Talk but not walk?

The tube amp referred to is not point to point wired and all the components are certainly affixed pretty darn tightly to those boards. I much prefer point to point wired tube amps sonically. I looked at internal pics. If one does not glue, or bolt, or clamp a part it is not only vibrating with the music it is potentially dangerous in a high voltage amplifier. The best sounding capacitors are made highly damped such as the Duelund CAST caps. How these realities all work together is most interesting. Removing crossover parts from the bombastic bass cavity of a speaker and placing them outboard does improve the sound. This I have also walked the talk on with experience. Why do they sound better outside the speaker cavity? Two main reasons. You correctly state one now has the room to properly space all the parts - particularly inductors. Also, the parts are no longer vibrating, but are now isolated from the cabinet.

michaelgreen,

The walk here is the fact that caps and the other parts (including cables) weren’t designed and spec-ed out with tie wraps around them.

Have you ever considered that this is because tie wraps are irrelevant to the performance of caps?

Computer circuit boards/drives etc are spec’d for a certain performance, and yet they can be put in any number of different casings, and affixed any number of ways, and the performance will be the same. (You could of course mount them in a way so poorly that connections break or over-heating occurs to failure, but there is a wide spectrum of installation possibilities none of which alter the performance of these items).

If you claim that tie wraps actually change the performance of a cap, what is your actual technical explanation and what is your evidence?

Can you show us measurements before and after a tie wrap has been removed?

And given you have thrown around the word "empirical" and "scientific" in your op, can you tell us the steps you have taken to control variables in your evaluations of these effects - obvious variables such as human bias and error? You recognize these concerns to be an important part of being a good, careful empiricist, I hope?

Audio parts are very specifically designed to meet spec and when you add materials (such as a tie or glue) you are of course changing the performance.

That’s an assertion without evidence, and it doesn’t follow at all.
In industry, ties, glues and all sorts of other parts of a device are used that do not change the performance - if they did, they wouldn’t be used, or the device would be designed with interaction of all the parts taken in to account. (That is, in good design - one can always find examples of bad design - but not everything is badly designed, of course).

I’ve used ties, glue and solder to, for instance, fix or adjust wires in various devices I own (both AV and audio equipment) and it has never changed the performance in any noticeable way (nor is there any reason to have expected any change, so long as I wasn't doing something stupid like running fine signal lines in close parallel with power lines, etc).

In fact, I completely re-arranged all my cabling, with all sorts of different ties, plastic, metal, etc. Did this change the audio performance of my system? No. Not one bit.

That’s when you have too many parts too close together. This actually causes blockage of the audio signal and makes the soundstage start to collapse or get congested sounding.

Again - I see no actual technical explanation you’ve given in support of that claim. Instead it seems, as I mentioned to bill333, a type of folksy association - "congested electronic parts yield congested sound."

If you are really the empiricist you claim, surely you understand how your explanations are wanting.

Michael, you were the one who made a big deal of testing, empiricism, and science. I’m just wondering if you are actually "walking the walk" in terms of being a careful empiricist.

Michael Green,

Why wouldn't an, for example, amplifier work to manufacturer's specification once received straight from the factory? Ties, rods, rings, whatever else, in place as manufacturer left it. I am not talking about some packaging material, but about a finished product taken out of the box? Why shouldn't we expect that manufacturer, when tweaking and finalizing before releasing to the market, is testing the product as customers would use it? In fact, why would not manufacturer do it? I have a hard time believing that someone engineers a half-baked product and never pays attention to how it sounds when finished? I am sure it is possible, but why would anyone put time and effort into engineering something that she/he would not adjust as the finalized product? Regardless of personal opinion what does or does not sound "better" (tied or untied, etc.). Or, did I completely misunderstand your post, which is also very likely?

If it is only about removing vs. not removing shipping material (as it seems is the case in your example), why would anyone not remove it? Even if you forget the sound, which may or may not be different to someone's liking, the machine would not look the same as what you envisioned when parting with money.

When you have too many parts too close together the parts are not able to perform at their spec. This actually causes blockage of the audio signal and makes the soundstage start to collapse or get congested sounding.

This is an interesting one. It seems that when parts inside some equipment get congested (capacitors etc. closer together), the virtual image of the performance, as heard from your listening position, also gets congested (musicians closer together). Serendipity at work? It would be interesting to know why would that happen just like that. I do not doubt many things (including this) can happen and that is why there are good audio equipment engineers out there who think of all the details, but this one is, kind of, funny. Almost makes me think that, if amplifier is turned to one of its sides, I should expect to hear a cellist sitting on top of a violinist.

glupson,

Nice to see people like yourself bringing critical thinking to MG’s claims.

They apparently don’t allow too much critical thinking on Michael’s forum. Skeptical challenges to their ideas - simple things like asking for measured results for some of the more controversial claims, listening tests constructed to control for the variables of people’s imagination etc - are frowned upon as "bad vibes" and a sign one is not being sufficiently open minded. (You’ll find exactly this attitude on any number of fringe medicine, New Age, psychic medium, astrology, etc groups...funny enough).

There isn’t the luxury of of fan-worship and lack of skepticism when he brings his claims here. (Though I’d like to be wrong insofar as he could actually substantiate some of his claims). So I’m sure it’s not as comfortable for those claims to be brought here.

But then: A wise university professor pointed out: Discomfort is a sign that something that you think is right, is being challenged. And that should be exactly what you want, because that’s exactly when you are most likely to be on the cusp you are learning either that you are wrong - or by taking on the challenge you gain more confidence you are right. One can either take that opportunity to be challenged and learn from it, or use the discomfort to declare those who challenge your claims as "trolls" as a way of running from the challenges.

As for how the crowding of the electronic parts producing crowding of the soundstage, you’ll find quite a bit of these folksy-level "explanations" in MGs stuff. For instance he’s written how running wires close together would produce a "tighter" sound, a bit more apart will yield a bit more open sound, moving further apart yielding even more open sound.

As I said, it’s something of a piece of the folk-wisdom behind homeopathy - the same conceptual appeal of "like cures like" (even though there is no actual basis for the claims made on this hypothesizing).

Sounds like hifi voodoo. Literally. Would like to see the empirical evidence of that. Some kind of cult?

Tuning sounds a like lot what many here would call tweaking.   Semantics I guess.

The mysteries of HEA. Queue the spooky music!