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What do we hear when we change the direction of a wire?

Douglas Self wrote a devastating article about audio anomalies back in 1988. With all the necessary knowledge and measuring tools, he did not detect any supposedly audible changes in the electrical signal. Self and his colleagues were sure that they had proved the absence of anomalies in audio, but over the past 30 years, audio anomalies have not disappeared anywhere, at the same time the authority of science in the field of audio has increasingly become questioned. It's hard to believe, but science still cannot clearly answer the question of what electricity is and what sound is! (see article by A.J.Essien).

For your information: to make sure that no potentially audible changes in the electrical signal occur when we apply any "audio magic" to our gear, no super equipment is needed. The smallest step-change in amplitude that can be detected by ear is about 0.3dB for a pure tone. In more realistic situations it is 0.5 to 1.0dB'". This is about a 10% change. (Harris J.D.). At medium volume, the voltage amplitude at the output of the amplifier is approximately 10 volts, which means that the smallest audible difference in sound will be noticeable when the output voltage changes to 1 volt. Such an error is impossible not to notice even using a conventional voltmeter, but Self and his colleagues performed much more accurate measurements, including ones made directly on the music signal using Baxandall subtraction technique - they found no error even at this highest level.

As a result, we are faced with an apparently unsolvable problem: those of us who do not hear the sound of wires, relying on the authority of scientists, claim that audio anomalies are BS. However, people who confidently perceive this component of sound are forced to make another, the only possible conclusion in this situation: the electrical and acoustic signals contain some additional signal(s) that are still unknown to science, and which we perceive with a certain sixth sense.

If there are no electrical changes in the signal, then there are no acoustic changes, respectively, hearing does not participate in the perception of anomalies. What other options can there be?

Regards.
anton_stepichev
anton_stepichev OP
150 posts
 
mahgister
I never wrote only for you....But for the others readers ...
Of course, for everyone, I didn't mean the opposite. Excuse my clumsy English.
anton_stepichev OP
150 posts
 
william53b
Yes, but are your circuit boards mounted in the right direction?
There are no circuit boards there.
dletch2
455 posts
 
The time-frequency uncertainty principle states that the product of the temporal and frequency extents of a signal cannot be smaller than 1/(4?). We study human ability to simultaneously judge the frequency and the timing of a sound. Our subjects often exceeded the uncertainty limit, sometimes by more than tenfold, mostly through remarkable timing acuity. Our results establish a lower bound for the nonlinearity and complexity of the algorithms employed by our brains in parsing transient sounds, rule out simple “linear filter” models of early auditory processing, and highlight timing acuity as a central feature in auditory object processing. (Emphasis added.)»


Mahgister, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you understand that this does not mean that humans have "magical" properties. It only means that our auditory system is not purely tone based, which again, has not been overly debated in over a century.  Pitch is still tone, as it is a definition and it is continuous, it does not involve attack and decay.


Instruments can time two waves of the same frequency to way better than 1/4 wavelength. Say you have two A/D recording the same sound, at 44.1KHz, 20KHz bandwidth limited. They are asynchronous, i.e. there is no synchronization of there A/D. In software I can resample and align those two recordings to an accuracy of sub-microseconds determinant on the SNR/THD.  So much for 1/4 wavelength.


dletch2
455 posts
 
I would believe whatever differences there are would show up most in cases where there is an impedance mismatch which is much more likely with zero feedback amps, but that should not really matter if one has addressed impedance matching between amps and speakers properly, which is the right way to do it for best results, so in that case impedance matching issues due to a zero feedback amp is a moot point.  



This would be virtually impossible, since impedance is variable with frequency across the audio band, impedance of speakers are not complex, and not controlled anywhere within the speaker itself. Given the mechanical nature, it may not even be a practical goal.
sj00884's avatar
sj00884
80 posts
 
Who “listens” to electricity or electrical characteristics/properties? Sound is created, or in this instance recreated, by a vibrating transducer(s); how is that movement measured objectively/scientifically? 
I am definitely in the camp where “everything matters”. I have no idea how some of the tweaks I’ve incorporated work, or even if they do. If I “notice” a change over extended listening +/-, perceived or otherwise, the answer is quite clear. 
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