Cable burn in Fact or Fiction ?

[Oldpinkman]

Measurement
Accepting that it can't be measured with a meter because its not a single parameter which affects the sound like capacitance, but other unmeasurables by a conventional unit, if it can be heard, then it is having a real effect. Why wouldn't this test work?

Connect two phono leads to pins 3 and 5 of an OPA2134. Send a mono audio signal down both leads (one inverted). As long as both leads have the same characteristic, amplitude, bandwidth etc then 0V should be detected at pins 1 and 7 bridged. If one of the cables is different then that difference will show up at pins 1 and 7. Basically, if you take a waveform and split it into to paths, invert one so that it is a mirror image of the other and recombine them one will cancel out the other. Even the slightest difference in either waveform will result in a +V. It’s quite simple and is how balanced leads work. (-8)+ (+8) =0

[SteveTheShadow]

As soon as you use a valve you fail CE.

How's that work then?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

As soon as you use a valve you fail CE.

How's that work then?

Go order a copy of the regs online and see for yourself. It basically fails for two reasons high voltage and high heat. But the regs are not being policed so people largely do what they want.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Measurement
Accepting that it can't be measured with a meter because its not a single parameter which affects the sound like capacitance, but other unmeasurables by a conventional unit, if it can be heard, then it is having a real effect. Why wouldn't this test work?

Connect two phono leads to pins 3 and 5 of an OPA2134. Send a mono audio signal down both leads (one inverted). As long as both leads have the same characteristic, amplitude, bandwidth etc then 0V should be detected at pins 1 and 7 bridged. If one of the cables is different then that difference will show up at pins 1 and 7. Basically, if you take a waveform and split it into to paths, invert one so that it is a mirror image of the other and recombine them one will cancel out the other. Even the slightest difference in either waveform will result in a +V. It’s quite simple and is how balanced leads work. (-8)+ (+8) =0

Because music is different, some parameter of music are so gross then measurement can be done, but some are so subtle there is no way of measuring them, so we have to hypothesise. And anyway the challenge was to explain the process not measure it, why do you want to measure it, it is akin to wanking when in a room of available ladies - a complete waste of time.

It happens, I have exlpained why it happens - take it or leave it.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Here's your link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq98XIyy9U4 Apologies for the ad, but you can skip after a few seconds)

A waste of time that has no bearing on this discussion.

I disagree. This discussion includes relying on hearing, including yours, to prove its point. It helps to understand how it works. Take another example - take HFS69 and play the phase check track. Do you get a sharply defined central image?
Nope - you are hearing not seeing
You do not have a cyclops ear on the front of your forehead
The sound is NOT coming from between the speakers

Stereo we enjoy is an illusion which relies on fooling the brain. What our fabulously sensitive highly calibrated ears hear is one sound coming from a point (area) on the right, and another identical one coming from the left, and the brain gets confused and thinks it is hearing one sound coming from somewhere in the middle. I say identical - but actually "fairly similar" will do to fool the brain.

And yet we are to rely on hearing done casually, to hear something so small it can't be measured, which can be confused with plugging and unplugging cables, or folding cables on the floor differently - I think how we hear is very relevant to a discussion where "proof" relies on hearing it. And if we are to use hearing as proof - it needs properly controlled test procedures outlined elsewhere. Otherwise it's hearsay, and as valid as Marco adamantly stating what he has heard. I'm not calling either of you liars, just reminding you of a few realities about human hearing as a measurement instrument.

Your post about the technical explanation was interesting, but too difficult for me to respond to immediately because I count beans for a living. If you stray off into hearing, that post was relevant. I am not interested in being browbeaten or intimidated by anyone, here on AOS, or at the far end of Synsei's galaxy

You are clutching at straws and wasting all our times with these silly games, music is not perception games, music is emotional experience. So stop wasting our time.

Musical appreciation is individual, it is not based on a group consensus, any more than peoples taste in food is. All we can discuss is flavours (perception) there is no point in trying to prove them, which is why blind testing is such a waste of time. A chef can give you the recipe, but each of you will come up with a different end product to *your* taste. This is the same, I am giving you some parameters of the recipe and explaining why they change the taste, nothing more. But that stupidity has been causing so many arguments it needed doing.

Most of these arguments have occurred on PFM, where (for example) Steve Toy says such and such thing makes his music better, to choruses of prove it, explain it, show us the science, show us the maths - that is what I am doing, showing the science. Your test may show something and may not because as I say you are measuring something gross, not the subtlety of some small phase change in a small percentage of the electrons that make up the music, but if shown it the human ear picks it up because it is capable of recognising that level of subtlety.

[Doggo]

...., music is not perception games, music is emotional experience. ....

When I used to listen to my tiny SW receiver on my sailing trips, the music that came out of that little box got me as emotional as would have music coming out of the best stereo equipment in a Chateau or from of the best concert hall.

I think the perception is relative to the context you are in at the moment of audition.

[SteveTheShadow]

I'm afraid I have to agree with the Doc here chaps.
I have heard the new set of speaker cables, I put in my system last Friday, change, but i have stayed out of this
argument as personally, I have no time for the view that everything has to be proven with maths.
We are all unique individuals, therefore sensory inputs are interpreted differently by each person's brain/sense interface.
Science has no place in any of this and it is complete fallacy to suggest anything otherwise.

Engineering is needed to design and build equipment for reproducing music; that cannot be denied. You can't just throw any old combination of components together and hope. You need to know what you are doing and why.
My particular field of amateurism is designing and making my own valve amps, which I enjoy doing.
I've lost count of the number of designs I have done, built and rejected because they failed to fulfil my expectations of what reproduced music ought to sound like. But my road to Damascus moment came when a couple of amps ago, I stopped following the stuff on forums such as DIYAudio and started thinking for myself.

The long and the short of it was that I read up on and substantially beefed up my power supply design skills, using lots of reservoir capacitance, separate supplies for drivers and power stages, ditched valve rectification (well I had to if I was going to use multi thousand microfarad supplies) and wouldn't you know it, ended up with great sounding amps that finally played music like I heard it live. Nowhere near the scale of live music you understand, that is not possible, but so far ahead of all else I had built, it wasn't even funny.

So what's the point I'm making?
The point is that you need sound engineering principles to build your amp, your speaker, your cable, after that it is up to you to fine tune componentry until you get the sound you want. A scope/spectrum analyser will tell you that you have a sound basic design that works, what it will singularly fail to tell you, is whether the sound produced will make your particular earth move. It is how the signal travelling from your speakers to your ears reacts with your own ear/brain interface/perception that determines how the end result works for you.

If you are lucky, what works for you, will work for others too, for example my latest push-pull KT120 design provoked a positive reaction from my wife and daughter. They love to listen to it and will sit for hours with no telly and the music on.
There has previously been nothing but stolid indifference from them, to anything hi-fi for as long as I can remember. Something has changed that.

I'm not interested in proving why this amp has produced this reaction, I don't care about ABX blind testing it against anything else. As a family we can listen to music as a joint social thing, something we never have done in the past. I'm no longer alone in this pursuit of fine sound.
That for me is worth a thousand bloody scope traces.

Reproducing music in the home is an emotional, human interaction/group pastime. Conventional white coat science has its place, but has NO business telling me, that what, I can hear/interpret is wrong. Who the f**k do they think they are?
The prove it brigade can shove their objectivism where the sun don't shine.

Embarrassing rant over

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Very good rant

[Daniel Quinn]

Yep agree , but Steve there's no need to be "afraid" of agreeing with the doc , its when you disagree you need to be afraid

[jammy395]

Its not slow, most simple cable is up in a few hours. It is not a linear process, it is logarithmic. (Doc)

Tiz true - I find that the most pronounced change comes within a few hours of warming cables up from Brand new / Cold.
Shure they may continue improving over longer periods, but far less perceptible IMO.

Obviously this must differ from cable to cable...Probably the more complex the construction the longer the run in ...I think.