I gave an answer to that Q in my post above:
"The jury is out on that issue round here.
Many respected members hear differences after a week or two, others don’t.
I did with the BJC, but didn’t expect to, and therefore wasn’t specifically listening out For it.
The two processes run concurrently, tuning your brain and ears into any sq differences
And also the cable changing temperature, settling after being stretched and stressed in transit, and having leccy run thru it for the first time, and being altered electrically and magnetically And I terms of static etc."
I see no answer to the question I asked about how having electricity run through it for the first time, and being altered electrically and magnetically produce the effects described as burn-in.
Oh, certainly at the deepest levels we know there are things we don’t understand - though I don’t think that our understanding is quite as poor as you seem to suggest. And we know enough to understand the coding and decoding of audio signals.
I take it that you are basically saying that there is sufficient ignorance of the way that electricity works to cover the apparent burn-in of cables, and that this ignorance is enough to account for it better than the possibility that we - our brains and emotions - could account for it, by becoming used to whatever changes, if any, have occurred, or possibly our imagining that such changes have occurred. Despite many demonstrations of the plasticity of our memories, and inexactitude in the workings of our brains.
For instance, it is quite possibly - indeed easy - to implant false memories in people’s minds. For example, showing someone some doctored photographs that seem to show that they were once given a trip in a hot-air balloon (though they had never been in one) can induce memories of that trip in their minds - and they will, in fact, furnish further details of that non-existent trip.
I would suggest that our brains are not to be relied upon absolutely. It is amazing that they work as well as they do, but they are not reliable. And I think that we understand how a length of copper wire works rather better than we understand how the brain (and in this case ears) works.
The cable is likely to have changed temperature many times before installation, and by more than the domestic temperature range. Heating ny the passage of electricity will be far smaller than the domestic temperature range, and probably unmeasurable without a high sensitivity thermometer.
Settling and stressed? Cables are wound on spools, where they sit without movement, then unwound, maybe a shorter length recoiled for final transit, interconnect type Ethernet cables are cut to length, have plugs fitted, lightly coiled again for final transit before use, Installed cables would be unsealed and threaded into place, with minimal stretching and avoiding sharp bends if the installer is competent, otherwise damage may be caused (which won’t self-repair in use).
Altered electrically and magnetically? How and in what way does the passage of low current electricity at low voltage cause any changes in the cable over time?
Static? There may be static charges for example generated along the plastic sheathing as a consequence of handling, but unless a perfect insulator in a vacuum the charge would be unlikely to remain for even hours.
They are an example of a subatomic entity that exhibits the set of macroscopic propertied known as the wave/particle duality with rest mass.
To express it another way it is a set of fields that interacts with other fields including electric fields, and the Higgs field (because it has “mass”), and may interact with magnetic fields. As such its macroscopic manifestation of its physical properties is limited by the uncertainty principle.
When you understand the underlying reasons for the uncertainty principle you’ll realise that all these are actually saying the same thing.
But still I would hestitate to make a strong generalized claim as to whether the changes to the various parts of a cable/system interaction had more influence than the changes in the auditory cortical activity and its interaction with memories et al in any particular case.
All depends on the person and the system and the cable.
I think that the ear/brain combination is far more varied and variable than a cable.
Many years ago I sold my old 486-based PC to one of my nephews. This PC had what was called a turbo switch. Basically it switched the PC’s clock between two speeds (fast and slow) - because some games that were being used at the time relied on counting clock ticks to control their speed, and the higher speed of the PC meant that the game was too fast.
My nephew said that the PC seemed to be slow, which surprised me at the time (today, of course, it would be considered to be almost torpid). I asked whether he had the turbo button pressed in or out, and whether it made a difference. He said that he had tried both, and it did make a difference but was still slow. I took the PC apart - and the turbo button was not even connected to the motherboard. Yet he was quite certain that it made a difference.
Now it may be, of course, that somehow the meta-position of the switch affected the, electrically separate - motherboard through some sort of quantum tunnelling or entanglement. I suspect, however, that it was his expectation of change that made him think that something had changed.
However, once I connected the switch, the PC ran much faster… Or did it? (yes, it did).
(Gazza on this forum has an excellent similar type of story in relation to hearing the sq effect of a bit of kit that was not connected IIRC [apologies to Gazza if I remembered this wrongly].)
I think that in many cases a new cable would make no audible difference to sq.
But sometimes a new cable will make a big and not subtle positive or negative impact on sq.
And sometimes that impact will change over time.
And sometimes it won’t.
And sometimes a person will hear differences (either immeidately or over time) where most other people would not hear any differences (or where there was no actual cable change at all but they thought that there was a cable change).
so the results would be pretty ‘flip flop’ depending on the case
and if the results are flip flop depending on the details of listener and cable and system, that helps to explain why it’s so easy for cable thread interlocutors to end up talking at ‘cross’ purposes…!
I think it perfectly possible (in fact, I’m pretty sure) that some cables make a difference (though I am not convinced of differences between ethernet cables - so long as they are fully ethernet cojmpliant).
I have recently changed a set of good quality but cheap ethernet cables for a set of BJC cables, just out of interest (and also an Audioquest Cinnamon for BJC - though FB doesn’t consider the Cinnamon to be anything special). I can hear absolutely no difference at all. I have also, in the past, changed my Netgear switch for Cisco 2960 (initially a 24-port version, more recently to an 8-port one). I could hear no difference.
I should say that my electricity supply comes from a small transformer at the top of a pole in one of our fields, and my house is the only one using this power supply, so I suspect that the electricity here is pretty clean - apart from any ‘dirt’ that we introduce; fridge, freezer and ethernet over mains courtesy of TP-Link. The network setup for the audio is somewhat separated - there is the PC which holds the music, the NDX, a Squeezbox Touch, a Hue Bridge and a connection to the TP-LINK as the only connections to this switch.
I have also changed, just recently, the cable between the NDX and the NAC52. I’m still evaluating this. I can persuade myself that there are differences in the sound - I’ve not yet decided whether this is real or not. I will at some point swat the original cable back to try to see whether it goes back to how I think that I remember it. I think it might be slightly brighter - more presence - than before, but I’m not yet sure.
How does the cable change? While temperature affects the resistance of a wire, I don’t think that it changes significantly over the normal temperature range that it will experience during transit - and presumably once it has reached the temperature of your room (which will not take long, presumably) then it should be stable. What is changing over a period of many hours? Why is it affected only if electricity is running through it? How long after having been burned-in does this effect last?
I would add to your point 1) - adjusting to the sound in the light of their (our) expectations.
Well, at least you tried.
So now you know.
Itch scratched.
kick back, float downstream, and let the music flow on…
one more route you could try if you still fancy experimenting further would be to somehow get the pc onto a different mains ring, or just isolate it from the NDX a bit more perhaps by adding one more switch???
that might reduce stray noise from the pc - but then it might make no audible difference at all
What is the phenomenon of burning cable for Nordost?
When cables are first put into use, their directionality is not securely established. However, once the Vidar begins running current through the cables, the trapped gases are dissipated and small impurities in the conductor’s metal begin to act like a diode, favoring current flow in a particular direction. By using extremely wide bandwidth signal as well as a range of both ultra-low and high frequency sweeps, the Vidar stresses the conductors, neutralizes charges, improves the way that signals pass through metal and ultrasonically conditions the surface of the conductors. It is these changes in both the conductor and insulation material that refines performance in audio cables.
It is on a ring that currently has nothing except a tv aerial amplifier power supply plugged in - the aerial amplifier is in the roof - and some lights (which are currently Philips Hue lights or compatibles). Otherwise, there is the Hue Bridge, the Squeezebox Touch, the PC (a Gigabyte Brix - no HDD just SSD), the PC Monitor, the Cisco 2960 - I think (from memory) that’s it.
For it.