Cable burn-in. A slightly new perspective

Hi-Fi Corner
22

I’ve had ‘further burn in’ due to using different ‘area’ of kit/some chips needed ‘more time to settle’ to find their penultimate sound state. (Last state being ‘worn’ and needing replacement or servicing to sound great again…)

so “worn in” vs “worn out”?

yes… along the way in burning-in a Naim Nait amplifier, around 600 hours of on time (and varying low volume level music mostly) sounded fantastic.

When I first used the headphone amp ot was obvious aspects of that needed breaking in (logical), but…

the amp benefitted from further use at higher volume.

A real eye opener was during burn in/‘break in’ that 40 hours+ of time above 0930 on the volume dial really helped the flow.

Certainly wasn’t speakers or cables or elsewhere in the system, and a ‘grain in the sound’ I typically hear only in new bits of kit which usually goes away quickly, which was in higher volume music, albeit ‘quite subtle’, took a couple if days to work itself out and this was nearly 1000 hours of on time.

What I had experienced, that I may not have described well here, was certainly ‘further alterration of the sound’ traits many many hundreds of hours use later, and only changed when I ‘started using’ those parts.

That being said -I take component ’ break in seriously’; as an example- going so far as to feed an A&K DAP with a tube preout; where it only engages both tubes in balanced output mode- and using the balanced output mode to feed into a Grace m903 simply to cook/‘burn in’ both those tubes equally.

Using that DAP in tube mode can disable 2 of the 4 DAC chips (best ‘natural sound’ by a large margin), but refeeding that signal into the remaining DACs allows a Hybrid sound mode (next best sounding mode, arguably, if chasing natural audio), and finally, bypassing the Tubes, equals a 4x DAC chip mode with Opamp output stage exclusively. (sounds great for Dance and electronica)
-So many ways to ‘burn this device in’ where differing parts are all on their own timetables. (and it sounded like that).
Not wanting to have one valve heavily used and one ‘untouched’, I had to avoid single ended output modes, and ended up putting a balanced cable on my in ear monitors to ensure ‘full circuit’ being used internally.
The extra 2 DAC chips will probably still have their grain intact when the valve preamp is no longer usable! although I have since gone to effort to ‘cook them’ when I’m not using the player, after seeing the Naim amplifier ‘continue to settle’, months later, as parts inside weren’t being fully used

Electrons settle over time, and like water cutting through rock, find their easiest/‘shortest’ path.
Even on a power lead, there is a settling effect. (that is lost after a couple of weeks of no signal enforcing the pathway)
Cryogenically treated cables I think avoid this resettling process,. and hence would be my goto headphone cable tech to shortlist if I was recabling headphones I use infrequently…

I suppose decades of buying bucketloads of new and second hand kit, there are traits that I only see in new kit that quickly vanish, that I never experience with used kit (revealing it isn’t just ‘brain adjusting’ to sound)

So, I’ve learned to do break-in right. eg that Grace m903 headphone amp is often in MONO mode for equalling headphone driver usage during the first XXX amount of hours… (before I listen for any length of time).

so, whilst clearly I believe in the burn in effect as something to ‘get on the other side of’, many advocate “just use the kit as you intend to do” (and give it time/enjoy)

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23

As weird as this stuff gets I do seem to remember a review on Mana tables when they first came out. The reviewer had put his TV on a stacked bunch of them and noticed that both the sound and picture had improved.

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24

Not only telly’s. :scream:

IMG_0486

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25

I have a mate who’s DBL’s are on a stack of three Mana bases. Each level added built on the strengths of the previous level. Unfortunately I only have one level under mine.

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Presumably exponential: 2, then 4 to better, then 8, then 16, 32 and speakers upside down from then onwards…

27

I had Mana tables. One per box though. But while they were all the rage, they are not talked about any more. Possibly because their effect was minimal.

As for the current thread, if the observed effect is true, one should burn in the whole system to single song, or perhaps, part of song or even single notes. How does one know that a cable is just ripe? Does it decline afterwards (just like camembert)? If yes, should one have cables at their right stage? Should we ask Chord to sell these cables (they could be costly :rofl:)? I think that this cable burn in thing can go ad absurdum.

I tend to take a more relaxed approach to enjoying HiFi: set up the best system I can afford, carefully choosing the components, sit back in the sofa with a good glass of wine, relax and enjoy the music.

Some days the music will be better than others. But that won’t drive me into trying to characterize that as cable burn. There so many factors, including physiology and psychology, that could play out, that it is impossible to experiment and disentangle causes and effects or try to deduce them from correlations.

4 Likes
28

Do modern TVs have any significant resale value? Has anyone here in the last, say, 10-15 years sold an old TV on for anything other than a tiny fraction of its original price?

Mark

29

Not IME. Who these days would buy a used TV? Once purchased they are effectively worth nothing and destined for the skip.

30

Well good luck with that!

I held off doing the mod whilst still in warranty for obvious reasons.

It’s curious to me that you say you only did it to get the right cable length and seem dismissive of any possibility of an improvement resulting. Yet you went to the trouble and expense of Supra cable and a Silver MK Toughplug. You could have made a custom length power cord from any old cable and plug for less expense and presumably identical performance. So why bother?

31

If an electron is, say, a standing wave, then it would not be able to settle. :slightly_smiling_face::snowboarder:

It can only continue to groove and move.

But perhaps the path an audio signal takes through a forest of copper might settle into a route of least resistance, forming a track?

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32

I was 60 this week and I’ve only owned 3 TVs including the current one.

The other 2 broke.

33

They are worth a negative sum - where I live they can’t even be placed in recycling points, and disposal is charged. The best one can do is advertise on free recycle website or social media sites, hoping some unusual person sees the benefit of not paying for a new one.

34

@Ebor & @PJL, yes flat screen TV’s do have a 2nd life value even if it is small. And yes I have both sold TV’s and also given to BHF (charity) who have placements for such items. But is of zero value/use without a power cable.

As for being “dismissive” of improvements. Apart from the primary objective of the cable length, (and it was not an expense, I already had the cable and MK 13A), I was disappointed in visual and sound, nothing changed. And I was expecting something, expectations based on my many experiments over time with audio power supply.

35

That surprises me - but so be it. On our previous and much cheaper TV when I changed the mains block it was plugged into from a cheap one to an Olson industrial type (hardly the pinnacle of hi-fi mains blocks sound-wise but excellent build quality nonetheless) there was a very obvious improvement in sound. This through the TV’s integral (rubbish) sound system and its own mains cable.

36

When our TV died a few years ago I found a burnt out component on the power supply board. I could in theory have soldered in a replacement, but I couldn’t identify it, and it would have been a faff in any case. What I did manage to do was to source a replacement PS board from an ebay seller which came from a similar TV for £25. (I could have bought a new board for £75, but decided to take a chance.) Swapping the boards was simple.

Anyway, my point is that there is certainly a market for used TVs, even fairly old ones, as people buy them up to cannibalise for spares, although I suspect such people pay very low prices for them. Perhaps that will change as people become more aware of the possibility of fixing electrical stuff instead of habitually replacing it.

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37

My TV is plugged into a purpose built supply board that it shares with BRP and a picture frame thing. The board has unswitched MK doubles that are radial connected from 2.5mm Supra and MS HD Power 13A.
The weak link was the TV wire until I replaced it. But that said it was only around a week old when I did this, so not really familiar with SQ & picture.

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38

Definitely a key point when researching a new big screen is having a mains outlet rather than a captive power cable.
Most now are a figure eight rather than the 13A because of considerably less power draw.

I have a friend who loves to buy the latest and greatest flatscreens when they first come out. And, is often busy selling them off to appreciative friends at considerable discount.

Going back to the Original Post. Often when swapping things about, the position of the plugged in devices could have changed - especially with a multi device audio visual system.
I have found profound changes here.
Especially when using a multi outlet block.

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39

What is BRP?

So is the TV set-up a stand-alone thing, ie, separate from the hi-fi? Do you use a soundbar or the TV integral sound (if not through the hi-fi)? If you don’t route TV sound through the hi-fi then any particular reason for that? We’ve found it makes a massive improvement to enjoyment of watching anything. Only two channel of course, but I would rather have excellent stereo sound than mediocre surround.
Sorry just curious/nosy!

40

Many have a separate PS with just a low volatge DC lead to the TV - so the TV has just a DC input socket. I’ve never owned any TV that has an actual AC input socket or ever seen one.

This Sony Pro Broadcast monitor does have a proper AC socket:

son1_9.jpg
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Yours for just £24K.

41

When going on a long holiday. One should turn off and unplug the most critical devices.
Coming back reconnecting everything, one should experiment with a time warp observation.