[threephi]

What do the people who believe in such things think is behind any benefit from cable burn-in?  Especially unmonitored cable burn in?

This comes up quite often in the product threads in other sections on head-fi, and to be honest it makes me want to bang my head against my desk whenever I see it.  It's one thing to believe in the value of fancy expensive cables.  Then another to believe in burn in (apart from what happens between the ears).  And then it's yet a third level of audiophilomania to think that the process of running a tiny voltage signal across the conductor wires effects a physical and persistent change in the wire itself.  

I'm relatively new to these forums, but am I allowed to engage these beliefs in other sections of head-fi, or is this the only refuge of reason?

 

[StanD]

Cable Burn in is a big myth. In fact Cables are a big myth. It's safe to say so in Sound Science. In other forums you will get hassled by the believers. We all know there is no technical reason for the claimed magical sound properties, the engineering/science behind this is very simple, however, we all know that will not stop the silver surfers and others from highly imaginitive claims.

 

[threephi]

So that means there's no restriction in calling it out elsewhere?  It's the unquestioned seriousness with which it's discussed that drives me crazy.

You should have seen the first three things I wrote in as the thread title, before reining in how maddening it is.  Suffice to say it included the sound Charlie Brown makes whenever a pop fly lands in the outfield next to Snoopy while he's off dreaming about flying a Sopwith Camel.

 

[threephi]

Just so the thread title is clear, I'm wondering just what story adherents of cable burn-in in particular (we can leave burn-in of other equipment to the side for the moment) tell themselves to justify it... because I honestly can't imagine a single one.

 

[thelostMIDrange]

prepare yourself 3phi for a host of snarky saracastic responses. Both those who make fun of this idea, and those who are proponents of it as being real, will cite similar space agey terms like cryonation, molecular discombobulation and rearrangement etc. I fall on the side of it being a real phenomenon in some cases and not in others but generally those little molecules are so amazing, I wouldn't quickly dismiss it as a possibilty. If an atom can be harnessed to atomize everything around it for 100's of miles, I wouldn't be surprised if they change a bit due to burn in. But I also believe in teleportation, time travel, and that different cables do sound different, but unlike most who claim it's a benefit, Those that i've tried just sounded unatural, and contributes to odd sounds and midrange sucking (i.e. more apprarent detail and sparkle). Same goes with teleportation and time travel. It's unatural to mess with such things. Soul (midrange) gets sacrificed in all 3 situations.

 

[Mr Rick]

  Just so the thread title is clear, I'm wondering just what story adherents of cable burn-in in particular (we can leave burn-in of other equipment to the side for the moment) tell themselves to justify it... because I honestly can't imagine a single one.

 
It's simple really. They believe they hear a difference / improvement over time. No amount of technical explanation to the contrary will convince them otherwise. It's like trying to convince a believer that there is no god. Your scientific arguments will never trump their beliefs.

 

[nick_charles]

two identical cables one burned in , one not burned in,  a listener unaware of which is which is asked to say which is which over a series of 15 - 20 trials. Would at least resolve the issue for that listener...

 

[thelostMIDrange]

@rick, that's unfair. There's no way to quantify such things one way or the other so to say that a burn-in adherent doesn't back up his belief's with evidence is not a knock against it. There's a million things that may in fact be real and true, that do not lend themselves to being scientifically measured and validated. This is the entire problem of course which is why reductionists end up scaling down the grandness of life to that which they can study and they end up with a shrunken 'thing' to study.  As i've mentioned in another context, a great way to test this stuff is by sticking with the individual subjective, but make it objective by blindness and variable reduction. This is an entire discipline strain within science and is sort of a bridge between pure reductionism and pure subjectivism. So in the case of cables, you'd set up a stereo with an A/b switcher with two sets of cables, you'd listen over the course of months blindly and have a computer keep track of what cable is being played. You would know which you are listening to, but not which cable it is. That way you could show preference, but not preference for anything known. Then over time you could develop (or not) a preference for A or B, and then you can have your own memory of preferring A or B and also have a tabulation from the computer of how many times more you picked one or the other. if the two correlate in a meaninful way after six months, you know there is meaningful difference and you also know in what direction that difference is.
 
the above is just a more controlled thing as nick just suggested isn't it. but still, as he pointed out in another thread, one might just prefer the letter A over B......it sure it hard to reduce variables isn't it!

 

[threephi]

 

[StanD]

Cables are very simple. Unless they are made of junk they have 3 electrical properties that determine how they work:
Resistance: Too low to make a difference in audio and with the impedance ranges of headphones.
Capacitance: Too low to affect audio.  In context of the circuit, this is in the realm of radio frequencies.
Inductance: Too small to affect audio in any which way,
 
None of the properties are going to change enough with any burn in to change they way they do not affect anything to start with.

 

[thelostMIDrange]

those are three known properties that your magnifying glass has found

 

[StanD]

  those are three known properties that your magnifying glass has found

I went to college, studied Electrical Engineering and worked in the field. I don't need a magnifying glass, haha, to know. This stuff is so basic it isn't funny. If anyone that wishes to imagine other things, go right ahead and be silly.

 

[thelostMIDrange]

beg pard, although i'm not convinced all that is taught there is legit (although I don't disagree what you are referring to is) and even what is correct is only known at this point in the unfolding of creation. Or did your college teach that creation is fully unfolded or that it doesn't unfold like a magic carpet?  To think that we know for certain a cable only has 3 properties seems capricious (collegiate term) - I had to look it up.

 

[threephi]

 

[threephi]

In all seriousness, just because some things are unproven, or unprovable, doesn't mean that everything is unprovable.  That seems to be your argument--that because we don't know everything, we therefore know nothing, and cannot ascertain what is false.