Initial disappointment with 1st set of “expensive’ IC’s...

Break in or burn in, who cares. We all know what someone is talking about when they use either term.

I have been using various Cardas cables for many years. They always need a very long break in, usually a couple of hundred hours to sound their best. If you have a burn in cd like XLO, that will speed things up. Even if I unplug cables and move them around after break in they will have to settle in for a while again but not as long as the initial burn in, so just keep playing music and evaluate them after a couple of hundred hours. Good luck. I recently bought a demo pair of Clear Cygnus ICs for my turntable and I had to burn those in for a while too before they sounded right. 

@dill I too have heard differences only after some period of time has passed. What’s hard for me is that I cannot tell if that is due to the equipment or to my own ability --or changed interest -- to notice later details, later. I’ve looked at (for example) the Mona Lisa painting many times, but I only really noticed the color shades of the mountains and river as compared with her figure later on. Was that because I got a new monitor? Or was it due to the way attention shifts based on interest? I take it a similar type of ambiguity is part of listening and some may simply be impossible to get clear about.

" The difference between cables should be obvious the moment you swap one for another."

Not true, that is why A-B tests are flawed. Many times I have been listening to familiar music and heard sound clues I had never heard before, weeks or month later. That brush stroke, fingers rubbing on guitar strings, increased or diminished depth or width, background sounds created by the musician touching the instruments, decay, pitch, vocals becoming more clear or smeared, etc.

If one hears a difference in a A-B comparison in an instant, how can one know it is better or worse, long term?

@oldhvy With respect, can you explain why people getting the terms “break” and “burn” conflated sets you off? I am asking dispassionately. What is it about that misuse of language that mangles the logic of the topic? You don’t seem the sort of guy to nitpick, so I’m honestly seeking your clarification. 

I wonder if anybody has ever put together two identical systems except for the cables and done  listening tests? Seems like the only way to get around the qualifiers that you can’t move a cable and it Has to burn/break in for hundreds of hours. Any dealers out there who have tried this?

Well OP at least your honest with yourself and others. Some would have us believe their word is gospel. It’s not. If you can’t distinguish between different cables, join the crowd. A LOT of the old zips and off the spool cabling were OK.. BUT a sonic difference?.. More like ear plugs in your ears..

Things have changed..

Cables BREAK IN, they don’t burn in, for the 10,000th time.. Things BURN UP, they don’t burn in. The exception is a "24 hour burn in" on valves (tubes). Everything BREAKS IN.

Copper if it’s assembled correctly by LOOKING at the way it was put through the dyes, assembled, and conditioned (cooked), makes all the difference in the world. From plug in, to rout and play. It takes about 24 hours and up to 100 hours or so with copper. Silver and silver clads.. hundreds of hours..

The CRAP people say... 1940s crap from some long lost dead guy’s quote from Mcintosh... or something.. EVEN Mcintosh change their tune about cabling.. Took long enough.. Over 15 years NOW...

Blind testing cables is worthless, just worthless... No reason to do or advocate it. We are not trying to please the masses, just ourselves. What part of ME not YOU don’t folks understand.. Stereo ism, is not the same as McDonald ism. Quit lumping toaster repair standards in with listening to a stereo and it’s cabling.. Different comes to mind...

Must be tough not to be able to LEARN with a SEA of information to the contrary. Just amazing.. I know we are the only one’s in the the whole universe too.. Look up for God sakes...

Wake up CAVE MEN and WOMEN. It’s quite all right to admit your wrong.. But argue cable DON’T make a difference or they BURN IN.
At least act like you’re smart.. Quit showing you’re DUMB.
Mouth shut, ears open... what a concept..."It’s like teaching Klingons". (Grand Nagus Zek, Star Trek, SD9).

Semi Regards... A 5 out of 10 on the regards scale...

@millercarbon
Diminishing returns is the point where I can not detect any improvement with a more expensive piece of gear. I’ve listened to systems that have absolutely jaw dropping resolution and other than pointing out an obvious sound signature, I couldn’t tell you the difference between two different sets of speaker cables. No way. How audiophiles are able to pick out micro nuances at such a high level of resolution and realism remains a mystery to me...I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying that I’m not capable of it at that level.

There is no such thing as diminishing returns.

You have two paths, as an unlimited spender (all evidence I've seen from your posts point to this being your reality).  Either you accept the idea of diminishing returns, where the difference between a $1 cable and a $100 cable is far greater than the difference between a $1K cable and a $50K cable, or at some point you have to admit to yourself that this is all placebo effect. 

Burn-in on cables is nonsense.  Period.  The only thing copper does over time is corrode.  It doesn't get better, it gets worse.  What does happen, however, is your brain acclimates to the specific tonality of what it's hearing out of your system.  No matter how subtle the initial difference between one wire and another, the longer you listen to the replacement, the more accustomed to its response you get.  And when you make a major investment in something expecting results, "burn-in" makes you more comfortable with your purchase as whatever differences you detected the first time you heard it become imprinted in how you perceive your system.  You WANT it to sound better, therefore as you become more comfortable with how it DOES sound, you convince yourself that, indeed, it sounds better. 

The only thing that burns in is your ears.  The difference between cables should be obvious the moment you swap one for another.  I've said elsewhere on this forum that I've done blind listening tests, and I can certainly detect those differences.  Without burn-in.  

And I've also said elsewhere on this forum that the biggest bitch about cables is that every manufacturer trades off one problem for a different problem, so the "best" cable for any given situation is going to depend on a LOT of factors, biggest one being length, because length changes priorities in the R/C/I puzzle. 

I’ve tried a two "expensive" ICs over the years and neither of them could beat my $10 Belkins.

@jl1ny,
25+ year Cardas cable owner of several generations. None of my brand new (coiled-up-in box or bag with mechanical tension) Interconnects sounded good at first, ever. Most sounded kinda strange new. Same situation with my better Cardas and my Analysis Plus OCC cables. Set ’em up, and let them rest and RELAX in place for 14-30 days, with no movement at all. None. Use and play them as much as you can while waiting.

Report back in 30 days to let us know if you hear any changes or not. When you get frustrated passing time, read this link below.

http://www.cardas.com/insights_break_in.php

Burn in is real. Huge difference. BUT nothing ever goes from crap to magic. Does not happen. What does happen, stuff that sounds really good right from the first minute opens up and fills out and sounds way better as time goes by, sometimes even continuing to improve well into a hundred hours or more.

By and large though people saying you need to wait 100 hours are blowing smoke. Like I said, it sounds good right out of the box, or it doesn’t. The sow’s ear never does become a silk purse.

Right now you are listening and paying attention to some tiny little subset of a very long list of audio attributes. When you have heard a couple dozen, or hundred, things burn in, to the point you are able to see the pattern, get back to us then.

There is no such thing as diminishing returns. The grain of truth that confuses and misleads people is that sometimes you can find one thing that is so good it costs a freaking fortune to get even a tiny little bit better. Townshend F1 cables for example, or Herron VTPH2A phono stage. There are any number of examples like this, and at just about any price level too.

But saying that is to miss the forest for the trees. There is also rubber bands that will isolate cables and improve sound and cost zero. So where are the diminishing returns? If you see diminishing returns, all that is telling you is you are looking in the wrong place.

@dletch2

Well, returning them is not an option (private sale) Cardas is a top notch manufacturer and while it’s possible that the QC could be off on one or both sets of the cables I’d say it’s most likely not the issue. It could very well be that the Cardas just sound like crap in my rig. I’m kicking around the idea of doing a A/B test by having a friend swap the cables (or not) with my Shirokazu Yazaki Belden 8402’s and see If I can tell the difference. I think I could easily detect the difference right now so I’d want more time with the Cardas before I do that just to see if it changes or appears to have changed...So if it’s a crap sounding cable then it should continue to sound that way and I should be able to detect it’s offensiveness compared to the Belden a week or month from now. Correct?

Thanks everyone for the kind wishes. It means a lot there’s too much bad this gets tossed around on this site

@raysmtb1I fully believe that there is a point of diminishing returns...with the resolution of a $60K rig, I can’t see how changing any piece of gear in that tier could make an audible difference. But with a system such as mine why wouldn’t an upgrade be audible? Makes sense no?

Sidebar- I went toe 2 toe with cancer and won. Stay strong and keep fighting the good fight brother.

Ray - grace and peace brother.

I’ve love music my entire life. I had an accident 3 1/2 years ago on my mountain bike and became a quadriplegic. I spent all day listening to music and over the past year I have put together a $60,000 Macintosh system. I have never heard speaker wires or inner K’NEX change.I listen to a lot of the same music at least eight hours a day and I couldn’t tell you from day to day if anything is changed. I’ll never understand what are you guys here that I don’t

@williewonka @ghdprentice @ghosthouse 
Thanks for the insight gents. I was apprehensive about spending what I did on these so my immediate expectations were perhaps too high. I’ll leave them running for the weekend then take another listen...they are keepers for a good while so It will be interesting to hear how they settle in.

@ghosthouse My Sonus Farber Concertinos are bi-wire and I’m using jumpers, I’ll definitely play with the configuration (didn’t know that was a tweak!).

@steakster Right now all my power cords are upgraded and I’m using a PS Audio Power Center (with plans for a Sunyata at some point).

@raysmtb1 The Prima Luna is here to stay brother, everything else I like is out of range for now.

I've had cables that continue to improve up to 400 hours of playing

Typically I put them on my streamer 24/7 for at least 150 hours before any serious assessment.

The burn-in process is different from cable to cable
- some save their best performance until the end
- other will give you an initial taste, only to degrade and then get much better

I've never tried Cardas, so I do not know how they will progress.

Just be patient and give them ample time

Regards - steve

It’s a lot easier if you buy a pre-amp with tone controls. Then you don’t have this fishing expedition of which cable is going to change the sound of my system. Something that they were never meant to do .

It’s a lot easier if you buy a pre-amp with tone controls. Then you don’t have this fishing expedition of which cable is going to change the sound of my system. Something that they were never meant to do .

@jl1ny

I agree with @ghdprentice 
Be patient.  I run Cardas myself.  Used, it seems to take a few days undisturbed and a good (20-50 hours?) of playing time before they settle in.  New, more like 100-200 hours of playing.  Even when moving wire already in the system, it seems like a day or two before things "settle in". To my ears/with my equipment, and with new wire in particular, break in always seems to involve the sound opening up (more air, space, depth) which I suppose could well be due to a little more high end extension developing.  

Having said that, once sufficient time has passed, I (obviously) can't guarantee you'll like sound with the Clear Lights.  Regarding the bass, however, if it persists in being "fat", consider moving your speakers a bit if you  are able.  In addition, if you are single-wiring to bi-wireable speakers and use jumpers, try Nordost's method of diagonal connection (i.e., Black (-) to the upper post, Red (+) to lower with jumpers connected as you normally would).  To me this method of connection (vs Audioquest diagonal which is the opposite...Red up/Black down) provides a little more high frequency energy.  

Good luck.

They are like all interconnects, they need a hundred hours or more to get broken in. Fuzzy or flabby bass is typical before breakin... although unfortunately typically they get a bit softer in the upper frequencies during breakin.

I used Cardas when I had a system that was too trebly and harsh. Their signature is warm. Personally... my audio guy keeps letting me try new incarnations and the always tip the balance too warm with my equipment. But, I would cross my fingers and run them for a week or two 24 x 7 and then judge.