Do cables really need "breaking in"?

I meant to say "saying 'put up or shut' to someone" or "telling someone to 'put up or shut up'" was rude. Still is, even after the apology.

I was just thinking how nice it was to have two recent threads, do cables sound different and how do you a/b cables, wherein some people could say "DBX" and other people could say "Cable X floats my boat and Cable Y sounds like mud,' and nobody called anyone else an idiot or a fraud. At AA, you cant say "DBX." And at Audioreview or rao, you can't say you like one cable better than another without being subjected to ridicule.

For a trained ee to say "wire is wire and I'm going to use 12 gauge stranded or Romex, and you are all wasting your time" is a perfectly valid point of view. He isnt trying to sell you anything. He's trying to save you some money and maybe debunk what he considers to be a fraud on the consuming public. You don't have to take his word for it. Go play with cables. And he doesnt need to waste his time playing with cables to test his learning. If you want to do that, as I have, that's fine too.

Now, if that ee says you're an idiot or a fraud, that's different. That's not nice either.

The other issue is the words people use around here to describe what they hear from their components and cables, and from "burning-in" cables, are marketing words learned from the trade (and yes, I include the "reviewers" for the buff mags as part of the trade). The more I hear, the more I want to go down to the hardware store and buy some zipcord.

My wife and I are both EE degreed engineers, myself at baseband, she at RF. I am open minded to many audio concepts, but not when the proponents use only their own stories of "how they heard it themselves" rather than a logical/technical explanation, perhaps backed up by repeatable measurement data.
Those who think that hearing trumps all are overlooking the fallibility of the brain and subjective measurements, couple with power of suggestion and "wishing it to be true".
I'm not saying you don't hear a difference, just that the difference may be in your own head or may be attributable to other sources (e.g. disconnecting and reconnecting oxidized connections).

But the bottom line is that we should not attack others ... if you believe something makes a difference go with it and be happy. If not then save your time and money and be happy. Remember guys it's all just opinions.

I too am an engineer who likes to "see the data" but in audio, there is more than one way to take data. I get real tired of people who scoff at the idea that the ear can be a meaningful measurement tool and insist that it be backed up with electrical data before pronouncing the effect real.

The ear/brain combination is a GREAT measuring tool for judging relative differences. For example, if I were to play a sinewave below 100HZ to somebody and then a 1KHZ signal, and while no audiophile may tell me exactly what frequencies I played, I'll bet every audiophile on this planet could hear a DIFFERENCE between the two signals.

What we were talking about here were the DIFFERENCES that burning in makes in the SOUND, not the measured electrical differences.

You don't need electrical measurements to hear an effect.

By the way, when I typed Sean in my previous post, I meant to respond to Seandtaylor.

Every time that one of these threads go up there's always a big controversy. If you don't want to believe it then don't, it's your loss. I used to be with the objective crowd too, being an EE with audiophile inclinations, but I ignorantly refused to believe anything about cabling, tweaks, etc. All I had to do was quit arguing & try listening; *wham* I'm now a subjectivist to the n'th degree. Don't worry about the spec's, the measurements, the proofs of performance. Just listen; that's what this is all about anyway - remember?

I've only been through this topic about 300 times-- guess it's always popular or new to some.

A bit off subject, but relavent I think: In Oct. 2001, we bought a new, large, wide screen TV-- near $3K and from a major manufacturer. Right out of the box the picture was fine, but the sound was terrible. It sounded like a $19.95 transistor radio-- bright, edgy, an annoying echo, and fatiguing. News announcers sounded like they were talking from a culvert. This TV allows adjustment of bass and treble, and I did my best to correct the terrible sound quality. This helped a bit.

After the TV had been on for 6-8 hours, my wife came home and said "what's that smell?". Well of course it was the smell of the electronics of the TV "burning in", and then I realized that the TV speakers also needed to break in. The "burn in" smell lasted 2-3 days for me and 4-5 for my wife. I'd say it easily took nearly two months for the sound quality to smooth out and become non-fatiguing.

And now 3 months later, the TV sound quality is just fine-- well, for a TV, and I've been able to return the bass and treble settings to more normal positions. Am I supposed to believe that this improvement in sound quality/character is all in my mind? That no actual break-in/burn-in occurred except in my mind?

BTW, new and near new TVs of the same brand sound just as bad at the dealers, but when I auditioned it I thought it was just room acoustics. Cheers. Craig