I thought speaker wire "burn in" was a B.S. audiphile thing but our lad just got his hands on some super cheap Kef Q100 speakers which sounded absolutely gorgeous. I'd be inclined to say quite possibly the best sounding speakers I've ever heard (apart from the kef LS50's)
Anyway... today we changed his no-brand "richer sounds" 2.5mm sq (guesstimate) speaker cable that is about 3 years old, for some new 4mm sq. van damme OFC stuff. Bloody Hell the difference was beyond belief. Until today I thought Speaker wire "burn in" was complete B.S, but every single track we played sounded "tight" and strangulated. It made the speakers sound sharp and overly tight with a significant separation between frequencies. In other words, just horrible compared to his original, well etched cables.
Digging around t'internet, speaker wire "burn-in" seems to be as much contested as computer O.S. ;¬) There seems to be a certain market for "burner inner" boxes that eliminate the requirement for 50+ hours of use to condition speaker wire and given that with the new "home cinema" room we're looking at quite a number of speaker wires, 50 to 100 hours of use to realize the full potential of the surround sound system makes a full audio spectrum burn-in box a worthwhile investment for speaker leads (Atmos 7.1.4) and interconnects. Just throwing it out there for any other thoughts about speaker wire burning in. Definitely noticed a significant "strangulation" of sound and gappy crossover between tweeter and base driver compared to the well-used existing speaker wire.
Any thoughts from the experienced audiophiles?
Cheers Pete