Interconnects and non-believers

The need to have ego reflected?
We all live in that moment.

unreceivedogma

Ok, accepting for the moment that the cable cultists are correct ...

Correct in what? You’ve already stated that the question isn’t whether there’s a difference in cables. So what exactly is the argument you’re trying to make - other than to just further an argument?

... then they rightly should pursue the logic of their argument to its penultimate end: https://youtu.be/XJJy6VJvSCk

I’m not sure what the link provided has to do with premium cables at all. And please explain what you mean by the "penultimate end." If you truly believe your statement, what would be the "ultimate end?" I suspect that you really don’t know what the word "penultimate" even means. But then you seem rather confused, generally.

Speakers need breaking in, capacitors need breaking-in, cartridges need breaking-in, who doesn’t believe that?

Who doesn’t believe those things? Generally speaking, from what I’ve seen: You’ll find skeptics among those have relevant knowledge of electronics, engineering and physics.

Who aren’t themselves trying to sell you the products in question.

Or who cater to professional industries where woo-woo claims tend not to pass the muster, vs those manufacturers that advertise to audiophiles. Or who come from a rigorous scientific background who maintain those as standards for evaluating technical claims. (I’d put, for instance, someone like Dr. Sean Olive in that last category).

Most audiophiles are not very technically literate (I include myself as well - I don’t have the technical chops to evaluate many of the technical claims).

So high end manufacturers can market with all sorts of technical sounding gibberish. As long as it tickles the audiophile’s "so this means it will sound better" module, it will sell to audiophiles. And since we audiophiles tend to have quite lax methods of testing such claims - if we put it in our systems and think we hear a difference, then the claim was true! - almost any claim can seem to be justified in the audiophile world.

This is why I tend to look for opinions from people who have relevant experience and expertise. who don’t have an interest in trying to sell me the product in question. to help vet such claims, Or, who at the very least, display an adherence to empirical rigour, and who don’t ignore relevant variables (e.g. bias etc).

So take for instance speaker burn in. Are there relevant experts who critique the idea? Sure. For instance Dr. Sean Olive, an award winning AES member who was a research scientist at the NRC studying "the perception and measurement of loudspeakers, listening rooms," has written to someone asking about speaker break in:

“As far as "breaking in" the loudspeakers, this should have no effect on the performance or sound quality of the speaker; unfortunately this one of the many audiophile myths that, in most cases, has little scientific merit. Of course, over time, you may perceive the speakers have changed or improved because you may have adapted to their sound. That is a psychological effect that is not related to any physical change to the loudspeaker itself.”

Of course you’ll see some high end speaker manufacturers claiming break in. But for one thing, we have to remember that this can be seen as rather convenient - because there is the well known adaptation effect that occurs in our perception, where we adapt to something, including sounds, over time. So if we find something "wrong" with the sound of a speaker at first, given time we can often adapt to those colorations. A high end dealer or manufacturer claiming "break in" allows for the possibility of this adaptation effect. "You love the sound of our speaker when you first set it up? Great. Told you it was wonderful. Oh, it sounds off to you? Well, don’t send them back, hang on to them and keep listening. They need to break in. Oh...and it can take hundreds and hundreds of hours!"

That’s a win-win situation for increasing the likelihood of keeping a sale, so it would be the path of least resistance to any manufacturer to support this idea, no matter what scale of personal confidence they may have in it. And btw, it doesn’t even have to be cynical or deliberate: people selling high end speakers certainly can and do believe in break in. But the fact that break in has this strong added appeal to sales can’t be just ignored.

So even for those manufacturers who claim their speakers need a great many hours of break in, I would ask "what data can you show for this claim?"

Paul Barton of PSB, for instance, ran tests on speakers/drivers for break in and determined that, while some differences were measurable, they were incredibly minute and barely or not audible.

As for Cables, I don’t see large companies with huge amounts of experience in constructing cables for demanding professional environments telling anyone they have to "burn in" their cables - e.g. Belden, Canare. Or take companies like Prysmian Group, the largest manufacturer of cables in the world, who build cables for all manner of the most sensitive requirements. If you download sales/spec sheets on their cables you will see incredibly detailed specifications and values.

But nothing suggesting anyone has to "break in" their cables in order to realize their very precise performance values. And if the performances of their cables actually did change that much over some "break in" time that could be a heck of a problem, so that is something they would be very incentivized to mention or deal with.

Or take resistors/capacitor "break in." Look at for instance Vishay. First of all, I’ve read reports from people who actually work with Vishay and who have broached the whole "break in" idea with Vishay engineers, concluding the break-in claims aren’t "real."

And this makes sense if you look at Vishay’s products and information.

They do resistors and capacitors not only for audio, but for a wide range of industries: "industrial, computing, automotive, consumer, telecommunications, military, aerospace, power supplies, and medical markets. ".

So their business includes many VERY SENSITIVE USE environments, where precision is everything, and B.S. won’t fly in those environments nearly so much as in the high end audio community.

Then look at their product information for any of their passive resistors/capacitors, and you’ll see very detailed technical specifications.

Given the sensitivity and seriousness of the use to which many of those will be put, if resistor/capacitor "burn in" were a significant issue, if the values would actually change to some significant degree, that would be a Big Problem. Industries NEED the product to hit those advertised values, right off the bat, not wait around for "burn in" hoping for the best.

What I have yet to see in favor of these "burning in of cables/capacitors" claims is what any demanding professional customer for one of these products would want to see: measured differences in "new" vs "broken in" components, with those differences carefully correlated to their level of audibility using controlled listening tests.

The effects of bias on perception is very well known and documented.

I have a bit of personal acquaintance with this as well, having conducted some blind listening tests of some items (e.g. some cables, CD players/DACs, digital servers). I know what it’s like to "absolutely hear" an "obvious" difference with a new piece of cable etc, but then find this "obvious difference" suddenly disappears when I don’t actually know which cable I’m listening to. It’s very instructive to go through this process, to understand just how vividly our perception can be fooled.

It seems that a great many audiophiles think their perception can’t be fooled. "Nobody can tell me I didn’t hear what I know I heard!"

All I can say to this is to simply point out it is in contradiction to well established scientific facts about human bias and perception. Which is why I will continue to take such reports, especially on the more controversial subjects, with a grain of salt.

And...as it seems required that I point this out in NEON LETTERS every time: None of the above establishes "there are no differences between cables etc" or that "burn in never happens." Rather, they are simply some of the reasons on which I place some of my skepticism and caution about some of the claims in high end audio. I haven’t decided "these things are not true" so much as "If the evidence isn’t of great quality...I’ll hold out for better evidence."

The Cable Cooker has been around like forever and is a great iconic product. The dude that makes them even did some headphone cables gratis as a special favor. I also used to have a M.O.B.I.E. (Maximum Overdrive Burn In Electronics or whatever) burn-in device I got from the dude that used to show with John Curl and Bob Crump at CES waaay back when. The weird thing, as I understand it, cables need to be re-broken in every so often. Can you believe it?

prof,

While I acknowledge many of your assertions are plausible, I believe you regard science as a kind of religion in itself.  Unquestioning faith in current science leaves no room for discovery.  You ignore the possibility that the tools of measument may not yet be sensitive enough to assess  what a large community of audiophiles recognize.  You believe they are all gullible addicts that fall for the insatiable advertising of greedy charlatans;  that a kind of mass delusion is at work.  I think you protest too much.  You have a contempt for the sellers of audiophile equipment that almost borders on paranoia. 
I do agree there is a degree of self-delusion and hype in the hobby.
But you carry that to an unreasonable extreme.  There is just too much agreement among a great number of listeners that a lot of the phenomena you disdain is real.
Your disclaimer at the end does not really counteract  the main thrust of your argument.