"Burn In" Question

There's no current flow unless you complete the circuit. So I would say yep, in order to run the signal through the interconnects, it must be drawn through by the load. No load, no energy flow. Btw, I leave my more expensive solid state stuff on 24/7/365 to reduce the number of thermal cycles. It's not very green to do so, but maybe it brings us all that much closer to using renewable resources, haha. Good luck!

I have burned in cables using the VCR. You do not have to turn the volume up on your amp for it to work. I also leave my class a/b solid state equipment on 24 hours a day as well as my CD player. Otherwise it takes along time (at least a couple of hours or so) for them to warm up and sound their best. I even notice that the CD player sounds better after it has "played" a half a CD or so even though it is never turned off. Could be my imagination, but I don't think so.

An amplifier, or any other input device, does not have to be powered-up to provide a load termination for the interconnect cables driving it; signal current will flow regardless. You can prove this to yourself by measuring with an ohm-meter; the load impedance doesn't change when either powered on or off (don't DC your direct-coupled power amp if you perform this test - very bad things will happen). If you don't have an idle component to plug into for cable breakin, then you can make dummy loads with cheap RCA (or XLR) female connectors from Radio Shack. Just solder 10k-ohm resistors, or 47k-ohm, or whatever load you desire across the jacks - simple. The lower resistances will draw more signal current, theoretically accelerating the breakin. However, you cannot use a preamp's inputs to breakin this way, unless that particular input is selected on the input switch; (ie: if you're plugged into aux 1, then you must select aux 1 on the input switch) otherwise there's no load terminating the cable & no signal current flows, so no cable breakin is occuring. Regarding AC power: for best sound, never power down a solid state component if you don't have to. Reduces thermal cycling, theoretically increasing equipment life, & definitely increasing your electric bill. DO pull the plug if a thunderstorm is nearby however. Provide for integral transient-protection in your power conditioning equipment, for when you're not home during those storms. Tubes don't follow this always-on rule though.

Bob - i have seen comments on this topic on other threads, but never a clear POV. Should tube preamps be left on? Tube amps? I currently switch off my tube amos, but tend t leave the preamp on.

Thank you for the clear guidelines Bob. You have explained why it took so long for my silver interconnects to break in. I was told otherwise regarding the the preamp selector switch. My 300+ hours of breakin was in reality only about 200+ hours, since we were listening to music during the day from another source. I have a new pair of interconnects on the way that should only take a week, now that I have finally got it.