Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

No, I’m laughing because you’re wrong. Also because you’re late to the game. Where have you been the last 25 years? 😃

How slow is costco_emoji? Costc_emoji is so slow that after all this time he still doesn’t know what directionality even is. All cables are directional regardless of whether they have a ground. If the cables have a ground the directionality of the wire should be *controlled* to comply with the ground direction. Audioquest does this. Most cable companies do not do this out of ignorance or laziness.

The copper on printed circuit boards is not pulled through a die so it’s exempt from the directionality rule. But all the internal wiring in electronics is directional. The wire in inductors, transformers, point to point wiring, and all the wiring in speaker crossovers, and other internal speaker wiring. The industry is apparently rather retarded when it comes to the touchy sudject of directionality. And will hear none of it. Very strange IMHO.

Directionality Smart Page (from Audioquest),

https://www.audioquest.com/theory-education/article/83-directionality-its-all-about-noise

@geoffkait

The wire in cables and fuses is physically asymmetrical. That’s why resistance measures slightly lower end to end one way than the other. Guess which way sounds better.

My understanding is that the premise is the asymmetrical directionality is a result of how the wire is drawn. I have not looked into whether there are measurements showing a repeatable difference in resistance with wire direction although I seem to remember some here citing the HiFi-Tuning fuse test results as one example. I have seen stranger things and do not doubt there could be a metallurgical basis for asymmetry based on the manufacturing process so I would not refute or even spend time arguing Geoff’s assertion of directionality but it is the "sounding better" part where I become a skeptic. There are just too many other things going on in every system for me to believe that a typical person could discern differences in wire directionality by ear. It would be like hearing a fly’s wings flapping in the backseat of your car going 60 mph down a gravel road or, in terms of water, the effect of a stick on the flow rate of the Mississippi River, IMO.

mitch2
I have seen stranger things and do not doubt there could be a metallurgical basis for asymmetry based on the manufacturing process so I would not refute or even spend time arguing Geoff’s assertion of directionality but it is the "sounding better" part where I become a skeptic. There are just too many other things going on in every system for me to believe that a typical person could discern differences in wire directionality by ear.

>>>>>Of course there could be reasons why someone might not hear directionality. I’ve always cautioned that negative results of directionality, like anything else, must be taken with a grain of salt since there are quite a few things that can and do go wrong with evaluations and make it difficult to hear differences. You know, things like mistakes in the system, hearing issues, and errors in the test procedure. I think it’s safe to say negative results for cable directionality are relatively rare over the past 25 years and can be thrown out. How many customers of (directional) aftermarket fuses are there since they first came out 15 years ago? 100,000? That’s a whole lot of typical people who can hear wire directionality. It’s not rocket science. You listen. Hel-loo!