Burn in - a myth?

Perhaps but it is a personal preference rather than a scientific point for debate. I am happy to read of personal experience but please don’t try and tell me my personal preference to not believe what I haven’t experienced is wrong.
There seems to be a lot of tub thumping around this particular subject.

Again I invite this.

Which of course confers on them special qualities - such as the ability to never be wrong and to know everything that there is to know.

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Oh, so now you’re telling me that you know more about how I think and feel than I do myself?

I prefer to trust my own ears and my own experiences rather than yours.

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And why exactly is that?

No. Speaking for myself at least, I base my belief on the fact that I hear it. I have no reason to believe that what I hear is not real. If I did not hear it then I would be in the non-believer camp.

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Some hi-fi components vary considerably in terms of their effect on sound quality after they are first plugged in, either when new or after a Service.

I can imagine some reasons why sound quality usually improves on average as a component first has electricity flowing through it.

You need room treatment. :grinning:

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Wow this thread gained some traction. Interesting read

Firstly cables do eventually burn out. Copper or even silver will eventually reduce in its conductivity and therefore the sound begins to dull. High frequency are reported to diminish. Of course this takes a very very long time. Decades. So that answers one aspect of that question.

Secondly yes mechanical stress and relief affects the sound of the cables. This is also stated by Naim. Cables settle in.

Now onto the most debated part. Actual burn in vs our ear brain mechanism getting used to the sound.

I’ve recently installed and used silver interconnect cables between my Phono pre and 552 and also my DAC and my 552. So two identical cables connected to two different sources.

My DAC gets about 80/90 percent more use than my turntable. To begin with both sources sounded very revealing in the high frequencies. The bass was not as noticeable as the high frequencies took my attention. The sound was a little hard to listen to and I wasn’t really enjoying the sound. I persevered with the burn in on both sources but like I said I used my DAC much more. Months passed. I would say at least 5. In which I hardly listened to my system but I kept it running almost every other day on low volume.

Then one day I sat to listen in the middle of the day and suddenly I was enjoying the sound a lot more. The sound wasn’t harsh or hard. It was pleasant and the treble was revealing still but also very sweet sounding. This was from my DAC. Excited by this I switched to my turntable and the sound was still on the bright side.

I then replaced the interconnect from my phono pre to the one I’d been using a lot more on the DAC. Surprise surprise the sound was more together. The high frequencies were less highlighted and the music sounded more pleasant. Now this effect wasn’t profound but just enough to make a difference in how I was hearing the sound. This may have also been because the tonearm also had silver cable running to the pre which obviously hadn’t been used much.

I repeated the cable swaps and each time I could detect the change. Not a blind test of course but I would think I’m mad if I tried to conduct double blind tests at home. Lol.

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I am. My three Naim Powerlines sounded great when I first plugged in. After a few hours they sounded lousy. During the next several days they swung from sounding really nice to pretty poor several times before fianlly settling down and sounding superb.

No doubt I imagined it. As did my wife who coincidentally made exactly the same observations at the same time.

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More appropriate in an argument would be for those who believe to justify their belief, as they are the ones making a claim…

However, I will respond: For my part, I accept - “believe” if you prefer that word - that some things can change during an initial period of use, and in this I should clarify that I am no talking about repeatable change in performance as something warms up to operating temperature when turned on. Examples include components which depend upon mechanical movement of compliant parts, such as loudspeaker driver cone suspensions, the mechanical characteristics of which can change / settle in through initial multiple flexing, likewise some electrical components such as capacitors may change slightly though the process of being powered up and handling an AC signal.

When it comes to cables, however, there is no logical argument I can think of or have heard /read as to why or how any cable could possible change characteristics as a result of the passage of an audio frequency electrical signal at the signal levels concerned. I have not heard any change for myself that I can attribute to cables changing, and I have not heard/read a convincing argument from anyone else, while no-one seemingly has done anything to verify observation (such as comparing an identical new cable directly, let alone blindly, against one that has been “burnt in”).

At the same time I am very aware that on the one hand human hearing is not a constant, and can (and does) vary over time, short term as well ss long. I am also aware that there are psychological influences to which any and all of us are at risk of being influenced in assessment of sound, needing objectivity to eliminate from any impressions we may have.

Overall the combination of the above leaves me sceptical and needing impartial objective verification to begin to take seriously any claims about cables “burning in”. This is basic science: for any claimed observation first verify that the observation is correct (and repeatable), and only after that is it sensible to begin the process of hypothesising and testing hypotheses to discover the cause.

So the challenge to believers in cable burn-in is, where is your objective evidence verifying that your observation is a real effect on sound? You don’t have to provide it, and of course you are welcome to continue believing if you wish, but you won’t get much serious consideration by sceptical/neutral people just by stating your belief, or calling those who don’t agree with you fools for not accepting or blind to reality, or whatever other dismissive or derogatory phrase you may prefer. Of course you may not wish for serious consideration, but that is where discussion is pointless.

Perhaps significant is the frequent use of the word “believe” by those claiming that cable burn-in is a real phenomenon? It certainly sometimes seems very like a blind religious belief, especially when those expressing the belief always seem to be the ones that get excitable and make snide remarks about those who don’t, leading to the sort of unpleasant exchanges that result in thread removal.

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I can only speak for myself of course but I base my belief in cable burn-in being a real phenomena on the fact that I hear it, not on some blind abstract decision to ‘believe’. I have heard it many times. I have no reason to doubt my hearing or to think that what I’m experiencing is a figment of my imagination.

Totally irrelevant. Are you saying that if you don’t understand something then it can’t happen? Presumably by exactly the same token you pay no attention to cable directionality as similar physical mechanisms are at play here - which you can see no logical reason for. If you do adhere to cable directionality then I would consider that to be totally absurd and you would be exhibiting the kind of blind religious belief that you accuse me of. Unless of course you can hear it? But if you can then I really can’t understand how you can be so dismissive of burn-in.

But as it happens there are reasons why audio cables change as a result of the passage of signals through them. Crystalline structures in metal conductors can become modified, insulation dielectrics become polarised etc. We are talking about minute effects here of course, which have zero relevance in applications such as the mains lead on your vacuum cleaner. But in audio applications, where we are considering the transmission of delicate audio information then they become significant.

Fair enough. That is the most sensible reason to dispute the existence of the phenomenon. If I had never heard it then I also would be very sceptical, although I would not dismiss it out of hand.

And this is where things typically get heated. As a believer I can accept that you cannot hear the phenomenon and therefore you don’t believe. I have no problem at all with that.
I have never heard your system and you know much better than I do what you do and don’t hear. I would not presume for a moment to try to convince you that you are imagining not hearing the effect, or that it is really happening but that your ears are adjusting to it so you are not noticing it. I really have no idea at all why you don’t hear it because to me, in my system, it is very obvious. Maybe if I listened to a new cable in your system then I would not hear it either - I really don’t know.

What I object to in the strongest terms is being told that because I can hear an effect and you can’t then I am imagining something that isn’t there.I am invoking some kind of witchcraft as you believe (quite wrongly) that there are no physical mechanisms that can account for what I am hearing. So you demand that I provide ‘scientific proof’ of what I hear. And if I can’t, and of course I can’t, then I am simply imagining it all.

Each to his/her own. If you don’t hear it then good for you - it can be a pain. But I know rather better than you do what I can or can’t hear with my own ears.

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Morning All, I’m a bit of a cable skeptic but break-in is real and not in peoples head. Cardas has written a very good paper about it.

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If you read my post carefully, and previous posts, you will note that I did not to say I do believe it is impossible, but that I need some realistic evidence to make me start thinking it is a genuine phenomenal and not just something like psychological effects or people’s varying hearing. As I said all scientific investigation of cause starts by verifying the observation - i.e. showing that it is genuinely repeatable. And, for reference, there are, as I said, recognised psychological causes of people believing they hear something, not just “someone imagining it” as in making it up, and simply believing one is totally immune is rather grandiose. Also, as I said, our hearing is not constant for physiological reasons (and I’m not talking long term age-related change or hearing damage), making comparisons over a period of time purely based on one’s own hearing questionable.

You say you have heard cable burn-in many times. How have you compared “burnt in” with virgin?

Those have been postulated by people who believe burn-in of cables happens, or in the case of manufacturers by people who have a vested interest in customers not rejecting cables. But do they actually happen, and if so do they actually affect sound? It would be interesting to see a proper study.

I agree. Would be fascinating to see what proper “controlled” experiments reveal – maybe a good one for an electronics PhD student!

Fully isolate a room, components, power supply, air temperature/pressure etc. Then somehow measure/analyse the same tracks/sound with the same cable after x y z hours.

Don’t know whether cable manufacturers would be interested in sponsoring this type of experiment, however :wink:

Like actually hearing it you mean - like I do?

As it happens, yes.

Let’s be realistic. These are the only people likely to be doing this sort of research. If you want to believe that all manufacturers are liars and con-artists then that’s up to you of course.

And they have been ridiculed by the people who do not believe in the burn-in of cables.

And so the circular arguments go on and on ad nauseam.

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I’m convinced burn in is a visual thing.
In an abstract sense. We sit in front of the hifi listening yet we “see” the music.
The drummer over there, the brooding bass floating over there etc.
Those who have a disposition to be more aware of looking into the music could be more aware of such things like burn in.
Certainly going to a hifi system fair, one should be able to “picture” the different sounds filling the rooms of different systems, so one should be able to “picture” the sounds filling your own room.
Burn in could only be just like seeing a subtle fine finish to details and the shape of forms than before.

Similarly those listeners who may not hold a preference for pin point panoramic vistas, preferring instead that toe tapping tone - might hold less line for this phenomenological phenomena.

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So now we can not only hear burn in, but see it. Too much substance experinces as young ‘un?

Interestjng - could you give more details of this please? Like how you went about it and what you heard?

A forum member proposed doing this a year or two ago, discussing protocols etc on here to try to ensure as effectively done as possible, with helpful suggestions by the scientifically minded members - but due to increasingly unpleasant posts by burn-in believers the thread ended up being pulled, and I think the proposer was rather disheartened.

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