Cable burn in

Look Science may definitely work the way you describe i am not going to read all that.
But certain of those that propose to be masters of the subject do exactly what i say they do
go on any Forum any where in any year and it is right in your face obvious.

The idea that using a burner can put a permanent sonic signature on a cable is interesting. I’ve bought a few cables from Futureshop including my current ones and have always shied away from the optional free burn in. There’s no really logical reason other than a feeling that if they are going to play music then they should be run in with music.

Some cables are marked for directionality. Others, such as my Tellurium speaker cables are not, but I’ve read that once run in, they should always be used in that direction, as directionality is then burned in.

I’ve certainly heard really significant changes as cables run in. The biggest was on Super Lumina Din to XLR interconnects. I’ve never understood it in 38 years of Naim ownership and have come to the view that it’s just something that happens and something I don’t need to understand.

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Non-believers: Perhaps it is not the cables, perhaps it is your ears (that are burned in).

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Tellurium Q? All the ones I’ve had / have are directional. They have little arrows on the white shrink-wrap pointing from amp to speakers.

Indeed, across the entire signal 0.5dB is detectable.
Across several octaves 1dB is detectable (and maybe 0.5dB in parts of the midrange).
Across a narrow band 3dB is detectable.

This of course only applies to short term changes - longer term sound memory is a lot worse than this (and cable ‘burn in’ is believed to take a long time in comparison to sound memory).

I am, truly, an arse! Maybe it was the early Black that was non directional.

Ok, gotta… I’d agree with that to a point. When I’ve made adjustments in Roon DSP sometimes 3db can be noticeable if the change pushes a track to clip but it depends greatly on the track being played.

For me, my experience in my system, any change in cables from new to run in tends to be subtle anyway. It’s more of a reduction it digital harshness in upper mids & highs. The character of the cable in terms of soundstage etc tends to remain the same.

:rofl: Lets face it, how much time do we spend looking at the cables behind the boxes!

Quite a bit before putting them behind the boxes…
because I assemble my own cables!

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I tend to buy TQ speaker & IC cables as I like how they sound but yes, I tend to make up my own DC & other power cables etc.

My interconnects are Prehkeytec DIN → Mogami W2497 → Neutrik ‘XLR’ (never heard any ‘burn in’ with these :wink:).

Mains to component cables are Naim (one standard, one PL).

Mains distribution is a home-brew capacitor / diode ‘DC blocker’ built using 2.5mm solid core wire (internal cabling and for the inductors) and 2.5mm flexible external cable, with unswitched 13A sockets, mounted in an aluminium box.

Why is it that burn-in only happens with audio cables - or in the audio domain? Why do we not see ethernet cables, for instance, exhibiting this effect? Presumably we should see changes in the speed of file transfers (because there should be changes in packet re-sends, presumably, as the cable changes). We certainly see no changes in the files received. I don’t hear of burn-in of cables used in radio applications (to and from the aerial, for instance), or video cables (though I dare say there are some who think these should be burned-in - I just haven’t heard anything in any serious discussion), or cables used in the medical industry. MRI machines don’t seem to change their results because of cable burn in.
Is there something about audio signals that is different from any other signal? Apart from the fact that it is people who are subjectively assessing the outcome?

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Above 15 kHz I do not detect anything. So probably more difficult to detect cable burning-in for me.

It looks like digital cables also burn in. But of course this does not affect the digital signal, it affects noise, interference, etc. There is another thread on this forum about internet cables that is funnier than this one.

3dB difference in overall sound level should be clearly audible however far you are listening. Less clear may be 3dB in a narrow range of frequencies with other sound staying the same, and may also depend on the frequency band concerned.

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But still only in the audio domain?

If you mean in audio application my answer is yes.

If you mean in audio domain or 20 Hz to 20 kHz, I am unsure.

Either or both. What is so different about audio from any other application?

There is more people experimenting to find differences.

A client of mine, an international company that produces very high end cables for precision applications, including for the Curiosity Mars Rover by the way:

Tells me that physical cable burn-in is not a thing, at least not in their field. This also includes copper cables, which is the most affordable material they use.

One reason is that copper cables are produced under very high temperatures and they consequentially produce a very thermally stable result. Under 400 deg C it is really not possible to temporarily influence the structure of the material, which makes copper suitable for most precision temperature measurents. Permanently changing the material would require +1000 deg C temperatures which is not applicable to most normal operating environments.

More about their copper cables:

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