Column

“Hold on man, something’s wrong.”

My friend was just staring at me, confused and cockeyed, definitely not disagreeing with me.  We had just finished changing my listening room into a theater setup to accommodate my new projector, and we were ready to start diggin’ some music.  I was already in my sweet spot chair, so he got to press the inaugural ‘Play’ button on my NAD CD spinner.

There was supposed to be music coming from the pair of B&W DM303s we had just moved into my theater room.  But what was this sound? It was not music.  It wasn’t a dangerous-like-something-was-frying sound...  It was too quiet, unintelligible, distorted and staticky, like the speakers were under a pile of aluminum cans and blankets. Strange, everything worked a minute ago…  I turned the volume knob of the system down, then back up, and the strange sound followed my input.  Somewhat.  Uh oh.

This WAS music.

I then shut down the system and duly double-checked all connections, swapped around inputs and outputs, and restarted: still garbled noise.  So what had changed since the last time everything worked?   There was only one new component in the chain.  Fresh speaker cable, about 18 feet of it per channel.  

Now, I have heard of cable ‘burn-in’ as a sound quality topic before, and indeed at first I thought it nonsense.  Then over time I became merely skeptical. Now, having read many reports describing how qualities in cables and other components, especially speakers, change over time, (usually for the better, sometimes not), I realize that how an audio signal is transferred between components affects aspects like frequency response, phase integrity and amplifier load.  All of which are important factors of how a system performs.  I had, however, never read of or observed an instance of new cables totally destroying the signal they carry.  This is why the problem didn’t dawn on me sooner.  But now, suspecting the cables were simply just that ‘cold’, I let the system play at a normal level, and left the room.

An hour or so later I returned, restarted the CD, and turned it up to an average listening level.  That was possible because now, the music WAS listenable.  It was as I remembered the clean, open sound to be.  Talk about warming up!
EVERYTHING in audio has a break-in period, including the listener.  If something as straightforward as speaker wire can impose effects so defining as to render familiar music unrecognizable, then I for one am acutely aware of the potential for change in complex electronics, and much more so in mechanical speakers.  

What does all this mean for the enthusiast on a budget?  Meaning, the most of us in the hobby who don’t have wads of bank and ample time to measure and listen and upgrade often and at will?

I will suggest that the biggest factor in realizing value in investment for the average enthusiast is correct identification of the flaws to be corrected.  Theoretically.

To achieve that, then, requires a listener to not be too hasty when spending money on perceived upgrades.  It means, don’t be reactive with your purchases.  Just as 15 minutes in a shop’s demo room isn’t enough time to examine all facets of an item’s performance, is it also not enough time to demonstrate itself in your home.  If you have just added a new, fresh component into your system and the improvement (if any) is less than expected, let the system run in the new addition, while perhaps experimenting with changes of settings, layout, and room treatments.  Get familiar with it all again. Within reason, there’s no telling how long is long enough, but 500 or so hours should definitely reveal natural characteristics in most equipment. In my instance, it would have been easy to assume my amp or CD player had failed. While there was no way I would tolerate 500 hours of that noise it made, just imagine my relief when I returned to find pleasing music coming from my system.  It’s the first time I’ve ever fixed my stereo by doing the dishes.

This discovery still affects my opinion of how my stereo system sounds.  Most of my listening with the DM 303s has been done with these cables, and while the system sounds quite acceptable after many months of use, its hard to have faith that a cable that started off so poorly is delivering an accurate signal now, without a known alternative available for comparison.  The good news is I have heard these B&Ws break in over used cables, and I have heard the B&Ws burn in new cables.  At least this provides useful experience when evaluating a cable’s character.  It is something that I am forced to consider when planning my next purchase.  The bad news is I’m quite sure my cables, especially the speaker cables, are significantly limiting the performance of the playback.  Indeed the next purchase just may be the replacement of the cables in question.  If I am thinking in terms of biggest gain per dollar, there are many aspects to consider.  To complicate the matter, buying cables is often a leap of faith, since comparison is tedious, specs can be misleading (if existent), and reviews can be difficult to find (again, if existent)!  I would rather keep my current cables and my current money, than trade them both for something that sounds no better overall, or even worse!  It is only to my benefit that I can reasonably assume my system’s familiar character will not seriously change in the future.  

-Christopher Jones