Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

flashlier: "What cables, stevecharm, have you tested before and after use, to make the profound claim that cable burn-in does not exist?"

Audioquest, Synergistic, van den Hul, Anticables, Mapleshade, Harmonic Technologies, Tara Labs and most recently Blue Jeans (which are Belden).

No such thing as speaker cable burn in. I’ve been listening to, buying, selling and researching this for about 30 years now. I wanted to believe it, I tried to believe it, but it’s simply a matter of neuroscience, and the power and process of belief. There is no quantitative, measurable physics associated with this. Dielectric formation over time, in a speaker cable?, bah, humbug! It’s the "dielectrics" in your brain!

djones51,

I guess my system is junk. Oh well life goes on.

I feel your pain.

Drat, someone on an audio forum has declared that if I don’t perceive obvious differences between cables, my system isn’t good enough. What will I do????

I’ve been stuck with junk from Thiel - like Thiel’s last flagship 3.7 speaker that review after review mistakenly took to be world-class in resolution - as well as MBL radialstrahler speakers ( How do they get away with those prices for such a low resolution speaker, let alone fool people like the Absolute Sound who rated the tweeter among the world’s best for many years!), various Audio Physic speakers (if only those speakers could render "detail," they could maybe Audio Physic make a slogan out of it!), Quads, Conrad Johnson amps, Benchmark DACs, Transrotor turntable, Benz Micro ebony cartridge....

And still my system isn’t "good enough." 

I’ll just have to suffer along with this crap.

(It’s ok everyone, no need to raise a finger to your keyboard, I’ll do it for you: "then your ears aren’t good enough." Damn, time to give up my job in sound post production I guess...)

My brain isn't good enough.

I’ve been stuck with junk from Thiel - like Thiel’s last flagship 3.7 speaker that review after review mistakenly took to be world-class in resolution - as well as MBL radialstrahler speakers ( How do they get away with those prices for such a low resolution speaker, let alone fool people like the Absolute Sound who rated the tweeter among the world’s best for many years!), various Audio Physic speakers (if only those speakers could render "detail," they could maybe Audio Physic make a slogan out of it!), Quads, Conrad Johnson amps, Benchmark DACs, Transrotor turntable, Benz Micro ebony cartridge....

I just got a pair of Acoustic Zen Hologram II speaker cables and the difference is night and day. Yes, and I am using Thiel CS2.4.

Andy,

If your system is so unstable that it alters sound when you change cables, maybe it's not good enough.

;-)