Do cables really need "breaking in"?

Matt, cables do need to break in, for about 10 seconds. Consider, if cables need to burn in, what changes? And if you say they sound fine after, say 50 hours, do they stop changing by some miracle or do they keep burning out?

For those who believe in DBX tests, there have been none, zero, to prove that wires benefit from any sort of burn in. For those who prefer anecdotes, many of us have never noticed a change in a cable from brand new to broken in. Many say they have. This is one cable dispute to which I think there is an answer. You simply have to decide which group is delusional, the group that thinks nothing's changed or the group that thinks something happened.

This burn in argument offered by retailers of cables is the best argument I know of for the proposition that cables sound different from one another. If they all sounded alike, none of them would have anything objectionable about their sound to get used to during the "break-in" period.

Having an old EE degree, I thought this made no sense. However, I have noticed that cables do sound better after they have sat in one place for many hours. One article suggested that the crystaline structure is under stress when bent and that after playing for many hours, the cables "relax". Try it, you'll like it.

Hi Matt,

I had three sets of Stealth PGS Gold interconnects. Two xlr's and one rca. I lent all my powercords, speaker wires and interconnects to a man I sold an amp to while I was away on vacation. He wrote me a note telling me which was the newest, the next newest and the most broken in interconnects. He was correct. I had a Resolution Audio Cd55 which I installed a xlr and rca pair to the pre-amp. I would switch back and forth and the result of the switch was that the newer interconnect would always sound brighter and more brittle. After a few months they became identical.

My experience.

Bill E.

I agree with paulwp for this reason. After reading hundreds of testimonials in the usual magazines and online for several years now about the benefits of burning in cables, I have never once heard anyone say that a cable sounded worse. They ALWAYS sound better. How can that be? If they do indeed change, how can it always be for the better? If good sound consists of a synergy of all components, at least some of the time the raw sound of the cable would be more synergistic than the broken in cable. But no, they are always described as sounding better. There is no doubt that different cables sound different. But I think the effect of burn in is one of becoming accustomed to the sound of the cable.

Herman brings up a point that I have thought about quite a bit as well, while trying to understand what I was/am hearing. Herman says "I have never once heard anyone say that a cable sounded worse. They ALWAYS sound better." After playing with quite a few cables, I have answered this question to myself in this manner:

A good high end audio designer should use the END product throughout testing and voicing of a model, and I think a lot of them do just that. A simple example would be speakers. If I were building a pair of speakers, and wanted to see what 10 different midranges sounded like, here's what I would do: buy a couple of each of the midranges, and cook them on some signal/amp combination for say 200 hours. THEN, and only then, would I put each midrange into the cabinet, and see how it sings with the woofer/tweeter/crossover. Bear in mind, I would have cooked the woofer and tweeter for sure, and heck, maybe even the crossover parts (including some extra capacitors/coils to try). After this process, the combination of parts and some tweaking would produce the prototype. Now, to actually build to sell them, I would be ordering the parts in quantity, and assembling the speakers. Maybe I have time/space/money to give them 10 hours of burn in, or maybe more, and expect the owner to do the rest.

The end result is a product that out of the box does NOT sound the way I (the designer) heard it. But, since I accounted for this breakin, the speakers will sound BETTER with break in - every pair of every model that is designed as above.

Now, I have no idea how much of this is feasible for cables (that's why I used speakers for my example), but I know some cable makers do go through this process.

All in all, I agree that some of it is the listener breaking-in to the new sound, but I am very sure that cables do change their sound not only with burn in, but also from being moved. Some of the more noticeable examples I have run across include Purist Audio, Cardas, and some Straightwire models. Take a pair of these interconnects off, put them back in their box for a couple of days, put them back into the system, and there is a readily identifiable and PREDICTABLE course that the sound will take while the cables settle back in.