There is a great video series on Wondrium (formerly named The Great Courses) about these kinds of mental phenomena.
I don’t know if linking is allowed here, but you can find it searching for:
“Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills”
The episode guide is as follows (each around 30mins):
01: The Necessity of Thinking about Thinking
02: The Neuroscience of Belief
03: Errors of Perception
04: Flaws and Fabrications of Memory
05: Pattern Recognition-Seeing What’s Not There
06: Our Constructed Reality
07: The Structure and Purpose of Argument
08: Logic and Logical Fallacies
09: Heuristics and Cognitive Biases
10: Poor at Probability-Our Innate Innumeracy
11: Toward Better Estimates of What’s Probable
12: Culture and Mass Delusions
13: Philosophy and Presuppositions of Science
14: Science and the Supernatural
15: Varieties and Quality of Scientific Evidence
16: Great Scientific Blunders
17: Science versus Pseudoscience
18: The Many Kinds of Pseudoscience
19: The Trap of Grand Conspiracy Thinking
20: Denialism-Rejecting Science and History
21: Marketing, Scams, and Urban Legends
22: Science, Media, and Democracy
23: Experts and Scientific Consensus
24: Critical Thinking and Science in Your Life
As previously explained PTFE, PP and PE molecules have no polar sites and so aren’t affected by electric fields that are significantly below their dielectric strength. The effect described can occur with cables using PVC as the dielectric (i.e. some low cost cables only, and may account for why PVC is usually a less good choice for a dielectric in high quality audio cables).
This is just an assertion with no evidence or proposal of mechanism to back it up. As a simple assertion it’s not testable, and therefore there is nothing to verify. It is unsupported opinion only.
“Viewed under a microscope the surface that appears smooth to the naked eye is really a series of peaks and valleys.”
True
“The irregular surface forces electrons along a circuitous path to their destination.”
Not true at audio frequencies, disproven by field analysis.
True.
“disrupting existing pathways and requiring new ones to be formed”
May be partially true, see observation about field analysis.
“This explanation lends credence to reports that cables need to be re-conditioned and being handled. I’ve seen this in a very real way.”
This gives no reason to believe reconditioning occurs below temperatures needed for annealing (>200°C for copper). In other ways this is an unverifiable assertion that depends on an unspecified mechanism of “reconditioning”
This is based on the unverifiable assertion in the previous passage, hence itself becomes an unverifiable assertion.
“While there is no hard data (that I am aware of) to prove to the engineers among you that break-in in exists”
True - to the best of my knowledge at least.
" I’m sure 99.9% of audiophiles have heard the benefits of the process and believe strongly in its importance.”
A statement of opinion with which I neither agree nor disagree as I have insufficient evidence to support it or disprove it.
There are a few scientific errors or limitations, but still nothing to give a good explanation (as stated in the last paragraph).
Well, duh! Those are the only things there, so IF it happens, it must be in one or other or both of those.
What energy? The only energy available to it, as far as I can see, is heat and mechanical movement. The heat will probably be not much more, if any more, than changes in your central heating settings, or winter to summer in those parts of the world that experience that.
Has this been observed or measured? Not as far as I know. This sounds like made-up technobabble.
Only, AIUI, for VERY high frequency signals, not audio frequencies.
These fissures will not affect the signal - electrons would not travel up into the peaks (except, possibly, momentarily), where their presence would prevent other electrons from moving up there. After all, they are all negatively charged and repel each other, so once a certain number of electrons move into the peaks (forming a charge), others will be repelled and find another, much easier, path.
A lot of this is ‘believe’ - but there is no evidence for these theories, just suppositions and imaginings.
And he may be sure that 99.9% of audiophiles have heard the benefits of this, I am pretty certain that it is nothing like this percentage - but I have no proof either way - except there is a reasonably high proportion of people here who do not think that cable burn-in is a real thing.
If it would behave like this then the dielectric would basically become a (super)fluid instead of a solid material, it would be a breakthrough in science if this were possible at room temperature…
A very valid point. The first question of course is whether a percieved change in sound from one point in time to another is a valid observation on the sound, or on the perception by the person…
Of course, from the hobby angle (as opposed to other considerations like sound fidelity or value for money), if people are happier with their wires after a while compared to when first installed that on balance is not a bad thing regardless of whether or not it is due to a real change in the wires causing an actual change in sound. Arguably it would be better still if they were to achieve maximum satisfaction instantly upon installation, but the main thing is that they achieve satisfaction, whatever the mechanism causing that.