ALL cables affect the sound and how a particular cable does is totally system dependent. see http://ielogical.com/Audio/CableSnakeOil.php Connectors outgas and oxidize and usually result in a worsening of the sound. Cable cooking is nothing more than user familiarization. As yet no one has shown how cooking changes the cable electrically. If it does not change electrically, it cannot change sonically. Burn in is as Elizabeth states, a delay tactic.
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Some items are more given to burn in improvement than others. Case in point; cartridges and speakers have always sounded better after > 60 to 100 hours in my systems. Those are mechanical systems, like shoes, and take time to loosen up. Cables, OTOH, are like a rain coat. It either keeps you dry or it doesn't. It may have other properties like being too heavy or too hot, but those are secondary to its primary purpose. |
@barnetk - two pieces of copper
Cables are far more than two pieces of copper. They are also plastic, cotton, geometry, connector and join method. Cables can be designed or engineered. Most audiophile cables are designed and their defects sold as benefits. Said benefit then exposes a "flaw" in a perfectly good component and the merry-go-round begins anew.
Deltas which only apply at very low temperature/DC/RF/etc. are promulgated as essential for 20-20k when 2-200k suffice.
IMO, Audioquest is one of the worst offenders with specious malarkey.
And what's with naming every POS cable?
Is it your pal, your lover, your confidant ???.
It's just freaking WIRE!!!
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Re AudioQuest - I didn't say anything their product, just their copy.
AQ Hard RCA Splitter : "This Male RCA to Stereo Female RCA connector provides a space-conscious, compact brass link for a secure, high-performance, 90 degree connection."
Elsewhere they ramble on about the need for Extra Special Copper with magic properties as being essential for digital timing in an analog cable.
Brass has ~25% the conductivity of copper, so wotsupwitdat?
Their kind of malarkey got the patent medicine [Snake Oil] industry shut down in the early 20th century.
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There is a potential issue with “auditioning” cables or anything before the burn in period is complete, assuming that the cable is ever completely burned in. That issue is that the burn in process can sometimes be a non linear one, with up and down swings in performance. Thus, when someone takes a peek prematurely he might be disappointed in the sound. But I digress. @geoffkait ROTFLMFAO! Systems change for well known and enumerated phenomena, ignored by the fuse, direction and burn-in proponents. If my system sounds better after recommend N hours of cable burn-in but worse due to other ignored factors after 2N hours of use, then what? Cable burn in is fraud. |
@ivan_nosnibor - laughable. The wiring in your home goes back to the power company transformer which has an extremely low impedance. If it did not, any perturbation on a neighbors line would manifest itself in your home. Only when a transformer is failing does that happen.
If cable cooking manifests itself by changing the cable and all cables sound different in different system, what is it about cooking that is always positive? If there are changes, then in some systems the changes must be negative.
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@geoffkait most of us should stop reading there |
Cables can be overcooked There are many MEASUREABLE phenomena which account for system changes. Why ignore them and ascribe to cooking? |
@ivan_nosnibor All is on and within the home’s circuit. The panel is a direct short to the transformer. To have an oscillation period of days [0.0000115Hz] to settle over weeks would require ENORMOUS C. The 0000 cable running to my transformer has an L of about 1.33µH. To attain 1.15µHz would require ~224PF, only here the P is PETA, not pico. |
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Sorry to rain on your parade, but analog tape is not a valid test for before and after. Analog tape decays quite rapidly and print through muddies the sound. Add in sonic differences due to thermal deltas and results are even more suspect. Was the recorder demagged before each recording? Was freq alignment checked / changed?
Get Morrow to send you another cable and run [double preferred] blind A/B tests.
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Here's a two hour 'burn out' challenge.
Select about 30 seconds of music you know well and loop it on a cold system at its normal level. Play it for two hours continuous, listening all the while. I guarantee it will change.
In a day or two, repeat the test. Only this time, don't listen the whole while. Just pop in and out every so often for a couple of loops. The changes will still be there.
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@geoffkait The reason the ring has to be green is because green is the complementary color of red, which means red + green = black Baloney! Red + Green = Yellow A green filter of sufficiently steep slope blocks red. The 'filter' characteristics of Green Sharpie are indeterminate and could be 100% transparent to NIR. Any emission not perpendicular to the disk edge would have some percentage reflected back into the disk. However, the laser is focused and the receptor acceptance angle limited, so any improvement from the green edge is on the negative side of ZERO. Just one more of Mr Kait's nonsensical Machina Dynamica scams. |
The point is that the cable's sonic value did indeed change post burn in. Perhaps. You definitely have two sonically different recordings in which you did not normalize/verify any number of other parameters that can account for sonic deltas. |
