Trying to find someone with a cable cooker in Metro NY

I am not sure if I believe in cable cookers.......But some people do and who am I to argue (at least until I saw the price of commercial cable cookers are they kidding me?)
I don't know if the OP wants to burn in speaker wire or interconnects but I made a DIY interconnect cooker for free from some spare parts in my junk box and a little wire. I took an old RCA jack (with four plugs) and wired one pair of the RCAs to the speaker output from the amp and the other pair to some banana outlets so I could plug in my speakers. If everything is wired correctly when you plug in your interconnect it completes the circuit and you can play your speakers thru your interconnects. You don’t have to play it loud (and you shouldn’t) but even when you can barely hear the music in the room you are putting 100-1000x more power thru the interconnects than a line level output.

This is kind of hard to describe but I posted some pictures on the Polk forum a while back that should clear things up. Interestingly there wasn’t the least bit of interest there. Either they don’t believe in cookers or they already spent their $1000 for one.

https://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/187224/diy-interconnect-cooker#latest

Whether or not cable cookers and burning in cables actually do anything is irrelevant.  What it does do is remove any doubt you have about your system and make it so you are confident you are doing anything you can to have the best sound.  

For the record......Scientifically (and I am a scientist) I don't believe you need to burn in a piece of wire.    But I still made a DIY interconnect cooker just to stop that little voice in the back of my mind saying it will improve things and sound better without having to wait 200-500 hours.  For me it was worth the 1/2 hour to solder a few parts together from my junk bin. 


If someone needs to spend $1000 to make the voice go away I might shake my head a little but I understand.

geoffkait....... " That’s a good point, but only in the sense that cable burn-in is fairly well agreed, you know, scientifically, that’s it’s actually the dielectric that’s changed by burn-in, not the wire. For fuses, who knows what burn in accomplishes? The solder joints? The air?"

Capacitors (and to a lesser extent tubes) are scientifically shown to need a burn in. You can hook them up to a tester and the differences after use are obvious. The cap manufacturers even state this and you can find it on their spec sheet. So I agree some components need burn in. 100%.
But scientifically I don’t buy the dielectric needs to burn in for a cable (a wire with insulation) and AFAIK no tester has ever shown a difference. Whether a person can hear something no machine made by man can detect is the debatable part. The dielectric in a cable is an insulator that can usually hold thousands of volts and I don’t see how a small voltage is going to change anything. But that is just me and I still had enough doubt to make a cooker and try it out (for free its worth it, I’m not paying $1000).

I made a burner for interconnects even though they carry an extremely low voltage/ current. I hooked up my speakers directly to the RCA output of a tuner and I had to put my ear to the speaker to hear anything. Even with line level CD output you had to be a foot or two away to hear anything. This got me wondering how this small amount of a current would ever effect a dielectric capable of taking 1000+ volts. But YMMV. Lets just leave it as there is no way I believe a phono cable needs burn in. They don’t carry enough power to even be audible directly connected to a speaker. How will that current ever change anything?

To further complicate things I also made my interconnects. I used small gauge wires (solid or stranded, pure copper or pure silver) and put them into an oversized Teflon tube. The wire is just randomly hitting parts of the Teflon and the the rest is just air. Like you mentioned how do you condition air? I am not sure this design even needs a burn in. But I did it anyway. If you believe the cable cooker spin I put at least 10,000x more voltage / current as you would get from line level in a couple of days listening to music (OK, I started drinking Scotch and the music got much louder than recommended at times). But now I know they are burnt in, no voices in my head giving me doubt and I can relax and compare my designs.

I would prefer to find someone local, go over and chat some, see his cooker and maybe even have him hook it up while chatting. Or maybe send them to a well respected company that offers the service. Third would be someone well respected here........

What I would not do is find some random stranger on the internet that will "cook" your cables for a fee. What is stopping them from taking your money, waiting a week, and send your uncooked cables back.

I guess the bigger question is...... Would you think your system was "transformed" after you got your same cables back.

Just reality.     Paying a token sum to someone who just wants to help a fellow audiophile is one thing....................But people were saying $200 to burn a cable!     Thats when the scammers come out.