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In Reply to: RE: Education and growth posted by gusser on September 22, 2015 at 12:31:47
I know most have no background in critical thinking about human subjects studies.
I can give you academic references for everything I said about methods, but they will not be in SMPTE journals.
EE is not somehow separate from all other human knowledge gathering enterprises.
It strikes entirely possible to demonstrate that people can hear directionality. The guy you're reporting to the Feds for AC cables seems to have done that in the Sprey/Slagle encounter.
What would constitute "proof" for you that some people can hear the directionality, in at least some contexts?
And if it is demonstrated that at least Pierre and Ron can do this say 8 or 9 out of 10 times, but nobody can produce a journal article citing measurements where does that leave things?
I put "proof" in quotes because I don't believe that you know what a proof entails and how that cf fits in with different research paradigms and I would hesitate to use that term in any research involving musical audio perceptions. There are are too many variables to permit establishing a logico-mathematic proof as you likely envision it.
To you. it is rambling because I am beyond your intellectual comfort zone and level of training, but the fact is your approach to the question is lazy and kind of blindered.
There are huge libraries of books on the research method issues I am talking about. Maybe a few EEs read some of them, but most did not. As I continue argue, EEs are no experts on the last 100 years of scientific thought and really suck at human research questions.
I gave you a few references and keywords. Check them out, even on Wikipedia. Kuhn and Vienna Circle for starters. This is a major field of research and scholarship, definitely related to this discussion, and it may help you out to learn more. No joke.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Follow Ups:
The only way I can think of to prove someone can hear directionality is a DBT. Yet you say those are not accurate for certain reasons I can agree with.How about this person tries and teach us what to listen for? I saw one mention here where is might be the attack of instruments? Well a scope can measure that. And today we can capture that clip in a workstation at 192khz / 24bit and analyze all the harmonics at length. Hell, with some effort we could even capture at megasamples and 64 or more bits with custom hardware and software. Surely if there is a difference in the risetime it will be found in such an analysis.
But there again is where I see a problem. Any natural sound has to travel through our atmosphere to a microphone. The atmosphere alone sharply limits acoustic rise times. The microphone has a defined mechanical response limit. And certianly the electronic recording process has a dynamic range as well as noise floor limit. And last we come back to the mechanical speaker and once again our atmosphere between that and the ear.
So what ever risetime difference caused by wire direction will have to be larger in magnitude than all the limitations and distortions listed above.
Based on known physics, at least for me, that all seems rather implausible.
And this so called manufacturing mistake that led to an example of hearing wire directionality was just that. Hardly a controlled experiment. We have no documentation of the surroundings or other external factors that may have influenced the results.
Edits: 09/22/15 09/22/15 09/22/15
Some reasonable comments here.
I don't know the answers but I like the thinking about the question more than throwing it out as totally unfounded.
As I mentioned, this directionality business sounds like total hogwash to me, but I'll go along for the ride to see what I can learn, about audio people and their games if nothing else.
For physics insights, I say find electronics materials experts. There are many super high powered people in this field and we never get to hear about 99% of the research...most of which I couldn't care less about, to be sure!
Pierre and Ron are actual trained engineering scientists and very smart, if unorthodox, guys. it would be interesting to know what they have to say about testing this stuff on an empirical level.
I know these guys understand scientific method, at least on an engineering level. And I know they don't mind playing with these limits and perhaps tweaking a few noses. I think they are encouraging thought and learning in their own ways, aside from selling some oddball tweak items.
If anything sicks from my endless long winded diatribe, I hope it is the failings of DBT from within a traditional scientific perspective. It is bad science with loose variables. No explanatory power, no validity beyond that unique case.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
"For physics insights, I say find electronics materials experts. There are many super high powered people in this field and we never get to hear about 99% of the research...most of which I couldn't care less about, to be sure!"If there is any substance to wire directionality and only these top research guys are involved, still where is the commercial application?
Surely if there is something there we would know by now. Even if it has no commercial value, such a discovery would still be featured in most science and engineering journals. Just look st the controversy it stirs up here. This would be ground breaking news to the electrical industry as a whole.
That leaves two possibilities I can think of.
1) It has been formally investigated on the level you suggest and nothing of any relevance has been found.
2) Such a discovery would serve no commercial purpose so nobody will fund the research.
In either case it remains and audiophile legend. As for my interest, that's not my job. I deal in applications, not materials physics. If this becomes a new recommended practice to worry about wire direction based on solid accredited reviewed research, then most of the engineering community will comply.
But I don't see that happening.
"Pierre and Ron are actual trained engineering scientists"
I'm not so sure of that. Can you provide background?
P.S. The kind of background an employer or venture capital firm would require. Not some audiophile magazine bio!
Edits: 09/22/15 09/22/15
I took the decision of adding a new thread about the finding of a wire's direction in the Cables forum. Judging from the debate here, I expect an angry crowd with flying eggs in the other thread, but I don't mind. I hope the debate here lowers a bit and transfers to the Cables forum.
As cpotl said, that the perfect place for that discussion. I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised by the response.
A little update on the wire direction thing.
I am kinda at an impasse, playing around I can only make a guess as to which direction sounds better, I can't tell a difference.
That is a problem, if I can't choose a "better" direction, then I have no hope in collecting any meaningful data.
The only reason why I pursued the test was that my comment about alternating current wasn't entirely accurate.
I stated that the wires were passing AC, when in reality some parts of the amp are not reversing direction of the current so much as they are modulating it.
I realize that sometimes this is a matter of semantics, nonetheless, the current on the primary side of an output transformer varies in current, rather then alternate, which implies that the current switches direction.
My system must not be resolving enough. ;)
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
Garg0yle,
Thank you for sharing.
If you wish to make another test, an unshielded RCA cable is a good candidate.
"I took the decision of adding a new thread about the finding of a wire's direction in the Cables forum. Judging from the debate here, I expect an angry crowd with flying eggs in the other thread, but I don't mind. I hope the debate here lowers a bit and transfers to the Cables forum."Since they apparently explicitly forbid scientific discussion of testing claims about cable differences on the Cables forum, and they forbid anyone who suggests that cable differences might not be audible, it seems likely that over there you will just encounter evangelicals and fellow travellers who will happily reaffirm each other's collective beliefs.
Chris
Edits: 09/23/15
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