If you play with a lot of cables or have multiple systems, it is well worth it. Regardless of the "sped up" break-in time, i think that cables sound better after being cooked even if they have been in a system with hundreds upon hundreds of hours on them. As i've said before, you haven't really heard the potential of a cable unless its' been cooked : ) Sean > |
Well Paul, i guess when you can't hear the difference between an amp from NAD, Rotel, B&K, etc... and an amp from Threshold / Pass, Boulder, Rowland, Electron Kinetics, etc.., it wouldn't make sense to put money into cables or tweaks of ANY type. Since some of you might not know what i'm referring to, take a look at this thread and consider the source for yourself. Other than that, why do you bother to lurk / read forums like this if that is your attitude ? If you have such a problem with comments / information that i post, why not join in and offer a contrasting point of view ? After all, if you have enough knowledge & experience to be able to discern errors in my posts or knowingly disagree with what i had to say, you should be able to put those thoughts and ideas into words / posts that might help others that i would otherwise be leading astray. Right ??? C'mon Paul. Come out and play. Snipers / hit & run drivers are no fun : ) Sean > |
Paulwp states: "Every product or tweak mentioned in this forum has its advocates. How should one decide to give any weight to one point of view or another?" I would suggest simply reading responses from those that post / respond on a regular basis. If you find that one / some of those poster's comments and experience match your own on a regular basis, then believe them. Having said that, the people that you don't agree with might not necessarily be "wrong". There might be variables involved in the situations that caused your point of view / experiences to differ with theirs. That is why it is important that we ENCOURAGE different points of view. This can only help us to break things down to a point that we can analyze and learn from the various and different observations that have taken place. As a case in point, that is why i asked YOU to post YOUR comments when you disagree with what i've posted. As to my experience with "cable burning", the results are not hard to tell between identical "burned" and "unburned" cables. Keep in mind that my comments are in regards to interconnects. I was supposed to have a "straight wire bypass" device some time ago that would allow me to do SBT and DBT, but that fell through as our schedules didn't jive. This device allows you to put multiple active OR passive devices in series with the main system and let you switch them in and out of the signal path in a controlled or random fashion. I've got to contact the individual that has this device and see if i can still purchase it from them. I just dumped quite a bit of money this weekend on a bunch of small purchases that have really added up, so this might be put off for just a bit longer. If i do pick this up, i'll be sure to let you know : ) Sean > |
Paul, I did go and check out the "snake oil" section of the website that you mentioned. The owner of this shop seems quite level-headed and respectable. Quite honestly, i was a HARDCORE skeptic about some of the "tweaks" that i take for granted now. Many moons ago, my brother and I had a "knock down, drag out" dispute about AC cables with a gentleman by the name of Ozzy and a select few others over on Audio Review. While Ozzy and his "crew" were preaching the benefits of aftermarket AC cords, my brother and i kept handing him the same lines that most AC skeptics use even today. The only thing that came out of that was a runaway thread and a lot of smoke coming from everyone's ears. I'm sure that Ozzy can remember this "dispute". He may even chime in with a few words as i know that he sometimes frequents these forums. The funny thing about that thread was that i was talking out of the top of my hat i.e. i had never experimented with "fancy" power cables. After trying a well designed cable out for myself, i could hardly believe that i REALLY could hear a difference. In fact, the difference was SO noticeable that i have now invested a couple of thousand dollars in test equipment so that i can try to analyze / design a power cord that is more effective than those that i currently own & use. Needless to say, i am now one of those that believes that science should be able to explain why something happens, not tell you that it can't happen. I've seen too many "impossible occurances" take place in the electronics field to discount ANY point of view. After all, a lot of the money that i make comes from being able to improve circuits /designs that are already "theoretically perfect". I've even had the President of one of the largest communications manufacturing facilities in the world fly in from the Orient with his head EE ( Electrical Engineer ) and ME ( Mechanical Engineer ) just to see "impossibilities" that were occuring on a daily basis with their products. Not only did they not know that such problems could have ever occured, they did not know how to correct them once they saw that they did exist. That's why they came to see me in person : ) Obviously, i'm not saying that i have all of the answers. If i did, i'd be able to whip out a formula that explained our existance and why cables go through electrical changes when voltage / current is passed through them ande how they react in any given situation. While i doubt i will be able to make a dent in the "why are we here" part of my last statement, i'm hoping to be able to at least measure and document some of the phenomena that many people don't believe exists on the latter part of that statement. Sean > |
Thanks for the kind words guys. I do what i can, when i can. What i have found is that if one shares honest opinions with any group of people, you are bound to step on someone's toes sooner or later. As such, i can see why some reviewers try to "soft shoe" the audience i.e. they don't want to alienate or offend someone based on their personal preferences. We ask for honest points of view and reviews yet when someone shares what is exactly on their mind and what they like, there are those that criticize those thoughts and cry "charlatan" simply because they don't see eye to eye on the subject. With that in mind, I learned a long time ago that you gain nothing by being wishy-washy. I've also found that there are ways to make negative comments that get the message across without decapitating the person that you are communicating with. Nobody likes to be talked down to regardless of their position in life or for that matter, the gear that they own. As such, i try to keep that in mind but sometimes slip back into the "neanderthal" mode that dwells within. The bottom line to me is to stick by your guns and be honest. You never have to go back and cover your ass if you speak the truth. Granted, there are ways to do so and not start a riot, but you'll always find opponents to the truth regardless of what the subject is. There would be nothing left to "cover up" if we used this approach and studied every subject with an open mind. In the long run, some people might not like you for sharing your honest opinions. Those that know that you don't "pull punches" will come to know exactly what to expect out of you and respect you for your honesty. They might not always agree with you, but they will at least respect you as they know that you are not going to bullshit them. As such, i would rather have someone hate me for being honest than to have someone like me based on a bunch of lies. The earlier approach feels a lot more natural to me while the latter approach only seems to work for politicians : ) Take me or leave me, but at least you know exactly where i stand. Sean > |
Detlof, glad to see that your results basically match mine. Then again, great minds think alike : ) Much like Detlof, i think that cooking cables presents a much more natural and refined presentation. By "refined", i don't mean "restrained". I think that music played on a system using "burned" cables has a far more natural flow to it. As Detlof mentions, PRAT or the "pace" of the music seems to improve as the system seems to be reproducing all the notes with greater ease and far less effort. The "strain" that you never realized was previously there is now gone, making it oh so apparent. Everything sounds more liquid with less glare, bass passages have the proper "weight" and definition, wind instruments ( especially horns and other brass instruments ) have the proper amount of "bite" ( which are actually micro-bursts of increased amplitude ) that one might hear on a good recording or at a live concert, highs are far more natural with more air and a very "correct" sense of timbre and harmonic structure are present, etc... As to Detlof's comments about a "burned" cable being "louder", i don't necessarily think that it is "louder" so much as it is a combination of factors. First of all, i think that transient response is improved, compression is reduced and time-smear becomes less critical. Because you can now hear more of the signal in a manner that was more timely, your brain can now process the information faster. In effect, Detlof could "sense" the information being provided faster and cleaner with a burned cable than he could with the unburned cable, so his brain processed that info first. When you hear two signal of equal or near equal amplitude, the signal that makes the initial impact is the one that we perceive as being "louder" or "more jarring". Does this make sense to you ? Now, to the tech-heads out there, this probably sounds like a LOT of "hooey", so let me try and explain this in layman's terms. The "compression" and "signal delay" that occur prior to burning has to do with various levels of dielectric absorption that takes place along both the length and depth of the cable. The untreated dielectic creates a time / amplitude / frequency response "skew" that are all inter-related. Amplitude losses may vary with frequency due to the specific dielectrics being used. This in turn would alter the over-all frequency response curve of the cable itself. Phase shift ( changes in signal over time ) may be introduced as frequency response varies due to the frequency dependent dielectric absorption taking place. As such, various cables in unburned form may have very different phase / absorption rates due to the dielectrics being used. This could possibly explain why using the same conductors with identical geometries but altering nothing more than the dielectric creates such noticeable differences in sound. Could this be why so many people prefer the sonics of Teflon / air based cables ? Both of these "dielectrics" tend to offer the least interaction with the signal. For the record, Teflon is the most "air like" dielectric that we currently know how to make. As such, the involvment ( or lack of it ) of the dielectric and its' side effects may play a MUCH greater role in what we hear and how we hear it. My guess is that these effects take place much like skin effect, as frequency varies, so does the severity ( and noticeability ) of the problem. As such, "burning" a cable is a two-fold process: It aligns the crystal structure of the conductors which makes for a less "resistive" and "smoother" path. Think of "bumpy crystals" and electrons as being equivalent to you trying to pass across a rocky mountain-side or walking down a paved road. They might measure the same appr distance but one will be able to be traversed in a manner that is both more timely and with a lot less effort. I don't know if electrons "sweat" while working, but maybe that is what we are hearing on unburned cables : ) Burning also minimizes the effects of dielectric absorption, making the cable more linear in time coherency, frequency response and amplitude linearity. That is why we "sense" the changes as an increase in "prat", which is time, amplitude and frequency related. While this may sound far fetched to some, you can think back to this post years from now and remember just how "flat" the Earth was : ) With all of that in mind, I have yet to try a cable that hasn't improved with "burning". Poor to mediocre cables become "acceptable" and good cables only get better. Sean > PS... the meaning of "PRAT" now stands for Pace, Rhythm, Amplitude, Tempo in MY book. Have any of you ever seen this acronym used with "Amplitude" used for the "A" ? |
