Burn your power cables in PROPERLY with Haglabs Frycorder

Just a note that the Frycroder2 is $189.00 USD.

DeKay

Ah right I was looking at the $290 AUD pricing, not USD. Even better for everyone !

The burn in devices like Audiokharma Cooker and Nordost Vidar were always way too expensive to take a chance on. But this is so cheap. There is also the Haglabs Frybaby3 which does interconnects, phono and speaker cables. Will have to get that one if the Frycorder is anything to go by.

Looks interesting. I'd like to hear positive and/or negative comments from people that have tried it in the USA.

Interesting.  I have always been skeptical of such devices.  But when it comes from someone that makes (from what I have read) some fine high value gear, I pause and wonder.  He also makes a similar unit for IC's, amps, etc.  Unlike units that show up from China with who know what inside, this guy goes so far to package his circuit board for all to see in a clear box!  You have to like that kind of transparency.....oops.

Would be good to hear from anyone else that has tried either of these units.

He even has the circuit schematic pdf's on the website for these products. 

US or Australian dollars, it's money better spent elsewhere.

Just buy an adapter for your EIC end that turns it into an extension cord for about $7. Plug it into you refrigerator or DVR and in a day or two you are done. These two things use more electricity than most things in your house. If you have a tower computer you can use your new power cable in it for a little while. Leave the computer on while burning it in. I understand that burn in devices can alter the signal or pulse it. In the end you want to cook your cable. The things mentioned above will do a similar thing. 
I do like the idea of burning in your interconnects and speaker cables. The current running through them is usually not enough at one time to cook them. 

Go to a concert on a Saturday with that money instead of rubbing your earlobes with some snake oil.

I have always been told by several high-end cable manufacturers, that you shouldn't use these types of burn-in devices.  I never have and never will.  YMMV.

Not sure I would trust "high end" cable manufacturers more than than this down to earth designer.

@corelli So the speaker wire re-distributors (I won't say manufacturers because they manufacture nothing) tell you that such a product should not be used on their wire, and yet you believe some hokey pseudo-scientific word salad slinger that says "buy my stuff  'cos I say it works"?  No wonder the high end audio accessory snake oil industry is doing so well.

I'm confused, or curious, with terms such as 

hash, grain, black background etc. Through horns

at 103 to 105 db my rig is quiet as a church mouse, 

as a graveyard, blacker than an Indigo inkwell.

Or so I hear, or don't hear it being this way. How does

one find out if their apparent "black background" system

can be made even "blacker"? Throw more money to a problem

than doesn't seem to exist?

@kckrs if you are so confused, do not worry, there is a forum for you called ASR, but I'm sure you know that already.

It sounds interesting , I would not run it with a line conditioner to a $$ dac just to be safe ,just use on that cable.

It’s too bad they don’t make a more versatile one that can use xlr 

maybe one for Ethernet cable and usb for low voltage.

Heaven help me... Now I have to burn in my extension cord?

@audioman58 they have another product that can, the Frybaby, it can connect RCA, Speaker cables and XLR with an adaptor (adaptor is extra cost addon).

If I burn in my refrigerator cable will it make everything warmer?

My 2 cents worth, most if not all high end cable and gadgets are worth less than my said 2 cents worth, silly stupid stuff for the gullible. Burn that in lol

Cheers 

These will never sell many at that price.  If they increased the price is to $27,000 they'll have to ramp up production to a 24/7 operation.

I hate having improper burnin.

oops.  you lost me at ASR.

Jerry

@jhnnrrs  Hey, I never said I endorsed the product.  I said I would not trust "wire re-distributers" any more than I would trust Hagerman. Have you never heard  "hokey pseudo-scientific word salad slinger" verbiage to endorse a cable??

@corelli  At this point, after all the shysters, con men, grifters, and thieves have made just about every ridiculous claim about their do-nothing products, we should be pretty wise to the lines.  We shouldn't have to point out that wires and fuses don't need burn in.  We should be smarter than that.  Should be, but...

I always am interested  in the comments of the cheapskate who will not try  anything  if it takes either time or money.  They don't ever seem to have either one except  when I comes to being  a keyboard  warriors. 

@retiredfarmer ,

While I do not have experience with the product in discussion, I wholeheartedly agree with this comment:

I always am interested  in the comments of the cheapskate who will not try  anything  if it takes either time or money.

I am seeing such trolls active on this thread and on another one, without trying either products and claiming to know-it-all.

Extracted from a thread “Cable Burn-In - Myth or Fact?” at Audio Science Review that Hagerman started about this equipment:

“What are the physics behind burn-in? I don't actually know, never been able to figure it out. I have some ideas, but not the chops to dig deep enough into the underlying mechanics to prove anything.”
 

To summarize, the engineer is basing his concept for the effectiveness of his “cable burn-in’ers” on his customer feedback. Customer feedback is not a suitable sole means of validation for design efficacy, which has been understood to the point of our planet having legal infrastructure against it for decades in other industries.

IOW, there is literally no scientific process or evidence whatsoever to support what these devices allegedly do. Please understand, this is not advocacy for the pseudoscientific stance of “no measurements = no difference” - I do not think this way nor do I agree with the stance that “if it cannot presently be measured then it cannot exist.” Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In this case, the issue is both the engineer and consumer appear to not understand, or not acknowledge, what constitutes evidence.

Engineering must be based on the scientific method, and in these products, science is being disregarded. At least the designer is somewhat up front about it. I admire someone who publishes his schematics in this day of nearly unchecked IP theft. However, in the case of this particular “IP,” I’m not sure how much there is to protect.

Link to the whole aforementioned thread for any user / would-be user of this product:

Does anyone know if this is a onetime event or is periodic maintenance required?

@retiredfarmer

I'm one of those cheapskates who invested 6 years of my time and lots of money gaining a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering. As such, I know enough about electricity to not know that there is nothing worth trying here.

"Engineering must be based on the scientific method, and in these products, science is being disregarded."

Exactly! Science and its engineering applications are all based on measurements. How do possibly power cables burn-in? Customer feedback? This is not science... just an excuse that ridiculously over-priced cable sellers came up with. So don't miss the return deadline.

@ak749  you know that a university  education  is about opening your mind and looking at things from more than just one way . 

@retiredfarmer that’s not inaccurate but I think you might be misapplying the sentiment in this case. In the absence of tractable metrics for a process/device like this, anyone with a reasonable understanding of experimental design (and/or psychology) will acknowledge the only option is a properly controlled preference study.

No reputable university will train people to base their understandings on anecdotes, no matter how abundant an online community may profess the anecdotes to be. Understanding comes from factual evidence. Belief comes from personal experience and/or unquantifiable anecdotes. Anecdotes are not evidence, but evidence of audible difference can be sought with properly controlled preference studies, even in the absence of digital test protocol/equipment.
So it’s left up to the purveyors of such devices as “cable burn-in’ers” to test (for consumer preference). The question “Why don’t they just do it?” is begged, the true answers probably being:

(1) it’s not free of time, money and other resources,

(2) it’s possible that less-than-favorable results may be had, and

(3) why invest (1) and risk (2) if sales occur without due diligence (1 and 2)?

Yeah - who likes it when a question is used to answer another question, right? 😉

One question about consistency of design philosophy, given the alleged importance of such things as cable burn-in being sufficient to warrant Hagerman Labs developing multiple devices for the purpose, … how does burn-in affect the cheap switching power supply for the rave-reviews-phono stage Hagerman designed - the current 3rd gen model that replaced the previous inbuilt PSU-versions of the Trumpet? Advocating a flagship phono stage that’s powered by a Chinese wall wart to the same folks you’re selling “cable burn-in’ers” seems to me a double standard. What am I missing?

Disclaimer: there’s little skepticism in my mind that the Hagerman phono stage is probably great (I’m particularly partial to certain 12AX7’s, so bias be had!), and I’m not one to assume a properly matched switching PSU will audibly degrade all stereo playback components. What’s curious to me is that I usually see a pattern of folks who say (A) LPS is a must for everything x cables / burn-in is real. Folks who hold (B) cheap switching wall warts for an analogue stage being fine x cables need unmeasurable burn-in, to be simultaneous truths would, in theory, be a rare breed indeed, no?

Overthinking this, surely, but, I like to know the process behind patterns I sense. Lest the patterns not be real patterns at all. 😆

Hey, maybe this place will turn into Audio Science Review (ASR).

Wouldn't that be fun?

My stereo makes me so happy now, any change would surely be anticlimactic. I will use the energy to find new interesting music.

Hello Agisthos,

Here is a person talking to you who really tried it out. I tell you how I bought it. A friend of mine camed to my place with a hijiri nagomi powercord. It was better than all my powercords so I decided to buy four of them from the same shop for my setup. When I got them I was really sad because they doesnt come close to the soundquality of my friends nagomi... :( I called the shop and told the shopowner that the cables maybe are fake! He promised me that they are for sure NO fake because he bought it from the distributor for germany. Then for my luck he remembered that he burnt my friends cable in for two days with a hagerman labs frycorder 2. Then he sended me his frycorder to burn then in by myself. And in the end it was the same soundquality. No it was even better because I burned one cable in for two weeks. This was the bestsounding cable. Then I wanted to buy the frycorder from the shop but he told me he won't sell it because its his own exemplar. Then I ordered one from haglabs webpage. Since then all my powercords have minimum of two weeks burn in and the frycorder works all the day. When I don't listen to a unit of my setup the powercord sticks in the frycorder. ;) Now I am interested in the snakeoil and electricitystudent comments from people which never try - just pray their useless non-fact-based opinion. :) Sorry for my bad english but I am from Bavaria/Germany. 

Kind regards from lake Tegernsee, Andreas

@andili That's interesting to hear because I was wondering what is really going on - is it the burning in of the main line that gives all the benefits? or does putting hours on each individual power cable have an effect?

According to your experience the later. I am doing 48 hours on each line so by this weekend will have the whole system done and can do a proper listen.

True there is a lot of snakeoil and useless products in this industry, but this one does something that is immediately obvious. And its so cheap at $189, that's a drop in the bucket - I have other tweaks that do far less for far more.

I buy so much stuff I don't need and why should I stop now. I'll take a few and give them away as gifts if I don't like them.

I'm still evaluating my grounding box with very expensive connecting wires.

I'm also evaluating some liquid material I put at the end of my cables.

also Evaluating those rubber things you put on tubes.

Also Evaluating vibration pads specially designed to be put on other vibration pads. 

And also evaluating Cable lifters.

Everything works amazing and I am so happy when I see more stuff like this I can buy

@agisthos Thank you for the kind words and testimonial. Cable break-in is one of those things you just need to try for yourself. Easy to do, and I offer a 30-day trial period, so you can return device if it does nothing for you.

From what I’ve deduced over the past 25 years, break-in is not about how much voltage, current, or power you can shove through a wire. If it were, power cords would break themselves in, right? Sorry Refrigerator Guy.

No, I believe it is all about the electrical and magnetic fields generated within the dielectric (insulation between conductors). Think of a cable as a capacitor. You break them in by doing essentially the same thing, exercising the fields, as much as you possibly can. That’s what the original FryKleaner did (generation prior to FryBaby), producing a signal equal to playing a hundred songs at the same time, basically white noise, while also modulating that signal in amplitude for more low frequency content. It also swept that modulation in time such that there was no constant steady-state information. The result sounds a bit like a vintage steam train speeding up and slowing down.

But that’s not all there is to it! We already know large voltage and current do not do the trick, so what is it? I believe it is not the amplitude of the fields that are doing most of the work, but rather how fast these fields are changing in time. That is, frequency. The secret to break-in is high frequency, operating well above the audio band. This is also why I think USB and CAT5 cables tend to break themselves in.

Think of RIAA correction for a minute. It was an attempt to de-emphasize the 6dB per decade slope characteristic of the generator (cartridge), where output voltage (or current) is proportional to velocity. This is exactly what I think is going on with burn-in. It’s all about the rate of change of fields (velocity). So for example, a power cord at 120V and 60Hz (and I don’t care how many amps) does not do much to break-in that cord. Not even thousands of hours. Let’s double that frequency seven times over (2^7 = 128), or roughly 7.7kHz. To me, a 1V signal at 7.7kHz has similar burn-in capability as does the original 120V at 60Hz. If we doubled frequency twelve times (4096 * 60 = 246kHz), we have 32 times more oomph (2^5). This is exactly what my FryCorder can do (FryBaby goes up to 500kHz). You cannot do that with a refrigerator. Fast changing electric and magnetic fields are what work the dielectric, breaking it in faster than music itself.

This is nonsense, and we need to stop perpetuating it. 

@hagtech Right on music lover and engineer of really great sounding, innovative and affordable kit. Dinner on me next time i’m on your Island !

The more you spend the better it is. I recommend all aftermarket cable manufactures are wonderful guys. How do you know when the cable manufacture is not telling you the truth?

I have no idea why some of you spend so much money on such devices. I just put my power cords in a deluxe microwave oven for five minutes. You wouldn’t believe how much better they sound! 
 

Seriously, this is one of the most ridiculous threads on the site. 

@agisthos "Burn your power cables” yep! LOL

@raysmtb1 "The more you spend the better it is” +1 LOL

Give the OP a break.  Who are you to refute what he heard?  

I am neutral on this one but nothing useful is gained by mocking and disparaging others on this site.  

My Frybaby does wonders. It can transform your sound after as little as 24 hours of burn-in. I will be ordering the unit for power cables soon. Too easy to use and so beneficial for such low investment.

I hate to get in the middle of these pointless arguments where all the people that have never given a product a try deny that it could have any effect and must be snake oil simply because they can’t propose a mechanism for its action but I am going to anyhow LOL.

1) I visited Shunyata Research recently where Caelin Gabriel said that he considered burn in a fact, not a belief. He pointed out that at Shunyata they have made exactly the same cable, made by exactly the same person, and tested them at different levels of burn in and clearly and repeatably heard a difference.

2) The guys at PS Audio have also made that same claim, that they have built the same products and compared them at different levels of burn in with clearly audible differences.

3) Shunyata claims their KPIP burn in process provides such a dramatic benefit that they no longer cryo treat their products.

4) Since I was buying a loom of Ice Age power cables and saw this thread, and was familiar with the positive reviews for Hagerman’s phono stages, I decided to take advantage of their 30 day return policy and bought the Frycorder2. At $189 shipped with return privileges it seemed like a no brainer.

5) Before any burn in I put the full loom of Ice Age OFC power cables in my system and compared them to the mostly Pangea cables I had before. I heard them as being slightly different, especially in the bass, but not clearly better.

6) I bought adapters on Amazon that let me daisy chain all 5 power cables and hooked them to the Frycorder2 for 3 days. And for good measure I put them on a fan for a day and a half after that. Shunyata said that a fan was the best thing for an end user to use to burn in power cables.

7) Once again I compared the Ice Age cables to the previous set up of mostly Pangea cables going back and forth twice to confirm what I was hearing. After the burn in the Ice Age cables had improved dramatically and were clearly much better than my previous set up in all the ways we listen to. Dynamics, bass, transients, attack and sound stage were all immediately and noticeably better. Since the Ice Age cables also come with a 30 day return policy my preference would actually have been for none of this to have resulted in a positive outcome.

8) Bottom line for me is burn in is real, the Frycorder2 made a very positive change in my power cords, and the Ice Age OFC power cables are a remarkable bargain in a sea of grossly overpriced gear.

I could care less what all the naysayers think who have preconceived opinions about how something won’t work and can’t be bothered to actually test those opinions and simply assert that anybody that disagrees with them must be delusional. Go take advantage of the money back guarantees and give the products a fair trial and perform your own A/B tests. If you actually know how to listen, and yes it is a skill, and have a reasonably good system, and you still don’t hear any benefit then make a constructive post with your findings.  That would actually be helpful. This blathering on about how something can’t work and must be snake oil is ridiculous without any testing with the most sensitive instrument we have, the human ear.

     "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."  (Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872) 

     "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,"  (Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873)

      "The super computer is technologically impossible.  It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required." (Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University)                        

      "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."  (Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923)

      "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." (Dr. Lee DeForest, Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television)

      "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible!" (Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895) 

      "The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives."  (Admiral William Leahy, re: US Atomic Bomb Project) 

     When the steam locomotive came on the scene; the best (scientific) minds proclaimed, "The human body cannot survive speeds in excess of 35MPH."

      Until recently (21st Century); and the advent of the relatively new science of Fluid Dynamics, the best (scientific) minds involved in Aerodynamics, could not fathom how a bumblebee stays aloft. 

     Often; Science has to catch up with the facts/phenomena of Nature and/or, "reality" (our universe). 

     I haven't been in school since the 60's, but- at Case Institute of Technology; the Physics Prof always emphasized what we were studying was, "Electrical THEORY."         He strongly made a point of the fact that no one had yet actually observed electrons (how they behave on the quantum level) and that only some things can really be called, "LAWS." (ie: Ohm, Kirchoff, Faraday)   

                 PERHAPS: that's changed in recent years and I missed it?

Well written responses to the naysayer community.  Keeping an open mind is more often a virtue than not.

@pinwa  i have now 2 days my first Ice age audio FrankenCable  power cord on amp.  Incredible cable , from the start soudstage is fantastic. This is a true giant killer ,  that's why no one dares to compare them with expensive cables in tests.