Cable burn in

The process of manufacturing a cable is directional, therefore a cable must be directional.

I can visualize this very well, it is almost intuitive.

However, if in a properly controlled p hearing experiment it turns out there is no audible difference related caused by usage of the cable, the burn-in question goes away. Electrical measurements, followed by microscopic, would be relevant and desirable in the event of a proven burn-in effect to try to identify what has changed.

Do you think we can arrange for recording music with different cables and being able to tell the difference in a second system?

This would also prove the case, perhaps at a lower cost.

I think it is exactly the opposite.

Electrical and/or visual measurements will demonstrate that something has changed in the cable.

Then we will demonstrate that these changes can be perceived by ear. If we fail, we will blame the ears/brains of the observers.

But it will remain demonstrated that cables age/settle/burn in.

To add more interest to this experiment, we could increase our budget and repeat everything at the ISS, to see what happens in absence of gravity.

Now I am kidding. And still unable to use emojis.

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But detailed microscopic examination will require taking of sampkes which will damage the cable and make it impossible to test audibly afterwards or to test electrically. For that reason the order I suggested would be better. Otherwise if you find microscopic differences you would have to get new cables and start again to tell if those observed differences can be heard (following which test again microscopically to verify the changes are the same)

Of course, that is why we put four cables in the budget. The test is destructive, as they say.

Sorry for cable lovers.

Guys…the cable can only be ‘directional’ for 50% of the signal because it’s AC…

I thought 4 was for 4 different burn-in periods? (Now 5 for a duplicate zero.) testing in the order I suggested gets maximum info from the 5.

I make a note to write a test procedure.

This would be a hose, not a cable.

Damn! I was going to volunteer for that one.

Always just a question of budget.

I’m not going to rule it out, but that doesn’t necessarily follow if the materials are homogenous and isotropic.

It’s a Ph.D. study, just waiting to be sponsored by someone with no commercial interest.

Not necessarily.

A cable that behaved as a very poor performance diode where the forward bias voltage is only just above zero, and the reverse leakage impedance is only a little larger than the forward impedance, could give a directional result as the alteration of the +ve and -ve phases of the signal would be different, depending on the orientation of the cable.

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Most cables (wires) are manufactured by extrusion.

Like spaghetti. Try to visualize them, would you eat spaghetti from the wrong end?

Next thing I am going to ask is for people in this thread to volunteer their cables.

Same concept than the spaghetti.

The mechanism is irrelevant, if the materials are homogeneous and isotropic, then it doesn’t matter: they are the same in each direction. Directionality would have to come from a different source other than the manufacture.

And no I don’t check the spaghetti to see from which end I should eat each strand! :joy: