I have read a few posts on Cable ‘Burn In’, some of which are quite a few years old. 2020 @PAR
I have a new Vitus SIA-025 Integrated Amplifier, so I need to purchase some XLR cables. Being the minefield that it is, I thought I’d start at more or less the bottom of the pile and work my way up the ladder. So I have purchased a 1m pair of Sommer Epilogue XLR cables, from Thomann, in Germany. At present, my dealer has loaned me some Tellurium and Entreq XLRs.
While I await delivery of the Sommer cables, I thought I’d ask them about the ‘Burn In’ time. To my shock they said, “There is no Burn In time needed, the cable has an absolutely neutral sound reproduction and full dynamic range, right from first use”. I honestly thought most cables required some kind of Burn In time? Between 100-200 hours?
As they make the cable, I assume they know what they’re talking about.
I’m not aware of any scientific evidence supporting quantifiable/measurable benefits of cable burn in (happy to be proved wrong) so I personally view it as lying towards the more speculative end of the audiophile superstition continuum. Just my 2c worth.
Or not. I have spoken to many manufacturers over the past 60 odd years. The majority seem to put forward the view that their product ( irrespective of type) is all you need and that all other components linked to or from it are irrelevant. I am exaggerating a little but not much unfortunately. Just keep a reasonable degree of scepticism.
I agree with Andrew technically. However some cables seem to improve with age ( the ones Ithat use are recommended for 200 hors + burn in by their manufacturer ). This is only my subjective view as it is not measurable as far as I know. Maybe there is no cable burn in at all but just us getting used to the sound ( if there are any changes noted at all)? .
If I had known it is possible that I could have sent you some Sommer cables. I have crates of cables but if they are in one stored in my loft we are out of luck as I cannot get to therm.
Count me on the side of those who subscribe to cable burn in.
My first experience started around 2010 when Chord decided to go after the Naim Audio marketplace (which made sense as the founder was the ex wife of Naim MD Paul Stephenson). When the SARUM project started I was one several in the States to demo the early iterations and all subsequent models. Nigel Finn, the Chord developer, warned us the cables had an extremely long burn in time. Numbers bantered about on the Naim forum were on order of 500 hours - which many on the forum made fun of. The cables definitely changed (dramatically) throughout the course of burn in. 300-400 hours seemed to be the magical number.
Fast forward today and I have just finished completing an entire loom of Siltech silver cables. Siltech is not only on record as stating their cables require 100 hours before reaching their optimized performance level, they also claim that Silver metallurgy cables continue to improve throughout their entire life span.
A specific query to Chat GPT (which I undertook strictly for the purpose of saving myself research time) yields the following:
QUERY: What does SILTECH say about burn in of their silver cables?
REPLY: Siltech’s official stance on burn-in
1. “Positive aging” of Siltech conductors
Siltech highlights that their silver-gold alloy conductors (used in many of their cables) have a property they call positive aging. They explain that the metal’s own structure continues to improve electrically over time as current flows, which they say leads to reduced distortion and better performance. This isn’t described as a one-off burn-in event but a long-term improvement.
2. Reduced run-in time with newer designs
In materials about the Classic Legend series, Siltech notes that the improved conductor metallurgy and insulation means the cables reach their optimum performance in a relatively short period — typically under ~50–100 hours of use, depending on connectors and conditions. That’s essentially a burn-in period they acknowledge for the cable to settle.
3. What run-in means for Siltech cables
Siltech’s documentation and reviews often mention that new cables are good out of the box, and over the first tens to low hundreds of hours of playing music they can become more refined — particularly in detail retrieval and clarity — without dramatic tonal shifts. They don’t frame this as curing a defect, but rather as allowing the conductors and insulations to stabilize in system conditions.
I distinctly remember my previous ls-cables needing time to open up and sound their best. Those were not new, but I would bet on it that they hadn’t been used for a long time, probably stored away. So I do believe there is such a phenomenon and it might be dependent on metallurgy, dielectric, geometry etc. One set of cables might need more of it than another.
Thank you Pete. I know you’ve used Sommer before. I got these from Germany, as they’re the only company to do Epilogue. Designacable don’t do them.
A tricky one, as I’m trying to do a back to back, then send back what I don’t like.
Just a point…My new amp was switched on, the 9th Jan. Paying music at very low level for 12-14 hours a day. So I think the Vitus is well on its way to Burn In.
With all due respect, but Thomann are a pro audio/music shop. They sell some nice stuff, but are not really focused on hifi. That might be either refreshing or not very helpful, depending on what you need.
The one electrical property that most closely resembles what many of us have experienced with cables, meaning, an apparent burn-in time, is dielectric absorption - a time-domain memory effect (more formally known as “non-Markovian” behavior) In the context of audio signals that manifests as settling distortion.
As is common with all electrical systems, there are a number of factors that affected it, such as the cable’s dielectric material, the input/output impedances involved, the cable length etc, and objectively speaking, dielectric absorption typically measures orders-of-magnitude below established auditory thresholds.
However, it is real, it’s measurable, and the similarities in impact to what we actually experience suggests it might not actually be that far below hearing thresholds (at least that’s what I tell myself to justify dropping $20K on interconnect cables ).
Hi @Anupc ,
Not sure to understand the rationale here… To justify what?
That this non-Markovian behavior might explain why those $20k cables don’t sound immediately right already after you just installed them?
(And that you need a bit of time to get used to them - sorry, that they get enough time to “burn-in”… )
My understanding was that Dielectric Absorbtion had been debunked as an explanation for cable burn in for multiple reasons, but principally that it stabilizes almost instantaneously and doesn’t reduce slowly over time. Again happy to be proved wrong.
). This is only my subjective view as it is not measurable as far as I know. Maybe there is no cable burn in at all but just us getting used to the sound ( if there are any changes noted at all)? 
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).
However, it went right over my head!