interesting experience recently. i moved my system around, and needed
longer speaker cables (25'). I had been using Ocos, an 8' pair, and
liked it, but it's no longer available. i also needed something that
was relatively small in diameter so i could run it either under my rug,
or run it under the floor, via the basement. just to get things up and
running i bought some inexpensive monoprice 12 gauge speaker wire, which
sounded ok, but rather raw. it did improve a bit after the first week
or so, but still pretty rough.
then i found a dealer who still had some Ocos, and could make a 25'
pair. it was expensive, but exactly what i thought i wanted, so I took
the plunge. when i first hooked it up, it sounded ok, definitely not as
rough as the monoprice, but also very flat sounding, almost lifeless and
devoid of dynamics. figured it needed to burn in, so i left it alone
and tried not to listen critically.
two weeks in, and it still sounded broken, and the right speaker sounded
much louder, with the image skewed to that side as well. granted, that
speaker is in a corner, so you'd expect some emphasis on that speaker,
but i'd never heard anything quite like this. i began to suspect that
maybe they'd mis-terminated it, and the speakers were out of phase, so i
swapped the +/- on one speaker. center image immediately improved, so i
left it that way for a while, but it sounded disjointed, bass suffered,
and i realized they'd been wired correctly after all.
so i swapped +/- again, and voila! everything came into focus, center
image remained, bass improved, tightened up now, not overly boomy like
previously, and the sound had depth and space to it, and the sense of
effortless openness and neutrality i associated with my prior pair of
Ocos. by this time i'd been listening for a good 3 weeks, probably
75-100 hours.
so yes, cable does change over time; whether that's "burn in" or some
other term i can't say.
--
4 TB Drobo-->FW 800-->mac mini-->Ethernet
Transporter--> Wireworld Eclipse 6 coax-->Meridian G61
G61--> Nordost Red Dawn-->Primare 30.3
Primare-->Ocos--Vienna Acoustics Beethoven/Maestro
------------------------------------------------------------------------
netchord's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=21002
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=103502