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In Reply to: RE: Let me ask you something: posted by gusser on January 31, 2013 at 10:17:16
"Whatever dielectric compression phenomena exist between Teflon and other standard dielectrics are well below the threshold of audibility and practical measurement. Practical measurement meaning the standard tools used in designing electronic audio products."
You have no idea what the threshold of audibility is about in anything. That is one thing I am certain about. Because you can't even design an experiment that removes all other distortions and leaves you with nothing but the one being tested.
When a massless building finally comes to pass, then you can talk about the other small mass loadings. Same with a pure amp. A FRACTION of another type of distortion can be heard in the presence of something very large if they're not too much the same type. And distortion is more than THD and IMD. There's dynamics involved, not just steady state old school measurements. You assume way too much. Even if deck chairs are thrown off the Titanic to slow the sinking, something is still observed in this process: The deck chairs are gone! Conclude at your own peril.
Don't assume the situation hasn't come to pass that stink in small chemical concentration can't be smelly in the presence of pure oxygen, either. This, like your analogy, is also a red herring. You haven't shown anything except how you pass judgment on the truly untested results. There is nothing concrete about your own statements.
It's your judgment and your opinion based on lack of experiencing it. Say it like that and I will agree with you. I have placed no judgment on it as no scientist should. A suggestive idea is what you have. That's all. Heard all the time.
You haven't taught me a thing on this whole escapade. I doubt you will. I have not changed my mind like you won't change yours. That I can guarantee.
Follow Ups:
"Because you can't even design an experiment that removes all other distortions and leaves you with nothing but the one being tested."You assume I don't know the process and theory of cancellation? Albeit at the levels we are talking about here I doubt it would be very effective.
You say I make flawed statements because I have not tested what I claim.
Fair enough.
But I will say you seem to lack much practical experience in electronics design. I have been in the audio/video/computer design business for 30 years now. That does not count my pre university hobbiest experience. While I cannot say 100% for sure that Teflon tube sockets do not make an audible difference due to lack of trying it, I can fairly accurately predict they don't.
Someone who is strictly a book worm, no matter how highly educated, will not understand that because they have no practical experience to fall on.
Where do you stand in that?
I realize one need not test every theory proposed provided that someone else has and published credible data of their work. But I sincerely doubt I or you will find and credible data that Teflon tube sockets make a audio amplifier sound different. I could be wrong but until I see something to the contrary outside of audiophile listening reports I will stick by my initial conclusion.
And I am not a scientist. Never claimed I was. I am an electrical engineer. I am paid to solve practical problems and get things done. Not ponder these minuscule interactions that occur deep to the right of the decimal point. Unless of course they do make a difference. If you are a scientist then it is your job to do exactly that. And when you discover something that does make a difference in engineering, you report it to us and we the engineering community heed it.
It takes both of us to move technology forward. Always has.
Edits: 02/03/13 02/03/13 02/03/13
I have been involved in engineering audio projects as an amateur for about 40 years (since I was 12 years old). I have no professional experience in audio except to start my own audio transformer business with not enough success soon enough.
I have designed speakers using great measurement tools and simulators available to me. But the design was still from an amateur, and other speaker designers could do more with driver mods than I could. Funny that I would try to modify some highly rated speakers, though.
I have designed and built literally hundreds of amplifiers, SS PP and SE to tube PP and SE. I have experimented with parts cheap and expensive, and find some correlation in price, but something rather disconnected often in the correlation. IOW, you have to try and see what it is every time.
I have a strong background in electrical test and measurement as my day job once was. I am now unemployed as an EE. I am trying to be a better diplomat in my stressed out manner. I have been involved on the internet for about 25 years, since the days of newsgroups like rec.audio.
I also have been into high-end analog, one of the co-designers of Gary Pimm's phono stage. I also have been lately into high rez digital, and have been fascinated more by 24 bit audio over 16 bit than high bit rates. That's another story.
I have for a living done baseband, IF, analog and digital, RF, and microwave circuits. I have designed and analyzed and measured many things. I have done work in microwave metrology. I spent 25 years in a leading electronic test and measurement company as a manufacturing engineer and sometime lab development engineer.
I used to be well known here, but I have been lately trying to be anonymous due to past digressions.
Well, that's a quick positively spoken biography. Then there's my dark side :-)
I won't disclose it here but my memory is pretty good.
If...a dumb ass is in the woods talking and nobody was there to hear him; was what he said still stupid? Assuming there was a foot of snow!
It is a matter of philosophical perspective how you want to conclude anything, if you conclude anything. Me, I'm not sure about anything these days. I do have my bets based on past results and probability. Probably I will die never hearing the effects of teflon sockets. That's only a guess.
Probably I will die never hearing the effects of teflon sockets.
I thought it was really interesting that early on in this thread Gusser specifically called out the unlikely nature that any effect hear was electrical. He said:
The electrical attributes of Teflon are nil at audio frequencies anyway. So the benefit is strictly mechanical.
40 or so posts later the discussion is still on the electrical characteristics of teflon. Why hasn't anyone paid attention to that 800 pound mechanical gorilla in the corner Gusser alluded to?
Tubes tend to be microphonic which means they pick up and amplify vibrations. I like to call it acoustical feedback. Now lets forget whether feedback is good or evil and just accept that it exists. Surely how it is applied (remember it is acoustical feedback) can be altered by the the materials / methods used to couple the tube to the chassis.
dave
There might be a minuscule effect on vibration as I can empirically see that Teflon is better at mechanical damping that ceramic.I completely missed that.
You two guys, Dave and Commentary, do exhibit impressive analysis skills. I sincerely hope both of you put that talent to good use in the real world. Because to spite the fun we are having here, worrying about this level of cause and effect in a tube amp project is rather silly, IMHO.
Edits: 02/03/13
I spoke with my friend, a research psychologist out of Princeton last night. I ask him my toughest questions, and he finally convinced me about the onus of proof about something unproven and that which cannot be unproven (this is where science and religion collide).
If the item cannot be proven over many years, it falls into a default state that nothing yet changes current thinking. Seems obvious to me now. That means all evidence points to all amps sound the same. Science is not involved much in audio at all. It's in this religious state that hasn't been taken seriously to try to be changed by scientists, and for scientists to all agree on.
So, I poke fun at the defects in ABX testing as is and offer a new approach (AAA..AX testing), but no one wants to change that poor discerning old method involving bad human memory. But it would be up to someone to publish a real study showing the evidence has been wrong and that we still can hear different amps apart. No one with true credibility has really taken it up and clearly refuted the old paradigm for sure so we can move on to improve things without that cloud hanging over all high-end amp designers.
So, old school remains valid. Old school ABX remains accepted. Surely, we can do better about this situation, but no one is really going to stake their reputation on it, it simply appears.
That is how I see it, anyway. No need to argue about this too much.
Chances are you will die before that. Is it possible to hear the differences? Yes, but not me. I dont want to, but that is just me. I would choose them such as Yamamoto sockets because they might offer better contact qualities or construction ease. I have seen cracked ceramic sockets because of over-torquing! But I have heard of soft sockets because of over heating. Sound wise to me there is not a pinch of puppy shit between the two. Truth is I miss Cinch sockets they had the bite of a dead snapping turtle!
made by Belton in Micanol are pretty good at biting....
yes and do they sound better than Teflon or Ceramic...hehe???
that may be a different thread than this one...
have fun,
and also thanks for your commentary 'commentary'...
and thanks for your good work Dave Sagle...
-3db
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