Understanding Cable Break-In

A necessary process:
Cable products require a break-in time for the sound quality to reach their maximum potential. It can be a sonic roller coaster ride during this break-in process. This page is here to explain this process and what you will hear, to encourage patience, later realizing great reward with beautiful and realistic sound.

60 day audition option:
We offer a 60 day audition at the time you make your purchase. 60 days will give you enough time to break-in the cable without feeling rushed. If a return is later desired, please follow our easy return policy.

Avoid premature returns:
We receive very few returns. Most of them have been from customers who did not complete the break-in process. Either they did not understand or made a miss-judgment during the difficult phase of the break-in process. 99% of returns have been from this fact. A pre-mature return have robbed these customers from the sonic beauty our cables have to offer.

Those who have waited out the break-in process were shocked with the improvement in detail, soundstage, tone and resolution achieved with the cables in their system. Many placed more orders, completely replacing every cable in their system with our cable line.

How to effectively break-in your cables:
There are many methods to break-in your cables. The most effective is to use a FM tuner tuned to inter-station "hiss". This "hiss" is white noise, covering the full spectrum of frequencies, breaking in your cables. A CD player on repeat can also be effective. Use a CD with a full spectrum of sound like heavy rock music.

If you are breaking in interconnects, hook the cable between the tuner or CD player and preamplifier or integrated. You can leave these turned off since the input impendence loads the cable, allowing the signal to flow through it. Turn off the source every 12 hours or so and give the cable a 30 minute rest. This "rest" has great effect on the break-in process.

My personal experience:
I have found with almost all products that the sound is good at first, then there is a dip in quality with a sudden steep dip in-between where it is unpleasant to listen to. This dip quickly rises back to a comfortable listening quality with a steady improvement, rising far above the first listen until the end of the break-in process. This whole process generally occurs over a 50 to 200 hour period, sometimes as long as 400 hours with products containing heavy silver content.

Break-In Testimonials:

Required break-in time for our cable line:
Morrow Audio cables require 200 to 400 hours to fully settle down and to produce the full sonic potential of the product. In order to help you know what you will hear during this process, we provide testimonials for the first hours, mid-way hours and then the fully broken-in sonic glory of the product.

The first hours:
When you first hook up your cables, you will hear about 70% of the sonic potential the cables have to offer. Note that the high frequencies is the area most noted.

"I could hear early on how good the clarity and definition were."

"At first, they sound rather lean..."

"The highs were flighty in the beginning, but the promise of something good was there, so I hung in there, and am very, very pleased. Clean as a whistle."

Mid-way through the break-in process:
Between 50 and 100 hours you will experience the "difficult stage" of the break-in process. The sonic potential of the cable drops to 50%. It may be difficult to listen during this time. This is when some of our customers make a pre-mature return, missing out on the full sonic glory of the product.

"The midrange and highs sounded a bit clinical"

"The highs can be a little peaky during the mid-hours of break-in. There is a dip in quality from what was heard during the first hours. Bass and midrange appears to be a little thin."

"Just want to let you know that I am very impressed with the cables. I have close to 200 hours on them. You article on break-in is right on the mark. Sounded really good right out of the box then at 60 hours sounded shrill, and now they are starting to really fill out. Great product!"

After full break-in:
As you reach the end of the break-in process, the frequency extremes fill and smooth out, the midrange bloom returns and the cable takes on a very natural sound presentation.

"As the cables break in, the bass and lower midrange fill out, and the cables become much more extended at the frequency extremes."

"Amazing clarity of sound and deep bass"

"Clear, precise, great rhythm, deep clear bass, inner detail..."

"They have great clarity, presence, extension and just sound beautiful! I believe these are quite special."

"The cables have a very natural sound and do an excellent job of preserving the natural timbre of instruments."

"The soundstage is huge! I'm very happy."

"There is substantially more bass with no loss of clarity/ definition. The midrange/ highs sound very natural."

"I'm amazed at how much the sound improved after the break-in period."

"Great audio cables Mike! BIG improvement on my audio system... soundstage, focus, tone quality, it is all there."

Another consideration:
Understand that the products found on this web site are extremely revealing of the quality of the rest of your system. The "weakest link" in your system will be more exposed as you add our products.

As the resolution of your system increases with the addition of our products, the lesser resolution product will be more and more exposed. This may appear to be a defect of our product but in reality the addition of our product increased the resolution of the system as a whole, exposing the weak link in the system. When the weak link is replaced or corrected, the problem goes away and you are left with a very revealing and realistic system.