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In Reply to: RE: Ultimately... posted by cpotl on October 02, 2015 at 17:33:40
What I don't understand in human behavior is the urge to debate.
Like every other audio equipment builder, I'm walking my path and these are my experiences. You don't have to agree with me if you don't want to. I'm not commercially directed either, I don't have an important need to make someone believe in my claims.
Analogically I don't agree with many EE's and their projects in the web space, but I keep it quiet.
Regards,
Alexander.
Follow Ups:
"What I don't understand in human behavior is the urge to debate."To me, as a physicist, that seems an extraordinary remark. My lifeblood centres around enquiring, questioning, debating. If we stopped asking questions, we would dry up, we would cease to function. If someone makes an assertion, we want to challenge it, subject it to scrutiny, look for flaws or loopholes. Not from any malicious intent, but simply from the desire to get closer to an understanding of the subject.
If someone asserts that they hear some particular phenomenon, it is just second nature for a physicist, or any person with a scientific training, I think, to challenge by supposing the converse, testing how one really knows that what is being claimed is actually true.
That is the weakness, to my mind, of the criticism of double-blind testing. No convincing evidence of its unreliability seems to have been presented. And commonly, those who disparage it have a lot to lose if it were accepted as being a valid experimental technique.
Chris
Edits: 10/03/15
For now it seems the only present way to prove wire directionality is a blind test.
The problem with ordinary blind tests - they destroy the intimate contact you need with music, when you're doing a serious listen. I'm giving some examples:
1. You are probably surrounded by people you don't know, you don't like or who make you anxious. The best way to be tested is to be left alone in the listening room. Only one person who is your best friend must swap the equipment and stop the music.
2. The words "blind test". A test? Knowing you will participate in this kind of activity already gives you anxiety. Music is to be nowhere near a test. By doing this, you mustn't feel in a exam activity, but in a friendly, fun one.
3. You are probably given to listen between many swaps. There is a problem - each individual brain has its limit of musical saturation. After reaching a certain number of listening, the brain gets tired and doesn't care anymore what you're listening. 20 swaps per one day is extremely much. I consider 4 swaps per day a maximum.
4. The "tested" audiophile individual must be in a listening mood. No test attitude, not the slightest traces of anxiety, stress, hunger, aches. These impart the listening quality of the listener.
5. The individual should be tested on his own system, mainly because it's the same system he has claimed the existence of audible differences due to "unusual" interventions.
Let's say I succeed of performing this kind of blind test with all these criteria, how will I prove it's not counterfeit to you?
You still have not given any opinion on the fundamental question.
Why is wire directionality not recognized by the electronics industry as a whole? And I'm not looking for examples form tiny audiophile garage operations. We have billion dollar players in this industry. Show me a professional audio electronics (not wire and cables) product manufacture that promotes wire directionality. Where is the documented evidence of this phenomenon peer reviewed?
Cable direction in my opinion is a phenomenon worth of a whole life research.
I am still currently thinking how to measure it. My first hypothesis would be that a cable passes AC current assymetrically and it's having a crossover point, distorting one half-wave. When reversing the direction, it could distort the half-wave of the other polarity. If this is true, this could be measured. Phase distortion measurements should be done also.
May I ask what is your technical / engineering background beyond the three years of hobbyist amp building you mentioned?
Have you any formal study into AC circuits? You are describing diode effects, do you know how a diode functions on an electron level?
BTW, Formal does not necessarily mean university. This information is widely available in books and even on line. The information is out there for free.
gusser,
For the same reason mentioned here - BS claim.
How do you expect a global group of EEs to believe and furthermore apply the direction of a cable?
There isn't an evidence yet as I know, but I doubt someone has done any serious research on it. Let's face it - highly educated scientists have much "better" things to do than hi-fi audio.
Some hi-fi cable manufacturers like Furutech, Neotech and Audioquest do put arrows on their cables. Although it could be thought as client-bait BS, personally I'm telling that even the cheapest bobbin wire has an optimal direction.
Also with the tendency of selling compressed, artificially recorded music to the mass public using compressed formats, the last thing most recording studio engineers would thing of is the cable direction.
"Let's face it - highly educated scientists have much "better" things to do than hi-fi audio."
Well yes, I agree there is some truth to that statement. What difference does it make to the average MP3 download?
But this isn't music going through a wire, it's electrical energy. And there are far more critical and sensitive areas of electronics than baseband audio. In fact baseband audio is the lowest end of the entire EM spectrum.
So don't you agree while there is little incentive in consumer audio to study wire directionality, there could be huge gains in other fields of electronics.
If this was a known phenomenon, even of it had no commercial application, we would have discovered it by now.
You grossly underestimate the current state of electrical engineering knowledge. You have been experimenting with audio amps for three years now? Do you honestly beleive this has never been questioned or analyzed in the past 100 years?
"But this isn't music going through a wire, it's electrical energy. And there are far more critical and sensitive areas of electronics than baseband audio. In fact baseband audio is the lowest end of the entire EM spectrum."
Yes. And maybe something else? Let's not think of it so simple.
"So don't you agree while there is little incentive in consumer audio to study wire directionality, there could be huge gains in other fields of electronics."
It could be.
"You grossly underestimate the current state of electrical engineering knowledge. You have been experimenting with audio amps for three years now? Do you honestly beleive this has never been questioned or analyzed in the past 100 years?"
I do not. But what I'm sure of is that large quantities of research information aren't available to the general public. In the meantime, lots of research is going on. Maybe this phenomenon was questioned, even before 100 years. But maybe it didn't lead to measurable results back then. As it does now. And so it was maybe abandoned as idea.
"If this was a known phenomenon, even of it had no commercial application, we would have discovered it by now."
I'm not sure. It's the human skepticism that prevents us.
"Have you any formal study into AC circuits? You are describing diode effects, do you know how a diode functions on an electron level?"
Of course I'm describing a diode effect. Why not imagine the wire as PN junctions connected in series. Impuritiy like copper oxide II is considered a P semiconductor.
OK if the wire had PN junctions, what is the forward voltage? Once you exceed the forward voltage drop, the diode is switched on. Now consider the noise floor of your amplifier. The forward voltage of the diode must be above the noise floor or you would not hear any distortion caused by said diode.
Furthermore we often hear that one must have a very resolving amplifier to hear these effects. Well an SET amp first has very poor PSRR and the same hard core audiophiles that use these most often insist on AC filament heating. So the noise floor of an SET is anything but "resolving".
Furthermore if these random doides in wire resulting from sloppy manufacturing exist, what makes them oriented in the same polarity? Surely some would be forward and some reversed. Now how does that work?
These are just two problems with the micro diode theory. There are many more.
How do you even know what research is going on. What technical journals do you receive? Why would the discovery of wire directionality be some secret? Why would the engineering community suppress it? The costs would be minuscule, both in wire manufacturing as well as application. All that needs to be done is to add an arrow symbol to all the other lettering that is now ink-jetted onto the wire as its extruded. The end users would merely need to follow the arrow. Automated machines could easily do this. So again why would industry suppress such a low cost improvement as labeling wire direction?
"How do you even know what research is going on. What technical journals do you receive? Why would the discovery of wire directionality be some secret? Why would the engineering community suppress it? The costs would be minuscule, both in wire manufacturing as well as application. All that needs to be done is to add an arrow symbol to all the other lettering that is now ink-jetted onto the wire as its extruded. The end users would merely need to follow the arrow. Automated machines could easily do this. So again why would industry suppress such a low cost improvement as labeling wire direction?"I know little and I am sure of it. What about you?
"Why would the discovery of wire directionality be some secret?"
Why not? Who cares about it? What if it's only apparent in music and insignificant in the other domains.
And finally, why would I care if the world industry suppresses such a phenomenon? It seems they don't need it. But it works for me. It works for my audio colleagues. It seems to work for some audiophiles from the whole world.And yet, why are you trying to portray the current technology as so great? Did we humans learn everything we can? No, we have no idea what surprises are left for us to reveal. So why be so confident? What if many things we learned in physics, electronics are BS? What if we are trying to simplify a complicated world through our prism of limited knowledge?
I agree audio is mostly based on EE, but IMHO mostly - not entirely. To achieve further improvements that are unreachable from only EE, oscilloscopes and fourier analysis, one must make the step ahead. Into the unknown, where only your ears will tell.
Edits: 10/04/15 10/04/15
"Of course I'm describing a diode effect. Why not imagine the wire as PN junctions connected in series. Impuritiy like copper oxide II is considered a P semiconductor."
If this really were occurring to any significant extent then it would presumably easily be verifiable by means of measurements. Much more reliable than putting the signal through a distorting amplifier, followed by a probably even more distorting loudspeaker, and then through a pair of ears with the associated psychological factors associated with the brain.
And if one did believe that the wire had a directionality caused by some sort of diode effects, then surely one would then want to use two parallel (well actually, anti-parallel) runs of wire, to balance up the two directions?
Personally, I don't think any of this is remotely plausible, but if one did believe it, then anti-parallel wires would be the way to go, I suppose! (OMG, doesn't that even go beyond someone else's "parallel runs of wiring" that we sometimes have to endure on these forums?!!!?)
Chris
And it isn't measurable yet. At least not with the tools most of us measure. I'm still thinking about how to do it.
"And it isn't measurable yet. At least not with the tools most of us measure. I'm still thinking about how to do it."
Well, as I've argued, I think it is overwhelmingly more likely that there is no effect there to be measured, and that the difference in sound between the two wire directions is imagined.
However, let us suppose for a moment that you were right, and that there were indeed some significant asymmetry in the wire. Is your idea then that with the wire oriented one way, there is a positive advantage, in comparison to an "ideal" symmetrical wire? Or is your idea instead that an asymmetrical wire is an unfortunate evil, but that with one particular orientation it does less harm to the audio signal than when it has the opposite orientation?
If the latter, then wouldn't that suggest you ought to try the experiment of putting two runs of wire together, with a "positively oriented" wire in parallel with a "negatively oriented" wire? Then, you would eliminate the asymmetry that you believe to be present. Of course you could also achieve a symmetrical arrangement by connecting two equal lengths of wire in series, one oriented oppositely to the other.
So there are two further configurations that you could try out with your listening tests!
Unfortunately, I think the dream that you will uncover deep truths that transcend known physics and electrical engineering by playing around with a home stereo system is just that; a dream. Conceivably you might learn something about human psychology and the way the brain processes its sensory inputs.
Chris
Chris,
I suggest the second thought. Each wire has its inevitable direction.
Your experiment of putting two wires with inverted directions in parallel sounds interesting and I will try it. What keeps me from applying it into practice is the double cost.
I will share my results when possible.
How do you handle interconnect cables or speaker wire where both conductors are optimized in the same direction? Because that's no good in your world. The return conductor must be opposite to the signal conductor as the current is flowing in the opposite direction.
Have you taken that problem into account?
If I cannot reverse a commercial cable, I leave it alone and consider it as a irreversible limitation. Interconnects have an optimal direction, even with the shield disconnected. I'm an owner of Furutech 13S and I found out the manufacturers didn't go wrong with the arrow pointing direction.I've also split Audioquest rocket 33 speaker cable in the past. By reversing directions, to my disappointment I found out it only got worse and the original direction was best. Audioquest also support wire directivity theory.
One of the reasons I started building my own cables is to be sure they won't have wrong with directions.
I have a pair of unshielded handmade RCA cables that have a very different tonality when plugged in reverse. This can be an advantage for different systems.
Edits: 10/05/15
"One of the reasons I started building my own cables is to be sure they won't have wrong with directions."
It's interesting to me that you are concerned about the direction of wire but you use triode wired pentodes that are clearly not as linear as true triodes.
In my mind we should take care of everything that is clearly understood before we move on to the other things.
Just saying.....
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Judging from my personal experience, cable distortion is audibly different from tube distortion and one doesn't entirely mask or compensate the other.
Despite this, on paper 6P45S wired in triode is very, very linear and rivals many triode. Please "google" its curves and check it out.
Have you got a set of curves better than this? This is all I could find.
"Despite this, on paper 6P45S wired in triode is very, very linear and rivals many triode. Please "google" its curves and check it out."
The spacing gets wider to the left and narrower to the right.
The plate voltage changes 200 volts in one direction but it only changes 160 volts in the other direction for the same grid change. That will cause a lot of harmonic distortion.
That is not "very, very linear". It's not even close to what I would call linear.
A 45 is very, very linear. A 2a3 is very, very linear. Hell, even a 300b is very, very linear compared to what you have.
Linear is when the plate voltage changes the same amount, left vs. right following the load line, as the grid voltage is changed from the idle point.
Sorry, maybe you have a better looking set of curves.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Yes, my mistake.
It can be considered linear only in a narrow region, swinging 39V RMS.
This translates into ~0,6W RMS output, which is enough for me to listen to a wire's direction.
Yes, you are right.39 VRMS is about 55 volts peak. 110 volts peak to peak. The tube is quite linear for that portion but becomes non-linear beyond that.
What speakers do you use?
.6 watts can be plenty, depending on the speakers, to listen to music not just wire direction.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Edits: 10/06/15
Currently the amplifier is wired to these sepakers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaV4e9ikNgs
My speakers are about 97db for one watt. Because of the gain structure of my system I can only get 2 watts from my 300b amplifiers. I only play midrange and treble with my tube amplifiers crossing to a SS amp at 200Hz into a pair of JBL 2231's.
That gives me a peak volume (assuming I'm in the reverberant sound field and I am) of 103db. This means if the peak over average range of the music I listen to is 16db, I can listen at 87db average.
Your speakers are 95db for 2 watts. That's 92db one watt. So with two speakers and .6 watts per speaker that's just a little over 92db peak total.
Listening to the same music as me, your average listening level (while not clipping the peaks) would be just a little over 76db.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
"I have a pair of unshielded handmade RCA cables that have a very different tonality when plugged in reverse."
Try running a 20hz to 20khz sweep at 100mv in both directions. REW is free software that can do this with any PC based sound system as well as plot any differences.
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