Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

This thread has veered so far off course that I'm sure it will be impossible to bring it back, but consider this.

Burn-in on wires is, by definition, a process that takes place over time, quite a long time (even with cable cookers and the like).

Substituting one component in a system for another can take 5 minutes or less.

If what we know about auditory memory is correct, how can you ever effectively demonstrate to a non-believer the effect of burn-in?

There's time lapse photography of grass growing and glaciers moving (and melting).  But there's no equivalent in the world of sound.

Or is there.....?

Auditory memory of sounds we're exposed too frequently over a long period of time is good: e.g. a parent's voice.

Auditory memory of a sound experienced once over a fairly short period of time, e.g. an auditioning of a new audio component, is very poor.

Hence, impossible to judge with your ears how much burn-in of cables helps.  If you listen to them once, you can't remember by the time they're fully cooked.  If you listen to them over a period of time, to form a more durable impression, you're actually burning them in while you listen.

All you can really judge is whether, subjectively, the experience of listening to them after burn-in is as positive to you or more so, compared to your judgment when you first listened.  This isn't the same thing.

Geoff: Now you’re talking my language! I wonder if there’s a dialectic with faster break in properties than air? Unobtanium? Dark matter? Event horizons?

If the Higgs boson exists, then cable burn-in exists...

(Of course, it all comes down to what you mean by "exist".)

Four: mismatch between the electrical parameters of your new cables and your existing equipment.  Highly praised cables in certain systems will sound like crap.

Can you leave your system playing 24 hrs/day, at a low level?  With just a couple of hours a day, break-in will take for ever.