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In Reply to: RE: Ignore the doubters! posted by Garg0yle on September 20, 2015 at 09:27:18
I am not simply rabble rousing, although I may belong in the lounge at DiyA on the subject of science! There is some crazy thuggish groupthink on some forums, although AA is more open minded as are many on DiyA, which is why I occasionally pop in.
This is an area I have spent my life studying. Tens of thousands of hours, 35 semesters in university, 100s of books, tons of audio gear, and more interaction with working audio people worldwide than most can claim.
So if you want to believe in trendy in-group buzzwords from an audio forum over me, go ahead. No skin off my nose.
Ask Dave Slagle to tell you the story where he intentionally reversed the direction of one wire in a batch of coils he made for Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade, without telling them...and they caught it!
I first heard about directionality of wires from Pierre 20 years ago. I have no doubt that the worked hard to develop this acuity and he seems to be consistent in his ability to identify it.
Pierre's design partner was/is? an actual working physicist in a top government research facility, by the way,
Personally, I don't worry about this and I will never put a wood chip on a transformer. I have bigger problems than these.
When I discuss science and its role in knowledge systems, I am speaking from a position of a reasonable level of education and understanding. And decades of fieldwork observing audiophiles and their work.
Empirically-based, experimental studies such as that undertaken by the OP can yield a useful body of practical knowledge. Moreso than abstract physics discussions in absence of any direct experience, I would venture.
It's a complicated world out there, especially when music listening is the subject and goal.
We can "know that" something works without "knowing how" something works. Most of our knowledge is like that.
When I read the OPs post, it seems he came a long way from zero, with a lot of work and found out a lot of very useful and valid ideas.
So, I think I'm doing y'all a favor by cautioning against sweeping generalizations to specific cases built on words on a page or screen.
You just don't appreciate it yet.
Listen, the role of a "model." which is what the textbook case is, is to compare it to reality and look for differences and gaps...and, if found, you adjust the model! Not the other way around.
In this case, music amplification, I think it is reasonable that listening experience should be included.
Why do you think I am on audio forums talking about this? If I want to fight, I can go have it out with my insane neighbor.
PS--And I would exercise double caution in making "scientific" claims about human music listening, because this isn't a science and never will be. Electronics is a science, if far more complex than electronics 101 would have one believe, but what people do with it is not.
What I react to is using bogus notions like "expectation bias" as a priori shoot-downs. This is something that needs to be proven in specific cases, even if you buy the theoretical reasoning, which I do not in the form it is given.
Isn't it the case that a generalized belief in expectation bias is itself an expectation bias? Think about it.
Anyway, I'm happy to share some of my hard-earned academic knowledge and save y'all $250k in Ivy League tuition.
I support what the OP is doing and congratulate him on his work, even if, as I plainly stated, I personally don't buy some of it. How can I say he is "wrong" if it is right for him. I'll bet that system sounds really good!
BTW, my good friend Nanana has also studied philosophy of science and the human sciences so he would be generally in agreement with me.
I'm just trying to hip you all to major trends in 20th century intellectual history that are being completely bypassed in most audio discussions I encounter, especially the ones that purport to be "serious."
Read my sig and have a nice day.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Follow Ups:
What is the role of repeatability in your model?
I think it is a very basic idea which has been proven to work.
Too much is never enough
There is no exact repeatability in human research. See comments elsewhere.
This is an idea borrowed from traditional conceptions of empirical physics that cannot apply to live thinking creative humans.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
What than, is the role of Statistics?
Too much is never enough
Statisics is a useful _descriptive_ tool in many applications. Purely descriptive.
You can not reliably establish causality with statistics, although it can point out unrecognized irregularites in method and assumptions. There can always be a co-occurring factor or variable that is shielded from view
Establishing causality, in other words "explanation" in cases where the use of the notion is appropriate, relies on control of all variables and research design, not the tallying up method.
Statistics has no strict predictive value beyond the data set is is used on. Anything can happen in the future.
Where it is counterproductive in listening studies is that each individual response and experience is translated into a generic digit for tabulation. The uniqueness of the data and its connection to context is erased, so that you can do the "general" calculation and come up with general statements about what was observed to occur.
This makes the use of statistics a serious impediment to understanding. The explanation as far, as it can be inferred through analysis, is not in the yes/no handwave, it is in the minds of the people and their complex, recursive relationship the situation of the experience.
This gets thrown out in statistical studies.
There is a place for statistics in empirical description, but the way it is used in human studies is often very destructive and block any possibility of coming to terms with the culturally-embedded event it is used on.
In archaeology, I might use Statistics to analyse the distribution of trash at an ancient occupation site to see if there are any patterns I need to look at, but it won't tell me much about the trash itself, the lives of people who threw it there, their cultural attitudes toward trash, or why they chose those spots to dump. but it might be a useful way to structure some empirical data to help guide my interpretation into conformance with the empirical evidence.
Does this make any sense? Statistics is generalized empirical description in short form. Is it useful? Depends on the task at hand.
It won't tell me what any one persons listening experience is/was, if that is the goal.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
As I said above, you seem yo be identifying the flaws of human perception. For example the idea that what you ate or hearing bad news right before a DBT will skew the results.
I agree and I think most other skeptics here do as well.
But this just further proves reports of these unfounded electrical phenomena are based in the flaws of human perception.
Electrical tests for wire directionality are repeatable and quantifiable. So it seems that's all we have at this time to go on because in your own words, DBT's are no good.
> But this just further proves reports of these unfounded electrical
> phenomena are based in the flaws of human perception.
>
Not flaws, "variability." This is a feature, not a flaw!
> Electrical tests for wire directionality are repeatable and quantifiable.
> So it seems that's all we have at this time to go on because in your own
> words, DBT's are no good.
>
Yep, it is an uncertain world out there, Gusser.
Isn't it exciting and interesting?
You have no idea what empirical research is actually out there, so don't
front.
In the field of human research, I happen to be a highly-trained expert.
By audio forum standards, I am Carl Sagan in social research and
anthropology around here, but in all modesty, I can hang anywhere with
just about anybody in this discipline.
You seem to be arguing from a position of prior belief and some sort of
curmudgeonly technician philosophy alone.
What would it take to convince you to change you mind? I suspect nothing
will.
That is not a scientific attitude. That is fundamentalist religion.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
"That is not a scientific attitude. That is fundamentalist religion."
No, you have that backwards. It is the wire directionality folks who are of religion.
My scientific attitude should be quite obvious. I want to see credible evidence that wire has directionality in audio and video circuits. Beyond that I don't even see any evidence it is a factor in any area of electronics.
You keep pressing ME to do the research. Well I am not qualified to do that level of physics. No more are deep theoretical physicists qualified to design practical circuits for solving real problems. So it's up to them to publish the evidence. If and when I see it, I will decide to apply it in my field. I think I speak for the EE's as a large group here.
When your poster boy scientists provide evidence that wire directionality can improve electronic circuits, I have no doubt this work will be applied where advantageous.
> No, you have that backwards. It is the wire directionality folks who are of religion.
They at least are going on experience, you are guessing and projecting in the abstract based on a static worldview.
Sounds like "Gimme that Old Time Religion" to me!
> > My scientific attitude should be quite obvious.
Your scientific pretensions you mean. You have not done exhaustive research in any way, practical or literature based. Science is not only applying published research to cases while sitting in your bedroom thinking about it, even if one has read widely.
Theory building and testing is a far more interactive and complex process. It must start with ground-up experiments not published papers. Most science is working from particular cases to hypothetical general statements. You cut that part out entirely.
A study of listening effects of wire directionality should start with listening for this effect, no? First you must investigate and then see whether there is any evidence or not. I gave you the chance to audition some AudioNote silver litz on loan and you weaseled out on the opportunity to possibly confront your untested assumptions.
This is not the attitude of somebody who wants to learn and do science. This is entrenchment in a professional society mentality bunker.
I am not sure about your understanding of the theoretical basis of scientific inquiry, which is why I asked if you have any actual education in this area?
No, right? That's fair because few people, including EEs, have.
You likely learned what I learned in high school physics, Logical Positivism, aka lcgical empiricism, aka lab methods, probably without going into any of the serious deficiencies of the paradigm. Read up on Vienna Circle Positivism and see if it sounds familiar. It will.
And note that the Positvists say that there is no knowledge without EXPERIENCE.
Then read the critiques and waffling on this position since the 1930s when the last holdouts of the strong statement were thrown into exile by the War. Relativity and quantum mechanics dealt this a death blow decades before that. They relied heavily on the early Logic work of Wittgenstein, well after he repudiated much of its import by shifting to a more cultural basis for knowledge. Look it up. Read about it. Learn what it is.
Nowadays, this classical Positivist position is primarily of historical interest in Philosophy class, because it has been largely superseded by theories that match reality and the actual enterprise of scientific investigation much more closely.
I will say that it works reasonably well to structure and get work done in most electronics labs, because that is a simple practical scenario, but it is not the final word on science.
You may be an engineer and good at what you do, but your logical methods and approaches are questionable and I don't think you have thought them through or even know exactly what they are and what the implications are.
This is not a personal attack on you, Gusser, it is an institutional and societal critique.
I would say that you have a "technical attitude," not a scientific attitude, although you might like science. And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a technical attitude unless you are stretching beyond the limits of what this perspective can let you know and do with any reliable validity.
> I want to see credible evidence that wire has directionality in audio > and video circuits. Beyond that I don't even see any evidence it is a > factor in any area of electronics.
We are not on a video forum. I hardly even watch TV.
Have you really looked for evidence?
Know how many EEs listened and heard differences and accept them, in lieu of scientific explanation?
The smart, inquisitive ones anyway. The actual scientists. Those who want to learn.
My friend John Camille thought this was all complete nonsense, then he listened and heard a wire difference, Until he died, he was "beefing up" and tweaking spectrum analyzers to try to measure what he heard. Camille was one of the best engineers I ever knew and a dedicated, super hardcore investigator. He would experiment a lot then read a paper or two, maybe. I miss that guy.
Remember there is "knowing that" and then there is "knowing how." If you had to read a journal article to verify everything you do in day to day life, you would still be getting dressed for lunch in 1974.
You have no background, are not doing any focused research or testing of any kind, and you are waiting for an definitive article on a precise topic article to show up in one of your subscribed journals that is never going to appear in that journal.
You are right, you are not qualified to speak on the issue.
If I were seriously interested, I would read as much about the wider science of electronic materials research as I could get my hands on and see if there is anything in that corpus that might shed some light on the question. You might have to make studied inferences and careful correlations but there might be something out there of potential relevance.
This is what researchers do. You look at similar or potentially relevant studies to see if any findings possibly extend to the question you are investigating, then incorporate those ideas into your project for further evaluation.
You won't find anything that exactly answers this query definitely and for all time in an Intro to AC and DC Circuits textbook or Journal of the SMPTE, most likely. There is work to be done!
Belden, a sober wire manufacturer, sells oxygen free "audio grade" wire...why do they make that? It is just wire, right? Call them up and ask.
Call George Cardas, a practicing wire maker who owns a factory if he can point you to any measurable effects from extrusion on grain structure of wire. He might know about something you don't. There is no question that annealing processes mess with grain structure. Maybe he can tell you something about that since he works with the industry all of the time. Sure he has vested interests but he seems like a smart guy who would be open to sharing what he knows on these questions.
I'm not here to duke it out with staunch curmudgeons, I'm advocating continuing education and exploration of our world, including how science and human research work so that we can employ these tools more usefully.
Much of the received wisdom and the stale attitudes surrounding us are impediments to understanding and development of our audio universes.
So far, I'd have to score it on research and investigation:
Mapleshade 1, Gusser 0.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Well I did initially think this Dr. Bae you referred to was some top university research scientist with deep government grants to play with.
Alas, as with traditional audiophile company hype, he turns out to just be one of your two staff members building audiophile gear. I am not discounting what ever knowledge and abilities he may have. But you could have disclosed his true professional employment for us.
I plainly stated that Dr. Bae is an engineering partner at Silbatone.
He is a really creative and smart engineer, genius-level. Very meticulous and "scientific" but he can solve practical problems in a lightning fast manner.
He does have a PhD in materials science and solid state physics though. He didn't like the jobs and hustle in professional research, especially in a Korean corporate setting, and he really loves audio. Audio design is his dream job and he is great at it.
I also got to meet and talk to a number of his PhD friends still actively working in the scientific end of the field. These guys know way more about the subject of conductors than we can ever dream. People like that are the ones to ask if there is any known phenomenon that might be edging in here.
Anyway, good to see you doing research. Keep it up!
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
This is just more of your bullshit as it pertains to electrical engineering.According to your bio, you are currently a salesman for Silbatone Acoustics? I am arguing with an audiophile products salesman here?
You are quite correct. I have no background, education, or experience in these social human perception issues you speak of. Nor do most EE's.
You mock EE's as a group. You keep emphasizing proper research methods yet you still provide nothing in the form of proof.
You use these strawman examples. Yes, Belden sells audio wire. I never disputed that. What they don't sell is any recommendations of directionality in any of their product lines, and I know their line very well.
You can ramble on all you want. But the professional electronics industry is not listening. That I know. When I see the major wire manufactures providing evidence of wire directionality I will listen. Until then it's junk science.
Edits: 09/22/15
> > You mock EE's as a group.
Just to be clear, my critique of engineering relates to the observed tendency audio forum engineers have to speak out strongly with great asssumed authority on subjects that they actually know nothing about.
Lawyers might do the same thing! ;op
EEs are pretty good at practical electronics, some of them anyway. But there seems to be no clearly-addressed notion that people are on the end user side in many discussions.
The problem may be that EE is hard and takes time, so there is no luxury to study science theory or other subjects which many would consider part of a good, well-rounded liberal arts education.
Maybe at super intellectual schools, EEs get a whiff of some of this material. I sort of doubt it though. From what I see, engineering students live in their own colony within universities.
I can handle somebody not knowing obscure academic material they never studied...until people attack others with great indignation, based on very poorly formed notions of the "science" and social science they are using for ammunition.
This is socially destructive behavior and a disservice to all.
I feel like I am doing YOU a favor, Gusser, at some pain to myself, although I know you don't appreciate it. If you have a "scientific attitude", study what that means in depth and you will be more fulfilled in your vocation and life generally.
Free your mind and your ass will follow. I believe that.
I'd still be in school now, learning more about our cultural knowledge systems, except that my eyesight is shot and reading non-stop is no longer fun. I put in 35 semesters, so I suppose this is my life's work, overlapping with audio education. Neither gig pays squat.
I actually came up with some useful intellectual frameworks for myself in the course of this discussion. it helps my research to learn what people think and what questions they have about these methods...and what they eagerly buy as science with no solid reasoning behind it whatsoever.
I also developed an interesting cultural way to look at the kinds of tweakery under discussion, which I'll put out for further discussion someday.
I'll gladly spend time with anybody who wants to learn something I can help with. PM me if you don't want to get into the OK Corral gunslinging.
That's why I popped in here, to add some hopefully useful thoughts, but I gotta go. Out of town visitors tomorrow, not to mention the Pope in town!
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
With all your deep knowledge of this subject to which you say most educated engineers lack, why aren't you on a lecture circuit?
Why aren't you a top consultant to fortune 100 technology companies?
Why aren't you deep in university funded research on this subject.
You did say you were the Carl Sagen of this subject?
Why are you a sales rep for a tiny audiophile company with sales I estimate of less than 2 million yearly?
Are you retired from all that excitement and this just now a hobby job?
Academic jobs suck nowadays.
I was in a second PhD program a few years ago and saw graduates taking adjunct jobs paying $2200 a class teaching Anthro 101 and putting 50k miles a year on their cars chasing crumbs at different universities. I am too old and lazy for that.
My classmates from the Anthro PhD program at Yale in the 80s all have major professorial gigs now, those who stuck out the hard times, but I chose to become an audio publisher instead.
Yeah, maybe I was a fool but I had an excellent ride and still enjoy it.
I have the best job in the world, I think. Friends all over the planet. A great life.
The company I am associated with has an unlimited budget and values research and public education over sales. A very idealistic operation.
You have no idea how privileged my position is. I go places you can't imagine...like I consulted with Samsung on speakers at their Advanced Multimedia Lab in Suwon, Korea a few months ago. You're a video guy, Gusser. Did they send a limo around to the Ritz-Carlton to pick you up for a consult?
Thanks to my unorthodox life, I was able to take my kid to school and pick him up every day when he was little. I saw my dad a few times a week at that age, because he worked night work. That alone was a major life benefit.
And I was able to pursue many years of extra graduate education that someone tied to the millstone in a corporate job couldn't easily pull off. That's how I learned subjects that would be total luxury for a working stiff in EE.
But just because I'm an audio bum, don't fully discount my knowledge in my "other" field. Actually, for me they are all one field.
This educational outreach on forums is all pro-bono work. Frankly, it is as painful for me as it is for you!
However, I am simply trying to contribute to the growth of understanding and beat down Babylon where necessary.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
This is all hearsay. Since you mentioned Yale and the approximate dates of attendance perhaps I should spend a few bucks and pull the transcripts?
Maybe all this anthropology stuff you ramble on about is of some use in other fields. But I see no evidence or application in practical electrical engineering.
Now you can say all you want about the under educated EE community but again all I see are the ramblings of a sales rep for yet another minuscule audiophile products company. Yup, conventional engineering knowledge is all wrong. You know better! Except that nobody in any position of authority is listening.
And yes, I too was flown to Japan first class by Sony in the 90s to consult on a broadcast editing system we were considering in a substantial purchase / alpha test program. Big deal! A lot of EE travel world wide for consultation to major electronic concerns.
Send me ten bucks and I'll scan my diplomas, but they are in Latin, which you probably did not learn in EE.What hearsay? Samsung? They called jc morrison and I in back in June to brainstorm ideas on how to up their game on the next generation of home theater gear. This was a personal favor to the future chairman/heir to Samsung Group who heard some of the gear we make and WE speakers and realized that we know things his lead engineers do not. I heard that we blew their minds.
I did not say that ALL conventional EE knowledge is wrong but a lot of it is sure CONVENTIONAL, i.e, established by convention, communal agreement.
These conventions and the value systems that spawn them have massive impact on the lives of end users.
And how we know what we think we know should be rather important to a scientist, one would think.
But if you don't wanna know, you don't have to learn. Maybe it is better if you don't understand and just slog through at the bench.
I fear this is all over your head, Gusser, but I hope some folks are getting something out of the discussion. Sorry to use you as an object lesson but you jumped into the role.
Hey here's a pic of me at Yale, back when I was not only an advanced student of scientific epistemology and a licensed ham operator, but also a serious chick magnet. Just found this ID in a box of old tubes. Fortunately, there were some real good tubes in the box as well.
As offered previously, I can document and add references for everything I put forth in this thread. Audio testing, as we "know" it doesn't have a leg to stand on as a scientific procedure and if somebody out there can refute my methodological objections, I would honestly love to hear it.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Edits: 10/02/15
I'm sure the janitorial staff at Yale has the exact same ID card!You come in here to an audio forum spewing anthropology theories that have nothing to do with any field of electrical engineering.
You put yourself on the same plateau as Carl Sagen - how arrogant can one get!
"Chick magnet"? Your ego is endless!
Yet all we have documented is your current position as a sales rep for some miniscule audiophile vendor.
"Audio testing, as we "know" it doesn't have a leg to stand on as a scientific procedure and if somebody out there can refute my methodological objections, I would honestly love to hear it."
That is merely your opinion. And it's refuted every day. Outside of these snake oil shops, audio gear is designed and tested using standard test equipment and procedures. And the listening tests when formally done are again per scientific procedure. You think DBT is flawed. Again that's your opinion. Yet DBT remains a highly accepted practice.
Yes this stuff you ramble on about is over my head. I am not trained in that field. Yet I am convinced designing electronic circuits and systems fit for commercial application is over your head. And heart surgery is over both our heads. What does any of that prove?
I'm not impressed. And I don't think I'm alone here.
Edits: 10/02/15 10/02/15 10/02/15
I think the 'testing' that shows unlikely outcomes, and 'I have no idea why that is' answers( that when checked against high-precision test gear shows no difference) can be addressed by the point JR is trying to make. That I personally aply that POV to unlikely things like a carbon film resistor 'breaking in' is of no consequence...LOL
cheers,
Douglas
Friend, I would not hurt thee for the world...but thou art standing where I am about to shoot.
He is just promoting alternate science theories that audio cannot be properly tested under any circumstances.What a convenient model for an audiophile product salesman!
Problem is nobody else seems to be buying into it. There are standard test procedures and specifications, both electronic and acoustical, for audio equipment performance the industry adheres to. Joe thinks this is all wrong, he and only he knows better. Fine, he can go bark at a tree!
Edits: 10/02/15
"...What a convenient model for an audiophile product salesman!
Problem is nobody else seems to be buying into it..."
I wish that were the case! Unfortunately, it seems that a significant percentage of people, although probably still a minority, do subscrbe to some of these ideas. It is as if there is an innate human need to look for mysteries where there are none, and seek complexity when there is simplicity.
A home stereo amplifier is really a very humble and simple system, and the technological demands are very modest compared with far more complex situations where science has overcome tough challenges. The frequencies are low, the currents are low, the voltages are low. And yet, there are claims that there are deep mysteries that transcend science, We are told that there are audible phenomena that cannot be measured with instruments, and that cannot be detected by means of objective listening tests.
As a physicist, I tend to favour simple explanations over complex and contrived ones. There is a beauty in simplicity. The phenomenon requiring explanation is that some people claim to hear effects that can neither be measured nor verified in double-blind tests. It is also well documented that the human brain is highly susceptible to expectation bias, and is easily fooled by a variety of sensory illusions.
The simple explanation that is consistent with all the facts would appear to be that the "unverifiable" sonic effects are in fact imagined by the listener who reports them. This would seem to be overwhelmingly more plausible than any contrived explanation about how the listener always loses the ability to detect the alleged effect if it is put to the test. The one obvious way to refute this would be if an alternative, objective, way of showing that the double-blind tests were unreliable could be devised. But as far as I am aware, no superior alternative has been proposed. In the absence of such an alternative, one is left feeling that the attack on double-blind testing is analogous to the attack a spoon-bender or a mind reader would make on any serious attempt to verify their abilities. And, furthermore, many of those who claim that double-blind testing is untrustworthy are the very people who have the most to lose if it is trusted.
Chris
I should have been more specific.Nobody in the professional electronics industry buys into these audiophile theories such as wire directionality.
I quite agree many untrained hobbyist audiophiles in fact do.
Your comment about the sophistication of an audio amplifier, better yet an SET, is dead on. Most of these folks have no idea as to the levels electrical engineering has reached. If there was any substance to wire directionality, we would have documented proof as well as commercial application.
Edits: 10/04/15
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.
"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.
Please! Why do you drag all of these threads into the gutter? The constant radical fundamentalism is, IMO, ignorant and obnoxious. Please pound your "bible" elsewhere! There has got to be a forum for "The Church of the Most Holy Electronics Formulas" somewhere on the net.
I honor and respect knowledge. I find mathematics truly wondrous! But listening to music is an organic experience that involves human capacities of which we learn more of everyday, yet know so little.
You find comfort in your beliefs. Good on ya! I find comfort in listening to music. Music, just like electronics, is basically mathematics. Hard to enjoy the listening experience when some fundamentalist keeps screaming, "Yeah but that's ALL WRONG, it should have been a major fifth and it's not!"
Please give us a break!
Of course YMMV!
Cheers,
Geary
We are not arguing the quality of music or the art.
Amplifier design is based on math and science. It has been for 100 years. The formulas are well proven and practiced.
Claiming wires have directionality, then discounting any test be it technical or a properly controlled listening test that proves otherwise sure sounds more like religion to me.
Documented, practiced electrical engineering theory is hardly "radical fundamentalism". But this "I think therefore I am" crap sure does fit the bill!
Pure linear thought process....sure sounds like zealotry to me!"We are not arguing the holy mantle of engineering.
Western musical composition is based on math and science. It has been for 100's of years. The formulas are well proven and practiced.
Claiming only the inviolable engineering formulas are the key to musical nirvana, then discounting any listening be it casual or a formal listening that proves otherwise sure sounds more like religion to me.
This "I am ENGINEER therefore I am" crap sure does fit the bill!"
You rarely fail to personally attack "non-believers". You harangue incessantly that "Your Formulas" are the only key to valid musical nirvana. Empirical observation would lead one to the reasonable conclusion that you are, in fact, a radial fundamentalist, hell bent on converting or condemning to objective hell the non-believers. And like most zealots, you think you do it for the good of others.
Please, enough.
Cheers,
Geary
Edits: 10/02/15
It's not just me. None of this audiophile voodoo has any backing by the legitimate electronics industry. In fact no other area of electrical engineering has such a collection of voodoo as does consumer audio.I take it you are not of an electronic technical education or occupation. Yet you think proper design procedure is for the birds?
I am paid to design circuitry and systems. So are fellow EE's. Who are you to question the competence of the field? Take your magic wire and audio component theories and apply for a job in the legitimate electronics industry. See how far you get!
There is a sister TWEAKS forum where my views are not allowed. Ditto that for the cables forum. Perhaps you would be happier hanging out there.
Edits: 10/02/15
You just don't get it, do you? You seem to always fall back on the same Pavlovian behavior. Disagree with me and you get my "slings and arrows!"No I am not a trained engineer. I respect that training just like many other vocations. There are many audio professionals on the SET Asylum. I respect them for their training, experience, knowledge, willingness to share and, especially, their positive decorum. And, no, I am not into many of the tweaks others employ. But I do not have your overwhelming compulsion to attack, denigrate and demean those folks that sell or use such.
I enjoy music, utilize SET's and build my own equipment. I like to share and learn from self-minded others. That is why I visit this forum. Not to have to scroll past the constant dogma and derision that you spew.
It is your consistently intolerant, inconsiderate and belligerent behavior towards those, not of "Your Faith", that I am trying to address. Sadly I just wind up pricking the zealot.
The music beckons...
Cheers,
Geary
Edits: 10/02/15 10/02/15
If you don't like my posts, then ignore them. I am not the only person in this thread who is arguing against this wire directionality folly.Your post history shows you are one of these "lets all get along" types. If controversy upsets you so much then stay off public forums.
Edits: 10/02/15
A response that past behavior clearly predicted. Sad. I do try to ignore your posts. I would suggest that you try to follow your own advice. But I hold little hope for that. Yes, indeed, my nature is to "get along with people", sorry that offends you. But, again, I do not have the unquenchable need to elevate myself by demeaning others. I have found life if far more pleasant when mutual courtesy and respect prevail.
Sorry, think I will continue to hang around. My nature is also to not let the "bible thumpers" make me question the value of basic respect and courtesy.
Surely I have condemned myself to the lowest level of audio engineering hell for I have seen the light of the holy master and choseth to partake not.
Cheers,
Geary
Hang around if you want. But it is you who attacked me here. Keep that in mind if the moderators have to intervene.And if you read through the thread I am not the one who is belittling. Comparing one's self to Carl Sagen is such an example. That same person continues to belittle EE's as a group lacking his alleged superior education. All I ask for is some proof or evidence of said electronic concept and all I get is more fortune cookie mumbo jumbo about human philosophy.
So at least get your facts straight before assigning blame.
P.S I'm an atheists so these religious parallels you make go right over my head.
Edits: 10/02/15 10/02/15
Firstly, sorry you feel threatened, but factually I never attacked you. I commented on your continuing bullying behavior. Remember, I am one of those "lets all get along" types. Attacking you would be totally out of character. Unfortunately your behavior in this thread continues to reinforce general impressions about your online persona.
Secondly, atheist, religious or not, unless you have had your head completely in the sand, or other dark orifice, the last few decades or so, radical fundamentalism is pretty much common secular knowledge. It is your constant, narrowly defined dogma, that vilifies any dissent, that is, IMO, akin to the radical fundamentalists that are a plague on humanity.
Quite honestly, I doubt the other EE's need you to ride in and save them from the unwashed audiophile hoards. Seems to me almost all of them are confident enough in their training and experience, to be able to make their cases or simply just let the "tweakism's" pass. Sadly some folks just haven't evolved to that level of maturity. Anything that deviates from THE dogma must be attacked, discredited and ridiculed.
The OP deserved better treat than he received. But, that reality has become the norm in the SET Asylum. Any defense, by anyone, is immediately met with the dogma deluge. Anyone who posts in support or defense get attacked, demeaned and "credentialed" ad nauseum.
So I really doubt The Bored is going to call me to task for questioning your continuing behavior.
Cheers,
Geary
So you think 100 years of accumulated electrical engineering knowledge is "dogma".So you built an amplifier circuit from some instructions based on 1930s technology.
You have admitted you have no formal training in electronics.
Yet you feel you you are qualified to question experts in the field.
We have a tweaks forum. This wire directionality discussion belongs there, not here.
If you don't like my posts, then ignore them. The audiophile hoards do not need you coming in here saving them either.
Edits: 10/04/15 10/04/15
So you think 100 years of accumulated electrical knowledge is "dogma".No, I don't. It is your incessant badgering, demeaning and disrespectful behavior, bombarding any deviation from your fixed ideas and/or experience that makes that knowledge base your dogma. That is what you fail to comprehend.
"So you built an amplifier circuit from some instructions based on 1930s technology."
If that were true, "So what"!? This IS the SET Asylum. Go figger! But, anyway, this is just another non sequitur straw case. The amps, perhaps partially, but the reality is the design is a modern deviation from individuals for whom I have the utmost respect, Paul Joppa and the late John Camille.
The preamp is based on Russian 41PL tubes, so again, doesn't fit your, well, whatever point you thought you were attempting to put forth.
"You have admitted you have no formal training in electronics."Yes, again, "So what?" It would appear this is your "go to dismissal". I just don't understand why you think "credentialing" supports any of your behavior. Common courtesy and respect for others are rarely, if ever, requisite courses in education.
"Yet you feel you you are qualified to question experts in the field."
I find this sadly amusing. You really have no basis for your diatribe, so you make one up. I am not questioning any "experts in the field" I am pointing out how offensive I find your dogmatic rants attacking anyone not anointed with your magic alphabet soup and in lock step with your dogma.
"We have a tweaks forum. This wire directionality discussion belongs there, not here."
This is a Single Ended Triode forum. Remember? That '1930's technology"! I did not realize you were the sole dictator of acceptable discussion subjects. So, again, your "point" is specious.
Why would you waste all of your overwhelming and vastly superior EE knowledge and expertise ranting at advocates of an "amplifier circuit from some instructions based on 1930s technology."?
Cheers,
Geary
Edits: 10/04/15
This is a technical thread.
If you nothing technical to add, then leave.
You have done nothing but chastise me since you joined this thread.
The way I respond to other posters is not of your concern. If they have a problem they can address it with me directly or report it to the moderators.
Mind your own business.
This is the AA description of this Asylum:
SET Asylum
Single Ended Triodes (SETs), the ultimate tube lovers dream.
Am I missing something? It is not, by definition, a technical forum. I am sure there are such forums elsewhere. But likely your behavior would not be welcomed there either. I have "chastised" your schoolyard bullying behavior, which, apparently, you cannot control.
"The way I respond to other posters is not of your concern. If they have a problem they can address it with me directly or report it to the moderators."
Ah, but I have addressed your behavior directly. Your behavior proves that there is an inability to comprehend your own online persona, a bully hiding behind a keyboard cloaked in online anonymity. Your behavior has proven you are incapable of demonstrating any interaction that is not consistent with a bullyboy attitude. So why would anyone else bother?
"Mind your own business."
How eloquent! Have ever considered following your own advice?
Cheers,
Geary
Do you want to take this to the next level?People who post extraordinary claims here are going to be questioned. My dialog with the OP has been of a technical nature, not personal.
This entire sub thread you started is solely to attack me. If you keep it up, I will seek relief.
Edits: 10/04/15 10/04/15
Oh! Sorry! My bad! I am not "technically" educated so I must I not have understood. Here are some of your "highly" technical comments in this thread!
"With all your deep knowledge of this subject to which you say most educated engineers lack, why aren't you on a lecture circuit?"
"Why aren't you a top consultant to fortune 100 technology companies?"
"Why aren't you deep in university funded research on this subject."
"You did say you were the Carl Sagen of this subject?"
"Why are you a sales rep for a tiny audiophile company with sales I estimate of less than 2 million yearly?"
"Are you retired from all that excitement and this just now a hobby job?
Now you can say all you want about the under educated EE community but again all I see are the ramblings of a sales rep for yet another minuscule audiophile products company. Yup, conventional engineering knowledge is all wrong. You know better! Except that nobody in any position of authority is listening."
"I'm sure the janitorial staff at Yale has the exact same ID card!
You come in here to an audio forum spewing anthropology theories that have nothing to do with any field of electrical engineering.
You put yourself on the same plateau as Carl Sagen - how arrogant can one get!"
"Chick magnet"? Your ego is endless!"
"Yet all we have documented is your current position as a sales rep for some miniscule audiophile vendor."
Gusser, whoever you are, I never attacked you. I simply commented on your consistent behavior and the fact that you appear incapable of comprehending how negative and self aggrandizing it appears.
You are most welcome to seek relief.
Cheers,
Geary
And those comments were not directed at you so once again, mind your own business!Who appointed you moderator?
You also conveniently leave out all the opposing comments of how I am unscientific, arrested thinking, incapable of learning new ideas.
"You are most welcome to seek relief."
Be careful, your profile here is not shielded!
I can easily drag this into other public arenas beyond the reach of this forum.
Lay off! Unless I engage you I wish no further contact with you.
Edits: 10/05/15 10/05/15 10/05/15
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.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
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.
------------------------------
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
I cannot provide you with evidence either.
And I'm not a qualified physicist either to make an attempt to do so.
In the meantime, you can consider this phenomenon as pure BS or do your own "personal evidence" using your hearing, trying to temporarily forget about everything you've learned about this world.
"There is no exact repeatability in human research. See comments elsewhere.
This is an idea borrowed from traditional conceptions of empirical physics that cannot apply to live thinking creative humans."
Joe, let's take the example of the claim that reversing the direction of the wire changes the sound. Somebody makes that claim, and the question then arises as to whether the claimed effect is real or imagined. How else can that be tested, if not by double-blind listening experiments? What would it even mean, to suggest that yes, the effect is real, and yet the person claiming it is unable to demonstrate the ability to discriminate between the two wire orientations when tested?
This should be a question that matters not only to other people, who would like to know the answer. It should also matter to the person himself, who is making the claim, at least if he has an inquiring mind. Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine ever being comfortable with believing that some change I make to my amplifier changes the sound I hear, if I cannot satisfy myself with some sort of double-blind experiment that I am not merely deluding myself. I am only too aware of how easily the brain, my own included, can be fooled into perceiving things that are not "real."
If you want to insist that DBT experiments are completely untrustworthy and worthless, then what tests would you propose instead, to determine whether the listener genuinely can hear the difference between one orientation of the wire and the other? Or would you say we should all just live in some sort of a state of fuzzy relativism, where everybody's beliefs are valid, and nothing can ever be questioned?
Chris
In that fashion...
If you do, more power to you.
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
What I am proposing is not a complete abandonment to relativity, although there is a very good argument for that.I am suggesting that a proper investigation of such phenomena must recognize a vast range of variability, between subjects and even for one human subject in different CONTEXTS. Important point, CONTEXT.
Humans live think and understand the world IN CONTEXTS.
James Brown screaming "Hit me!" in a song is a lot different from mqracing going up to a Philly cop and screaming "Hit me!" meaning and significance ALWAYS depends on context. Always.
Also we must recognize listening knowledge and skills, some of which are physiological, some cultural, some based on learning and development through experience and a few other factors I could add to the list.
In a Physics lab, context can be controlled. In the real world of human action, no.
I'm sure some such formal tests are done using young folks who never even heard an LP or proper stereo, only phones and ipod docks. How can they be compared to a pro recording engineer or somebody like many of us who is a lifelong super audio geek? We learn how to listen for things that don't matter so much to civilians, or as I like to call em...Normals. :op
I'd say that Pierre catching Slagle playing with the labels is a good test, for Pierre. And for Slagle, I might add!
I think the big problem here is the question of whether anybody else can hear what Pierre and Ron have been focusing in on for 30 years? Maybe some people can do this off the bat, some can learn, and some will never ever hear it.
Now, let's recognize that a test situation is a lot different mindset and perceptual platform than drinking a beer and listening to Jazz. I strongly contest that one substitutes for the other.
Can Pieere pick this directionality bit out while casually listening to jazz? How about some weird-ass Chinese music? Can he hear it on a Magnavox tube console or only on a super high rez tweaked out monster system?
Things that pop out and impress during a test might not matter or be serious drawbacks in extended natural listening contexts. Things that work in extended listening.... sense of flow, puts you in a nice chilled out mood, whatever...auditory inputs leading to those evaluations might not appear or seem important in a quick A-B.
So if we are looking for positive solid answers, this is fruitless. The world is too complex and so are the people listening.
If one person is fooling himself, does it matter. I find that over time I realize when I have been fooling myself and if I don't then it is a really great illusion.,,,and it might not matter if it is an illusion.
There is no general science here. No universal answers. Every result is embedded in and refers back to a unique historical event involving a listener and everything else in the universe around him as it is configured at a particular time and place.
Now, this is not a totally unscientific notion...think of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that extends this logic out to empirical events. Without a situated observer, there is nothing to say about an event or phenomenon without characterizing the observer and the presence of the observer changes and helps create the phenomenon.In any human research, this concern comes to the fore.
Hope this is a helpful insight. I appreciate the question and understand the motivations behind it, however...
The project to nail this stuff down 100% for certain in scientific lab testing is a fool's errand.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Edits: 09/22/15
"I am suggesting that a proper investigation of such phenomena must recognize a vast range of variability, between subjects..."
But if the issue under investigation is that a specific person has asserted that he hears the difference in sound when a wire is reversed, it doesn't matter what abilities any other people may or may not have. The person in question has made a definitive statement that he can hear the difference between the two directionalities of the wire. Either he can demonstrate that claimed ability to the outside world in some set of objective tests, or else, for all practical purposes for the rest of the world, his alleged "ability" has no utility, and in fact no meaning, if no test is capable of supporting his claim.
Your sentence I partially quoted above went on to say "...and even for one human subject in different CONTEXTS. Important point, CONTEXT." I would be perfectly happy to let the person in question qualify his assertion with any list of restrictions and caveats as regards context that he cares to specify. But, of course, the more restrictions on context that he makes, the less powerful his asserted abilities will appear to the outside world. In the extreme case where he claims the ability to hear the directionality of the wire, but with the caveat that he is not able to demonstrate that in any objective test setup whatsoever, then as far as the outside world is concerned, his "ability" becomes operationally indistinguishable from having no such ability at all.
Chris
Chris,
I follow your well-thought out argument and agree with most of it, but my next question would be is why does the outside world want to know and to what use does this information serve?
The way the situation presents itself to me is that the notion:
"his alleged "ability" has no utility, and in fact no meaning, if no test is capable of supporting his claim."
Does not come to terms with the reality that the test is an artificial and contrived situation, so why should findings within such a method have any outside utility and, more strongly, be the sole conferrer of "meaning."
Context does indeed constrain meaning and applicability. This is precisely what I'm getting at. The test situation provides limits to meaning which make it LESS useful in understanding "natural listening" in its myriad forms, rather than more useful.
I'm trying to avoid the topic of "objective" testing, but you are laying a lot of subjectively derived value on the "test." I say subjective because the methodology and authority claims of such tests are cultural constructions. The presumed strength of such tests seems to me to rest on guild-approved conceptions of positive knowledge and how to achieve it, rather than a solid grounding in sociocultural or logical reality.
The overt "scientificness" of the procedure basically throws away general relevance and replaces it with an ultra-specific and highly constrained relevance. The strangeness of the test context yields very tightly bounded results.
From my standpoint, "meaning" of X is what people use X for in context. If the context changes, the meaning of X changes,
What is needed is some way to study the phenomenon in natural contexts of use. This is difficult and it may be impossible to achieve the level of universal certainty you seem to covet.
Referring back to earlier remarks, this is not abandonment to radical relativity so much as recognizing the radical situationality of experience and meaning.
Yeah, a certain form of "relativity" emerges out of that position. This is the fundamental condition of human experience, however, and why I am arguing that the methods of positive science are impossible to apply in human research.
This may be way out of the comfort zone of engineering science but for anthropology there is no comfort zone. It is all gray area, interpretation.
Hope this is useful. I sometimes feel like an elitist pig preaching this esoteric academic stuff on audio forums, but you are getting very close to the golden nugget.
You see the dynamic of context and meaning but the next step is to realize that it destroys the "test" because this basic condition of human experience refuses to be subdued in the lab, quite the contrary.
Thanks, Chris, for your comments. You said it better than I did.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
"Chris,
I follow your well-thought out argument and agree with most of it, but my next question would be is why does the outside world want to know and to what use does this information serve?"
Joe, I think there are plenty of reasons why one would like to know whether alleged phenomena are genuine or not. The specific example that was being discussed, namely the audibility of directionality of wires, is itself a rather trivial one, and I personally am perfectly happy to dismiss it as almost certainly a delusion in the ears of the beholder. But the more general question about the verifiability of alleged audio perceptions is of rather wider interest.
On the face of it, double-blind testing is just about the only way that one could attempt to make an objective test of whether someone's alleged ability to discriminate between two different configurations is genuine or not. Now, you counter by telling us that research in the "social sciences" of human subjects reveals that perceptions are context-dependent, and so on. And that in that field, the notion of double-blind testing has been discredited.
I presume by that you mean that it has been demonstrated to lead to incorrect conclusions? But that, surely, must mean that the researchers in the field must have come up with some other procedures for determining whether the human subject can or cannot hear the difference between the two configurations of the system? The researchers are, one would certainly hope, not simply taking the person's word for it that he can hear a difference, despite not being able to demonstrate that ability in some sort of tests?
If you can cite research on alternative procedures, as opposed to double-blind testing, that have demonstrated a human subject's ability to discriminate between the two configurations of the system even when double-blind testing failed, then that would certainly be very interesting. I would have no problem at all with learning that some other objectively-administered test procedure was demonstrably more reliable at correlating a test-subject's claims with the outcomes of the experiments.
If, on the other hand, you are saying that *any* method at all of trying to verify a person's claim to hear differences between two configurations of the system is necessarily invalid and worthless, then it begins to sound more like a descent into a metaphysical morass, where words and statements no longer have meaning, everything is relative, and everyone's beliefs and claims were all of equal validity.
It seems to me that the default assumption, i.e. the most natural interpretation, of a failure of a double-blind test to confirm a person's alleged ability to discriminate between two configurations of the system, would be that the person really cannot in fact discriminate between them, and the alleged differences are all in their mind. Any other conclusion is, I feel, an "extraordinary claim" that requires extraordinary evidence.
Now, maybe you will tell us about other objectively-administered tests that do a better job than double-blind testing. But in the absence of such evidence, I don't see any reason to be unsatisfied with the "natural interpretation," namely that double-blind tests are a reliable way of testing people's claims. Of course, I am well aware that some people, such as those in the high-end audio business, will have a very strong vested interest in debunking the conclusions reached by double-blind testing. But is there any objective evidence that double-blind testing is unreliable?
Chris
I understand where you are coming from. Let me ask this...What makes the test objective?
I don't think there is an "objective." We perceive and experience the world though cultural filters. These are subjective. There is no outside stance.
Now, we can have cultural interpretations that match up with an observed empirical reality. This could be considered a validity test, the correspondence of interpretation with the structure of reality as we perceive it. I usually suggest substituting "empirical" for "objective" in these discussions, becausue there isn't any such thing as objectivity.
Objectivity is itself a subjective cultural construction, after all.
But let's remember that observation is also relative, as physics teaches us. Also the tools and concepts/definitions we use frame, limit, and configure our observations, hence a true "objective" universality of perspective is not going to happen.
> > where words and statements no longer have meaning, everything is relative, and everyone's beliefs and claims were all of equal validity.
They still have meaning but relative to situations/contexts. You have been living like this all your life, so wheres the big mystery?
Validity is not as clear cut as we would all want it to be.
In terms of audio testing procedure, I think that what would make the "test" more valid is to pluck the data from the flow of natural experience somehow.
A test is a test because it sets up a fake controlled situation. Unfortunately, doing so destroys the phenomenon we are looking to study, unless our interests only revolve around performance in that particular contrived situation.
To be scientific, by old scholl definitions, observation and logic yields conditions of necessity and sufficiency that force the conclusion to be true. People are just too creative, unpredictable, variable, and flaky for the model of lab rese4arch drawn from the natural sciences.
Maybe I think that to perfectly know whether somebody else can hear X is impossible but a quasi controlled casual "test" as related in the Pierre Sprey wire story is somewhat convincing to me...moreso because it was not a formal "test."
More important is whether _I_ can hear X. I would try to find that out by listening as I usually do and swapping the parts and listening carefully but not obsessively for differences. Time and some learning might be key factors that are ignored in clinical AB testing. I find that sonic differences can be amplified or attenuated and their significance best understood when some time is devoted to understanding them in one's usual music listening context.
Hey there is a guy who can identify LP records by looking at the grooves. I'd have to say that is impossible and I know I can't do it. Does it really matter if he can do it or not, aside from a certain human curiosity perspective?
In short, I'd have to say that I can not recommend a scientific method of the form and potency you seek to determine whether other people can ever, under any circumstances, hear unlikely esoteric differences.
I don't know how to plug this question into science. The nature of the human experience is too slippery to establish the logical links required for solid general knowledge via scientific observation and reasoning.
I suggest coming to terms with some forms of relativity. This is only a bad word in religious and moral contexts where absolute certainly handed down from above reigns over all meaning.
EE doesn't have that kind of authority beyond measurable aspects of electronic circuits. The clinical testing paradigm never achieves it.
Relativity and subjectivity are intrinsic to the human condition. Try to fight that and you will never get to the truth.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
"I don't think there is an "objective." We perceive and experience the world though cultural filters. These are subjective. There is no outside stance."But what *is* objectively testable is a person's claim to be able to discriminate between two configurations. Suppose someone tells me he can see the difference between a card coloured red, and a card coloured green. I will be inclined to believe him, because it is within my own experience of what I also can do. But I could also set up a double-blind test (well, not literally, of course!), to check whether he can indeed tell the difference between the two colours. And I can thereby now objectively determine whether his claimed ability is genuine or not. In this extreme example, the test will almost certainly confirm his claim, of course.
Now, suppose that he asserts that he can see the difference between the colours of two cards that look, to my eyes, to be identical. I can again conduct the double-blind tests, and determine whether his claim is valid or not. I don't see any way I am imposing any "subjective cultural construction" on him. It's a simple question; can he tell the difference or not?
We are all, I presume, happy with the use of a testing procedure to determine whether the person can tell the difference between the red card and the green card? In fact, it can be rather important to know whether someone is red/green colourblind or not. This is not a subjective cultural question; it is a simple matter of fact.
I would maintain that in fact the way that we determine the thresholds of detection in all the human senses is by means of experiments along the lines of the card-colour tests; how similar must the two colours be before the human eye is not able to discriminate between them? Likewise, we could ask questions such as how close do two audio frequencies have to be before we cannot discriminate between them. These thresholds are not cultural constructs, they are objective facts. Of course, the thresholds will certainly differ as between one person and another, and maybe they can change for a given person, depending on all sorts of factors like age, tiredness, mood, etc. But for the given test subject, at the given time of the test, the outcome is an objective fact.
Coming back to the rather absurd wire-direction example, as I said before I would have no problem with the person who claims the ability to hear the difference conceding that their abilities were sometimes better and sometimes worse, depending on the time of day, their mood, etc. But if they ended up having to concede that they could in fact *never* hear the difference when they were tested in a double-blind test, then I think it would be legitimate to conclude that the alleged effect was in fact entirely in their imagination.
Chris
Edits: 10/02/15
cpotl,These are my findings I've come to during all this time. I have come to the conclusion that every wire has its optimal direction as sound goes.
A bit of story from me:
When I first started with audio, I was one of the most skeptical persons in the national community. Back then, I thought only my speakers where worthy of attention. I was going to build some cheap gainclone amplifiers to drive them, naively thinking that I'll be in the audio ecstasy with a few hundred bucks sum.Terms like "tuning by ear" ; "sound of a cable" ; "sound of capacitor" ; "terminals quality" sounded weird and incomprehensible to me. They all started to make sense little by little, when I went into my first DIY SET amplifier.
Sometimes the truth was painful, but I had to swallow it. I remember how blown away I was from the sound difference of speaker cables and RCA cables. Then came the power cables where I was the most skeptical of. Then came the plugs and IECS. Direction of capacitors. Oh.. memories.
I was lucky for having the opportunity to try and listen to accessories before buying them, thanks to friends from our community. One of the reasons I achieved much with little money.This was a long road and I'm sure a night of typing won't be enough to tell it all.
What I know for sure if I stayed the same skeptical person as I was 3 years ago, I wouldn't had built this system and posted here in this forum.
Maybe I would be the guy building cheap gainclones and posting oscilloscope takes at diyaudio.comFor me, the direction of cable is already a normal thing and I never doubt it. I came from a long way of swapping cables to do so.
Together I and other people had done blind tests. A colleague of mine was turning a wire and he was the only one knowing its direction. We listened and guessed a few times. The difference in a good hi-end system was so obvious that we all came to the same conclusion and since them, blind tests were useless for me. Later, I also did blind testing on other people with unshielded RCA cable direction without telling them what I did, only asking them what they hear and what they prefer. The most of them were women. All of their answers matched and to my surprise, they described the differences in greater details than me.
In the end, you don't have to agree with me and close this page if you consider it as BS. If you are skeptical, but curious, the easiest way I can offer you is to try it for yourself. Garg0le claimed he will be doing it.
I am sure these phenomenons will be explained one day through science.
Edits: 09/22/15
May I ask what is you understanding of electrical engineering theory. What have you studied outside of hobbyist articles on tube amp construction? How much electrical engineering mathematics do you understand and practice beyond Ohm's law?
Hi JoeFirst off, thank you for all the wonderful articles from Sound Practices. My amp builder and I came up with a 300B design based off numerous articles from your pub.
As a retired pharmaceutical scientist we are still very much using double blind testing to remove ANY bias in our drug trials. The medical community also compiles its meta-analysis for evidence based medicine off double blind (or at the very least single blind) studies.
When it comes to audio I do this stuff all for fun, so it's my ears that I gotta please. I just started using forums in the last year, but after seeing some of the cowboy remarks I personally plan to be extra vigilant about what I say lest I be ridiculed. With the anonymity the internet grants anyone can hide behind a pseudoname.
Retirement has been great. Thinking about putting together a 45 SET for active drive of a compression driver/horn.
-Brent
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15
In pharmaceutical testing, there is an empirical result to use as a measure of efficacy. You compare the treatment with observed measurable results.
In audio there is no such thing. The emprical result is the response of the human on the test form or the raising of the hand when a difference is heard. The datum point is the raised hand. You can't observe hearing, only the behavior of the listeners. That is why this largely discredited paradigm is called "Behavioral" research.
Many uncontrolled factors go into that hand raising. There is no direct empirical or logical link, hence it is BAD SCIENCE.
The public face of Behavioral social science was BF Skinner, and before that Pavlov of salivating dog fame. These guys wanted to study psychology and people with psychologies in a lab, like lab rats. The paradigm was a move to extend logical empiricism of physics into the arena of the human mind.
This can't work and, to me, it is a bit insulting to all humanity.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
"I first heard about directionality of wires from Pierre 20 years ago. I have no doubt that the worked hard to develop this acuity and he seems to be consistent in his ability to identify it.Pierre's design partner was/is? an actual working physicist in a top government research facility, by the way"
This is hardly the first or last time someone with impressive academic credentials has endorsed implausible audiophile theories.
But the fact remains none of these theories have ever seen commercial application nor are they ever proven by fellow engineers or research scientists.
IMO, all this audiophile snake oil started about in the early 1980s. That's 35 years ago and yet nothing has ever been proven in commercial applications. Surely in 35 years of electronic and scientific progress just one of these outlandish theories should have been replicated and the causes found?
Furthermore this stuff seems to be without exception entirely based in high end consumer audio. No where else that I know of in the electronics industry as a whole do we hear about these strange theories that defy practiced electrical engineering knowledge of the past 100 years. Again what is so specialized about base-band audio electronics?
Over on the tube DIY forum I posted a link to the first commercial broadcast VTR in the late 1950s as an example of tube electronics of the day. If you bother to look, the video signal path takes up over 5 11x17 pages of dense circuitry. And that doesn't count the servo systems to control the mechanical tape to rotating heads interface. Now look at the audio electronics. One page of a fairly simple circuit! So much for all this "ultra wide bandwidth audio requirements" we often hear on this forum.
If these audio voodoo theories like "wire direction and sound" apply to base-band audio, that is 20-20,000hz, then shouldn't they be immensely more critical at DC to 5mhz? Yet none of this voodoo was ever applied to analog video circuit design - I know, I started in that sector of electronics.
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15
Gusser, we have met here before.
One important difference is the two separate senses required to consume the products of the two media.
Maybe there is less inborn variability in sight than hearing? Or more depth of "trainability" where people can develop certain acuities.
Tough to say, but it seems caution is advised in equating two entirely different sensory systems.
Anyway, I think the resolution of that VTR was probably pretty low, as was the color fidelity. At the same time as that, hifi systems were already pretty high rez, no?
Agreed that there was no market for some genres of tweak junk prior to the 80s and the advent of "high end" audio. There is definitely a cultural shift and coeval economic dimensions at play.
Work for an anthopologist, not an EE, once again.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
But if there were some credible science to wire direction and it's effects on low level electrical signal distribution, how about the front ends of Cell phone tower receivers and signal processing?Now don't you all agree if there was any substance to the idea of wire directionality improving performance wouldn't the cell phone industry for just one example be all over it? Just squeezing in a few more data channels would be worth millions yearly.
Don't like cell phones? How about other areas of electronics that deal with sensitive electrical signals?
P.S.
"Anyway, I think the resolution of that VTR was probably pretty low, as was the color fidelity. At the same time as that, hifi systems were already pretty high rez, no?"Even in 1959, the absolute minimum HF limit for broadcast quality was about 3.5mhz. Still a far cry for 20,000hz! So no, still no contest between audio and video bandwidth.
They didn't go to all the trouble of high speed rotating heads to get to 1500ips relative tape speed just for fun. The physics of magnetic tape recording required it - and still does!
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15
Valid question, but musical audio listening is in the realm of aesthetics, and not evaluated by listeners in direct technical terms. The goal structures are entirely different.
Let's remember that some trick wire has been developed for commercial applications such as oxygen free copper for power distribution, litz for VLF, silver wire for high Q coils, etc. etc.
There is very little wire in a cell phone. Not a good market. Wire is becoming as obsolete as the knob and toggle switch.
I know a couple Korean PhD physicists who are extruding plates made out of monocrystal silver which they then laser cut into wire for audio.
We tried it. It was OK but not mind bending.
The grant supporting the research is a Korean govt technology incubator foundation.
In any event, I'd want to talk to guys like that to see what I can learn about materials in wire and their potential effects on signal transmission. I suspect that deep down at micro levels there is all sorts of stuff going on--boundary effects, magnetic properties, who knows what-- and some things might only appear at super macro levels like cross continental transmission.
You and I, we're just guessing. For this job, you would need materials scientists and actual physicists whio specialize in this field. Not a job for the anthropologist, this one.
As for the musical "sound" of wire, can you think of any commercial application outside of specialist audio where anybody would care let alone pay extra??
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
I'm talking about cell towers and the associated equipment shack, not your Iphone. There is plenty of wire in those. And believe me, telecommunications equipment companies can afford the cream of the crop when it comes to top materials scientists.Again where is the published research and patents?
Of course Litz wire exists as well as many other specialized wire and cables. And they are also represented by solid science as well as full technical specifications exploiting their special attributes. We have none of that with magic audio wires!
Face it, magic audio wire is pure junk science in the professional electronics industry. Unless you or someone can provide accredited documentation, that fact will remain mainstream. If your high end materials scientists and physicists have discovered proof, where are the papers for peer review?
"As for the musical "sound" of wire, can you think of any commercial application outside of specialist audio where anybody would care let alone pay extra??"
I still don't think you get it. IT'S NOT AUDIO, IT'S ELECTRICAL ENERGY. 'Audio' merely represents the bandwidth, which by the way is a the ass end of the EM spectrum. Anything that can influence audio signals will certianly have greater effects on more sensitive electrical applications.
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15
I doubt you ever researched this topic, Gusser. There are a million articles on obscure conductor effects.
Here's the first one off of a google scholar search
Conductors with controlled grain boundaries: An approach to the next generation, high temperature superconducting wire
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7982179&fileId=S0884291400041790
Start there and get back to me. Hopefully the interesting articles are not in Chinese.
As I said, some people are specialist experts and you and I are not.
JR
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Or perhaps I wasn't clear. I am not saying there is no research into electrical conductor behavior on a micro level. There is a lot targeted towards specific applications where such things matter.
I am saying there is no evidence any of that has any audible effect on base band audio, that being consumer HiFi at that.
How do you know? Did you do the research. I got a couple hundred thousand hits on searching "boundary effects conductors."Can there be serious research findings that do not specifically mention soundstaging or whatnot, that seem to have a strong rational connection to audio signals?
You don't know. Learn from those who might.
Insights likely exist which are not to be found in the Belden catalog or The Audio Curmudgeon's Journal.
I am fairly convinced of the effects of wire in some cases. I even offered to lend you a piece of Audio Note silver one time to try it out for yourself, but you punked out. A real scientist does experiments, as mentioned above.
So I "know that" wire makes a difference from 30 years of experimentation. I don't "know how and why" with any authority. I'm cool with that.
You are just using your question as a weapon. Try researching it deeply to help answer it.
There might even be scholarly articles on wire in baseband audio...I don't know and neither do you. Google Scholar is a good place to start.
if you know any actual materials scientists with expertise in this area, like my partner in korea Dr. Bae, ask them.
This is not my specialty or compelling interest. I study and try to learn about people and what they do and think they know, which as this very discussion indicates is a very interesting enterprise.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Edits: 09/22/15
I work in the professional electronics industry. I am an IEEE, SMPTE, SBE member. I get the technical journals.There is absolutely no evidence any of these audiophile wire theories have any credibility. Nor is there any professional commercial application of these ideas in the audio / video industry as a whole.
We are talking about thousands of degreed electrical engineers here. Are they all wrong? Why hasn't just one of them ever published some repeatable proof of these phenomena?
You don't even work in electronics. You have extensively studied some area of human perception behavior and are using that here to cast a fog over 100 years of developed engineering knowledge and practice.
Nobody with any authority in the electronics industry is going to take you seriously in this subject.
Edits: 09/22/15
Give me the names of 5 EEs who are trained in any human research beyond the useless crap that passes as scientific audio testing.Seriously, this DBT stuff is BAD science.
Anybody can send in $75 bucks and join alphabet soup societies. I am not impressed.
This does not substitute for actual research of the wider specialist literature.
I suspect that the EE world lags behind the cutting edge materials research by at least a decade, just as it lags theory of science by 100 years, and human science by 300 years.
EEs are too busy in school learning electronics and that is OK, but there is plenty of high-level thinking going on not taught in engineering school, especially at BA/B Sc. levels. And I don't know if serious consideration of the intricacies of scientific epistemology is taught in any engineering program anywhere.
EEs are for the most part, practical fix-it guys. Not genius scholars of advanced materials research and theories of knowledge. That's fine and how it should be.
Tell us about your training. Did you study any philosophy of science or human research, or was it all DC Circuits 1 and 2?
And look at how you Professional Society dudes are...If somebody wanted to publish an article on the sound of trick wire in the official journal, they would be marched out in front of the hotel where the annual meeting takes place and shot at dawn by a bunch of ornery drunk engineers.
Anthropology and archaeology is pretty much the same way. Professional gangs of thugs, protecting and regulating their turf. Change happens but it is much slower than it should be due to vested interests and intellectual inertia.Read the old 1960s classic by Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" for some insight into how institutional culture functions in science. this book is part of a well-rounded liberal arts education these days, but I'd bet they don't read it in most EE classes.
Read, learn, and get some fresh perspective on the problem, or at least deeply test your assumptions because you are stuck in a mind rut that does not necessarily conform with the current state of advanced thinking on the issues.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Edits: 09/22/15
You say they are flawed and I agree even with my limited knowledge of human sciences.My point is the lack of any scientific data to support the notion of these wire follies.
P.S. SMPTE and SBE require at least some industry affiliation.
IEEE is much stricter. You can't buy your way in. Accredited credentials are reviewed prior to membership. Experience may be substituted for formal education but that still must be in the form of demonstrable accomplishments.
The more I read your posts I can see you are deeply educated in a obscure area of science. Nobody cares about this stuff day to day and I suspect you get laughed out of a room from time to time. Hence your broad dislike of professional societies made up of of peers.
An anthropologist arguing electrical engineering from a human sciences perspective?
Edits: 09/22/15 09/22/15 09/22/15
To be honest, I didn't suspect my topic would lead to the kind of debate, hehe
Regards,
Aleaxander.
Exactly my point about prediction in the human sciences! You can never know! ;op
Anyway, I am on your side, Aleaxander. Go have a nice glass of wine and listen to some music! ;op
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Its just the basics of design we are easily fooled. If human perception wasn't easily fooled stereo video wouldn't function. When one invests much time money into end result they will have a bias towards it being a improvement because its human nature to do so. To me designing tweaking a amplifier and not running on different loads does not teach you anything except how that particular amplifier drives that particular loudspeaker. Maybe that's enough for you but its not for me thus why I helpfully posted a comment about confirmation bias.
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15
Nice to see a post that's both respectful and constructive.
My Bottlehead Paramours and Hornshoppe Horn combo was a match made in heaven. Hook up the horns to my Outlaw 2150 and you kind of wonder what happened.
Sir Roberts, thank you for this post.
I must admit I've also learned from great people who helped me be on the path.
"Ask Dave Slagle to tell you the story where he intentionally reversed the direction of one wire in a batch of coils he made for Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade, without telling them...and they caught it!"
-Great, so you guys can tell us how Dave Slagle knew which wire was the "right way" to begin with?
I'm all ears.
For the record, the directional flow of electrons through some materials is not a mystery, it is called a junction diode.
If something like that did in fact happen, the folks doing the observation failed to look at the big picture, it could just just have easily been a poorly soldered connection.
"So if you want to believe in trendy in-group buzzwords from an audio forum over me, go ahead. No skin off my nose."
-What are you talking about? What trendy buzzwords am I using?
"Personally, I don't worry about this and I will never put a wood chip on a transformer. I have bigger problems than these."
-Thank you, the wasn't so bad, was it?
"Empirically-based, experimental studies such as that undertaken by the OP can yield a useful body of practical knowledge. Moreso than abstract physics discussions in absence of any direct experience, I would venture."
-No it doesn't, he built something based on previously known abstract physics then added a bit of his own JuJu.
"It's a complicated world out there, especially when music listening is the subject and goal."
-It's not that complicated. Music makes the microphone vibrate, make the speaker vibrate to create music.
"Anyway, I'm happy to share some of my hard-earned academic knowledge and save y'all $250k in Ivy League tuition."
-Unless you spend 250K on electrical engineering, I'm not interested.
"BTW, my good friend Nanana has also studied philosophy of science and the human sciences so he would be generally in agreement with me."
-That is so vague and awkward it is virtually meaningless.
"I'm just trying to hip you all to major trends in 20th century intellectual history that are being completely bypassed in most audio discussions I encounter, especially the ones that purport to be "serious." "
-How about those old Western Electric speakers that you make your living off selling, do you think those engineers subscribed to this same bullshit?
"What I react to is using bogus notions like "expectation bias" as a priori shoot-downs. This is something that needs to be proven in specific cases, even if you buy the theoretical reasoning, which I do not in the form it is given."
-I told you I tried the poker chips and Popsicle sticks, nothing happened.
Perhaps you fell victim to "reverse expectation bias." ;)
Read MY sig and have a nice day.
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
-Great, so you guys can tell us how Dave Slagle knew which wire was the "right way" to begin with?
I'm all ears.
I didn't know the direction but I did know that one of the samples was inverted in direction from the two other ones.
I was asked to supply a few 3 meter pieces of the wire I could wind with so they could check the directionality and instruct me which end to place at ground potential.
I sent
-#31 cardas
three samples of #34 formvar all from the same spool with one marked the opposite of the other two and said they came off three different spools. (wire coming off the spool is not always the same since one never knows how many times it has been respooled)
-#42 plain enamel (the stuff the guitar pickup guys love)
The #42 was best, the formvars were all rated the same and the inversion of direction was noted. and the #31 was last. All five samples were labeled with a direction and I ended up winding with the #42 plain enamel.
Sure it could have been chance to pick the inverted wire and I later apologized for trying to trick them only to find out I wasn't the first.
For the folks below saying a bad solder connection could be the cause, I believe the connections used were all mechanical.
dave
Hi Dave:
What would (or should) the transformer winder do if the coil is designed to have reversed windings?
You mentioned spools that may have been respooled... consider also that magnet wire starts out it's life as 3/16th inch rod and then is drawn to it's finish guage through multiple dies and could be respooled how many times?
MSL
Builder of MagneQuest & Peerless transformers since 1989
Hey,
I don't have a horse in the wire direction race, I was just honoring a customers request.
dave
Hi Dave, nice to hear from you.
Any recommendations for my little experiment?
I was thinking of arbitrarily marking one end of the wires with a silver sharpie, then covering the wire with a sleeve of some sort. I would then place them in a box and shake it up.
If I am able to discern a difference, I will then mark the sleeve with a sharpie to distinguish the better sounding direction.
If I do think I hear a better direction, when I un-sleeve the wires, most should have the original marks on the same ends.
At first I was just going to use some pre terminated RCA cables for convenience, but I think I should have a larger group to sample from, say at least 10 samples.
Any issues performing this experiment at the large signal level? I'm thinking I could avoid potential interference that I may encounter testing un-shielded small signal wires.
(I MIGHT have a long enough length of shielded cable to cut into samples, I won't know for sure until tomorrow)
I also changed my mind about testing phase at this stage in the game, I will see how this first part goes first before proceeding.
Cheers
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
I am a big fan of raw data collection and feel anecdotes (like the pierre sprey wire direction test) are very important to remember. The thing I don't like (and most people take issue with) is the assigning of merit (good or bad) to a particular data set.
It typically goes like this. I listen to some vintage WE transformers and am amazed by the wonderful sound. Some of the claims mad as to why are:
-Age annealed laminations
-Age annealed wire
To me (assuming the transformers really contain magic) those just focus on the obvious... old wire old core but discussion rarely goes beyond that into something that seems a bit more plausible. As the laminations go it is reported that WE used "power supply" iron in many of their coveted designs. The key factor for me in this is WE (allegedly) used EI laminations and PS lams are a non-oriented material. The supporters of C-cores claim their superiority because the grain is always in line with the core material in a wound tape core but in a Stamped lamination the uptight of the "E" is always cross grain. The thing to note here is if you use a non-oriented material (like PS iron) the claim of superiority of C-cores by optimized grain direction goes away. (the one thing C-cores allow you to do is very thin laminations but that is for another day)
As for the wire. With the increasing popularity of recycling of copper the thing I wonder is if older wire is simply of better "quality" It seems entirely possible that wire that was mined and refined 50 years ago has a consistent nature whereas the recycled copper of today comes from a questionable pedigree. Sure recycled copper can be refined to the utmost of purity but at what cost and is it ever done in todays money driven economy?
Anyways.... got a bot off topic there.... As for your silver experiment, I say give it a try and send it around as a blind test to see what happens. In other words collect the data then have a statistics guy crunch the numbers. I think raw data and statistics can be both powerful and honest and I was shocked how increasing the sample size cahnges things. 6 out of 10 pretty much makes it a coin toss, 58 out of 100 is similar but by the time you get to 550 out of 1000 it starts to become meaningful even thought the difference in percentage has gotten smaller.
dave
One other note should be made as regards WE vintage transformers and that is that when these designs were penned... the grain oriented core materials (M6) had not yet been introduced to the commercial marketplace.
MSL
Builder of MagneQuest & Peerless transformers since 1989
Correct and the empiricist in me really makes me wonder if the "better" lams are really an improvement just like Push pull was an improvement over SE and solid state was an improvement over tubes. Since the generally accepted premise in this small sector of the asylum is based on an antiquated concept, it really surprises me how many people are willing to dig moats in the sand.
dave
From the vantage point of magnetic parameters M6 is a vast improvement over M19.As I said earlier the core losses in M6 are less than one third of the losses in M19.
M19 is only available in 26 and 24 guages. M6 is available in the thinner 29 guage standardly. This would decrease eddy currents.
Perm is much greater with m6 if used in a non airgapped application.
Max permissible Flux is greater (giving the designer more options on sizing the transformer to achieve their mix of design goodness.
Harmonic distortion generated by the core will be reduced with M6 vs M19.
No load exciting current will be reduced with M6 vs M19
Thicker guages of lams (M19) tend to be mechanically noisier than the thinner M6.
Except for lower costs I do not see any advantages to M19 over M6 (and even more so with M4, M3 or M2).
MSL
Builder of MagneQuest & Peerless transformers since 1989
Edits: 09/24/15 09/25/15 09/26/15
many of the "coveted" WE audio transformers such as the 171A output trans the core was a C and I configuration (both the C and I being stamped from 26 guage (.0185") M19 material. The two c's are closed around the I which is located in the middle.The C and I arrangement is not very efficient from the vantage point of having many gaps of high reluctance.
M19 has triple the core losses than M6 and just a fraction of M6's superior (i.e., greter) permeability. And has less power handling capacity to boot.
That same 171A coil wrapped in a modern core (such as M6 or better) will have much better performance specs.
Two other quick thoughts. You mentioned "thin" lams... you can get M6 stamped from. 006" material... though as with all of the thinner core materials the penalty is having a poorer stacking factor... so that, in practice, you've reduced the core cross section area... which raises the flux density (and by extension reduces power handling). I don't see it as being advantageous in audio transformer designs.
A point to consider as regards c cores is that they tend to have large (uninterrupted) air gaps versus an interleaved EI core. Take the same transformer and build one with EI's and one with c-cores (using the same grade of lam)... then measure the no load exciting current for each... and tell me what you've discovered.
I fail to see any magic in c-cores and whenever possible will build with an EI (or other stamped lam shape) which can be assembled and fitted by hand stacking for an optimum fit with the wound coil.
MSL
Builder of MagneQuest & Peerless transformers since 1989
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15
Hello, Mikey and Dave.I used to service nearly all W.E. stuff. I serviced Movie Theatres, and later bought and built theatres of my own, and also built stadium-type theatres for new owners.
W.E. gear I ran into a lot. At first, when servicing an older theatre, I would remove the W.E. model 91A amps, or some of their bogus attempts at making push-pull amps, remove the speakers and their drivers, give the junk away and replace the amps with McIntosh MC-60's (which I lightly modded), and the speakers with clean, sonically and directionally ACCURATE units such as ALTEC or JBL.
Later on, the Japanese went bonkers over historic W.E. gear, and we saved the old junk and sold it to them-- we sure didn't like to listen to it.. Interestingly, MGM pictures boycotted ALL W.E. gear in their theatres because it totally butchered the "live", accurate, sonic presence that MGM wanted for their theatres. I believe a Mr. Jim Lansing was hired to design something better, and he surely did!
The point of this is that I got better sound-- a lot better-- without the W.E. gear. Today, one can also get better sound by avoiding the misdesigned 300B tube, unless it is one that is made symmetrically with vertical filament structures by EML, etc.
Love you guys, keep up the good work!
---Dennis---
Edits: 10/08/15
hey... just to have some fun here...
That same 171A coil wrapped in a modern core (such as M6 or better) will have much better performance specs.
by what definition of performance?
Re thin lams....I have some .006" thick nickel and it is fragile as hell but with C-cores even .001 is rigid. I'm not making a judgement just noting differences between the stamped vs. tape wound topologies. I typically use non-oriented materials and tend toward stamped laminations where the only two main differences between the cut core and stamped lamination are lam thickness and gap size. I'm not saying thinner lams are better... just making the observation and in the case of amorphous material which is .001" thick, a c-core is the only option.
Now when we move onto gap size, the Cut cores have two discrete gaps that cover the area of the core. This means that the smallest gap possible depends on the finish of the mating surface. A while back there was a company offeing cut tape wound cores with a stepped surface to increase the surface area of the gap which makes it effectively smaller. With stamped laminations you have the option of alternately stacking the laminations which greatly increases the surface area of the gap making far smaller gaps possible than with cut cores. So to answer your question... for a given coil and core geometry a power transformer stacked with 1X1 EI laminations will have far less magnetizing current than a pair of C-cores in a shell configuration since the stamped laminations allow for a much smaller effective gap.
For years people have asked me to use 80% nickel C-cores for my autoformer since 'C-cores are better'. I try to explain that if I were to move to a cut core I would end up with a maximum of 1/10th the possible inductance of a 1X1 stacked EI configurtation. If all your sources are 50 ohms then it isn't an issue but in the real world we need to do some pretty nasty stuff to meet that goal so I opt for the EI lams as the best option.
dave
> > How about those old Western Electric speakers that you make your living off selling, do you think those engineers subscribed to this same bullshit?
Never sell, only buy.
I only point out some widely-recognized lacunae in trying to apply ill-formed notions of physical science to human sciences in hopes that some will see the light.
This is one of the principal topics in 20th century thinking...hardly vague or awkward.
The subject here is knowledge conditions, not forum political jive.
Just don't be so sure I am wrong if you have no instinctual understanding of what I am getting at. Like I said, I am well-trained and well-read in the field of human research and scientific thinking and I might know a few things that you and almost all engineers don't.
If you don't think the interface between electronics technology and music listening is extraordinary complex, well then I rest my case.
I agree the OP mixes physics and some weird juju, but I think it's working out for him.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Geez Louise sum it up for us with out trying to sound so sophisticated.
Are you saying it is OK to have the JuJu because of some "I think therefor I am" type thing?
In other words, the pucks actually do sound better because he believes they sound better?
Spit it out Joe.
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
Seems to me that Joe is giving us a university level description of well known placebo effect. That being "the complex music to electronics interface". (note you have to include the science of acoustics in there as well).
Yes, the person who claims it most likely hears it, monetary gains aside. I certianly agree that happens to all of us at some point or another.
But the question on an electronics forum should be about technical proof of the phenomenon and that certianly requires repeatable and quantifiable evidence.
Listen, Garg0yle, nothing personal. I am sure you are a nice and sincere guy.
This subject is in fact very sophisticated. Big words and mostly non-obvious thinking. Most people don't have a clue that it even exists, but there are vast libraries of thought out there on these very questions.
I'm just pointing out for those who have ears to hear what I'm saying, that scholars who specialize in trying to understand how people "know" their world have a much more comprehensive view of the matter than civilians.
WHY do people who never studied this material think they are natural-born experts in it? I can only think, "One doesn't know what they don't know."
This extends to understanding how "Science" as a logical system and human social enterprise works. Most audio forum science is pretty close to trash, not so much in the realm of electronics where high-school lab conceptions are reasonably useful, but when EEs and guys who learned electronics in the Navy start talking anthropology and human research, it gets pretty silly.
This subject is neither easy nor obvious.
Big Science, modern physics works in a universe that is probabilistic and perspectival, whereas the EE lab is neither. It works on convenient fiction, a simplification that is good enough.
One of my engineering partners in Silbatone has a PhD in Solid State Physics and Material Science. He doesn't think all this wire stuff is absurd, even if he doesn't have a ready explanation. As I was saying, a REAL scientist will test his model against reality/experience and if they don't map each other, adjust the model.
I am pretty sure that when Dr. Bae things of current through a wire, he is on a totally different plane from myself and most DMM owners.
This is the key gesture in science, testing models vs.reality. Making top-down pronouncements from general law is a tiny part of it, cause there aren't that many laws.
Even major forces such as gravitation are poorly understood, except that we know "what" it does.
JUJU
I am saying that the "juju" might add something valuable to the important process of hands-one/ears-on experimentation, without in itself having much physical/physics grounding. Maybe it makes him feel good and inspires a deeper connection with what he is doing. I'm looking at the whole project and thinking...good work!
A bit flaky here and there but so what? Nice system!
I am a Virgo and basically a nerdy analytical person. I sometimes wish I had more juju and mambo in the mix, but I go with experience, observations, and my naturally questioning attitude and trust in that.
I really can't "explain" why people go for some of the crazy audio tweaks out there and to do so without trying it myself, I would feel like I am not checking my suspicions. But I really can't get interested in some of this microlevel tweaking when I have much bigger issues to deal with first.
More to the point, I also really catch a bad vibe off snake oil peddlers, and that is something else I'm interested in anthropologically. I'm from South Philly not Missouri, but I think some people out there want a wizard at the controls. I hear Shun Mook and I think they are trying to mook me.
Hey, what are we doing on SET forum. SE amps should blow compared to low distortion SS an PP amps, right?
How did we find out that they aren't so bad? Experimentation in the face of received wisdom.
Let's do more.
Don't throw out a chance to grow and expand understanding because of some wacko trying to sell seemingly bogus pucks. That is my message.
Don't buy the pucks. I know I wont.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Joe, you sound like someone with whom it is possible to have a rational discussion. What would your response be to the following?It is clear that at some level, if one is not going to be a gullible simpleton who believes everything he is told, one must make some sort of a judgement call about whether a reported effect even deserves any serious consideration or not. For example, if I report that by burying a teapot at the bottom of my garden I get a much improved soundstage in my living-room stereo system you would not (I hope!) give any credence whatsoever to the claim. You would be able to make an assessment, based on known and well-established understanding of how the physical world works, that the claim was simply ludicrous; it does not need to be tested before being dismissed.
So, what is one to make of somebody's claim that reversing the direction of a piece of signal wire changes the sound? There are (at least) two possible explanations for the reported effect. One of these is that there really is a genuinely verifiable effect on the sound. (And to me, the only way it could be genuinely verifiable is if the person reporting it could reliably demonstrate the ability to hear the difference in rigorous double-blind tests.) Another possible explanation is that the person has imagined the effect, with their expectation of a difference leading them to "hear" it when they make experiments reversing the wire.
To me, the possibility that the direction of the wire actually makes a verifiable difference is about as likely (that is to say, very very unlikely!) as that burying the teapot in the garden would make a difference. As gargoyle emphasised, one is talking about alternating currents here. Why on earth should there be a difference based on the direction the wire is connected? On the other hand, it is very well documented in countless experiments that people may "see" things that are not real, or fail to see things that are real. There are huge numbers of examples of optical illusions. I'm not so familiar with experiments concerning aural illusions, but it does seems to be the case that the brain is easily fooled into perceiving what it expects to perceive.Given this situation, surely the overwhelmingly more plausible explanation for the alleged effect of reversing the direction of the wire is that it is entirely in the imagination of the listener? Why should it be given any more credence than the claim that burying a teapot will affect the sound?
Of course, there is in principle another conceivable explanation for a genuine effect, as has already been mentioned, namely, that because of some badly soldered joint, for example, there is some sort of crude diode rectification involved. That could be much better settled by making measurements with test equipment, not by delving into obscure corners of human psychology. And in any case, it would not be providing any sort of general principle about the direction of wires mattering. Rather, it would just be a lesson that shoddy soldered joints should be avoided.
Chris
Edits: 09/20/15 09/21/15
Good question.
I don't think there is a one size fits all answer, however.
The question of directionality is a good example. Do I believe it? No, frankly. Sounds like total hogwash based on my limited knowledge of the subject.
But look at Slagle's story about Mapleshade. He was unrolling wire off of a spool and was supposed to label start and finish so they would know the "direction" of the wire for future testing. Then Dave intentionally swapped one around and labeled it backwards.
Pierre called Dave and said he thinks Dave labeled one of the wires wrong. In other words, he got caught.
Not sure if I am supposed to tell that story or not!
I don't know, Bro.
It seems Pierre has some way to know. Pierre is what I would call an intense auditioner and a hardcore experimenter. I first met him about 30 years ago and he was doing wacky experiments even back then. What can certain people learn to distinguish? I'm not sure.
Learning is routinely ignored in a lot of the forum discussion. Somebody who works with audio gear all day for decades learns things average folks don't know about sound, including highly developed sonic memory. I don't think it is pure memory, more like developing a framework to categorize sound differences that don't make much difference to average folks.
I routinely ignore even things I know matter, i.e. could make a positive or negative difference. I use speaker wire I bought USED from an installer in Vegas on ebay. It is used Belden 4 conductor. Sounds OK to me, but I think the kinds of speakers I use are somewhat less sensitive to wire choice than modern speakers even though I totally believe wire sounds different, but I don't get involved too heavily anymore. I make my interconnects and most wires myself out of stuff I selected though evaluation.
I think it is also hard to separate the device from the sales pitch. As soon as I hear a super wizard sales pitch about how this genius dude discover a new physics, I shut it off. For some reason this works on otherwise seemingly rational people, many with excess money.
But I have heard items like the Tice clock of the late 80s make a distinct difference, when it "shouldn't" have. This was a digital clock that you plug into an outlet near the system and it cleans up the sound. $15 at WalMart, a couple hundred $ from Tice or something like that. Basically an unexplained phenomenon with chicanery and snake oil drizzled on top, at a price.
This comes back to the difference between "knowing that" and "knowing how." Just because there is no handy explanation or a totally farfetched 'new physics' explanation is offered doesn't effect whether it works or not.
I guess I would say you can't _know_ until you try it, but something has to motivate people to try things. Intellectual curiosity might be enough in some cases, but personally I'm getting lazier by the day.
In all honesty, my main filter on this stuff is how much time do I have to expend. I have amps to build. Shopping to do, etc. To me, the magic puck thing is operating on a level of tweakery I haven't gotten to lately.
When I was younger I would build circuits just to hear what they sounded like, which is how I first got into SE amps and triode amps. I was just experimenting and keeping what I liked. I was more high energy and I suppose more fascinated in those days. I worked on audio and studied old electronics books and magazines around the clock.
However, I know that there are some things I am purposefully ignoring that might be major learning experiences but gotta make cuts somewhere.
Perhaps it comes down to personal style. Some people are magic puck and crystal people and some aren't. Nobody can do it all. Pick what lures you in. For me it might be a tube, circuit, or new transformer concept, but it won't be a magic crystal.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Are you kidding me?Look at their BiWire jumpers. Those are hand cut copper scraps with labels hand drawn by a Sharpie pen. Are they serious? Is that the best they can do in terms of professional product manufacturing?
Next look at their interconnects. Hand made RCA connectors? No, I don't mean hand soldering OEM RCA connectors, I mean making RCA connectors from scraps of brass sheet!
And how about those AC cords. Do they have any clue of minimal acceptable electrical safety standards? AC plugs made from butcher block stock?
This is a joke! How can anybody take such products seriously. Yeah, I know, "well did you try them?"
This is exactly why these high end audiophile vendors are the laughing stock of the IEEE!
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15
MapleShade?
------------------------------
Are you kidding me?
Gusser, is it safe to say that you are not a buyer?
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
I don't see why they deserve any praise here. I dislike all audiophile snake oil but at least some vendors do produce high quality craftsman ship with their products to spite their technical uselessness.
This stuff however is junk and the AC power products are downright dangerous!
Somebody is going to get hurt. Making AC power cords from what looks like loose 22ga hookup wire. Altering UL listed power strips for resale. Making AC line plugs out of wood.
It's one thing when some charlatan cable shop buys standard electrical parts at Home Depot or a supply house and builds an AC cord with some nylon flex over it. At least if competently assembled it's more than likely safe. Still not approved though. But this MapleShade stuff is over the top in terms of safety hazards.
Yeah, the CPSC may just laugh it off or they may seek a court injunction to stop sales at the other extreme.
At least I will have tried to prevent a serious accident.
Since when do people think they have the right
to "protect" people from themselves?
It is a free country which means people have
the right to do what you think is stupid.
You have the right to call them on it
BUT not the right to force them into
what you consider "correct" behavior!
Please, I plead with you, stop the police state
that you wish to impose because it offends you.
You do not have the right to not to be offended.
DanL
You are free too build whatever unsafe electrical devices you see fit in your own home. But when you offer them for sale to the general public at large, well thankfully we have laws and standards that must be adhered to for the protection of others.Are you honestly suggesting we abolish building codes and product safety standards?
Based on your recent posts belittling formal engineering education and study, In can see the logic in this idea as well.
And since I made that post I did some research and found it quite easy to file a complaint - which I am going to do, like it or not.
Yes good people do have a moral responsibility to report crimes to the relevant authority. And those AC power products as displayed are a crime when it comes to basic electrical safety.
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15
That in a nut shell is what
is wrong with this country.
You never bought the product
but you want to make sure
no one else can.
I will never understand
the hubris of that position.
DanL
!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
Any experienced electronics or electrical person can easily see those products are not safe under established safety standards of the past 40 years or more.
And you know it!
Defending this is silly.
So are feet under the component.
So are cable elevators.
So are tubes without cages.
Also for 50 years before that wood insulted
most electrical wiring with porcelain help.
Wood is a good electrical insulator.
It isn't going to cause a fire.
It just doesn't take abuse well.
Joe Public does not shop at Mapleshade.
Audiophiles do.
You are supposedly trying to save Joe Public
but he is not involved at all.
DanL
It is with government, as with medicine. They have both but a choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.
--- Jeremy Bentham
Typical audiophile analysis. You pick an example such as knob and tube wiring but overlook the details.
gusser,
I've already put ceramic hoods on top of the anode caps, if this is what you worry about. These are a bit old photos.
This is about the Mapleshade power products.
Your amp is a good example of Dans point in ths issue. It's yours, in your home, it's not being sold to the general public.
AGAIN ...
The general public does not shop at Mapleshade.
Another spurious red herring argument.
DanL
OMG stop with the nonsense!
Of course the general public is the ONLY people who buy Mapleshade products.
Audio enthusiasts are part of the general public.
I wouldn't want to resort to name calling, so I won't start now, but you "sound" like a complete moron. I am not calling you a moron, just saying you sound like one.
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
I'm glad I live in DC, land of the free. Guess I'll go smoke a legal joint and make myself a run to the power pole out of Cardas tonearm wire.
I don't buy any Mapleshade products. I'm a DIY er. I'd make my own.
But where Mapleshade deserves praise, in my opinion, is for their attitude of experimentation and perfectionism, as they see it.
When I visited Ron and Pierre at Ron's house 15 years ago, they didn't have a volume control in the system. They played Mapleshade recordings and they knew the level they were recorded at and they set the amp to THE proper volume. They had an outboard volume control box, if needed. for visitors.
The amp was liquid cooled Mosfet with the cooling line running down to the basement where it was cooled by an antique fan blowing on an old air conditioner coil.
As mentioned before these guys are quite serious experimenters and very careful listeners. If one is of the mindset to be intrigued by such tweaking, these guys are old masters at it.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Supra Mains Power Distribution Block
z
It's more of a moral and legal matter, rather then a "right".
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
Moral
In whose eyes - not mine for sure.
It does not claim UL certification.
It's obvious that it will not stand abuse.
Somebody MIGHT get hurt is a red herring.
People get hurt stepping off the sidewalk.
The same reason is used to get swings, kickball,
monkey bars, jungle gyms etc out of playgrounds.
It is a very stupid argument in a "FREE" society.
Legal
Again do you want the government involved in deciding
what can and cannot be sold in the audio realm
because once you invite them in ...
They see No boundries !!!
They crush the whole business with regulations.
They love to make laws and even more laws.
I have seen it happen in many venues.
The whole section of business crushed by regulation.
GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT = POLICE STATE
Then let lawyers involved in this - Bad Idea.
Nowhere is it written that the government has the power
to protect people from bad decisions.
You can warn them but the choice is theirs.
In a free society that is.
DanL
No, we are not trying to outlaw monkey bars in playgrounds.
But what's wrong with imposing minimum standards of weld quality or steel grades?
Is the problem for you that the inexperienced, unlicensed hacks can't participate in the industry?
They are selling things that people want.
You don't want it fine.
But to make sure that others can't ...
Once you get the gov't involved then
they can and will destroy the industry.
Feet under the component makes
the whole stereo unstable.
Cable elevators cause a tripping hazard.
Tubes must have cages or
someone might burn themselves.
You can easily see where this can go.
You want BIG BROTHER in this ???
Think a little before you do this.
You may say that is not what you want
but it is a very slippery slope.
DanL
You think it's ok for some firm to sell playground equipment with shoddy welds or inferior steel where a child falls and seriously injured?We should not have product safety standards?
P.S. I would be honored to destroy the snake oil audio accessories industry. About time these people make an honest living.
Edits: 09/21/15
That isn't what happened...
ALL swings and ALL jungle gyms were banned.
Workmanship was never considered.
Workmanship hasn't been mentioned
about Mapleshade just materials used.
Yours vs Someone Else's Products
Who gets to decide that???
Who gets to draw the line???
The gov't will ban them all
because they can.
Someone somewhere will get offended.
Again who buys Mapleshade products ???
Audiophiles and wannabes not general public
and not some 10yr old kid or grandma.
So they are going to be
somewhat smart about it's use.
and poof another item on that list.
> > I would be honored to destroy
the snake oil audio accessories industry.
Now we are getting to the real point ...
This is something that YOU are going to do
to make YOU feel better and more in control.
YOU are going to wipe out the snake oil industry.
YOU are going on your soapbox and decry
the charlatans and beguilers as criminals.
YOU are going to bring fairness to the masses.
This is about YOU.
DanL
.
I see your point Dan, I'm growing tired of all the legislation and laws getting shoved down our throat. This is a political agenda based on kickbacks and "earmarks" (or whatever fancy name you want to use). It is also a machine that funds litigation, I don't think our founding fathers had this in mind....
^ +1
Like I said, there are plenty of snake oil audiophile products out there. And for the most part they do no harm. Even many of the AC power products while not UL or equivalent listed, they do appear safe based on casual observation and the source of the raw components.
However once that line is crossed, it is more than fair game for anyone to suggest an investigation by authorities. It's their decision to act or ignore, not mine.
You know damn well if those Mapleshade power products would ever be subjected to safety inspection they would fail miserably.
Pierre called Dave and said he thinks Dave labeled one of the wires wrong. In other words, he got caught.
Indeed I was caught but the comment was that the "spool" from the reversed wire must have gone through an extra de-reeling procedure.
I do know that pierre and ron (bauman) have a series of very specific test tracks they use to listen for direction and iirc the differences they hear is all in the attack of the notes. Sure some will argue that a real engineer should be able to measure this and it is important to note that both Pierre and Ron are top level real engineers.
I have another friend Johannes who could nail the relative phase of a SE amp to a speaker. This doesn't have anything to do with absolute phase but rather the idea that air is harder to compress than it is to rarify which sets up a situation to create an even order distortion. When you combine this even order distortion generator with another (a SE tube output stage) suddenly you get very different distortion spectra based on phase. Johannes would simply instruct me to listen to the bass and it was easy to hear. I admit I heard differences but in no way could I ever nail it like Johannes could.
(important thing to note for all you absolute phase junkies is simply swappping speaker cables polarity is not a fair way to reverse phase)
dave
"I have another friend Johannes who could nail the relative phase of a SE amp to a speaker. This doesn't have anything to do with absolute phase but rather the idea that air is harder to compress than it is to rarify which sets up a situation to create an even order distortion. When you combine this even order distortion generator with another (a SE tube output stage) suddenly you get very different distortion spectra based on phase. Johannes would simply instruct me to listen to the bass and it was easy to hear."
This is an interesting point, since indeed there must be some degree of asymmetry in a sound wave, since air pressures can increase arbitrarily high, but they cannot decrease below zero. On the other hand, as I learned from a Wiki page, a sound level of 94dB corresponds to a fluctuation of about 1 part in 100,000 around atmospheric pressure, so one would have thought any non-linearities associated with this effect would be really tiny; at something like the 0.001% level or so. This looks as if it could be rather negligible in comparison to the order of magnitude of distortions from the amplifier, and from the speaker itself.
In fact, I think I have seen astonishingly large distortion figures quoted for loudspeakers. Isn't it possible that, if there is some audible effect associated with the phase choice for the connection of the amplifier to the speaker, it is much more likely to be associated with asymmetries in the way the loudspeaker itself responds to being driven outwards, as opposed to being driven inwards? I would have thought that such kinds of mechanical asymmetries in the behaviour of the loudspeaker cone would be overwhelmingly more important than non-linearities in the way the acoustic wave propagates in the air.
I was a bit puzzled by you final remark: "important thing to note for all you absolute phase junkies is simply swappping speaker cables polarity is not a fair way to reverse phase". Until I reached that point in your message, I thought that you precisely were talking about what happens if you reverse the two speaker wires? What did you mean, if not that?
Just to make sure we don't go off on a complete tangent, this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of the phase of one speaker relative to the other in a stereo system! The effect you are wanting to talk about is, I believe, what is normally called "absolute phase," and could be discussed purely in a mono audio system. It is concerned with the issue of whether a transient attack at the beginning of an impulsive sound will drive the speaker cone forwards, towards the listener, or instead drive the cone backwards, away from the listener. This effect would precisely be reversed if one switched over the two wires going to the speaker. Thus I am puzzled by your sentence apparently saying that that is not what you were talking about.
Anyway, in summary, I could believe that absolute phase has a chance to be an audible phenomenon, because of non-linearities and asymmetries in the system. But I would have thought non-linearities and asymmetries in the mechanical response of the speaker cone would be far more likely to be at play here than non-linearities in the propagation of sound waves in air.
Chris
By absolute phase I indeed meant swapping polarity of both channels at the same time and not one channel in relation to the other.
The air thing was under the assumption of mainly bass (due to the large amounts of air movement) and an asymmetrical design (not an open baffle) where there is a pressure build up in a back chamber. I was using lowthers in rear loaded horn at the time.
dave
"By absolute phase I indeed meant swapping polarity of both channels at the same time and not one channel in relation to the other."
OK, good...we are on the same wavelength (so to speak)!
I think, though, that the percentage change in air pressure around the quiescent 1 atmosphere is still absolutely tiny, even for loud low-frequency sounds.
But the asymmetry of the loudspeaker response, together with the asymmetry of the SET amplifier response (because of its predominant 2nd harmonic distortion) would certainly, I imagine, lead to the possibility of either addition, or subtraction, of the two asymmetries, depending on the polarity of the connection to the speaker. I'd put my money on that, rather than asymmetry in the acoustic propagation of the air wave itself.
Chris
It was presented to me as the non-linearity of air as being the cause. What other aspect of a speaker design could generate even distortion?
A slightly off center voice coil in the gap?
suspension / spider?
dave
"It was presented to me as the non-linearity of air as being the cause. What other aspect of a speaker design could generate even distortion?
A slightly off center voice coil in the gap? suspension / spider?"
Quite possibly.
I tried quickly googling around a bit, and distortion figures for loudspeakers seem to be commonly up to the order of several percent, especially at low frequencies (presumably because the amplitude of the cone movement gets larger at low frequencies). These distortions include substantial second harmonic, which implies asymmetry.
So if the second harmonic distortion of the speaker were comparable with the second harmonic distortion of the amplifier, then I suppose there could be a significant and audible difference if the two asymmetries were combining on the one hand in unison, versus on the other hand in opposition.
By contrast, I think the non-linearities in the acoustic propagation in air will be way down, for any kind of realistic sound pressure level. (The "maximum possible" sound level in air at standard ambient pressure, based on supposing the pressure reaches down to zero in the troughs, is about 194 dB. which is pretty loud!!!. A loudspeaker, on the other hand, will be hitting one or other of its end-of-range mechanical movement limitations at hugely lower sound levels. Thus asymmetries at normal listening levels will be likely to be much bigger for speakers than for air, since the ratio of typical cone movement over maximum possible cone movement is a much bigger fraction than the ratio of air pressure change over ambient air pressure.)
Chris
Silly wabbits...It would never happen with the UPOCC copper or silver wires. Less Grainy so it solved the directional issues.
megasat16
It is the Neotech UP-OCC hook-up wire I use the most in my projects and it's highly directional.
Neotech UP-OCC
Highly recommend, this is some of my favorite, best sounding wire I have encountered. I can not hear if it is directional or not.
Indeed I was caught but the comment was that the "spool" from the reversed
wire must have gone through an extra de-reeling procedure.
============
Slick footwork, Slagle!
But obviously they did not need your silly labels anyway.
JR
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
"Big Science, modern physics works in a universe that is probabilistic and perspectival, whereas the EE lab is neither. It works on convenient fiction, a simplification that is good enough."
-Well sure, much of what is used was discovered empirically, nothing wrong with that, it avoids a lot of smoke! lol
"JUJU
I am saying that the "juju" might add something valuable to the important process of hands-one/ears-on experimentation, without in itself having much physical/physics grounding. Maybe it makes him feel good and inspires a deeper connection with what he is doing. I'm looking at the whole project and thinking...good work!"
-That is fine.
"WHY do people who never studied this material think they are natural-born experts in it? I can only think, "One doesn't know what they don't know."
This extends to understanding how "Science" as a logical system and human social enterprise works. Most audio forum science is pretty close to trash, not so much in the realm of electronics where high-school lab conceptions are reasonably useful, but when EEs and guys who learned electronics in the Navy start talking anthropology and human research, it gets pretty silly."
-I don't think you are giving some enough credit, after all you don't know what they don't know. ;)
"I am a Virgo and basically a nerdy analytical person. I sometimes wish I had more juju and mambo in the mix, but I go with experience, observations, and my naturally questioning attitude and trust in that."
-Now don't go dragging astrology into this Joe! lol.
"Hey, what are we doing on SET forum. SE amps should blow compared to low distortion SS an PP amps, right?"
-Not at all, I fully understand that all distortion is not created equal, nor is everything linear.
One doesn't have to look too hard, the first control on most stereos is the volume. Like a lot of things in audio, it is logarithmic.
In earlier times, yes I was naive, I thought 5 on the volume dial meant 50 percent power and that "low THD" amps couldn't possibly be the cause for bad sound.
Fortunately, I was able to learn this from others work in physics.
It was there the whole time, I just needed to be able to see it.
"How did we find out that they aren't so bad? Experimentation in the face of received wisdom."
-I get what you are saying...
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
This extends to understanding how "Science" as a logical system and human social enterprise works. Most audio forum science is pretty close to trash, not so much in the realm of electronics where high-school lab conceptions are reasonably useful, but when EEs and guys who learned electronics in the Navy start talking anthropology and human research, it gets pretty silly."
-I don't think you are giving some enough credit, after all you don't know what they don't know. ;)
-----------------------------
In human research areas such as audio testing and evaluation, I see a lot of the same approach taken in the EE lab, which doesn't work!
This "scientific" approach to DBT and ABX and all that is based on totally discredited paradigms in social science. The basic notion is that people, or rather their behavior, can be studied in the lab similar to physics experiments. Control the "experiment" and good solid insights come out the other end.
I can tell what people don't know about this subject by what they write. This is bad science and really bad human research. Why? Because it doesn't recognize how people relate to the world and doesn't recognize and control many relevant variables. The result is that the test has little relevance outside the unique conditions of the test.
Where I get upset is not seeing that forum guys don't understand human research, this is a very specialized and complicated field. It is when these highly questionable notions are weaponized and used to shut down discourse, using the holy mantle of Science. I see it all the time.
Did you blind test that opinion? Sighted listening! Expectation bias!
I can understand when tech people get peeved at hearing about bogus new electronics phenomena invented out of thin air. Well, that's how I feel about this audio forum evaluation science. It is extremely dubious and certainly no basis for feeling superior and in control of listening evaluations (especially other peoples') the way we are in control of circuits.
It is not a science in the sense it is being framed and can not be.
I realize that many, perhaps most, have no idea what I am talking about sometimes and that the idea of scientific listening testing seems totally reasonable on the face of things, but it is not that simple, really not.
My main interest in pointing out things like this is to remove blockages to advancement and useful experimentation in audio. This is what I have been trying to do my whole audio career.
The tip off for me that I am on to something is how ferociously people defend their turf. When I first started writing and publishing articles about horns, an extremely unpopular subject at the time, I had drunk old geezers calling me up late at night, "Roberts, you bastard, you're putting audio back 30 years!" Numerous "pros" ridiculed me to my face, including one who had a complete horn system within two years.
Look at how people defend audio testing, when 99% of the defenders have no training in or understanding of the field whatsoever, and how strongly they defend Science when they don't have much insight into the profound intellectual complexities of their claims, and it appears that there are some really deep-seated understandings about the world and their place in it riding on those topics.
I get it that some personalities do not like to feel adrift and want to pin everything down with scientific certainty. Well, we are in fact more adrift than many would like and I think that is a good thing. It is what makes us interesting.
One important insight that I have gained in 30 years as an anthropologist in audio is that we modern first-world humans are not that far from our primitive ancestors. Science is another of many cultural activities that shares a lot with religion and politics. People are people and science does not offer an exit route.
Incidentally, I was a declared Physics major at U.Penn. That lasted exactly two classes. They put me in a class in Elementary Mechanics that consisted of me and 5 guys selected by the Chinese government to come to Penn to study Physics. After getting all As in AP Physics in high school, I thought I knew this stuff cold. Well, I felt like I was surrounded by Enrico Fermi, Walter Heisenberg, and Nikolai Tesla. Maybe I was. I swiftly dropped the class and took "Intro to Film Making" instead.
In retrospect, I think the Physics department was testing me in a "sink or swim" environment and I definitely saw some vivid underwater phenomena!
Sure, Physics has its place but it is not the universal key to understanding human existence. I'm glad I took the anthropology and philosophy of science/social theory route. These perspectives have been very useful in the audio world.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
I don't believe only that "the pucks sound better", but I do believe they are a tuning accessory, as I wrote at the start of this topic:
"-the sound can be further tweaked with wooden discs on transformers or tweaks as battery grounds."
And from my experience too much of any tuning accessory can be harmful and this also applies to these discs as well.
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