Cable "burning": Real or VooDoo ???

If the sound of the cable changes over time, why does it always get better? It seems to me that at least some of the time, the sound would get worse. I believe it is because you adapt to the sound of the cable. If I spent big bucks on a cable, I would work hard to convince myself that it was starting to sound better, not worse. My vote is for voodoo.

If interested, go to the www.cardas.com where they have a discussion of cable burn in posted in the "insights" section. I'm not sure I buy into it, but it makes for interesting reading

Jadem6, Just to throw a little more oil on the fire, you state "To do this I went through some of the recordings I personally find to be well recorded with above average sonic achievements." I believe a more accurate statement would read "To do this I went through some of the recordings I personally find to sound good on my system."

I think this is THE huge variable in how systems are evaluated. We tend to use the same recordings to evaluate various components. For instance, I may have a recording that has been deemed to have excellent bass. Perhaps it is a little bass heavy, but on some systems this is just the ticket to sonic excellence. Using this recording, I would judge more neutral systems to be bass deficient.

For this and other reasons, I advocate spending most of your budget on components, and saving the big "cable question" to the end when you are putting on the finishing touches and have a system of sufficient resolution to make these megabuck decisions.

Happy listening