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Cable Break In for the Naysayers

I still cannot believe that in this stage of Audio history there are still many who claim cable break in is imagined. They even go so far as claim it is our ears that break in to the new sound. Providing many studies in the way of scientific testing. Sigh...

I noticed such a recent discussion on the What’s Best Forum. So here is my response.

______________________________________________________________________________________________ I just experienced cable break in again firsthand. 10 Days ago, I bought a new set of the AudioQuest Thunderbird XLR 2M interconnects.

First impression, they sounded good, but then after about 30 hours of usage the music started sounding very closed in and with limited high frequencies. This continued until about 130 hours of music play time.

Then at this time, the cables started to open up and began to sound better and better each passing hour. I knew at the beginning they would come around because they sounded ok at first until the break in process started. But now they have way surpassed that original sound.

Now the soundstage has become huge with fantastic frequency extensions. Very pleased with the results. Scientifically I guess we can’t prove cable break in is real, but with good equipment, good ears, it is clearly a real event.

ozzy

128x128ozzy

Showing 3 responses by mceljo

mceljo
1,348 posts
 

When it comes to break-in I will quote Dug and say, "I'm having two feelings."

I have some balanced Morrow Audio MA4 interconnects.  I didn't focus much on the break-in, but here's how I would describe my experience:

The expectation bias was set by their cable owners manual that essentially says that the cables start out sound good, then go through a period where they sound bad, and then they get great.

When I first hooked them up they sounded amazing and I spent quite a bit of time listening.  Then there was a couple of days where I wouldn't describe the sound as obviously bad, but I would just listen for a couple of minutes and then walk away.  After even more time I started getting sucked into listening again.  I can't say that I could tell a difference between. new and broken in with absolute certainty, but I can say that there were a period of time where I didn't find my system engaging when before and after that time I had to pull myself away and this period of time aligned with what Morrow Audio described.

I try to identify a scientific reason for the things that I experience and I've got nothing for cable break-in.

mceljo
1,348 posts
 

@classicrockfan - The fallacy in your argument is that if cable break-in is real the marketing around cable break-in absolutely would make sense. Because of this, I don’t consider this a compelling argument.

 

i would like to see a system setup with identical sources feeding a preamplifier. Then the goal would be to utilize two identical interconnects from the sources that had exactly the same time on them. If the listeners could agree that they sounded identical then on could be swapped with a new one and then any difference could only be attributed to break-in. 

mceljo
1,348 posts
 

I am far from an expert on this, but for those that believe that science simply doesn’t support cable break-in, consider this:

The electrical signal is a flow of free electrons in the valence shell of the copper (one example) atoms.  It’s a physical flow of matter.  Because electrons are free to move relative to the nucleus of the atom it’s not unreasonable to think that the flow of electrons could alter things in the cable.  I am thinking that any interfaces in the cable could mesh/blend over time resulting in a different flow of electrons.  The connections would be a place where this could matter most and why people experience a break-in period when reconnecting cables  

My experience with cable break-in is very limited, but this is a physical phenomenon that happens with cables.  To quote myth busters, plausible at minimum.

 

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