Fry On: Burn-in and burn-in generators

[Garth]

First off I have not used a cable cooker so i have a few questions.

1 is a cooker just speeding up the break in, in other words are you going to end up with the same results over time cooked or uncooked.

2 As anyone found any harm in cooking cables short term or long term

3 if it is the best thing ever why do cable makers not pre cook them or do they

4 freezing cables and other things was a thing a few years ago is it still done and is the results the same or close to cooking.

5 I understand wanting to speed up the break in of cables especially for reviewers but is the result the same in the end

6 does this shorten the life of cable

7 do manufactures say yes do it or do not do it

8 does cooking give you a boost in one area of sound while taking away in another area

I am not for or against just have not done it

[Guest]

First off I have not used a cable cooker so i have a few questions.

1 is a cooker just speeding up the break in, in other words are you going to end up with the same results over time cooked or uncooked.

2 As anyone found any harm in cooking cables short term or long term

3 if it is the best thing ever why do cable makers not pre cook them or do they

4 freezing cables and other things was a thing a few years ago is it still done and is the results the same or close to cooking.

5 I understand wanting to speed up the break in of cables especially for reviewers but is the result the same in the end

6 does this shorten the life of cable

7 do manufactures say yes do it or do not do it

8 does cooking give you a boost in one area of sound while taking away in another area

I am not for or against just have not done it

1. Not necessarily. In the case of interconnects, you may get the results of burn-in over a length of time, but would you be able to tell? No cable may benefit more from burn-in than tonearm wire and tonearm cable. Given the low output voltage of many (not all) MC cartridges, that cable may never get burned-in by just playing records.

2. Speaking only for myself, no.

3. Shunyata does factory burn-in their most recent line of cables with their KPIP process which is permanent. You can read the details about that it in the section labeled 'Phono Cable Break-in' in my review of their Sigma Phono cable. I've not heard of other manufacturers doing anything like this ... yet. Kuzma put 48 hrs of burn-in on the Kondo silver wiring in my latest 4Point. I added another 96 hrs using a Hagerman Audio Labs FryBaby2. You can read about that in my review: 4Point Bejeweled – A Guided Tour of an Improved Kuzma Tonearm. I've heard of other manufacturers or distributors (Nordost?) who will apply burn-in for additional cost.Otherwise I don't know think there are general rules across the board for cable manufacturers; I'd contact those who make the cables per your interest.

4. Shunyata no longer applies cryo treatment to their cables. Not a physicist but I do not think cryo acts the same on wire as burn-in. What I remember about cryo was something having to do with affirming metal crystal boundaries and other 'stuff'.

5. See #1 above.

6. Does burn-in shorten the life of a cable? I've never had a cable wear-out or die, with burn-in or without.

7. I'm not aware of manufacturers saying "don't do it". Except Shunyata - applying burn-in to their already burned-in cables (recent models) is a big no-no; it corrupts their process and the cable must be returned to the factory for it to be reapplied. Again: I don't know think there are general rules for all cable manufacturers; I'd contact those who make the cables per your interest.

8. My experience finds benefit across the board with tonearm and interconnect cables. Those are not major but definitely audible.

9. Is applied cable burn-in permanent? From what I've read the answer is no, with the suggestion to re-do burn-in at some frequency (6mos - 1yr). Maybe when you clean your connectors.

[Garth]

Thanks for the reply that makes sense number 1 I can see the low out put taking a longer time to burn in if ever on tone arm cable .

good thread by the way and your right cryo seems to have come and gone.

[Bill Hart]

Well, I'm burnin' in--- I opted not to use the digital rig on my main system but instead the home theatre set up in the front parlor downstairs- it has an Oppo disc player that allows you to adjust volume at the player side on the analog outputs. So I reduce the volume by 1/2- not sure that's in any way directly correlated to output voltage but figure it's 2 volts at fixed output so if it is around 1 volt, all good.
The ingenious thing is that Kuzma's packing materials allow you to set the arm in the packing just so and I rigged up a fairly delicate connection to those very fragile tone arm wires using small gauge hook up wire which snugs into the cartridge pin clips- I used some shrink tubing (without heating) as an insulator around each connection to avoid shorts. The hook up wires go to alligator clips that are connected to test probes terminated in BNC; BNC to RCA adapter and viola!

[Barry]

I stumbled across this Cardas article recently and found it of interest.

I am also curious about the comment reference above to the two Frybaby settings and hook-up options, one for voltage; the other, for current methods of break-in. Jeff Day's remarks about warming up or thinning out the sound in cables using both methods are also intriguing.

Anybody experimented with this? Can the Audio Dharma cable cooker be used for voltage conditioning by jumpering the speaker cable connections top to bottom so there's a signal, and then connecting one end of the speaker leads to just the top outputs of the cooker? That appears consistent with the Frybaby instructions. Have just started trying this am about to find out.

I guess I've been indoors too long....!