Beware of the cable claiming long burn in period.

There’s one in every crowd. 😬

It’s a little bit dangerous IMHO to ascribe up and down changes of break-in or even *any* changes over a period of time due to the fact that most audiophiles are continually adding, changing or deleting cables, equipment, room treatments or tweaks, not to mention all the other variables that affect sound. - day vs night, day of the week, weather, and things that uh, go bump in the night. 

fleschler

• Details
• Discussions
• Posts
• This discussion
• Message User

760 posts02-25-2019 6:48pm

•  Edit
•  Delete

Geoffkait - I never said that I would endeavor to cook a cable for 500 hours. Someone on the forum posted that it could take that long. I thought that was ridiculous as you did.

I am satisfied with 24 hours on the cables I audition. Sometimes I allow an IC it to stay plugged in on a full band radio station with classical and rock for 5 days, especially on cables from other manufacturers. I don't use a cable cooker. However, just allowing a cable to play for 6 to 8 hours often yields superior results. For A/C cables, they get plugged into a frig for a day or two. They also usually sound quick good after 8 hours in an audio system only.  

(The corollary is that inadequate cables don't sound good regardless of the time they spend cooking). Enter your text ...

>>>>>If you say so.

Fleschler, let me cut to the chase, if you don’t mind too much. The Audiodharma Cable Cooker breaks in cables and power cords in two days. The break in track on the XLO CD takes a little longer, but nowhere near your (ridiculous) number of 500 hours. Besides nobody sits around listening to his cables break in for days on end nor do they generally break them in continuously - an oft overlooked, detail. I mean, come on, do you think audiophiles really sit around listening to their cables break in? For hundreds of hours? 

No matter how much you have in the end you would have had even more if you had started out with more. 😀

fleschler758 posts02-24-2019 4:12amMy experiences with dozens of cables indicate that they tend to sound good within 24 hours of use.

>>>>>Define good. No one is saying they sound horrible right away. Besides, wouldn’t it depend on the system and the user. Your numbers seem way too low. They appear to be outliers. No offense. If those numbers were correct Bob Crump wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of breaking in all his TG Audio cables and power cords for a month prior to shipping. And there would be no reason for the Cable Cooker or the Burn In Track on the XLO Test CD, the latter of which requires a minimum of two weeks.  

This is also relative to the manufacture of the cables. I didn’t notice any difference in Monster cables from the 1980s. GroverHuffman cables can sound good within 6 to 8 hours of use but really settle in after about a days use.

>>>>>>>Define good. No one is saying they sound horrible right away. Besides, wouldn’t it depend on the system and the user?

Same problem with fuses. The SR Black fuse took 72 hours to burn in and sound acceptable in several of my systems.

>>>>>>>>Define acceptable. That’s a pretty broad term.

The SR Blue fuse sounded excellent immediately and just got better over time. The SR black duplex sounded good immediately and similarly just got better over time.

>>>>>>Everyone agrees about that.

I wouldn’t want to purchase a cable that required 500 hours of use just as I hate it that so many speakers require 100s of hours to break in (especially those with berrillium tweeters).

>>>>>No one is saying cables require 500 hours to break in. As for speakers, the drivers alone take many months to break in. You can’t fool Mother Nature. There’s no short cut to Nirvana.

Did someone forget to leave out the Roach Motels?

It’s been disproved? Prove it! Talk’s cheap.

dinasty11 posts02-22-2019 11:58amDigital cables have no burn in.  They either pass the signal as a 1 or 0 or they don’t. They have no burn in, no directionality, no nothing. Do you think they deliver a more powerful 1 or 0 after the burn in???   Asinine discussion

>>>>The signal transferred on digital cables isn’t 1s and 0s. Also, the signal is an electromagnetic wave just like analog cables, therefore subject to the same causes of noise and distortion as any other type of cable. This is why toslink is usually judged inferior to coax digital cable, counterintuitively. If it was ones and zeros all digital cables would sound the same, which they obviously don’t. Follow?

Even if it’s a myth I’ll take it...as long as it works. A myth is as good as a mile.

Metaphors be with you. 

Did I do that? 😳

Get off the upgrade train, folks. 🚂 It’s a train to nowhere. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. The cheaper you go the higher you fly. 

No, what was unbelievable I thought, was someone who has been through these burn in discussions many times, asking “what’s causing the long burn in times?” since, you know, it’s all been covered ad nauseam. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, “what’s been covered ad nauseam?” 😛

shkong78
Who else brings a product to market that's only 90% there? (On second thoughts, don't answer that...) 

>>>>Just a opinion but it’s not 90% of the way there. It’s more like 50% of the way there, assuming you do it right when you burn it in.

If the burn in happens in your head and you need a double blind test to prove it we call that burn out, not burn in. 

I realize it’s frustrating but even after the arduous and supposedly magical 300 hour mark is reached there is still a long way to go. Proof? Hook those cables with 300 hours on them up to a real burn in device like the Audiokarma Cable Cooker for a couple days. Then hold on to your tu tu. 

+1

prof1,714 posts02-18-2019 4:32pmaniwolfe,

"It took over 300 hours to really sound great."

What do you think is happening within the cable over those 300 hours that would alter the sound?

>>>>Unbelievable. 

They all require long burn in times. So what’s the difference? Hel-loo! Beware the guy who tells you it sounds good right out of the box.