Cable "burning": Real or VooDoo ???

702, granted and I also agree with Garfish, that we are often closer than it may seem, but I often sense absolutism on both sides, which is detrimental to progress of knowledge for both sides.

702, thanks for the reply, maybe we are all progressing in the right direction of meaningful discussions and who knows, ultimately we may stumble across an explanation that will transpose into a forumla that we can all understand and use to explain some of these effects we perceive? Regarding wave properties, I would have thought we need to look along these lines as any effects that may (or not depending upon your viewpoint) well be caused by the transfer of wave charge along, say, a conductor. The sources quoted are only a small part of the many complex contributions on the subject of particle matter. Speaking of altering structure, is it not possible that somewhere along the line sub-atomic particles are indeed being re-aligned (I'm not saying or suggesting they are "altered")into a more ordered and natural structure after being disturbed during the manufacturing process? Could there be anything here that we should look at to help understand these "changes"? Regards, Richard.

Excuse my typo "...forumla..." should read "...formula..."

Why would cable companies insist that their cable needs to be burned in if it doesn't change the sound? They aren't making money by the # of hours you play the cable. Seems like it would be easy enough for a company to say "our cable is good from the start" all others are inferior and have to be burned in. But that isn't the case, at least as far as I tell.

No money, basically you make a good point here, but don't many audiophiles react in the sense of : Since all "good", meaning very expensive, cables neeed to be burnt in and this is always expressively mentioned in the glossy literature, then something must be "wrong" with a cable, which is said to work right out of the box. So if you like, but I am not implying that this is so in most cases, you could just as well infer, that all that burning in stuff is merely a necessary marketing hype (next to clever pricing)for the manufacturer to sell his wire as something special and top notch.