I did a blind test with my owl, Robert. Robert was crying when the sound was better, between two same cables, one new and the other fully burned in.
He was crying each time I was connecting the burn in cable. He was wearing dark sun glasses.
We already do, the wife of a friend of mine was completely deaf since childhood but is able to hear (music) again with digital implants that directly stimulate her auditory cortex. Pretty amazing stuff!
People hearing burn-in does exist. We know that. We are trying to find out why. There are two main possibilities. Something in the cable changes over time which people who hear it almost universally find it is an improvement. In which case we want to find out what physical changes have occurred in the cable. Or, there are no changes to the cable, and the perceived change is in the mind/brain of those that hear a change. We already know that this sort of thing can happen, in many different situations, so arguably no further explanation is required.
Electrical conductivity can be defined as how much voltage is required to get an amount of electric current to flow. This is largely determined by the number of electrons in the outermost shells; these electrons determine the ease with which mobile electrons are generated.
Aluminium has 3 (valence) electrons
Copper has 11 (valence) electrons
Due to the wires having electrical resistance, which means that they resist the motion of electrons, the electrons bump into atoms on the outside of the wire, and some of their kinetic energy is given to the atoms as thermal energy. This thermal energy causes the wire to heat up.
Entropy increases as temperature increases . An increase in temperature means that the particles of the substance have greater kinetic energy. The faster-moving particles have more disorder than particles that are moving slowly at a lower temperature .
Was the cable conditioned, or was the customer conditioned?
[edit] Serious addition: it appears that futureshop offers a cheap and simple way of testing the effects of burn-in, which is nice. Chord Odyssey X is only £30/m and the burn-in is free of charge, so it’s easy to get multiple pairs with and without burn-in applied.
I was buying the cable anyway, and the burn-in was free. Hopefully it won’t actually make the cable sound worse by sending all those electrons into hyperspace, so I figure there’s nothing to lose.