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Any need to burn in new speaker cables? Does it make them sound better?


Dylanl

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I know a few respectable audio guys that say there is a perceived difference after burn in by comparing 2 sets.

Were they selling the wire or the "burn-in service"? Were they writing for a magazine that contains advertising for $$$$ wire? If so, the term "respectable" as applied to such individuals is suspect. There is no scientific or audible evidence that "burning in" wire changes any of it's characteristics. This is fraud at worst, pseudo science at best.

Silly me, I would think fresh or new wire would be at its best at that point and only degrade over time but what do I know.

Apparently you know much more than the aforementioned individuals who recommend cable burn-in. You have caught onto the scam.

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No no one was trying to sell. Here is a link that I used to build my last set and they sound no different than others so....... I guess you are right. The original reason I asked was because I was looking for a logical true reason and at this point I have not had one post even close to any "real proof" or tests. That say just about all I need to know.

Have a look at this link http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/whitelightning/moonshine.html

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I have heard others speak about putting 100 plus hours of pink noise to burn in speaker cables for better sound. Is there any truth to this? If so what?

The most important way to answer this is for you to understand what is audio truth to you, and how you go about discovering it. Are you the type of guy who listens for hours on end in the dead quite of the middle of the night listening for the most subtle nuances of your equipment? Have you regularly discovered tonality differences between amplifiers, and had the desire and ability to accurately describe them for future reference? Do you regularly change out parts of your audio system for incredibly minor improvements in tone or clarity?

If you are not that guy, the answer makes no difference to you, so why bother. If you are that guy, you will already know how to discover the answer, right?Geeked

Well I could have sworn we were engaged in a Marxian dialectic here and who jumps up but a Helgian. Shifty characters who can never make up their minds and whose answers are more concerned with the question than with the answer. I glad you never built your fine instruments on the basis of Helgian principles or we would all have been greatly disappointed with their sound.

Now, Old Timer, though, is engaged in a true Marxian dialectic, concentrating on the material outcomes associated with making a pie. Indeed I think Marx's own words describe it best:

"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its
direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e.
the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even
transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real
world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the
Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the
material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms
of thought."

I suspect, however, that he is more of a Leninist than a true Marxist, and would use all the different kinds of apples but keep most of the pie to himself. Despite his being an unrepentant commie I do believe he would never worry about breaking in his speaker wire. Now would he concern himself about weather it was long strand, short strand, oxygen free, nickled, polished, bronzed nor chromed, but just appreciate wire for what it is, a simple means to a simple end.

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I have heard others speak about putting 100 plus hours of pink noise to burn in speaker cables for better sound. Is there any truth to this? If so what?

The most important way to answer this is for you to understand what is audio truth to you, and how you go about discovering it. Are you the type of guy who listens for hours on end in the dead quite of the middle of the night listening for the most subtle nuances of your equipment? Have you regularly discovered tonality differences between amplifiers, and had the desire and ability to accurately describe them for future reference? Do you regularly change out parts of your audio system for incredibly minor improvements in tone or clarity?

If you are not that guy, the answer makes no difference to you, so why bother. If you are that guy, you will already know how to discover the answer, right?Geeked

Well I could have sworn we were engaged in a Marxian dialectic here and who jumps up but a Helgian. Shifty characters who can never make up their minds and whose answers are more concerned with the question than with the answer. I glad you never built your fine instruments on the basis of Helgian principles or we would all have been greatly disappointed with their sound.

Now, Old Timer, though, is engaged in a true Marxian dialectic, concentrating on the material outcomes associated with making a pie. Indeed I think Marx's own words describe it best:

"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e. the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought."

I suspect, however, that he is more of a Leninist than a true Marxist, and would use all the different kinds of apples but keep most of the pie to himself. Despite his being an unrepentant commie I do believe he would never worry about breaking in his speaker wire. Now would he concern himself about weather it was long strand, short strand, oxygen free, nickled, polished, bronzed nor chromed, but just appreciate wire for what it is, a simple means to a simple end.

You have it partly right Thebes. But what else could I expect from a soul brother? I have been called a Trotskyite by those who should know, but never ever a Leninist. Even people with homophonically similar names to Lenin are suspect in my book. (Said book is unpublished at this time of course until the world will be ready for it.) Usually I take less pie than most, more in accordance with my needs than with my abilities.

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" Silly me, I would think fresh or new wire would be at its best at that point and only degrade over time but what do I know."

Now, Dylan watch your thinking there, you don't want to start running with that Entropist crowd. Sure entropy always wins, but what they don't let you know, is that properly made cables like those Six Moons ones you made, can delay the onset of entropy, while simultaneously having absolutely no affect on the quality of the sound.

I think ultimately, the question is which story do you really like: "I Sing the Body Dielectric" by Ray Bradburry, or Huxley's rejoinder, "I Sing the Body Dialectic". Of course, Huxley's dead but Bradburry's still alive and writing.

OT, whatever you do, stay out of Mexico.

Dave, yes a house painter by trade but at night a part of the Klipsch Gestalt, which I do believe is located near Gdansk. Just a basic 4 year degree from a state school in upstate New York, which is more than likely (aristocratic sniff) a finer experience than the leading Southern (sniff) university.

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You can't compare wire that is intentionally designed to sound different (did't say better) to wire that is like you folks report, just wire.

So in the market place you now have various wires designed to sound different, try them til you find one you like, or just use plain wire.

No different than tube rolling, or any of the other mystical thing you can do with audio. Changing capacitors, changing tubes, changing wires, etc.

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Just a basic 4 year degree from a state school in upstate New York, which is more than likely (aristocratic sniff) a finer experience than the leading Southern (sniff) university

Thebes you should try something called a nasal rinse. It might really help with those sniffles old chap.

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Lots of debate on this forum (and others) about cables. How 'bout a cable shoot-out at the Pilgrimage; it would be interesting to challenge boutique cable enthusiasts against those who are happy with lamp cords. I will donate a 50' roll of Wally World 'Yard Master-16/3' for the cause. Double-blind testing rules would have to apply.

Rick

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Lots of debate on this forum (and others) about cables. How 'bout a cable shoot-out at the Pilgrimage; it would be interesting to challenge boutique cable enthusiasts against those who are happy with lamp cords. I will donate a 50' roll of Wally World 'Yard Master-16/3' for the cause. Double-blind testing rules would have to apply.

Rick

That's a great idea wish I could be there. Try 2 of the same set one new and one with some hours on it.

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The way the math equation works here is that the effect of burn-in for new speaker cable is directly (and uniquely) proportional to how long it has been since they were new and different than what you had before. At first you know they are new and different because you just bought them and installed them. As time progresses you should notice a difference in their newness and difference from what was there before (including no cables at all if it is the first installation of the system) which will be exactly measured by how long it has been. This is burn-in.

The longer they burn in the more you will perceive that time has elapsed since they were new and different and that, my friend, is the effect of the burn-in in a nuts shell, and it is a comforting feeling, usually, like a pair of old slippers. With enough burn-in you hardly think about when they were new and different than what went before them. Eventually, given enough time, burn-in can become burn-out and at that point you put them in the recycling bin for scrap. Slippers you just throw away.

You could also throw the cables away too or use them to tie up things, kind of like when they used to make baling wire which you could re-use to fix other things on the farm, now they just tie up hay bales with plastic rope, echh!

So, to review, for myself as well, the more the wire burns in, the more you notice they are not new anymore and you can hardly remember what you had before. The way they sound now will always be different than the way they sounded before because that was then and now is now, depending on your mood and general state of mind.

If you are agitated and not at peace with yourself, burn-in can seem to be a downhill slide, and you feel like everything was better before and now everything is f#@ked . Then the next day, if all goes well and your memory is sieve-like, you will swear they are the best cables ever and that burn-in is directly proportional to "better", in which case the math involved is that the elapsed time of the burn-in is directly proportional to how much you are not being able to tell how long it has been, which is a good thing actually.

There is a complex relationship between burn-in and "getting used to it", although not strictly a direct-proportional relationship because of other variables in the equation, not least of which is how much you can get for them at the scrap yard someday, which means, in other words, related to the price of copper, I told you it was complicated, and we all know how complex the study of economics can be with its screwy equations, so you have to add this into the audio equations as well, that, and the psychological effects of these various academic pursuits and just how and why they might apply to our everyday lives, if you know what I mean.

This could have been a good place to stop, but I just remembered another important factor, also directly proportional to burn-in time, and that is amortizing the dent in your pocket-book (eg. the price of the cables). Simply put, each day of burn-in is directly proportional to another day later and, no, not deeper in debt as Tennesse Ernie would say, but rather less guilty about having spent your hard-earned cash just because of some hype you were convinced about when you got them, ie. inversely proportional to buyer's remorse. Eventually the most ridiculous expenditure can be forgotten about along with the ex-wife.

In actuality, the time-heals-all-wounded-pocket-book phenomenon is inversely proportional to the square of the burn-in time measured relativistically as a spatial dimension. "That was ages ago (miles down the road)...."I forgot how much I paid"...."I don't think it was very much", "they were much less than the retail price, it was a deal I couldn't pass up" "they don't even make them like this anymore, the ones they make now are crap by comparison" "I was lucky to buy several of them then before they went up in price" "glad I don't have to buy them today" and "mine are finally really really really burned-in and real nice!" is the script you need to memorize for that situation. Let your friends drool and resort to buying NOS on eBay to even get close, and theirs will not have all that burn-in time, it will take them years, and by then yours will be even more burned-in, they will never catch up, and certainly not be able to get them for the price you got.

Remember, there are vacuum tube collectors who will pay for cool looking old tubes that are burned out, so go ahead, buy those really high priced cables because after they are burned-in and you have enjoyed the experience of burn-in (eg. forgetting when you got them and exactly how much you did pay), you can sell the burned-out cables to, by then I suspect, a "cable collector" who might want to have them in a display case: "burned out $10K audiophile cables and the date"..... This could get you way more than the price of the scap metal for sure.

oops --- got to go back to procrastinating.....

-Nodal Drench Pips (yes, rearrange the letters to "get clipped and shorn".....believe it or not...)

PS. I do agree with a previous poster that you should play the music you have and like through the cables when burning in the cables.This can get advanced, say, if you want your classical to sound funky or your country to be jazzy etc. Knowing what to play and when while burning-in is a delicate art. Many have ruined cables during burn-in by playing the wrong music at the wrong time. It's hard to explain, but be careful when playing bachelor pad music for questionable reasons. Our own memberfini is an expert at knowing what music to play and at what volumes while burning in cables especiallly when other ears are in the vacinity.

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The way the math equation works here is that the effect of burn-in for new speaker cable is directly (and uniquely) proportional to how long its been since they were new and different than what you had before. At first you know they are new and different because you just bought them and installed them. As time progresses you should notice a difference in their newness and difference from what was there before (including no cables at all if it is the first installation of the system) which will be exactly measured by how long it has been. This is burn-in.

The longer they burn in the more you will perceive that time has elapsed since they were new and different and that, my friend, is the effect of the burn-in in a nuts shell, and it is a comforting feeling, usually, like a pair of old slippers. With enough burn-in you hardly think about when they were new and different than what went before them. Eventually, given enough time, burn-in can become burn-out and at that point you put them in the recycling bin for scrap. Slippers you just throw away.

You could also throw the cables away too or use them to tie up things, kind of like when they used to make baling wire, now they just tie hay bales up with plastic rope, echh!

So, to review, for myself as well, the more the wire burns in, the more you notice they are not new anymore and you can hardly remember what you had before. The way they sound now will always be different than the way they sounded before because that was then and now is now, depending on your mood and general state of mind.

If you are agitated and not at peace with yourself, burn-in can seem to be a downhill slide, and you feel like everything was better before and now everything is f#@ked . Then the next day, if all goes well and your memory is sieve-like, you will swear they are the best cables ever and that burn-in is directly proportional to "better", in which case the math involved is that the elapsed time of the burn-in is directly proportional to how much you are not being able to tell how long it has been, which is a good thing actually.

There is a complex relationship between burn-in and "getting used to it", although not strictly a direct-proportional relationship because of other variables in the equation, not least of which is how much you can get for them at the scrap yard, which means, in other words, related to the price of copper, I told you it was complicated, and we all know how complex the study of economics can be with its screwy equations, so you have to add this into the audio equations as well, that, and the psychological effects of these various academic pursuits and just how and why they might apply to our everyday lives, if you know what I mean.

That could have been a good place to stop, but I just remembered another important factor, also directly proportional to burn-in time, and that is amortizing the dent in your pocket-book (eg. the price of the cables). Simply put, each day of burn-in is directly proportional to another day later and, no, not deeper in debt as Tennesse Ernie would say, but rather less guilty about having spent your hard earned cash just because of some hype you were convinced about when you got them, ie. inversely proportional to buyer's remorse. Eventually the most ridiculous expenditure can be forgotten about along with the ex-wife.

In actuality, the time-heals-all-wounded-pocket-book phenomenon is inversely proportional to the square of the burn-in time measured relativistically as a spatial dimension. "That was ages ago (miles down the road)...."I forgot how much I paid"...."I don't think it was very much", "they were much less than the retail price, it was a deal I couldn't pass up" "they don't even make them like this anymore, the ones they make now are crap by comparison" "I was lucky to buy them then" "glad I don't have to buy them today" and "mine are finally really really really burned-in and real nice!" is the script you need to memorize for that situation. Let your friends drool and resort to buying NOS on eBay to even get close, and theirs will not have all that burn-in time, it will take them years, and by then then yours will be even more burned-in, they will never catch up....heh heh heh.

Remember, there are vacuum tube collectors who will pay for cool looking old tubes that are burned out, so go ahead, buy those really high priced cables because after they are burned-in and you have enjoyed the experience of burn-in (eg. forgetting when you got them and exactly how much you did pay), you can sell the burned-out cables to, by then I suspect, a "cable collector" who might want to have them in a display case: "burned out $10K audiophile cables and the date"..... This could get you way more than the price of the scap metal for sure.

oops --- got to go back to procrastinating.....

-Nodal Drench Pips (yes, rearrange the letters to "get clipped and shorn".....believe it or not...)

PS. I do agree with a previous poster that you should play the music you have and like through the cables when burning in the cables.This can get advanced, say, if you want your classical to sound funky or your country to be jazzy etc. Knowing what to play and when while burning-in is a delicate art. Many have ruined cables during burn-in by playing the wrong music at the wrong time. It's hard to explain, but be careful when playing bachelor pad music for questionable reasons. Our own memberfini is an expert at knowing what music to play and at what volumes while burning in cables especiallly when other ears are in the vacinity.

After reading that novel, I have to ask why, on so many fronts.

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As an aircraft type guy (nothing to do with audio) fresh is better due to lack of corrosion. We use environmental splices, etc. If the contacting conductor corrodes it plays havoc. Just because it ohms out as good doesn't mean it can carry any load. So my non-technical thought is, if it makes good contact then it's good. I have put several high dollar sets of speaker wire on my system (never bought them, just borrowed to hear) and I still use lamp cord from HD.

I am starting a recycling center for stale cables. All you guys that have old stale, mouldie, corroded cables, please send them to me and I will find a good home for them after I get them fixed (spayed or neutered). A high end cable is a terrible thing to waste. Some cables have not been played with for years and are stuck in some dark box in the closet. It that any way to treat a cable? Why no! They need to have a hook up every now and then just like anyone else.

We are a green company at Klipsch so we are trying do our part to save the world one speaker cable at a time.

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