Cable burn in

Keep strong!

This will prepare you for even more difficult things in life.

Guys,

Do not despair, I had a little incident and have to focus on other things for some time, but I really want to make progress with the bridge experiment soon.

All the best, Rafael

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…litemotive’s caution might be well founded.
In a spirit of responsibility, it might well be that we should focus exclusively on Rafael’s ‘as rational/valid as seems feasible’ investigation. We can safely ignore inflammatory comments. Each of these words are carefully chosen.

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I’ve reached the point with one person’s contributions that there is clearly nothing further to be said in response, so on that aspect I personally will leave unless it gets personal.

@Rafael, doing this isn’t the most urgent thing in the world, but is very worthwhile. Better to plan well, a benefit of thoughts on this thread, and do well, which is very much subject to your own availability/time/resources. Hoepefully we all will learn from the outcome.

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I do know an awful lot about subjective testing having locked my self away in a room
for 12 years 365 days 12hrs a day doing nothing but Very sad but true.
Outside that i have no more intelligence or knowledge than you or any one else on
this Forum and compared to the Techs my knowledge is not small - it is Non Existent!
I can only say the opinion of those who are expert say the Dielectric on all things
under goes change and there is also belief in some quarters the electrical pathway
will differ from new. I have heard a cable change sound due to non normal electrical
input. So i have some reason to embrace their view on that.
I also once had quite a short piece of connection wire that was tinned at both ends
the insulation was getting a little short so i cut a bit from the same reel (the wire was 10yrs in use ) slipped the insulation off and slid it onto the wire in question. The sound changed i had
to go to the bin retrieve the old bit and refit it! This is additional to my normal cable
Burn in experience.

Thankyou - I do wish your presence was not here on this subject, being imposed on by me.
As i am pursuing a goal of World Domination - it will all be considered much personalised
when it is actually a theme.

How Dare You! Feign anger at my post when your main thrust for years has been to
comment on the Mental state of anyone with a subjective opinion! How Dare You!
I believe that post is a quite Accurate view of the situation, and if you think the only
Form of science that can be used here is going to be your own well think again.
You can hand it out but when the tables are turned you complain it is rude,
well it is not rude at all it is a straight forward assesment.

If some body cant hear Burn in and does a test that proves it does or does not happen.
It follows they still cant hear it. So they are back where they started!!
My IQ is not high so it dont take a Genius to figure this out!

I notice your numbers have fallen to 3 well 2-1/2 really.
I would not want to be the one left holding the bag.

Politely, may I suggest that Richard you duck out of this one? You being here seems to be disrupting what was a relatively jovial discussion.

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I understand you but my involvement has been for daily for weeks (not sure about you) and
this has Not been nor was intended as a jovial outing.
Or is it intended to be a popularity contest, so maybe you should make like
a duck and find water elsewhere.

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A TIME TO LIVE ---#--- A TIME TO DIE

Anybody watching this can see where it is going your references to Future Shop
and Nordost equipment. There is a push / pull a push for it and then a pull back
when you realise the water is getting to deep (i am sure you know what i mean)
If you can implant a audible effect and as it is a Nordost unit for their own cables
it is likely to be as benign as you will get.
Afterwards even if the Listen Tests are Neg you may or may not see reason to measure.
Now i dont want you to latch onto some insignificant - to get out of a corner you have
painted your self into.
Of course you need to be game enough to do this test. Not just ignore it like Everything else.
Raphel can set this up.
ARE YOU GOING TO ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE?
If not just shut up shop and we will all go home.

I understand that. It’s now been two days since my post, so hopefully in the mean-time you’ll have been able to read and understand my position, and, accept that:
1 Scepticism isn’t the same as simple denial.
2 Human senses (particularly when involving memory over extended time frames) are not reliable enough to be considered to be ‘proof’.

I for one will be delighted if Rafael’s experiment shows an actual measurable change (that’s the first step in investigating why there’s a change, and using this information to benefit our systems).
Incidentally, with the proposed bridge system and a AtoD converter that’s monotonic and reproducible to 20bit level, it’ll be possible to investigate changes in the amplitude domain that are at the level of one part in 100,000,000, or to express it another way, -160dB level. This is well below the limit of human perception.

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I’m agnostic as to the outcome, but I think that undertaking well designed and controlled tests is a wonderful proposal, and I fail to understand how anyone can object to the idea.

However, I do think that ideally before undertaking measurements there should be blind listening tests by several people, including some who believe they have heard ‘burn-in’ changes in cables, conducted on the same system.

Should that confirm that there is an audible difference consistently discernible by one or more people then it would be known that measurements have something to try and find, so if no measurable difference is found more thought would be required as to other characteristics to investigate.

And if no consistently discernible audible difference is found, measurements would be academic rather than relevant to hifi.

Although to me the wrong way round, listening tests would of course still be valid if conducted after various non-destructive measurements, though of course any destructive tests such as looking at the structure of the conductor or insulation would preclude subsequent listening.

However, I recognise that setting up blind testing with multiple people as per my suggestion may be more difficult that conducting measurements, even though conceivably there could be volunteers from this forum…

Aye, and there’s the rub.
I do indeed find this interesting both academically and from the perspective of HiFi, so I don’t mind in which order tests are conducted.

And here is where it gets tricky… if no audible difference is found in this one lone listening test it will still not convince myself that the listeners were able to pick out those differences in the system that the testing was conducted on. It will take more repeat studies.
I will give an example of my past experiences with burn in. I have a few male vocal tracks that I use to test my systems ability to play smooth treble.
One track is Paul Kelly live, stories of me. His voice is thin and he plays a harmonica and it can easily sound overly bright. With this track I can easily tell which of my cables is attached to my system by my ears comfort level. This is the track that I go to to assess a new cable/ burn in, and to set my tweeter level etc.
I believe that the listeners need a specific reference track and be somewhat familiar with the system in order to pick out these differences. They can be small but ultimately make a difference to long term listening comfort. A lot of my other music is not suitable to pick out these differences.
I am not saying that this makes it impossible but I feel it needs to be considered
Another factor is the speaker quality. But I won’t go there as the playback system has not been mentioned I don’t think.

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There is simply no reason to think that the human ear can detect something a machine cannot. The human ear is an extremely limited device, and it just gets worse when you factor in all the work the brain does on the incoming signal.

If a human ear can detect any change, then a machine should easily be able to detect it. Easily.

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In the past we have agreed on this several times and it remains an important point. If you can hear it, you can measure it.

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I think so too, which could negate the need for any kind of human listening test.

Possibly so, but I have an interest whether I can tell a difference.