Cable Burn In

I believe you. I doubt it is anything I would ever notice and it does sound like a very clever way for a cable company to excuse a bad product. I mean, how do you compare what you are hearing right now vs what you're hearing 7.29 days later? Just sayin'. But I'm an eternal skeptic.

Anyway, now I'm curious. Just what exactly is burned-in? And if something needs to be burned-in in an expensive cable, why don't they do it before they send it to you? Or maybe that's a thing. You can buy race tires for your sports car that are heat-cycled several times by the manufacturer to bring them up to peak performance.....for a few extra dollars. Of course maybe the best cable companies do this already? If not, I smell a marketing opportunity!

n80

There is a lot of dubious "wisdom" in the audiophile world.

You’ll hear people claiming "break in" is required for literally everything to sound right...even an equipment rack, or a set of isolation feet for your component. It’s a sort of self-perpetuating mythology, because when people listen for differences they *hear* differences, even if there isn’t any in reality.

So you’ll see lots of claims that things like cables need "burn in." But what you will have a hard time finding is actual objective evidence for the claim (e.g. measurements showing audible-levels of difference between a new vs burned in cable).

The Burn-In mantra has of course lots of use for manufacturers to encourage you to keep their product as long as possible. "Not impressed by our product? Don’t just return it; Keep listening...it takes hundreds of hours until it sounds right!" That’s plenty of time to acclimate, listen carefully and over time come to believe you are hearing something new.

Others will likely chime in defending cable burn-in. Meanwhile, here’s a bit of reading for the skeptical side:

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/audio-cable-break-in-science-or-psychological

Is burn in absolutely a myth? I don’t know. But most Electrical Engineers that I’ve seen discuss this over the years, who aren’t part of a company trying to sell boutique cables, tend to dismiss the idea.

You might consider that Belden, for instance, one of the world’s most experienced manufacturers of cable, and who supply to the professional market vs just honing marketing at audiophiles. You won’t find any "our cables need burn in time" from them. (And it would be to say the least awfully inconvenient for all the pro industries if burn in were the ’problem’ audiophiles think it is. Remembering that cables are used not only for high-stakes professional audio and must perform essentially right-out-of-the-box. But cables are involved in countless sensitive technologies, from medical imaging, to NASA. If cables really didn’t hit their specs for hundreds of hours and needed all this burn in time, that is a whole host of potential problems that...funny enough...you never really hear those industries worrying about.  It's like capacitors/resistors burning in.  If those didn't hit their values essentially right out of the box, that could be hugely problematic given the incredible number of highly sensitive instruments that use those passive parts.  And you don't see industry leading manufacturers like Vishay warning for any of their product heading to sensitive industries like medical imaging etc "warning...100 hours BREAK IN TIME needed before these reach their proper specifications! ).

OP - Cable burn-in is indeed "a thing".  Here is a thread from 2003...yes it was a thing way back then as well.  https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/cable-quot-burn-in-quot?highlight=cable%2Bburn%2Bin

Many cable manufacturers use the term "settling in." A new cable has been manufactured, then coiled into a package and now you are installing it in your system. I believe the settling in process has to do with introducing current into the cable and its interaction between the conductor and the dielectric (or insulation) on a molecular level.

There are so many different cable designs with different substances being used for dielectrics and many different types of metallurgy being used as conductors. The EE measuring parameters with a scope may see a consistent signal, but who’s to say definitively that there is no audible change in the cable after it’s "broken in."

@n80

It’s a mad mad world. Some audiophiles will believe any tomfoolery that any tomfool cares to invent. It’s a mugs game for the unscrupulous who spend hours here promulgating “fear marketing” that says folks are not getting the best out of their precious system without an endless number of ridiculous tweaks. It just shows you that people are terribly unreliable at any kind of precision or sonic memory. Our senses are rather whimsical and clearly influenced by many factors such as mood and expectation. I guess this is why we always use instruments to make precise measurements in hospitals, engineeering, manufacturing, home inspection, food production etc.

The greatest nonsense is that although none of these tweaks can provide any measurable results they are always claimed anecdotally to provide the greatest sound improvements the user has ever encountered. Complete nonsense. Cable burn in is complete nonsense too.