The molecular level explanation of "cable burn-in"

Thanks

for the enlightened anecdote about Maxwell and cables...

It is why i proposed the simple experiment above which is way more instructive than raging discussion about electro-magnetic concepts theory ( quantum or not ) for most people😁 :

You put quartz on the connectors : Decompression of sound among other impressions ...

You put shungite on the connectors : it produce more a compressive impression ...

You put the two and the effect can be generally positive and more balanced...

But the effect will be perceived slightly differently function of each system synergy and each cable specs...

i believe in my experiments it is how i learned what i learned not by buying a hundred of gear upgrades...

And i am not an electrical engineer , only someone who spoke with someone who spoke with someone who spoke with someone who spoke with Prof. Feynman... 😉

Interesting story :

So when the first cable was laid under the Atlantic and people tried to make a transcontinental telephone call, the sound came out skewed in time, noisy and garbled. They checked the cable along the ocean floor and it was in perfect condition and insulated.

They consulted the best physicists out there, including one guy in England (forget his name) who was a student of Maxwell. He proposed that the cable insulation material, not the conductor, was the problem, which turned out to be true. The dielectric was distorting the sound. its the same reason high tension power lines have an air gap between them and the earth.

Most burn-in has to do with the changes that take place between the outer layers of the conductor and the dielectric, changing the speed which result in phase interferences that we hear as noise or resonance. this has been clear to real physicists since the first telephone cable... also, I saw CalTech guys talking about it on YouTube..they know, and have to know when doing ultra high end EE like semi-conductor stuff. There was even someone who talked about their elementary school class where they ran DC current into crystals and observed the changes that occurred over time, something like that.

clustrocasual

So when the first cable was laid under the Atlantic and people tried to make a transcontinental telephone call, the sound came out skewed in time, noisy and garbled.

This is fiction. For one thing, the first transatlantic cables preceded telephony and were used only for telegraph.

... they consulted the best physicists out there, including one guy in England (forget his name) who was a student of Maxwell. He proposed that the cable insulation material, not the conductor, was the problem, which turned out to be true. The dielectric was distorting the sound ...

Again, fiction. Telegraphs work with dots and dashes, so I’m not sure how you think the sound was "distorted." The insulator did fail but there was nothing exotic about the failure - the material simply couldn’t withstand the environment and it decayed.

The first transatlantic telephone cables were installed in the 1950s and worked reliably well into the 1970s.

The first official transatlantic phone call took place 94 years ago, on January 7, 1927. The call was held between the President of America's AT&T company, Walter S. Gifford, and the head of the British General Post Office, Sir Evelyn P. Murray. The call was not transmitted by wire, but by radio waves. 
 

https://libraries.uta.edu/news-events/blog/today-history-first-transatlantic-phone-call

audphile1

The first official transatlantic phone ... was not transmitted by wire, but by radio waves. 

That is correct. What we've been discussing are transatlantic cable communications.