I have a set of Harmonic Technology Magic speaker cables that were in storage since I bought my Vandersteen 5A speakers nearly 20 years ago. They sounded great in my previous system, but the spades were too wide to fit inside the barrier strips on the 5A's so I replaced them. About 6 weeks ago I had the spades on the speaker ends ground down by Audio Connexion in Burlington, Ontario (no affiliation) slightly so they would fit inside those barrier strips. Audio Connexion did an excellent job. If I didn't know they were trimmed a bit I'd never know it was done. Anyway, after connecting them and listening, saying I was VERY disappointed would be an understatement. They sounded absolutely terrible - like my system was broken. I then set my streamer to play them around the clock for a couple of weeks, listening most days to see if there was any progress. At first, after a couple of days, they still sounded significantly worse than my other set of speaker cables, so I was tempted to just go back to them, but I persisted. After about 2 weeks of nearly constant playing, they finally opened up and had none of the grit I had heard. I'm now VERY happy - they sound great. After sitting idle for 20 years, breaking them in brought them back to life - YAY!