

So you claim.

I don’t see anything to support your claim.

So....any cable can transmit a one note bass but not necessarily a musical tone which is the fine, tonally textured bass that Nonoise refers to and which musical lovers strive to hear as completely as possible when they listen to their systems.That requires something much more refined than bog standard ( which meets the existing theoretic specs and the attendant testing protocols but really sucks at presenting the qualitative aspects of music ).

This is clearly false.

I have "bog standard" belden speaker cables and it’s simply, and hilariously, false that they are producing "one note bass" or incapable of transmitting complex bass passages, or tonally distinct bass. In fact I have found that in terms of definition and all the tonal qualities we audiophiles often seek in accurate bass, such qualities are a distinguishing feature of the sound I get at home.  Using my current Thiel 2.7 speakers this is true, but it was eve more true with my bigger 3.7 speakers. I could go to my friend’s place, listen to a system using $50,000 of Nordost cable and come home to bass reproduction that easily surpassed that system. When over the past couple years I auditioned a large variety of speakers, in systems using many of the top high end cable brands we could name, every time I came home and played the same bass torture tracks on my system, it distinguished itself in how controlled, beautifully pitched and even holographically placed the bass could appear.

Audiophile pals, musicians, and a friends who review high end audio all have been blown away by what they hear at my place, despite the "bog standard" cables in place.

So, please, don’t give me this about the things "bog standard" cables "can’t do."

Secondly, it’s clearly false in that "bog standard" cables are used all the time to transmit musical information, bass included, accurately and as tunefully as they musician desires. No one needs to use Teo Audio or Nordost cables between their bass guitar and their bass amp. A standard quality cable does this quite fine. As do "bog standard" cables that connect instruments direct in to mixing boards, or via microphone to mixing boards, through all sorts of other "bog standard" cables in the chain of recording, mixing, mastering for most music sources.

If "bog standard" cables could not transmit and preserve the type of nuance you are talking about, IT WOULDN’T BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE IN THE RECORDINGS that used bog-standard cables.

And, yes, your subjective anecdote about the belden cable meant nothing. It’s ludicrous to leap from your own subjective emotional involvement to some objective idea belden cables are incapable of transmitting musically relevant information. I have gobs of emotional connection to the music coming through my system, and to how it sounds.

All your claims only serve to underline how many poor arguments one encounters justifying audiophile cables (and burn in, etc).

Andy2 wrote:

Let's me repeat:1. If you think cable burn in is false, then there is a massive world wide conspiracy.
2. If you're right, then everybody in the world is wrong.
Just take your pick and move on.

I admit it makes me curious how someone can take such a dogmatic stance where they simply won't allow reason or evidence to intrude on their claim.

Take a look at the false dichotomy Andy2 seems completely dedicated to propounding.

Let's apply it to other areas of inquiry.

As I've mentioned before in a previous thread:  My son was part of a large scientific study researching the efficacy of a new allergy therapy. 

The study followed strict scientific principles to control for variables.
We were "blinded" as to whether he was receiving the study drug or a placebo, and we had to keep a journal on any symptoms.  The researchers running the test were "blinded" to who was receiving the study drug vs placebo.

Now...what could possibly be the rational for this?

Imagine we had said "Look, why are we not allowed to know if my son is on the real drug or placebo?  Neither he nor we would LIE about his experience while on the drug.   And why would the researchers have to be blinded in the study.  Why would they deliberately LIE when interpreting the results?  The only explanation for why you think we have to accept the blind controls are that you assume there is some CONSPIRACY TO LIE by the patients and researchers when interpreting the results.  And if you think ANY of the conclusions we would make without blind testing are wrong, then EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS WRONG."

Does this hysterical response actually constitute a sound, informed argument?

Or...do you think maybe that is missing a third option for why research uses blind testing?

Maybe...one that Andy refuses to account for in his drum-beating for his false dichotomy? 

nonoise,

Prof, do yourself a favor and check out the specs on a set of Darwin Truth II ICs and a pair of Blue Jean Cables ICs and you'll get it.

Hardly.

I looked at the Darwin website and it seemed to be full of all the dubious justifications as any other high end cable manufacturer.  In the "why you should buy Darwin" page, they say they "painstakingly tested by ear..."

That's hardly a good start, especially when the very process of "testing by ear" is the one being disputed.  That's like a homeopath saying "We painstakingly tested our remedies by ingesting!"   Kind of leaves out the problem of bias.

They go on to make all the dubious claims we see repeated in this forum, but with no other support for the claims than "we just said it" or "we heard it." 

The Darwins are well within spec and yet they sound demonstrably better.

When you know which cable you are using, right?

I still see no plausible argument given for why a lower cost, competently built cable would produce "one note bass" while passing a huge variety of (musical) bass signals.  It's just a claim wafting in the air.  

Once one wraps their head around the perfectly acceptable concept of our hearing being better than a measurement (more exacting, differentiating, etc.)

Why accept something untrue?

Or, at least, we have to separate the untrue implications from the true implications in such a statement.

We have tools that measure the presence of frequencies you can not hear, and levels of distortion you can not hear. Why do you think we develop a huge number of measuring tools in the first place if our senses, including our hearing, were sufficient????

How is that x-ray vision of yours going?

Measurements only take you so far.

Agreed. Ultimately the point of any audio product lies in what we humans actually hear from that product. A good understanding of measurements and of human hearing can to a degree predict the sound
one might hear from, say, a pair of speakers. But given all the complexities involved, and some of the unknowns, perfect prediction escapes us. So we can always be surprised. That’s why anyone should listen to whatever audio gear they produce, to make sure they didn’t go wrong somewhere in the design.

I’ve used Devore 0 speakers as an example a number of times for this: they’ve been attacked by some audiophiles/DIYers and speaker designers as "doing things wrong that are likely to produce bad sound" and yet when I and many others actually listen to them, I find the claims overblown in terms of actual results and I love the sound of the Devores.

But "it’s hard to sometimes predict results purely on measurements" is an entirely different thing than claims like "our ears are better/more sensitive than instruments." It really depends on what you are claiming to be able to hear. And on what grounds.

To simply pooh-pooh such statements as "tested by ear" betrays a dogmatically and hermetically sealed mindset.

No, it’s an eyes-open LACK of dogmatism, where we admit to the fallibility of our senses. It is rather dogmatism to cling to the idea that your perception is infallible, or a golden standard unsullied by the (well known) problems of bias and error.

Imagine you went to your doctor with a sore throat. The doctor says "Well, obviously you have cancer of the throat!"

You ask "why?"

The doctor says: "Because throat cancer can cause sore throats."

And you say" But...can’t many other things cause sore throats, like maybe I have a cold or a flu? Shouldn’t you show me how you have ruled out those other causes"

Doctor: How DARE you be so dogmatic as to question my diagnosis!

Now...who is actually being dogmatic there? It’s not the person who is acknowledging the variables involved, and that the doctor’s claim doesn’t seem to have taken those variables seriously enough, when deciding he can’t be in error.

It is just as strange and mixed up to try to portray someone who is pointing to the simple fact that your method is ignoring existing variables, and why you seem to have unwarranted confidence, as if the person raising these cautions is the "dogmatist." It’s literally got things the wrong way around.

taras22,

And surely you have ample measurements to absolutely and fully prove all those assertions beyond the shadow of any doubt. Or are we going to have to trust hearsay based on information drawn from listening experiences using your, uhhhh, ears ?

Which is, as usual, drawn from a mischaracterization of my arguments.

I have been voicing reasons for skepticism when it comes to *controversial* claims about audibility - controversial in the sense they do not form a part of generally accepted, well established phenomena.  Claims that remain controversial among the relevant experts (e.g. I've seen many EEs say why the technical claims made by audiophiles or expensive cable companies are nonsense), and where the explanations are dubious, and the evidence almost purely anecdotal.

Claims like cable burn-in, and even the purported sonic advantages often claimed by manufacturers and users of expensive cables, fall in to that category.

That's different from the gross differences in sound well known to be audible, credible both in terms of technical explanation, what we know of human hearing, and what is reliable via our experience.

So, for instance, the audibility of sonic difference between various musical instruments would easily fall in to those categories.  The harmonic/distortion profiles of different instruments is measurable, and falls well within the realm understood as audible to humans.  And we reliably detect these differences all the time.

There will be gross physical, audible differences in the audio profile produced by, say, a Fender bass vs an acoustic stand up bass.  

It's not remotely controversial that we can capture and reproduce these audible differences in the recording/playback system.  Nobody is mistaking Paul Chambers' double bass at the beginning of Kind Of Blue for Geddy Lee playing his electric Rickenbacker bass, and for good reasons.  

That goes for a whole host of audible characteristics that occur between different bass instruments, the way they are played, the audible effects of how they were recorded, placed in the soundstage, eq'd, mastered, etc.  All of those differentiating factors exist well within non-controversial, known realms of audibility.  

Then there are all the audible influences that can be measured in terms of eq, room effects that cause "bloat" or "overhang," and various measurable phenomena  that can interfere with bass signals, produce the subjective perception of homogenizing bass - "one note bass" - etc.
These are all within the realm of what we know to be audible artifacts.

THEREFORE we have an entirely plausible case to stand on when we are discerning between different instruments on a playback system, between different bass instruments, between bass instruments recorded differently, between the qualities we can describe etc.

So...no...your "gotcha" relies on a naive look at the problem, not on some internal contradiction or fault in what I've been writing on here.

taras22,

Thanks for the invite.  I might be at the Toronto show (hope to go).

No worries, I'm not a leafs fan (not a hockey fan - I'm a bad Canadian that way).   Oh, and I don't take any of these discussions seriously in terms of personalities or holding any animosity at all.  Nothing on an audio discussion forum is worth that. 

Cheers!

blueranger,

Do any of the nasayers believe in equipment break in? Tube break in? Speaker break in?

To be clear: I'm not a "naysayer" in the sense I claim cable burn in doesn't happen.  I've just found the arguments I encounter FOR it aren't very convincing.  As well,  I've never heard any equipment I've ever bought, cables or otherwise, "burn in."  Doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

As for burn-in of tubes:  I don't know.  (I actually have a brand new pair of tubes I'm going to be putting in my CJ pre-amp.  Unfortunately, even in as a casual test of burned in vs non-burned in tubes, it wouldn't work in my situation.  The reason I'm replacing my tubes in the first place is that the old ones have become more noisy, hiss coming through my speakers, so there ought to be an obvious change when I put in the new ones. I hope there is!)

Burn in of speakers:  Much more plausible than what's been offered for cables.   But there seems very, very little hard data on the subject.  And analysis by the people who have tried measuring speaker burn in - e.g. drivers burning in - generally seem to point out if it happens the audible results would tend to be very subtle, and that any likely audible difference in break in happens fairly quickly, vs the hundreds of hours one often hears about in high end audio.

robert_1,

 For most people, instead of learning and understanding science they choose to follow the blind, and have a justification to their foolish (ego trip) quests to brag about their latest piece of equipment. It is mostly about the hardware specs rather than the music.

I don't see it that way, and it's always dicey trying to ascribe motivations to other people.  Especially when it comes to people's views we don't agree with, we tend to get that wrong giving it the worst spin possible.

My impression, not trying to read anyone's mind, is that people buying expensive cables etc are just as honest and motivated by a passion for music/sound/gear as anyone else.   They are just relying on a certain method of moving through that space.  (And one I tend to use as well - listening, trying things out).

I really don't see this rampant "I just want to buy this expensive cable/gear to show off how much it costs" thing happening, at least not in enthusiast forums like this where it seems clear to me we all share enthusiasm for music, sound and the buzz we get from our systems.

djones51,

I guess my system is junk. Oh well life goes on.

I feel your pain.

Drat, someone on an audio forum has declared that if I don’t perceive obvious differences between cables, my system isn’t good enough. What will I do????

I’ve been stuck with junk from Thiel - like Thiel’s last flagship 3.7 speaker that review after review mistakenly took to be world-class in resolution - as well as MBL radialstrahler speakers ( How do they get away with those prices for such a low resolution speaker, let alone fool people like the Absolute Sound who rated the tweeter among the world’s best for many years!), various Audio Physic speakers (if only those speakers could render "detail," they could maybe Audio Physic make a slogan out of it!), Quads, Conrad Johnson amps, Benchmark DACs, Transrotor turntable, Benz Micro ebony cartridge....

And still my system isn’t "good enough." 

I’ll just have to suffer along with this crap.

(It’s ok everyone, no need to raise a finger to your keyboard, I’ll do it for you: "then your ears aren’t good enough." Damn, time to give up my job in sound post production I guess...)

Andy,

If your system is so unstable that it alters sound when you change cables, maybe it's not good enough.

;-)

The metaphysical and the scientific. Until we have testing equipment that can test things outside the reach of science right now, only our opinions can be our reasoning. Does science know all about the behavior of atoms and electrons? I don't think tbere is a physicist, electrical engineer or researcher that would bet their life on it. Oh well the discussion goes on

^^^ I think there is a member here who sells cables tailor made for this gentleman :)