Speaker cables - cables make a difference

@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.

My dear brother, 

Yes, new cables, either Interconnects / speaker cables, need break in period.  Even brand new audio equipment needs a break in time because of the soldering / wies .  Forget about the technical/ mathematical measurement.  New cables sounds edgy until everything settles, opens and smoothing up when cable finally broken in.  Actually,  you can be the judge yourself.  Get 2 same cables , one new and the other already broken in. Listen and you definitely will hear the difference.  . I make cables so I know . Thanks.

@lanx0003 - It's common experiences with cables that give me confidence that there's more to it than expectation bias and placebo even though I know that they are also always an unavoidable factor.

My original perspective with speaker cables after doing a lot of reading was that the primary factor that resulted in audible differences was the AWG which led me to go with the 10 AWG BJC cables that are overkill for my length of cables.  I believe 10AWG is what Imax uses for their sound systems that have really long runs.  I have an intermediate switch in my speaker cables (receiver and integrated share my speakers) which is an automatic sub optimization and doubles the cost of any cable purchases.  As a result I I stayed with the BJC cables for a long time until I came across the favorable reviews for the Mecca 14 that were easily obtained and reasonably priced for two sets.  I didn't like them, but hearing the difference fed my curiosity.  Early in my audiophile journey I made some DIY speaker cables from multiple runs of CAT5 cable with the goal of a large aggregate AWG from multiple small solid conductors.  At the time it didn't seem to make any difference and they were a bulky mess so the 10 AWG BJC became a better solution for me.  In retrospect, I think the inability to hear a difference was likely more related to the capability of my AVR than anything else.  The more research I did the more I felt like there is something to smaller conductors, so I eventually purchased Morrow Audio SP4 speaker cables on a Black Friday sale and have really enjoyed the result.  They added detail to the sound but in a natural way.  My damping factor did drop significantly and I would say that the bass became a little less clean as a result, but not anything that would be objectionable.