Of dozens of burn ins I can’t remember anything new that took only a week, although I read that Shunyata power cords (and others?) now come mostly ready and some claim that new production Chinese tubes don’t take very long, though that’s not my experience. Developers almost invariably grossly understate the time needed, although Morrow Audio offers a guide to what one will hear at different hour points up to about 400 hours with their cables, and they recommend 5 hours on, 5 off. Saves premature complaints and returns.
Typically, tubes = 250-300 hours minimum and most everything else 325-400 on up including some rest (settling) time. Of course, with power cords and fuses it’s continuous, assuming a live circuit, which makes for about two weeks or a little more. Some companies or developers will do some of it for the buyer on a cooker, but usually there’s an extra charge. With tubes, I’ve belatedly learned about SS rectifiers, which help facilitate the process while preserving recti tubes.
I use an AudioDharma high power cooker on all of my cables, the biggest issue is rough handling during shipping can undo some or even most of the burn-in. Usually it's just some and it settles down quickly but I've had cables, that I assume were handled with "extra care", that are like starting all over again. Different cables handle shipping differently too, my litz wire isn't effected by shipping that much while the ribbon cables have much more of an issue with it. I think it's because the litz wire uses painted-on insulation where the ribbon cable's teflon insulation may shift wrt the conductor metal due to rough handling more.
For me, it is impossible to try all cables. What I wonder is just how much improvement in sound the upper priced cables provide.
It varies, but the issue is cables are a high profit margin item used to pad money made in system sales, and the price of a high end cable sold via a dealer gets out of control due to overhead of the manufacturer in terms of promoting and advertising, packaging, glossy brochures, trade-in policies, etc. then the dealer gets the cable for 25% of retail.
In contrast I pay very little in overhead and sell direct, so my prices are a fraction of the price of a dealer-sale brand. The issue is, and this is true of many types of businesses these days, there is so much choice the customer is overwhelmed. The signal to noise ratio is too much. This is even true of supercars, there are probably a dozen brands of supercars out there you've never heard of unless you're a car nerd. With audio cables there may be a hundred direct-sale brands in the world and many of them have significant flaws, not only in performance, but in design of the product. I've seen cables gushed over here that are a major safety liability, for example power cables that using 12g+ solid-core wire that will certainly crack after relatively few bending cycles. There are other reasons cables can't be bent without failing such as a ribbons placed one-atop the other so when bent they apply massive stress to the connectors and insulation, these will fail quickly. Others will have corrosion issues. So it's kind of a minefield with tons of products out there (not just in cables) that have significant design flaws made by enthusiasts with a lot of passion but poor engineering and manufacturing skills. I've seen tube gear with horrific build quality and many failures, electronics poorly designed and cheaply built, some with significant design flaws that indicate the designer had inadequate knowledge and experience to make a product that's polished enough for sale. OTOH, I've seen dealer-sale "big" brands that offer horrific value for the money for a quasi-luxury experience. Prices high for the sake of being high... and they are also not immune from quality issues.
So like everything, the educated buyer has a big advantage and is likely to get something that fits what they want for a fair price. If you have the means to spent 6-figures in cabling that's what it takes to get top end dealer-sale cables these days, and yes they will probably be very good. However, I and some other brands offer comparable cables for a lot less due to the previously mentioned economic factors. I buy my wire and connectors from the same places many of them do, so by comparable I mean
much closer than you might think. But sorting this out, figuring out who offers a true high value in high-end cables is not always easy. I can say all this and I'm only one out of a hundred voices you'll hear, all claiming that for whatever reason they have the best... so there are pros and cons to the modern market! Technology and globalization has made tools that used to be incredibly expensive an afterthought and the internet has made virtual stores more common than brick and mortar, so the proliferation of businesses of all types is just incredible right now.
