Cable burn in

Obviously.

It isn’t. There is hundreds of years of developing the scientific process and a theoretical-philosophical body around it, because we had to. And we had to because “many people think so” is neither an absolute proof, nor is it in any way “very close to a fact”, simply because it was found in practice that this is not so. This is the case for subjective alien experiences, for subjective audio experiences, and for, e.g., medical experiences. If many people believing something was a reliable measure, scientific progress would be faster, easier, and much less work.

But they were theorized long before by Einstein.

For cable burn-in, we currently have no testable hypothesis yet, it’s purely speculative.

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Yes, but they were predicted by a rigorous scientific theory a hundred years ago, and the detectors were built on the basis of this theory to prove or disprove the prediction

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There is by the way a straightforward way to test cable burn-in, by letting people who do report burn-in changes do A/B tests:

  1. Person is introduced to a new cable
  2. After a certain period, ask person if there is a change in sound
  3. If yes, randomly swap the cable for an unused version of the exact same cable, and determine if the person is able to tell if it is the new or the burned in cable.

If a significant percentage of people is able to tell the difference, then cable burn-in is a physical phenomenon which can be examined further.

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There seems to be some misunderstanding about the meanings of the words hypothesis and theory in the comments…but no matter, the principle remains the same. Some of the comments about the validity of the phenomenon seem to be based on the fact that it has not been measured.
This does not mean that it is immeasurable.

Greatly facilitated by the Nordost cable burn-in box mentioned further up :slight_smile:

However, as you know I do believe that it’s at least very difficult to perform proper, significant blind testing in this area. Even the act of asking a person to identify a change might inhibit their ability to do so, as the test situation changes everything. Statistical significance would require a complex preparation because you need a large number of people for whom you first have to establish their ability to hear any differences at all. And you would have to control for changing abilities caused by many possible factors.

These two things together, the necessity of proper tests and the impossibility of conducting them, is what keeps this and similar topics going, IMHO

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There is definitely much misunderstanding of the scientific process and many terms associated with it, yes.

It would help if you could quote such a comment. I cannot recall any such comment by the pro-science faction, and on the contrary there were several specifically stating the opposite after the same was asserted previously.

You are correct, of course, that not having measured it does not mean that it is immeasurable. However, it neither supports the hypothesis that a phenomenon exists or is measurable

And there expectation that there has been a change, because they have been asked whether anything has changed.

Something that I discovered many years ago (and I’m sure it must a a well-known phenomenon) involves listening to a ticking clock, or a metronome. The ticks of a well-balanced clock should be pretty much the same - our “tick-tock” is usually not reflected in reality - at least, not reliably or strongly.
In listening to a regular tick like that, I can convince myself that it is going tick-tock, and just as easily convince myself that it is going tock-tick. Or that one is slightly higher in tone than the other, and then swap them.
other similar illusions are available.

Indeed. There is this, and too many other complicating factors to list

Absolutely. Similarly, if you put a voice sample of a word or two onto an infinite loop, after 30 secs or minute you start to hear a different word. And the faster the more you focus on what you hear.

The brain making up new rhythms based on a tick-tock is a large part of how techno works. And the brain making up words based on a loop is, I am convinced, how Christian fanatics started to hear the devil when playing bars of Beatles, Stones, or Sabbath backwards for as long as they had to in order to hear something.

In fact, the literature on sensory confusion and failure is so long, and many phenomena are so well-known in everyday life, that it boggles the mind how some people are convinced that they hear the absolute truth.

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Yes our brain is primarily a prediction engine, it is constantly trying to make best guesses about the world around us, in order to keep us safe.

This is a really nice TED Talk on the topic:

“Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality”

Indeed. I like to call it a pattern-matching engine because much of how it copes with the necessity of predictions is by finding patterns. It is very good at this, but the flipside is that the brain’s eagerness to find patterns is so strong that it makes them up if there are none. This has been widely demonstrated in experiments and is a well-known phenomenon in everyday life, such as the mentioned tick-tock of a metronome, staring into white noise in the TV (when this still happened), or the slight shock when something we do coincides with something else (such as flipping the light switch and a simultaneous unrelated noise). This ability is critical for us but a big downside at the same time, that we always must be aware of.

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Tautology: a lot of people experiment cable burn in. A lot of people believe in Aliens. So the people experimenting cable burn in believe in Alliens.

I never said that. I said that if a lot of people reporting to have experienced aliens is not sufficient evidence for the existence of aliens, then a a lot of people reporting to have experienced cable burn-in is not sufficient evidence for the existence of cable burn-in.

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Definitely not tautology. And no-one said that people who believe in cable burn-in also believe in aliens.
All that has been said is that both lack evidence in exactly the same way.

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I do sometimes wonder this. My wife finds it really difficult to hear differences between things. She can hear larger differences such as between components but not more subtle things. I wonder if there are some people that simply do not have hearing capability that can relay the information to the same degree. I’m not talking sensitivity but the synthesis of information into a spatial picture.

I trust you did not think of me as one of these “technical people”, as I have made clear in this and other threads that I conduct subjective testing when practicable - and having learnt about the factors that can cause bias, these days also I take measures to try to eliminate that from my assessment.

Incidentally, you haven’t yet answered the question I asked 3 days ago, which seems particularly relevant in the context of this post of yours as well as the one I was responding to when I asked it : Do you consider yourself immune to psychological or physiological effects that could affect the sound as you hear or perceive it?

In case of interest, there is a company (at least one) that sells devices to burn cables in:

thecablecooker dot com

Perhaps also evidence that cable burn in is more factual than ufos or miracles.

May be an engineer at thecablecooker can explain the facts.

Not kidding!

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Also that there is possibly an accompanying incentive to state a UFO sighting. Like a tv interview etc… a short moment of fame perhaps.

Can’t believe someone could post suggesting the existence of a salesman implies the efficacy of their product :flushed:

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