If I go into space, I would like it to be bi-directional.
Well, after reading this thread, I have second thoughts.
Well, after reading this thread, I have second thoughts.
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.
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.
- ...
- 798 posts total
Some don’t get it at all. Some sommeliers are sooooo good, and have studied so much that they can identify the sub region where a wine came from and when it was produced.What is surprizing is not what any humans can or could develop in the mastery of their own powers, sensation/perception, intuition, imagination, thinking concentration etc.... What is surprizing is the way some trust only their religious belief.... Guess which is the name of this new religion? It is not protestantism, Islam or orthodoxy or buddhism, no, this religion is the new one , the idolatry of technology and the confusion of the map with reality and now worst, the replacing of reality by animated maps....Walking idols like those of Boston dynamics.... It make me sad that some will name "luddite" someone who vouch for science over running technology, and not the opposite....Science is NOT only physics or biology by the way, it is way more complex and vast that this TV simplification.... In the long history of science we are at the borderline where the worker want to be the master.....Technology cannot by itself be the savior....It is a part of the problem when profit run the game ... Any civilized society must invest most of his eggs in the basket of education.... Where else? But we are not civilized, we never have been, we are powerful savage manipulated by hubris.... After Shakespeare, Goethe in his Faust and in his general works, take a deep look in the modern hubris at a level never renewed perhaps since.... But who understand Goethe? It is an obsolete poet for most....Few people know that Goethe was also a great scientist... Like Archimedes who waited more than one millenia to be understood by Newton and Leibnitz... This new religion i speak about is incompatible with Goethe thinking..... |
That is because they are listening to the wire and not to Pink Floyd and equate turning a screw to assemble an actuator to going through a full space qual design and implementation and having something up in space .... and no one ever mentioned cable direction. But that is nothing. I just read someone claimed the location of an instrument shifted 1/3 of the soundstage due to, wait for it .... wait for it .... copper wire. We have entered the twilight zone. |
I have to say all this is a great discussion. My head is vibrating :). @millercarbon you are often snarky and I’ve come to in a perverse way enjoy it much of the time. I have to say your threads are particularly excellent in this discussion. They are really resonating with me, no sarcasm, totally serious. Thanks all for your contributions as well - for the most part. Certainly the usual turds in the punch bowl, but less than normal :). The Audiogon forum, in general, has greatly improved since the biggest turd of them all, whose name will never be repeated again, - he who thought a concrete wall would make the ultimate speakers and that we are all a bunch of idiots for loving this hobby - was finally banished off the island! |
- 798 posts total