Some Expensive items...

[OwenM]

Originally posted by protodoc
I have a no-nonsense Marantz CD player and a Fisher tuner that was built when JFK was still alive. Try getting that kind of life cycle out of electronics these days.

I love some of the older stuff for home and car. harmon/kardon particularly. Still have a HK TL8500 carousel disc changer (you know, the ones that open from the top, and went for $800 12 years ago?), and a HK 3500 receiver that works as good as the day it was purchased--same day as the changer. Still have it in my bedroom with bookshelf speakers, and a powered sub. Typical of their car audio stuff, the power on their old home receivers is way underrated, and has some impressive heatsinking. Wonder if that is still true(?). I don't keep up with audio gear like I used to.
My Panasonic 5 disc DVD/CD managed to last a little over a year. A few weeks longer than the warranty did.
Advanced technology

 

[J. MacDonald]

Chuck, that all looks good on paper. I do find it interesting that you do believe in bi-wiring (I do as well), while many do not. Ask the folks at Theil or Wilson Audio and they will argue ad naseum as to why it makes no difference, or in fact is worse. But once one admits that EMF (Electro Motive Feedback) does exist, as a coil of wire (voice coil) moved in a magnetic field will produce measureable voltage, even if it's happening while that coil is acting as part of a linear motor being driven by an AC sinewave (signal from amplifier). From there it becomes bi-wiring becomes a no brainer to me and far from voodoo.

Certainly you will admit that it's well documented in RF work that there are issues with signal reflection within co-axial cables like RG6 or RG59. Bounce within cables is well documented in the RF industry. These types of distortions certainly alter the signal passing through the wire, sometimes in subtle ways. Why would you believe that the phenomena completely dissapears when you drop below a certain magic frequency and into the audio band? The same can be said for skin effect and group delay. There are all kinds of variables that can be introduced such as changing the shielding, the dielectric, the raw materials themselves.

I'm not maintaining that more expensive wire is always going to get you better sound, nor that all wires marketed as high performance really are. All wires have some loss and degraged the signal to a greater or lesser degree. It's a fact of life. But wire is necessary to make a multi component system work. Now lets take into account that there is no standard input impedance or output impedance on audio components, and the fact that a loudspeaker is, in almost all cases, a pretty reactive load. The speaker is driven by an amplifier of variable capacity that could be a push pull design, have a single ended output stage, useg either tube or solid state devices in circuit, (sometimes both). Do you mean to tell me that considering all these variables, no variation in a wire design, providing it measures the same by ohm's law, could possibly change the way the audio signal in an audible way? If you hold to that belief, is it because you've actually tried to do compare several different cables under controlled conditions with a system that you were familiar with and source material that you were also familiar with, or we just going by the engineering textbook here?

John


in a circuit path that is carrying a signal that will be capable of conveying all the subtlties of a solo on a Stradivarious or a well played Stratocaster, could not

 

[Gollnick]

Why would you believe that the phenomena completely dissapears when you drop below a certain magic frequency

They don't. But, these phenomena are frequency-dependant. The lower in frequency you go, the less accute they are. There comes a certain point where they become vanishingly small.

I recently helped a friend who wanted to install a computer network in his house. Half of his house was built in the early 70s. The other half was built just a couple of years ago. When he built the addition, I persuaded him to use CAT5 wire for the telephones. As a result, we were able to do 100MBit/sec Ethernet in the new part of the house with no problem. The old parts of the house have CAT3 telephone wire. Fortunately, it does go mostly in a star topology. As a result, we were able to run Ethernet into the old part of the house. But we had to use a managed hub that can have some ports allowed to automatically determine bit rate for the new part of the house and that can have other ports fixed at 10MBits/second for the old parts.

What this shows us is that there are frequency-dependent characteristics of cables that can limit their usable bandwidth. This is real. It's science.

But there is no difference between a telephone call made on CAT3 and on CAT5. The superior characteristics of CAT5 cable do nothing for voice-frequency signals.

The last I heard, the record for human high-frequency hearing was about 22KHz. There have been some studies that show that humans can have non-audible responses to frequencies as high as 100KHz.

The formula for skin effect is:

s = 503.3sqrt(rho/(urf)) millimeters

rho = resistivity in ohm-meters
= 1.72x10e-8 for copper
ur = mu r = relative magnetic permeability
= 1 for copper
f = frequency in megahertz

The depth of penetration (s=sigma) is the depth at which the current intensity has fallen to 1/e of its value at the surface, where e equals 2.718, about 46% of its intensity at the surface, roughly half. At three- and four-times the depth of penetration, the current intensity is about 5 percent and 2 percent of that at the surface respectively.

Let's make it practical for copper. For copper the depth of penetration is as follows:

MHz Depth of Penetration sigma (mm)
.1 .209
1. .066
10. .021
100. .0066
1000. .0021

At 1000MHz, which is 1GHz, skin effect is very signigicant. Remember, the depths given above are in milimeters. At 1GHz, sigma is 2.1micrometers, 82 millionths of an inch.

In fact, if you go to UHF TV Station, (or other sites where high-power GHz-type signals are in use), you'll see that they have a problem. The transmitter is physically quite large and heavy, so it needs to be on the ground. But the antenna needs to be up in the air, often a thousand or more feet. If you paid a lot of money for this transmitter, you don't want to waste its power in the cable. So, getting the signal from the transmitter to the antenna with minimal loss becomes imparative. Well, that's easy. To reduce loss in the cable, just throw more copper at it. But at 1GHz, only the first 100 millionths of an inch of copper count. What's more important to add is surface area. So, the coaxial cables are typically quite thick, eight or ten inches. But if they made that cable out of solid copper, it would be very heavy and very expensive. So, the center conductor is typically hollow. The signals only use the first 100 millionths of an inch of the conductor, so hollowing it out makes absolutely no electrical difference. The hollowed out center conductor is usually pressurized with dry nitrogen. So, the cable not only carries the signal to the antenna, but also carries up dry nitrogen to pressurize the antenna to keep water out of it. If the radio signals aren't going to use that space, we might as well use it for something else.

But look at sigma for 100KHz. It's 0.209mm. That's 8/1000ths of an inch. A typical AWG #16 stranded "zip cord" or "lamp cord" wire (UL Type SPT) is actually 65 strands of AWG #34 wire. AWG #34 wire is 0.160mm in diameter, a radius of just 0.080mm. Since .209 is about two and one-half times bigger than 0.080mm, we conclude that there is no appreciable skin effect at 100KHz in AWG #16 lamp cord.

Is there a certain "magic frequency" below which skin effect stops? No. But is there a certain magic frequency below which skin affect becomes irrelevant? Yes. And when sigma is over two times the diameter of the cable, we've reached that point.

 

[J. MacDonald]

Chuck,

You have certainly demonstrated that you are a far more learned engineer than this lowly sales slime, but you didn't really answer the question as to whether your position was based on empirical listening tests, or epxperience in other areas and theory?

Comparing a packet based computer network to an analogue signal chain is an apples and oranges comparison. The packet based system (ethernet) has built in compensation for time based errors, while an analogue signal is much less tolerant of timing errors as by nature any timing error in an analogue signal path is distortion.

Your telephone call analogy is interesting because while it doesn't really take into consideration the broad audio band/ open arcitecture of a hifi system (phone systems tend to be limited bandwidth/dynamic range and are built to a standard), it does point out the human ear's acuity. Even over the narrow bandwidth, compressed audio path of the average telephone system, most people will recognize the voice of a spouse or a loved one in the first sylable or two of a spoken conversation. Are we to suppose that these same sensitive ears are incapable of sensing any change in sound as different cables are introduced into a decent hifi system?

John

PS: I love your formulas, but again would ask, have you done the empiricle experiments?

 

[Gabe Newell]

Another part of the equation are your ears.

Age-related hearing loss is called presbycusis. There are two main formulas for calculating presbycusis. One is called Robinson-Sutton's equation, and the other is called the Spoor's equation.

For a 35-year old male, here's what you get:

Hearing Loss From Presbycusis For a 35 Year Old Male

Robinson Sutton's Equations

250  Hz: 0.87 dB Std Dev:   6.35 dB 
500  Hz: 1.01 dB Std Dev:   5.90 dB 
1000 Hz: 1.16 dB Std Dev:   5.96 dB 
2000 Hz: 2.02 dB Std Dev:   7.31 dB 
3000 Hz: 3.32 dB Std Dev:   8.33 dB 
4000 Hz: 4.62 dB Std Dev:   9.35 dB 
6000 Hz: 5.20 dB Std Dev:  10.58 dB 
8000 Hz: 6.36 dB Std Dev:  12.04 dB

Don't these numbers dwarf the supposed advantages of audiophile products? It's not my cables, it's my age?

You can mess around with an on-line calculator of presbycusis at:

Presbycusis Calculator

 

[DEA]

jmxcpter, scientists normally back up their research with data
i would presume the sources gollnick are quoting would have already proven it

 

[Gollnick]

you didn't really answer the question as to whether your position was based on empirical listening tests, or epxperience in other areas and theory?

I don't have the ear to judge these things by listening.

Some years ago, a friend of mine dragged me along to help him buy stereo speakers. I could definitely hear the difference between the $100 speakers and the $1000 speakers. But in repeated trials, I was unable to distinguish between the $1000 speakers and the $10,000 speakers.



There's a myth that there are two kinds of electronics: analog and digital. In reality, the actual electronics is always analog. In bringing up the Ethernet example I was trying to illustrate the fact that there are frequency dependent characteristics of cable that can limit their usefulness. A cable that can carry 10MBit/sec Ethernet can not carry 100MBit/sec Ethernet because the frequencies are much higher. Similarly, it is entirely possible that a cable that can carry 250Hz (roughly middle C on the piano keyboard) can not carry 25,000Hz very well. But, fortunately for the person buying a sound system, the phenomomena that make the cable capable of 10MBit/Sec uncapable of 100MBit/sec are frequency-dependant and become vanishingly-small below about 100KHz.

For example: F=MA. Force = Mass x Acceleration. Your car is designed based on this simple formula. Airplanes fly based on it. We've landed two rovers on Mars using good old F=MA. But Einstein discovered that F=MA is wrong! It's completely invalid. The faster you go, the more invalid it gets. As you approach the speed of light, F=MA is useless. Fortunately, very little of what we do in our practical lives approaches the speed of light. For most of our practical lives, the error introduced into good old F-MA by relativity is vanishingly-small.

There are certainly electrical phenomomena that cause problems for cable designers and manufacturers at higher frequencies. But for shorter cables at audio frequencies, they are vanishingly-small.

During that aforementioned trip to help my friend pick out speaker cable, the salesmen tried to sell a special speaker cable that was physically constructed as a braided flat ribbon rather than the twisted round bundle that most cable is. His explaination: it increases surface area for reduced skin effect. First of all, it doesn't increase surface area. And, second, skin effect is one of these very real electrical phenomonena that, while very real, is frequency-dependant and becomes vanishingly-small at audio frequencies.

 

[SteelDriver]

Gollnick,

I, too have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and understand everything you've said. There is indeed a sea of pure snake oil in the hifi world and even more twisted science in their advertising schemes. Having some background in EE, I am hugely skeptical of most of their claims. That said, I respectfully disagree that, "ordinary copper wire will do just fine." I won't try to debate the merits of RFI/EFI, skin effect, time smearing, etc. But in my lowly JBL & Onkyo bedroom stereo, I replaced my Monster cable with speaker cable I made myself with bulk 16-strand Litz cable and likewise with the interconnect. After break-in, they really do sound better.

I also made my own powerline filters (they're nothing more than various sizes of capacitors wired in parallel). And I really can't hear a difference with or without them. They should work from an EE standpoint, and maybe I need to turn on every appliance and electric motor in the house to tell. I try to invest in components based on my understanding of science; sometimes it sounds better and sometimes it doesn't. We can't even explain everything that our ears+brains easily detect. If it sounds better to you, 'nuff said. But when you can't tell the difference, go with what's cheaper!


Regarding the expense of hifi,

The greatest gains in my sound system came from room treatments and replacing the speaker stuffing. I pulled out the polyester filling inside my JBLs and installed some rubbery, polymer sheets (the name escapes me). Really opened up the speakers in terms of clarity and soundstage. I built four bass traps from 12" fiberglass pipe insulation and they eliminated the boominess from room resonances. Bass is now clean and tight. I added just enough acoustic foam to dampen first-order reflections and reduce the liveliness of the room to a minimum.

For most of us it would be unreasonable to build/modify our own amps, sources, and speakers, but with a given budget you can spend more on those components and save money by making your own cables and room treatments. You can spend your home morgage on speakers but if you neglect proper placement and room treatments, those might as well be money wasted. It doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg for impressive sound if you do your homework and cover all your bases.

 

[J. MacDonald]

Gabe,

Yes it's well documented that as we age, our hearing deteriorates. It get's worse the higher you go in frequency. However, because you have lost some sensitivity based on an amplitude measuring system does not prove that you can no longer discern variances in tone or timing. That's like saying that because your eyesight is not quite a sharp as it once was, that you can also no longer discern between different colors.

Chuck,

I don't have the ear to judge these things by listening

I don't buy that. Basing your inability to hear differences in a single random demonstration of unknown quality in completely unfamiliar circumstances does not even approach any sort of controlled experiment. What you don't have is the desire to invest the time to truly find out if you can hear the difference by setting up a controlled experiment with your own system. Of course from the lab perspective, unless it's a double blind ABX comparison there can be no statistical conclusion drawn because of possible predisposition of the listener. FYI: Your piano might be a little out of tune, middle C has always been 440hz as far as I know..

Thrump! (sound of towel being thrown in) Could anyone really hear that?

John

 

[Gollnick]

After break-in, they really do sound better.

As a fellow engineer and applied scientist, would you care to explain to me how a cable "breaks in?" I guess you've gotta loosen up those electrons, eh?

I also made my own powerline filters (they're nothing more than various sizes of capacitors wired in parallel). And I really can't hear a difference with or without them. They should work from an EE standpoint, and maybe I need to turn on every appliance and electric motor in the house to tell.

Maybe power line noise just isn't a problem with your equipment. Maybe you're chasing a problem that you are fortunate to just not have. If your house is well-wired and you don't have a lot of other equipment that's noisey, maybe you don't have a power line noise problem. Furthermore, most better hi-fi equipment has some power line noise filtering built into it. A lot of hi-fi equipment these days has some digital aspects to it even if it's just a microcontroller that enables the remote control. That means that it has to pass FCC requirements for emissions including noise carried out the power line. The common solution is to include a filter inside the equipment on the AC power line. That same filter also acts to filter out noise coming into the product. Furthermore, well-designed equipment has some immunity to noise on the AC power line. The idea that any noise coming into your power line will instantly and necessarily translate into noise on your output is wrong. If it were, you'd have a constant 60Hz tone coming out your speakers. Maybe the filtering built into your equipment coupled with its designed noise immunity is enough to deal with the minor noise that your AC power has on it. Be thankful and spend the money you save on elaborate AC filters on something that will really help my pocketbook -- er... I mean your sound system... like one of my magnetic residue scrubbing sponges.

 

[bassetized]

i find it ironic that people who would spend hundreds, thousands on "another" knife, gun or whatever toy ridicule others when they buy something they don't understand!

 

[J. MacDonald]

Why am I not smart enough to just walk away.....?

For an interesting read from a slightly more technical viewpoint, look here:

http://www.mitcables.com/technology/power1.asp

If you find that interesting reading, there's other white papers posted on the same site. Mr. Brisson is well known in the audio industry and holds several real patents. He also runs an engineering consulting firm where among other things, he consults on th edesign of hearing aids.

Disclaimer time, yes, I am ascociated with MIT.

John

 

[SteelDriver]

Originally posted by Gollnick
As a fellow engineer and applied scientist, would you care to explain to me how a cable "breaks in?" I guess you've gotta loosen up those electrons, eh?

Perhaps I should have used the more common term, "burn-in." The legitimacy of cable burn-in is an even dicier topic than audio cable design. My point was that I let my system play music through the new cables for a few days before evaluating them. If you believe in burn-in, this allows for a fair comparison with my previously burned-in cables. If you don't believe in burn-in, it makes no difference anyways.

Originally posted by Gollnick
I don't have the ear to judge these things by listening.

Some years ago, a friend of mine dragged me along to help him buy stereo speakers. I could definitely hear the difference between the $100 speakers and the $1000 speakers. But in repeated trials, I was unable to distinguish between the $1000 speakers and the $10,000 speakers.

It takes time to train the ear to listen for some of the nuances that distinguish audiophile components. Aspects such as soundstage, imaging, and warmth can only be discerned by listening, not measuring. Otherwise we'd buy our speakers by playing a mono 20-20kHz sweep and choosing the pair with the smoothest response. I bet I'd have a hard time distinguishing those $1000 and $10,000 speakers, too. I'd have to listen to a wide range of quality recordings and play certain passages side-by-side to really nail down the differences.

If you do that, you will find that with a decent system and holding all else equal, different cables do influence the sound. If you don't trust your ears, bring some friends and have them listen alongside you. For me, that difference is minor enough that I don't go overboard but try to build my own cables from bulk wire (all I have to do is terminate the ends).

 

[scfishr]

I am reminded as a result of reading these threads the first time i walked in to a high end audio shop-i had saved some money(more than enough i thought), so i went in looking for the BEST- i kept asking for watts-- 250 a side or better to drive a pair of Snell Acouctics-"c"`s $2000.00 for the pair, had an NAD power envelope($600.00) 150 watts a side of what was suppose to be clean power(kept blowing it up)--any way back to the salesman at the shop,-after i explained to him what i thought i wanted to hear he kept trying to sell me an amp that had 50 watts of "class A" solid state power($1800.00)- i walked out refusing to be scammed, eventually i went back because he had made me an offer i could not refuse-- i could take the amp home for a weekend- so my brother n law and i-both of us thought we were in the know and had very good ears for high quality sound-there is no way to prove it on paper- but i can tell you that there was a greater difference in the sound of those speakers than that of a pinto and a rolls royce. if you are in to commercial sound or an engineer who is trying to justify the difference with a calculator , it evidently cannot be done, because of the responses of those who apparently just have not experienced the difference in the sound of high end audio equipment, its not small but huge! literally night and day. as for speaker wires and iterconnects:after you reach a certain level of quality the differences are not nearly a stark--paying a whole lot more for only a little more, but the differences are there, i think the big problem here is that there is not a huge difference between 29.95 and 49.95(wires and iterconnects)-especially with class E power supplies-but with a class A power supply 50-150 AMPS(not watts) or better-now hook up a 29.95 cable and a 300.00 or better cable and the difference will be HUGE not suttle or indistenguishable- will not need a golden ear either- i do not recommend this if you think collecting knives is expensive- in closing-- before i bought my first quality knife(microtech amphibian)-i could not imagine the difference between an old buck folder or victorinox and an amphibian, but the difference is huge-(a person not in the know would argue: they both cut dont they) any way this is a great thread- have enjoyed it alot

 

[Gary W. Graley]

Lot of interest in this, that's always good to stir up the mental muscle a little, for me, all those formulas are making me dizzy

I finally received my 100' roll of SoundKing 12ga speaker wire last night, changed out my 16ga surround wire runs, I had plans once those were wired up, to use any remaining to change the bi-wire on my mains and center channel. Well I ended up after all was said and done with a piece of wire less than 5"! On my mains and center I already had one run of 12ga but the other run was some Audioquest wire, solid wire, 4 conducter, two 17ga and two 20ga, I was told that I could just use THAT wire to bi-wire my speakers, WOW did that stink! I then tied the pairs together to make one wire and used that for the other run for the bi-wire. But last night I changed out that section with the SoundKing 12ga, nice speaker wire btw, from PartsExpress.com. The sound is a lot fuller now and the rear surround speakers have a nice solid full sound as well, a simple upgrade but worth it.

Keep them ideas rollin' but lets keep it civil if we can.

One thing I have noticed, it's not always the equipment but the sound media source, if you've got a nasty recording...it won't make much difference what you have! You have a GOOD recording and it always seems to amaze friends when they stop by and listen. Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers extended edition has a great soundtrack, very inspiring to say the least.

G2

ps...I'm gettin' old too and Gabe that info you posted hit me hard, as I also have tinnitus, (taking some B12 and Zinc pills to help but nothings changed so far the past two weeks.)
And with turning 50 on Saturday and I'm starting to feel it!

 

[Gollnick]

It took a bit to get through all the MIT stuff, but the bottom line is that power factor, which they center their argument around, can not be corrected by cable.

Many European countries require power factor correction on the AC power inputs of equipment drawing more than 50W. Appliance manufacturers hate this because power factor correction circuitry is expensive, heavy, and large. If they could correct power factor with a magic power cord, they'd be all over that. But you can't.

Furthermore, as much as appliance manufacturers complain about power factory correction circuitry, I can assure you that it does not cost $30,000 which is what these Opus MM speaker cables cost.

I can also assure you that it does not consist of, "a large mass of epoxy damping material [that] encapsulates the Opus MM network, which is then encased with carbon fiber." And I can also assure you that it doesn't need to, "sit upon a thick acrylic plinth supported by four adjustable feet, to insure stable 4-point contact and decouple the network from room borne resonance."

Cable has inductance. Yes it does. But as long as the cable is relatively straight, that inductance is very low, microhenries. Inductance increases impedance. Yes it does. But this is another one of those electrical phenomenon that is frequency-dependant. As long as the inductor is very small, the change in impedance from 20Hz to 100KHz is vanishingly-small.

It may surprise some folks that a perfectly-straight piece of wire has inductance. The classic formula for inductance doesn't predict it. You have to go to the Biot and Savart form of Neumann's equation in the differential form. And since we've already got our hip wadders on due to the marketing BS on the floor in this thread, I won't fill 'er up with differential equations. (Besides, I can't do 'em with text characters.) Instead, I'll boil it right down:

Ldc = 2L[ln(2L/r) - 1.75]nH

Ldc is the low-frequency (less than 1MHz or so) inductance in nanohenries (for higher frequencies, we have to start adding skin affect in and it gets much more complex), L is the length of the wire in cm, and r is the radius of the wire in cm.

This version of the equation is greatly simplfied by the assumption that the radius of the wire is much less than the length L. That's usually true.

The important thing to realize is that this equation delivers its result in nanohenries.

Solid AWG #16 wire is 1.29mm in diameter. The formula wants it in centimeters. That's 0.129cm. Let's make the length 4meters (about 16 feet) long. That's not unreasonable for a home stereo system. Again, the equation wants centimeters. So we'll use 400cm. The inductance of such a straight wire at low frequencies (and by low we mean frequencies below which skin effect is negligible) is...

A drum roll please....

5,586nanoHenries. 5,586 seems like a big number, but nanoHenries are very small units.

The inductance at audio frequencies of a straight cable used in a typical home stereo installation is vanishingly-small.

Capacitance is a similar.

Perhaps I should have used the more common term, "burn-in."

Burn-in usually refers to operating equipment for some time in order to catch manufacturing defects. The theory (which often holds to fact) being that if the thing can operate for some time perhaps ten hours (often at elevated temperature hence the "burn") that it will probably continue to work just fine for a long time.

Again, what about wire burns-in or breaks-in or wears-in? Are you loosening up the electrons?

My explaination is this: You used your old cables for years. During that time, magnetic residue built up on them. You became accustomed to the sound of music played through cables encrusted with magnetic residue buildup. Then, when you switched to new, clean cables, the sound of music played through clean cables was foreign to you. So, what you thought was break-in or burn-in was really just waiting for magnetic residue to build up on your new cables.... magnetic residue which can only be removed with my exclusive magnetic residue scrubbing sponge. I know, it looks like an ordinary bathroom sponge, but that's because my exclusive treatment takes place at a molecular level which is not visible to the naked eye. Order yours today!





The analogies to knives are very real. We've seen in this very forum site, makers claiming that their very expensive knives are better because they use some exclusive alloy or some secret heat treating process... some "secret sauce." And when those claims haven't held up, those makers have blames notches in the tang or maybe that the knives weren't "broken in" yet. Or maybe magnetic residue buildup...

Some people are suckered by it. The thinking man says, "The science doesn't support it."

 

[protodoc]

Just to keep things interesting:

Do you guys remember the "Tice Clock"?

If memory serves right it was a Radio Shack clock that was somehow "electronically enhanced" to make audio equipment sound better when it was plugged into a nearby outlet.

As far as cables are concerned:
I always find it surprising that all the emphasis is on the wires that dangle between the components of your system: powercord, interconnect, and speaker wire. No one seems to care about internal wiring and all the cable "upstream" of the power outlet.

To each their own. I cetraintly wouldn't fault anyone for spending money on cables but I don't think you are getting much bang for the buck.

If you ever want to surprise yourself try some blinded comparison of components that you think make a big difference in sound. Astonishing amount of placebo effect.

 

[Gollnick]

On an unrelated note:

In the late 1910's, Bell Laboratories embarked on an amazing project. They set up a lab to "burn in" tens of thousands of vacuum tubes. These were specially-made tubes for use on the telephone network -- high reliability. The tubes that were still running in 1946, about thirty years later, were deemed golden. If they'd run 30 years, they' probably never quit.

Today, getting on ninty years later, those tubes are still running. They're running on the floor of the Atlantic ocean where they form the in-line amplifiers for TAT-1, the first trans-Atlantic Telephone Cable, also called "The string of pearls,"... still in use today. Not one of those tubes has died.

And that's the power of "burn in."

 

[Gollnick]

Breaking something in is something we're all familiar with. If you've ever had a pair of new shoes, you know about breaking in.

The process of wear that loosens up, that "breaks in," a new pair of shoes never stops. Eventually, your shoes end up not just broken in, but broken down and broken out and just plain broken.

Let's assume that there is some physical process of "break in" going on in a cable. What stops it? Why doesn't the cable wear out?

Just a thought.

 

[Buzzbait]

So I took the test today. I took out my inexpensive AudioQuest interconnects and Radio Shack RG-8U coax cable speaker wires, and replaced them with some borrowed MIT Shotgun S3ic interconnects and Goertz MI speaker cables. I borrowed the new stuff off of a fellow audoiophile. I might have heard a difference, but I'm not really sure. I don't know what the price of MIT and Goertz cables run, but I wouldn't call them a "value" if they're expensive. Maybe there's a law of extremely diminishing returns once you go above Audioquest and very good quality coax cable. I don't know.

Keep in mind that I've been in the hobby for a long time and don't have cheap components. B&K, Meridian, Cary Audio and Vandersteen are nothing to sneeze at. For your reference, the recordings I used were:

1. Jazz at the Pawn Shop (one of the best recordings I've EVER heard)
2. Grace Jones - Slave to the Rythym
3. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (Mobile Fidelity version)
4. Natalie Cole - Unforgettable With Love
5. Time Warp - Telarc

I'll stand that I might have heard a difference, but nothing close to a minor change in room acoustics or a lowering of overall ambient sound levels. If the cables are indeed expensive, I'd be likely to put the money into better speakers instead.