Speaker cables - cables make a difference

Excessive hours burn in skeptic here.  However, if you must, burn in with white noise.  Do not listen to music during whatever burn in time you choose.

I agree that the largest perceived changes, if any, occur during the first 5–10 hours, and I don’t believe long burn-in periods are necessary for speaker cables. However, you might as well listen to music during that time instead of living with white noise.

Are you implying that white noise is more effective for burn-in, or are you concerned that listening to music during burn-in will cause you to become accustomed to a less full sound and reduce your ability to discern any improvements afterward? I don’t believe either is true or to the dgree with which you should be concerned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wai8MUH5ky4

Thought provoking "Just saying"

@lanx0003 - I tend to not share my specific impression with cables because it sets people up for expectation bias to become a more significant factor. Having said that, it sounds like your experience with the Micca 14 speaker cables aligns with mine.  At the time I had BJC Ten White (10 AWG) speaker cables and after seeing the favorable reviews for the Micca 14 cables and their very affordable price I decided to try a set. They always left something to be desired for me that would align with your “rolled off highs”. I have Focal speakers and felt like some of what I love about the tweeters was lost. When I swapped back to the BJC cables after several weeks I felt a literal sense of relief as soon as I started listening. I shared the Micca 14s with a friend without telling him what I thought about them other than he knew I preferred my BJC cables. He put them in his system for a while and also went back to his Parts Connection speaker cables. I think he was using bi-wired 14 AWG speaker cables (a cheap way to get a larger aggregate AWG), so nothing fancy. When we compared our experiences we both had essentially the same description of losing the highs. Out thought is that it’s likely related to the Micca 14s being parallel conductors while both of our other speaker cables were twisted conductors.  I think Micca 14s might be a great solution for people who prefer a very warm presentation or have an unpleasant high end with their systems. 

My experience with cable burn-in is very limited, but I will say that when I got my Morrow Audio MA-4 balanced interconnects my listening experiences generally aligned with their prescribed timeline for break-in. I truly didn’t focus on a lot and just left my DAC running throughout the break-in period and then would listen for a few minutes each evening after work. My experience was that I initially had the Classic experience of getting sucked into the music and wanting to re-listen to my music collection. Then for a couple of evenings I just wasn’t engaged as can happen when I’m just not in the mood to listen. And then I got sucked in again. It was later than I realized that the evenings where I wasn’t engaged aligned with the time period that Morrow Audio says that performance will drop. Correlation at a minimum. 
 

When I got Morrow Audio speaker cables I paid for the 200 hour break-in because I didn’t want to leave my speakers going continually.  I life in a small house so it’s impractical to have it going all the time.  When I got MA-4 unbalanced interconnects I had a similar experience to the first round. 
 

I won’t die on the hill defending cable break-in, but my experience tells me that there’s more to it than simply nothing. 

@mceljo  I think your experience with Micca 14 vs BJC Ten White is consistent with mine.  I believe the BJC Ten White they carry now is essentially the Belden 5T00UP 10 AWG (twisted geometry) I was using in my DIY speaker cables back then. (see the labels in the image).  Although I like Belden better, I spend fair amount of effort upgrading xlr IC and preamp to finally tone it down to the smooth, liquid sound I like.  Not warm but smooth sound I have been craving.