Topic: COMP: new v. burned-in cables

[rokpunk]

hehe...i'd bet nobody could tell the difference between $300 XLR cables and a pair of $15 XLR's from Guitar Center.

<sarcasm> maybe after you "burn in" the $15 cables you could tell a difference </sarcasm mode off>   

[Brian Skalinder]

Alright, I give up - I can't tell the difference.  Does that mean new v. burned in cable differences don't exist, or just that my playback system and/or ears don't have the resolution to hear the differences?   

hehe...i'd bet nobody could tell the difference between $300 XLR cables and a pair of $15 XLR's from Guitar Center.

I suspect it's more likely some people may hear a difference in this case.  Set up a comp and we'll find out. 

[willndmb]

Alright, I give up - I can't tell the difference.  Does that mean new v. burned in cable differences don't exist, or just that my playback system and/or ears don't have the resolution to hear the differences?   

i think its poss that people want to hear a difference, so they think they do

just like when people get a new tv and they use the $2 cable to hook the dvd player up vs a monster cable
my brother says he sees the difference, i think he was told he will see a difference so he does
not that he actually does---know what i am saying lol

[Brian Skalinder]

i think its poss that people want to hear a difference, so they think they do

That's where ABX comes into play.  If one only -thinks- one hears a difference, it's incredibly unlikely one can identify the same imagined difference in the same file after 20 blind trials.

[Church-Audio]

i think its poss that people want to hear a difference, so they think they do

I would think after spending $$$ on cable I would want to or at least make my self hear the difference too.

[Digital Quality]

Downloading samples...

I read both threads and didn't see anything mentioned about electromigration. Over time, atoms inside a conducter are moved around by current and voltage. I wish I knew more about the physics of it but it's a problem in the mircrochip world because material (aluminum or copper) builds up around the corners of the interconnect. It can cause shorts and even opens where the material moved from.

How this changes the audio properties of cables I don't know but it's not all that far fetched for me to believe that it could. Of course my ears will never know,, I guess we will see. Thanks to all involved and especialy to SparkE for the time and effort. It's fun to talk and think about at any rate.

[Church-Audio]

Hear is the problem I have with all this stuff. Number one people say speaker cables for example sound better once they are broken in. Well my answer is this how do you know it’s not your speakers that are sounding better because they are warmed up? Or your amp is better sounding because it has warmed up. How can one separate the function of a speaker cable being broken in over the other components in the system, when they all change? How can you isolate the determining factor with all these variables?

 And to top it all off in my humble opinion if your using great cable but the internal of the amp or speakers or mic or what ever is using cheap cable does not the benefits of the expensive cable get lost anyway? Is not the transfer function of a good cable only as good as the weakest link in the signal chain?


Chris Church

Downloading samples...

I read both threads and didn't see anything mentioned about electromigration. Over time, atoms inside a conducter are moved around by current and voltage. I wish I knew more about the physics of it but it's a problem in the mircrochip world because material (aluminum or copper) builds up around the corners of the interconnect. It can cause shorts and even opens where the material moved from.

How this changes the audio properties of cables I don't know but it's not all that far fetched for me to believe that it could. Of course my ears will never know,, I guess we will see. Thanks to all involved and especialy to SparkE for the time and effort. It's fun to talk and think about at any rate.

[SparkE!]

I read both threads and didn't see anything mentioned about electromigration. Over time, atoms inside a conducter are moved around by current and voltage. I wish I knew more about the physics of it but it's a problem in the mircrochip world because material (aluminum or copper) builds up around the corners of the interconnect. It can cause shorts and even opens where the material moved from.

How this changes the audio properties of cables I don't know but it's not all that far fetched for me to believe that it could. Of course my ears will never know,, I guess we will see. Thanks to all involved and especialy to SparkE for the time and effort. It's fun to talk and think about at any rate.

From your friend, the Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration

Electromigration is the transport of material caused by the gradual movement of the ions in a conductor due to the momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing metal atoms. The effect is only important in applications where high direct current densities are used, such as in microelectronics and related structures. As the structure size in electronics such as integrated circuits (ICs) decreases, the practical significance of this effect increases.

So, this is only an important effect when there is a significant DC current density.  That is not the case in audio cables.  Most of the current density is due to an AC current.

[Digital Quality]

It's an AC problem in the micro world. Especially for clock lines and other high drive lines - mostly related to high current.

[SparkE!]

It's an AC problem in the micro world. Especially for clock lines and other high drive lines - mostly related to high current.

So do you get material build-up on corners and other structures where the geometry changes rapidly, corresponding to the places where free charge carriers are most rapidly accelerated?

I wonder what kind of current density it takes to cause metal migration in copper?  I'm betting that it more easily occurs in structures  of a microscopic scale and less easily at more macroscopic scales like in cables.  Something in the back of my mind tells me that interconnects on IC's will carry several 10's of kiloamps per square cm.  That's certainly not the case on audio cables.

[Digital Quality]

It's been so long since college, I don't really remember the physics of why things build where they do, that makes some sense though. Guess I should study that wiki a little. Over time though even small currents can do the job, on the chip we are talking charge and discharge of 10s or 100s or fF, the current density of the cable much higher but so is it's capacitance.

How this all applies to audio I'd be very keen to understand. One thing to remember about our cables is that the current is carried almost entirely on the surface. It's a very thin on the cross section. Maybe some imperfections could be smoothed over by migration or something like that. A couple of impressions that I remember about cable burning is that it was more important when the conductor was being driven by a low voltage source, like a tone arm or microphone. The other thing that I vaguely remember, or maybe I drempt it hehe, was that the end effect was to "align" certain atoms or magnetic di-poles. That's all pretty fuzzy I know.

Gotta run up to grace today but I'll try to take a look and dig through some books tonight.

[Digital Quality]

Well, I talked to a couple of older engineers here and they both think cable cooking is just another hi-fi scam. Of course I'm still not totally convinced hehe. Don't we have any golden ears people in this community,,, or know any? I used to have some contacts when I worked for Ford but I think they've all gone on to other lives.

[ghellquist]

Hmm.

Just thinking. Assume that "burn-in" does have an effect. Not that I believe it. Not that I have heard it. But what in the world says that the burn will make things sound better? Why not the other way round, maybe you should always use a fresh set of cables for critical listening. I mean, my drummer always uses fresh skins for recordings and my bass player always uses fresh sets of strings.

Gunnar