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In Reply to: RE: Ignore the doubters! posted by Joe Roberts on September 20, 2015 at 10:23:09
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
Follow Ups:
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!
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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.
------------------------------
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.
------------------------------
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.
------------------------------
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?
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