Cable Burn In

The best tweak in the world is a 5K run before you sit down and listen.

+1.  I can attest to that.

Unfortunately, though, as time goes by that tweak tends to become less practicable  :-(

Best regards,
-- Al

FWIW, over the years I've noticed a fairly consistent phenomenon in these forums. Certain members seem to gravitate to threads involving phenomena that are either technically inexplicable, at least when considered in a quantitative manner (if that is even possible), or are particularly controversial, or both.

The usual result being that potentially constructive dialogue gives way to some combination of childish commentary, exchanges of insults, and ad hominem attacks, rather than dialogue which is constructive and potentially useful. Which as far as I am concerned would seem to defeat the main purpose of a forum.

Just an observation, FWIW. Also, BTW, I consider contributions to this forum by Prof and by Analogluvr, among a number of others I could name, to be the antithesis of those I am referring to. I always find their contributions to be pragmatic, thought-provoking, based on extensive experience in many cases, and certainly warranting intelligent discussion.

Also, as usual Jim (Jea48) has provided a constructive input to the thread. The problem, though, is that all too often audiophiles tend not to perform their evaluations in as thorough and disciplined a manner as he suggested, before proclaiming that a perceived difference is attributable to a specific cause. As opposed to being caused by extraneous variables such as ongoing aging or breakin of unrelated system components, differences in AC line voltage or noise characteristics that occur from time to time, changes in ambient temperature and/or humidity (temperature being a factor that is fundamental to the physics of semiconductors such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits), differences in equipment warmup states, flushing of internal digital memory that occurs when power is cycled, etc.

My own belief, again FWIW, is that when it comes to controversial audio-related matters more often than not reported perceptions are likely to be accurate, and not the result of "expectation bias." Depending, of course, on the credibility of the particular person who is doing the reporting. But my belief is also that in many cases the methodology that has been used in arriving at the reported conclusions has not been sufficiently thorough to assure that the perceived effect is being attributed to the correct variable.

Regards,
-- Al