Scott, many cable companies do put their cables on a "cooker" prior to sending them out, because they can tell the difference before and after they are cooked.
Well, um.... either that or they know that it makes absolutely not one technical difference in the world, but it makes great ad copy.
Sorry, I don't buy this line for wire at all. I don't believe in cryo treatments, or hitting wires with hammers, or charged dielectrics, or skin effects at 15kHz, or zapping wires with voltage to change them.
I'll believe in *all* these things if someone can show me that it changes the resistance, inductance or capacitance of wire. But - oddly - the manufacturers uniformly refuse to publish those numbers. Of course, some manufacturers do dope wires to change the physical properties. The result is colored sound, and some people love that. At least
that isn't pseudoscience.
I've been an engineer for almost 30 years. I've also worked in start-up companies and seen up close how marketing people work. A company that has measureable data that proves their claims will always, always publish. They have everything to win if they do. A company without measureable data... hires a big marketing staff. And makes claims that amount to "we believe in fairies and magic."
As I've said before, the audio business needs that. If people didn't drop $10+/ft on speaker wire, there wouldn't be enough profit in this business to attract the engineers and music lovers who really do create the stuff that works. But that doesn't mean we should be gullible about it. There are reasons to wave a dead chicken over a sick person that have nothing to do with the illness, and witch doctors have known it for centuries. And made their living thereby.
