HDMI Cable Burn In Is a Real Thing (no joke)

Backstory:
I'm currently using 2 new DACs that both sound better to me than the Yggdrasil A2/og. i finallily found my upgrade! Both have similar tone though, but of course not identical because they're not R2R. I'll try to write impressions of both of these DACs but that will take a lot of time and i'm limited for time right now.

2 DACs:
APS modded PS Audio Directstream mkii
Chord TT2 (without mScaler yet)





Yes if you make a DAC that lights up I will cover it in duct tape no matter how much it costs

At first i did not have the TT2, just the DS and Yggdrasil A2/og. I tried various HDMI cables mostliy cheap ones but then invested in some nice ones from Audiolund. The Audiolund "True Silver" OCC silver HDMI cable, which is as thiick as a garden hose.

When I first plugged it in, i was really disappointed because it sounded worse than a $10 Cable Matters HDMI from Amazon (the braided one, not the molded one). Noticeablly flatter and less resolving. More dull. A group on a Discord really encouraged me to burn it in, but i have no secondary system to do this and I didn’t' want to listen to it while it burned in for hundreds of hours to sound good (while putting up with the inferior sound).

i belive in cable burn in, though I've never heard it before, but it's the kind of thing where, if you are smart in this hobby, you read people's impressions and figure out who you agree with - people who's preferences align with yours, people who you think are smart, and then you can trust their impressions about things. I onliy really criticaliy listen when working on headphones or tube rolling or headphone cable rolling or something like that, the only way i'd notice regular analog interconnect cable burn in is if i kept one brand new and then used a switcher to switch back and forth between the brand new one and a burnt in one and i don’t care enough to do that.

So while i believe cable burn in happens due to trusting people via the above method, I have never heard it and did not think it could make a digital cable of all things go from sounding worse than an $10 cable to greatness. In other words, I thouht cable burn in would be subtle and even more suble if it happened with digital cables, which i am skepticcal of the audiophile ones int eh first place. But i was proven wrong on both.

The Point:

I was wrong, HDMI cable burn in is a very real thing, at least with cables this thick with evidently this many wires in them.

I got the chance to borrow a Chord TT2 for an extended period of time so I used that time to keep the DS plugged in with the Audiolund True Silver HDMI and also played music from a "burn in playlist" at night off an iphone i don't use using Jplay so it was easy to just hit play/pause when not using my rig.

And I was able to compare the TT2 to the DS very easily because both go into a 2 input switcher so i can flip a switch and go from one DAC to the other. At first, with the HDMI cable to the DS not burnt in or using the Cable Matters cable, the TT2 was just as resolving as the DS (without the mscaler, which has just arrived but is still in a box) but the TT2 was way way more holographic making the DS sound flat.

But over time, the DS has become more and more resolving compared to the TT2 even after adding an Audio Envy BNC cable to the TT2. I used to naturally just switch to the TT2 when listening because of that holographic sound, but all of a sudden, I find myself switching to the DS because it is full of nuances the TT2 seems to gloss over. The TT2 is still way more holographic though. i find that to be the best test of gear, better than a/bing. Which do you wind up listening to when just listening to music?

But having a reference to compare to made it easy to notice the changes in the HDMI cable, there's no chance this was me "adjusting" or "brain burn in" etc. I've had a control in this experiment we could say. The TT2 stayed the same, while the DS made very significant improvements.

What the implixations of this are to other digital cables i don't know. I have not noticed burn in with the Audio Envy BNC cable for the TT2, but it does sound better than the Bluejeans BNC i was using before. The BJ gave the TT2 a slithgh bump in the upper mids and the AE seems to have gotten rid of that. And this is comparing back and forth between TT2 and DS. So a rather controlled expriment, not just me hearing things over time.

I think it is worth getting a good digital cable (and burning it in before you give up on it) if you have other major parts of your rig set and you want to mazimize things. Or if you have invested a lot in a DAC alrady an want the best in it. But I would not recommend buying anything other than Bluejeans level for a Modi or something. Or if your system is in flux and you have other things to invest in that matter more.

I just thought this would be of interest. Maybe not worth a thread, but there's no where great to put this that would be worth the time to write it up.