I recently bought a pair of speaker cable / straps. When I plugged them they sounded absolutely fantastic (far better then the precious speaker cable I still own and even better than the demo unit I borrowed few months ago. I kept notes on my listing impression).
After few hours of listening, I turned off my system. The day after, they still sounded great, less impressive but great.
Then something happened; I don’t know what but they don’t sound good at all since then : the high frequencies jump to the sky, the bass are boomy and uncontrolled and the voices are moved back. This harshness is not a subtle difference, it made my system barely enjoyable since then.
Does anyone experienced a similaire situation or have an explanation ?
Insofar as I have noticed burn-in on cables (namely, sometimes but not always), it’s always been a very ‘bumpy’ process. Cable sounds OK, cable sounds worse, cable sounds better, then less so etc. Finally, it settles down sounding good. Very peculiar.
I’m sure sceptics will suggest many reasons for this. Whatever.
Running in can cause a few ups and downs. If it still sounds bad after two weeks regular use, it may be that you simply don’t like how the cables sound.
Aside from anything else, our hearing is not a constant, varying from time to time even over very short periods due to physiological factors, and possibly mental factors, sometimes better, sometimes worse.
There are other threads on the subject worth reading if you’re interested, e.g:
I’m not disagreeing with anyone else’s perception, it’s more that I find it interesting how different our perceptions can be. I took psychology at uni and found that part of biological psychology fascinating. But personally I’ve never noticed a big difference over time and certainly never had the up and down experience. Sometimes I think something sounds better after time but it’s not enough for me to be 100% sure I’m not imagining it. So for me it’s a case of if I like something at the start I’ll feel the same months later and if I don’t like something it doesn’t get better. It really does make me wonder how all this works.
