Do the same test without knowing what pieces of wire are in the system. Let's hear what you can hear then.

Steve - Did you try the new interconnects with the Vampire speaker cables in place?

Steve - If you still have the interconnects on loan, do give them a chance before judging that they have no positive or negative effect. I honestly feel many interconnects will benefit from signal passing through them for 100-200 hours (if not a bit more.) I know there are cable burn-in naysayers, but, it seems (to these ears) that with the dielectric charged up and broken in, smearing of transients gets reduced.

I agree 100% with Jeff on this,plus,even when the cables are fully burned-in but being stored(ie,no signal passed through them for more than a few days)they need at least 24 hours to with signal passing through them to perform at their best.

hahahahahahahahahaha, burned in cables! DAT'S a GUD VON.!!!! And what changed or will ever change in some copper and some plastic in 24 hours!!! Based on whether there is no small audio level signal.....now really, come on. You gotta be pulling the leg here!!!! I work on stuff up to 60kv....guess what, the hV cables never change....10 years, and guess what, they are under EXTREME STRESS from hig tension. Once in a while due to water or contamination up inside teh tube shiled, the hv insulators go bad, they start to arc, with 40kV or so applied, then the thing shuts down, replace the cable, yeah after 10 plus years, there ain't nothing happening to a low level piece of wire.....come on already. How come the wires out on teh poles around here have been in place for almost 40 YEARS!!! hot, cold, wind, rain, snow ice anything you can do to it, has been done by nature, yet they still deliver power reliabily, never a blip in 21years that I have been around here....the piecee of wire in your stereo ain't changing.....what "white paper" ad did you gleen that bunch of crap. It took an earthquke to damage the wire in the ocean over in Asia, that thing is 1/2 thick, under salt water, it took probably a rock or something to damge it...what is going on in your listening area? Must be a heck of an enviorment!!!!

Steve - Even if a cable is well used, if it has been dormant for any significant length of time, the insulation must be burned in again, as if new and virginal -- burn-in is not permanent, it's something that must be maintained.

If you don't listen to the system while the cables are cooking, there's nothing to reconcile. You can just wait a few days and see if you enjoy your system more or less, or if you notice things that are different from your initial impressions.

Hi Steve,

I have suggested to DUP, many times, that he study the medical arena (pertaining to hearing), physics, chemistry but to no avail. It just goes in one ear and out the other with him, so we just ignore him. Like his last post, he rambles on with nothing pertinent to say. He continues to propagate subjective audio DBT testing even though, in other strings, it has been shown to heavily skew the results towards no sonic difference.

Take care and all the best.

Hi Steve

I know what you're saying.All i meant was,give those cables 24 hours to "settle down" and listen to them again.Jeff will
help you on the technical side of things.
Now,regarding the "getting used to" thing,well.the answer again is no.First of all,just like you,i too evaluate systems with 5-10 songs.I do not listen for "depth of field"
"soundstage" etc.If what i am evaluating moves me,then it is good.Only then i concentrate for soundastage etc.Every one of us is more sensitive to different things.I give a lot
of weight to "hardness".If something sounds "hard" i do not buy it.Can you explain to me how can i get used to a "hard" sounding cable?No way ! Steve,i never repeat what reviewers say.Everything i say are based on personal evaluation,that is why i don't say a lot here. I have several cables,same brand same model.Some i use in my system and some i don't.Many times when i decided to replace a cables with one of them,the sound wasn't as before.I know what you're going to say.I got used to the sound.Nope !Say i use cable A between my cd player and pre-amp.If i get another cable A from the locker and substitute the obe between my cd/pre,it will sound worse.After 20-30 hours,if i repeat the procedure,you won't be able to tell them apart.Trust me,i did this many times and i have been using those cables for almost 20 years.

Right, wires are changing in 24 hours and YOU can hear this!!! Think real hard about how retarded that is......Keep thinking. Of course in 24 hours your mood, being tired, rested etc. are you hungry are you over fed...when listening. Are you just plain DRUNK? How about the WALLS in teh listening area changing with humidity and temperature!!!?? Now that does happen, wood floors change with temp and humidity, hmmmmthat could efect the sound.....heat on what kind of heat, forced air, radiant...that would effect the speakers too. It ain't changing WIRE!!! Wire is pretty inert, stable. Wood is very changable. Keep thinkin g, are you sure that wire has changed, not your mood......How bout' when you watch video, is that changing too, same types of wires.....is your tv line cord doing something, why is AUDIO so impacted with nonsense and other things ain't? do $100K TT change every day? A $100K car is pretty stable under the most changable conditions, really adverse conditions too. car keeps doing it's thing. a piece of wire...now this change you are gonna hear? Maybe it's your EARS that are changing due to enviormental conditions....now THAT..is possible....not a piece of wire

And where is your scientific knowledge coming from? What is your source of your scientific knowledge? Don't keep us in suspense.
Since you are such an expert, please tell us about all the classes you took, the experts you hve spoken too, and the books you have read.

301 - I have finally broken down and put DUP on ignore. I've had a large enough sampling of his 1000+ posts consisting of 4 variants and have had enough. I don't expect to read anything useful, on topic, or in any way helpful from him given his track record. I'm saddened to have reached this point because I've met him and it made me like him more than I would have thought based on his posts here. You might consider clicking the button as well.

So he even got to you, eh Jeff. Don't feel bad about it, you held out a longer than most of us. Hell, I understand Donald Trump only gives second chances.

Clay,i am not gonna put him in "ignore".I've been waiting almost one year to read the "Dup's trilogy" the extended edition ! rotfl

Certainly not the EXPERTS you have gleened these pearls of wisdom. Where did you find out from an "expert" that a piece of wire needs to be burned in, and if not used, in 24 hours it changes something, let alone you can HEAR THIS!!!! come on, are you high?

Are there more NUTS in audio or in Scientology? How do you hear the wire , that hasn't been used in 24 hours, really, you gotta explain that one. How come the lights in my house look the same if i ain't turned them on in a day. How come the wire to the light didn't effect that, only AUDIO. come on you are on the MF crazy train (Ozzy) hearing magnetic plastic, vibrating AC outlets from Furutech, the nonsense quotent is never met in audio wierd ville. Audio grade wall wires? How come principles discovered and worked out at Bell Labs and other places still hold true, yet magic wires scammers, keep re inventing WIRE every 4 months? Entertaining really is. Does it take more or LES education to be this gulliable?

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I guess I have been one of the last hold outs, I guess I have to realize he is beyond help.

Be quiet Dup ! Why are you bothering 301 with this? I just explained all these in this post 2 days ago.Read above if you want to know and i never said 24 hr.I said for a certain period of time.ie,many days and without signal passing through them ! Do you actually read the replies or you just type whatever comes to your mind at the time ?

Quote:
I agree 100% with Jeff on this,plus,even when the cables are fully burned-in but being stored(ie,no signal passed through them for more than a few days)they need at least 24 hours to with signal passing through them to perform at their best.

What is this NUMBER then?

24 22,23, does it realy matter? What is changing, ya gotta let me know? do i need to "burn in" my newly installed service panel and 2 new ckts going to my stuff, or can i just like use it? Non audio grade Levitons Ivory. About $3 for a box of 10 !! Contractors pkg. niiiiiice. Hey, it does have a HUBBELL plastic cover plate!!! From Grainger, also bulk bag pof em, no fancy designer boxes or stuff like that. Nice HUBBELL, solid robust, PLASTIC, maybe even nylon, for that extra bit of strength...mostly what was on sale and available really. And both lengths of NM feeding the outlets from teh panel are just about teh same length..now how audio cool is THAT!!!!? Didn't want one ckt to have more impedance to teh AC source than teh other, coulda' made one amp sound different than the other riiiight? But then maybe the Furman PF-Pro would correct that anyway. Furman does talk about Impedance of teh AC line and teh load it serves, they actually do it in terms of electrical design and stuff, not like an audio review of words with no meaning. But I don't hear any difference between a nice orange ext cord from the other outlet to the new outlets next to the amps actually. But I do know I don't have to walk over teh cord no more, that's the improvemnt. Maybe just MAYBE.....if I crank it and suck some current out of the wall, the voltage drop may be 1 or 2 less!!! Since there is other stuff on the loaded down lines before. But that is meaningless too as far as sound goes. And how do i know this voltage drop, the Furmans have front panel voltage and current displays, I ain't just guessing, it's measured. the way most thing electrical are made designed and repaired, not through voodo and just because. Audio, it really is science and electrical engineering, acoustics, not wood blocks and cable lifters off teh carpet!!!!

"Audio, it really is science and electrical engineering, acoustics, not wood blocks and cable lifters off teh carpet!!!!"

First you hide from my question asking what your scientific qualifications are. Then you post you have a GED.

So how would you know what is "science" and "electrical engineering" since you haven't studied these?

I have an ADVANCED GED. I was gradiated on the Dean's list....Dean was the guy I owed money too, he is still waiting for that $100. He keeps a list of people who owe him money. GED means Get Educated Dummy. I is well diversed in them thing electriclas. You should see me handle 50kV....zaaaaaaaaaaaap. I also had a Mr. Wissard lab kit as a youngster, and I watche Mr. Wizzard as a kid, I learned all about science things, and butterflys. And in my first electronics job I got a 93 in my soldering test to get the job. So there. If my father didn't die in the holocoust concentration camp in WW2, I coulda done better. Yeah, he fell out of the guard tower, it was terrible. Without a father figure to lead me, and teach me, I almost became a hair stylist..... Happy Niew Year, except Jeff, cus' he can't see me anymore. But JA is OK.

Cable settling is a very real occurence. How long varies with the construction techniques used in the cables. Interconnects like the Kimber tri-braid don't seem to take long at all, while many Audioquest cables take over 100 hours before they open up.

I think a good rule of thumb in judging a new cable is that if they seem unfocused and lacking in bottom end extension, give them at least 100 hours before determining their merit. I use those two aspects because those are the two characteristics that seem to consistently arrive last.

If you can accept that cables do make a difference, and you seem to have concluded just that, then you might want to consider that there might be something to this cable settling thing and give them a chance to show you what they can do.

As for our friend, Dup. According to JA's measurements of Dup's frequency response in his room, his treble information is substantially missing in action. Couple this with the normal loss of hearing as we age and you can easily figure that Dup's only concern is with those frequencies below 2 or 3K. Attributes such as "air, bloom, decay and transient speed" are all part of the important things that the rest of us listen for and quite often altered with the changing of cables.

Of course, at the decibel levels that Dup prefers to listen to his music, there isn't a whole lot of anything missing in action.

Turning the speakers inward or outward effects what is heard and measured depending on where you sit and where the mics are. I can aim them so they meet behind my head or sometimes aim em' so the converge in front. Depends what I feel like doing. checkout the .pdf in the www.legacyaudio.com site on the WHISPER section, they have the instruction manual , talking about where to turn em. I also have a RANE which was switched out during those measurments. What does that mean? cabling settleling. Never read anything of the sorts in any pro audio publications I read or get. Please explain. Do magic cable makers use some really unstable shit in their wires? What kind of plastic do they use that this change can be so audible? SoundKing speaker wire never mentions any such phenom. Maybe the audio pixies in magic wires get hungry? they need to be fed regulary? Strand jumping, cabling settling, What about when they test this stuff at the factory, when they design it? do they know about cable settling? Make it more stable, they can do material science, that led to Kevlar, all kinds of super epoxys that hold friggin airplanes parts together!!! But wire can't be made to not change so you don't hear a difference!!! Permacel even made an adhesive TAPE that holds airplane parts together!!! FAA approved, light weight, STRONG flexible, they used our analytical stuff to test it!! but, wire is so unstable, you hear it. come on....re think this nonsense! amazing.

From Jeff:

Quote:
Steve - If you still have the interconnects on loan, do give them a chance before judging that they have no positive or negative effect. I honestly feel many interconnects will benefit from signal passing through them for 100-200 hours (if not a bit more.) I know there are cable burn-in naysayers, but, it seems (to these ears) that with the dielectric charged up and broken in, smearing of transients gets reduced.

From Yiangos:

Quote:
I agree 100% with Jeff on this,plus,even when the cables are fully burned-in but being stored(ie,no signal passed through them for more than a few days)they need at least 24 hours to with signal passing through them to perform at their best.

A question for you guys.

Looking at JA's recording of Silverman, I can't recall if he had all his cables hooked up and carrying signal for 24 hours before each recording session.

I also don't know if the wires inside his computer had been properly burned in using audio or "conditioning signals."

Same goes for all the mic cords they used.

You'd think someone like JA would have been careful not to smear his transients, but I can't recall his cable conditioning protocol before making recordings.

Could it be that when someone is an audiophile, cable conditions are important, but when making a recording, these considerations are shown in their true light?

To take the importance of audio cable to its logical conclusion, if this really really really mattered to the extent that some claim, why aren't we seeing this behavior described when one of our own makes an ultra-Hi Fi recording?

*Disclaimer: I'm in the "cable club," it's just that I can't reconcile how easily the "importance of cables" can come and go depending on the given activity.

Buddha,there is a big difference here.I do not know if these
cables could be improved by burning them in or not,probably yes but no one bothers.What we're trying is to improve the reproduced sound allready recorded by any means used.Besides
and this is my mistake,what i meant was,a cable (a fully burned in one) to come to its optimum stage after being stored (ie no signal) for weeks even months,need at least 24 hours with signal,any kind of signal,passing through it.

I may be guilty of an oversimplification regarding burn-in (mainly so as not to get into the various dielectric properties of different insulations and why I prefer Teflon over PVC, the former sounding less smeared than the latter from the get go.) It may be useful to think of interconnects and speaker cables as just very long capacitors and that they are affected by the types of insulation material used, just like capacitors.

I'm not sure what John's cable protocol is when it comes to recording. It has been a long time since I've read any liner notes or articles that document his process. I've no idea if he leaves the gear cooking during the whole session or not. I suspect there might be limitations at location recording sessions in terms of how anal retentive one can get because of practicalities (safe storage of gear overnight & patience of musicians come to mind) and one must make compromises. A studio session might be a different matter -- the stuff could be fired up all the time.

While any sins committed to tape or hard disk must be lived with, playback at home needn't be hobbled.

Cus' it's mostly nonsense. Hmmm, when the measurments of my speakers where taken, the computer, AC cords, mics, mic cables, etc where not BURNED IN....oh oh. did they suffer, from that dreaded 24 hour cable settling? Oh no!!! Or is this phenomenon only in PLAYBACK, not in wire used for measuring, or recording? Or even at the original live performaance, like the amp speakr cables, guitar cord, mic cords. hmmm, let's figure that out now cable dudes. How do these wires know where they are, what they are being used for. Cardas. Kimber, Zen, AQ,Monster,an don and on, smartest cables made? The Belden, Canare,Nuetriks,Switchcraft,ProCosound, George L's them is the stupid cables, they never know where they are?

Quote:
Buddha,there is a big difference here.I do not know if these
cables could be improved by burning them in or not,probably yes but no one bothers.What we're trying is to improve the reproduced sound allready recorded by any means used.Besides
and this is my mistake,what i meant was,a cable (a fully burned in one) to come to its optimum stage after being stored (ie no signal) for weeks even months,need at least 24 hours with signal,any kind of signal,passing through it.

I hear ya, I just wonder why we never hear of those 15K high altitude cables turning a fine recording into an earthshaking one.

Just think, if tossing one pair of those babies into a system can overcome everything else downstream, imagine what we're missing when it comes to recording!

Put one of those interconnects into the recording chain and we can all save a bundle of cash.

Seriously, if we can put a pair of cables between the phono-pre and the pre-amp and get that benefit, you'd think putting them even closer to the sonic source would be revelatory.

___________________________
___________________________

On a related note, does anybody remember the name of last year's greatest cables? You know, the one's that Mr. Fremer said were revolutionary and JA said measured like crap?

I'm beginning to wonder how those cables might sound between a Zanden CD player and a preamp.

Maybe that is one reason why a simple turntable setup, with analog LP recordings using tube equipment, I have been using lately blows away my CD recordings. More natural and accurate, more live sounding.

If some recording studios let the music go through 100 OP amps, dozens of connectors (of what quality), and hundreds of feet of junk wire, I would suggest they substantially taint the music. I have seen at least three small studios, and I wasn't impressed with any of them. One, with an electrical engineer at the helm, didn't think wire was important because it was in the "recording process". I mentioned 'doesn't the music go through your equipment and isn't your recording equipment part of the chain'. He never responded.

Steve - Ideally, we want to do as little damage as possible to the signal. Theory and things on paper are all well and good, but, in practice, more difficult to execute. Cable designs will vary in resistance, capacitance, and inductance based on geometry and materials. The dielectric insulation introducing phase shifts throws another variable into the mix. Different gear will react to these variables in a variety of ways.

I like to think that the best cables are the most neutral and are imparting the least sonic flavour on the existing signal. This brings up the well known sticking point -- if you were not at the recording session, how can you know what the recording is supposed to sound like? This is the reason many people use the live, unamplified acoustic sound as their reference. But, the playback of a recording depends on the accuracy of the recording. Buddha's suggestion of high-end cabling in the recording chain would be a step in the right direction. It's possible compounded distortions add up to something desirable. A coloured recording of an acoustic instrument might sound real through one system, but, way off on a more neutral one. Until we perfect the recording process, we're chasing our tails.

My own methodology when evaluating a cable or power cord (or tweak for that matter) is this: Is it revealing more information, subtlety, and nuance? If I can now detect decay of notes against a blacker background and now hear delicate information like rear wall reflections in a recording that I couldn't with the other cable, I can be pretty sure I'm getting genuine information and increased resolution, as opposed to a tipped up treble that amounts to false detail.

So, in answer to your question... yes, all cables introduce artifacts -- the key is to find the ones that produce the least number of them in our given systems (they're going to be system dependent in most, if not all cases.)

Crap cubed 3....MF should really hear some bliss. Last year's best piece of wire is now replaced with this month's latest river or mountain range? What reptile? What advertising pitch is happening this month? Why are there no audio grade toggle switches on systems. PS audio has audio grade wall outlets, Furutech has vibration reduced wall outlets!!! WOW, that's some creative marketing. Who is gonna come up with a vacuum enclosed wall outlet!!? Or a blinking LED noise suppresor cryocooled then shipped in a vacuum..they should ba able to scam about $2K for that wizzardry. do GREEN LEDS take out more noise than BLUE or RED LED's? PS needs to do some "research".