They all require long burn in times. So what’s the difference? Hel-loo! Beware the guy who tells you it sounds good right out of the box.
Beware of the cable claiming long burn in period.
Almost all the audio equipment including speaker need burn in time.
But I had bad experience with one digital cable recently.
Some people blew the horn on it and claimed burn in time more than 100 hours.
Out of box it had lot of details but etched.
After 8 weeks (around 200 hours) it got little bit better but its overall performance is not better than other digital cable that I have had.
Now it is too late to return it.
Beware of any cable claiming more than 50 hours of burn in time.
The chance is high that you will waste your time and money.
But I had bad experience with one digital cable recently.
Some people blew the horn on it and claimed burn in time more than 100 hours.
Out of box it had lot of details but etched.
After 8 weeks (around 200 hours) it got little bit better but its overall performance is not better than other digital cable that I have had.
Now it is too late to return it.
Beware of any cable claiming more than 50 hours of burn in time.
The chance is high that you will waste your time and money.
- ...
- 150 posts total
I disagree with Geoff on ’all require long burn in time’ Some cables do sound decent or OK right out of the box, and some sound OK withing a few hours of play. However I do agree even those may/do get better after a long period of use. So for cables which just sound terrible right off. I would say give them at least 24 hours and a good percentage of initially bad sounding cables will get a lot better after 24 hours of use. Sadly some do not. For myself I would NOT keep a cable that take weeks to sound any good. First off if it is not used a lot, (later on) it will revert back to sucking. So IMO why bother to keep it around?? One cable in particular that sucks out of the box is Kimber Hero. When I bought a 7 meter XLR and plugged it in, it was terrible .etched and grainy and shrill. My immediate feeling as to take it out and return it. However I gave it a day.. and by day two (left on 24/7 but not playing music) it was much better. and was good enough to not return. That cable over the years I used it just was better and better (though when I replaced it with a Kimber KS1116 which cost 4 times the price of the Hero, it was immediately obvious the Hero have been a lot more veiled ..Plus the KS1116 was great from the moment it was plugged in. ((The seven meter KS1116 was drop shipped from Kimber, directly and may have been broken in by them prior to sending it? I have no idea yes or no)) (also prior to the Hero, I had used Kimber PBJ for the 7 meter run, and back then, I never noticed any change but I was not looking for any, also it eas the fist time I arranged the large gap from preamp to amp... so no basis to compare the sound.) |
I once owned a California Audio Labs Delta CD transport, with both their Sigma and Alpha DACs. Given they were to sit side by side(Delta/DAC) I thought a .5M Kimber Orchid would be a good AES/EBU to try. Couldn’t listen to it, regardless of time in service, or which DAC I tried. Then I remembered something about, "reflections" and, ’jitter", resulting from too short a digital cable length. Purchased a 1.5M Orchid and everything was wonderful(but- still got better, with time). Regarding burn-in time for cables: I’ve always held(yeah: my opinion) that part of it was attributable to the fact that cables are capacitors(actually, an LC circuit, to a degree) and their dielectric’s dipoles need time to align themselves, with relation to whatever voltages/signals they’re going to be dealing, before they sound their best. The better the dielectric(ie: Teflon, Polypropylene, etc) the lower the dielectric absorption, but- the longer the process takes. I suppose, moving cables around, might scramble one’s dipoles, as well. Perhaps that’s why some mention having to re-burn-in their cables, after handling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_absorption |
- 150 posts total