After being an audiophile for 25 years I worked in my audio store for 22
years and I have some experience with break-in of speakers. I found that
some speakers sounded disappointingly harsh and thin when new, so in my
store we started breaking them in so we could make them sound their best.
Depending on the models they sounded deeper, warmer ,and smoother with
continued play until a certain point was reached, depending on the speaker.
And, no, it was not getting that we were getting accustomed to the sound
because we did not listen to the speakers while they were being broken in.
We di it three ways: we played them loud overnight on FM while the store was
closed, or we used CDs (including some "break-in" and CDs with bass test
frequencies), or we ran the speakers off the lower voltage taps of a
transformer. For this we set up the speakers in a receiving shed, put them
face to face, connected them out of phase and let them rip for a week or so.
We proved to ourselves time after time that break in is a reality for
speakers, some more so than others, and more important usually on the better
speakers, especially the ones with butyl surrounds.
As for wire break in, that too is real, though not always dramatic. My most
dramatic personal experience was when using 25 foot silver coated speaker
wire in my home. The first listen was dreadful. Extremely and unlistenably
harsh. At that time I was already a believer in cable break in and I had a
device called a cable enhancer that used a proprietary test tone to break in
cables and interconnects. After 10 days of break in I found the cables to be
vastly inproved. My wife, an impartial observer, had hated the cables first
time. When I played them after break in she said she liked the sound and
asked what I had changed. She was amazed that the cables that had been so
dreadful were now an improvement over my previous speaker wire.
I'm not selling anything. Having insufficient technical background I don't
know why cable and speaker break in work beneficially. But break in is real
for everything in audio as far as I can tell, although it's not always easy
to tell. The situation in a store let us listen and compare the same music
on the same sets of speakers so often that we could easily tell changes.

Wylie

"chris" wrote in message
...
Hi I though it would be an interesting thread to start.

Burn in of speaker cables, how long for what dielectric. What's your
experiences?

Bare OFC 5N + PVC +48hrs
Bare OFC 4N + PE about 1 hour
ive not tried Silver+ Teflon yet (need an overdraft 1st)