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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
dletch2
455 posts
 

anton_stepichev OP55 posts04-21-2021 3:49am
Your logical chain doesn’t have a logical end. If some objective interference enters the signal circuit and can be detected by ear, it should be easily measured. But we know that such interference cannot be measured even with the most accurate electrical measuring devices, see the article by Douglas Self.


I will simply point out that YOU said, it, not me. I don’t insist on blind testing because I like typing. I insist on it because humans are biased and no, their anecdotal evidence cannot be trusted and in this case should not be trusted as it is so easy to make the evidence far more reliable.


However, I will also point to my other point about cable designers almost as a rule having no clue how electronics works, and even many "good" designers of electronics lack EMI experience. Hence they may not know the conditions required to generate measurable differences (if possible).



That 60Hz buzzing is not always just 60Hz. It is only something that happens 60 times a second. There can be rich harmonic content in that 60Hz buzz. Now that take 60Hz and harmonics and modulate a music signal with it. Now you have stuff all over the place.

There’s not much logic in this explanation either. Аny audible modulations and harmonics that power cable can cause will still be multiples of 60 Hz, which is a periodic interference. If such interference gets into the signal circuit, it is simply superimposed on the sound of music without changing the timbre, dynamics, or anything else that we can notice by ear when replacing the power cable. So we need some better explanation for power cables.


Your statement and conclusions are wrong. They will not only be harmonics of 60Hz, but also harmonics of the modulation of 60Hz and the audio signal (if they exist, and really more 120Hz). However, any comments about "dynamics" are questionable and likely not backed up factually, again to this blind testing thing.


A wire can only be directional for AC signals. It cannot be directional for DC. You have it backwards. I am not saying there will be anything audible, only that you must have AC for it to be directional.


This is absolutely true. A wire can only be directional for AC signals. It cannot be directional for pure DC. Giving me links to people with a poor fundamental understanding of the science does not change that answer.


perkri
926 posts
 
@dletch2

Clearly you have a deep and profound understanding of wine, wine making and how the process of drinking it works.

They make a glass for pretty much every kind of wine and some spirits.

Because of my varied previous life, career and interests, I have had the good fortune of travelling to many wine regions. I also have many friends who are winemakers/vineyard owners - both in North America and in Italy. We would spend our summers on a vineyard in Tuscany.

Riedel was the groundbreaker in wine glass design. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for lo-fi wineglasses, as are commonly used everywhere. Table wines... But, if a special vintage is to be enjoyed to its fullest, the appropriate glass enhances the experience especially when paired with the "right" meal.

Synergy. Kind of like audio systems. Lo-fi systems that have their time and place when filling a room with sound is the purpose. But when listening is to be a "lose yourself in the moment, meditative experience", subtleties matter.

The law of diminishing returns applies to a system just as it applies to anything else




dletch2
455 posts
 
Essien's main contribution is that he discovered the unsolvable problems in understanding of sound and explained what they are:

"(In our perception) the instruments do not mix together and produce one instrument, and the singers are seen as separate individuals, different from the instruments. In like manner, when the singers sing accompanied by the instruments, the ear sees them as separate entities; they do not mix in the ear and produce one sound quality... At the acoustic level, however, all the vibrations issuing from the different instruments and human singers mix to form the chaotic acoustic jumble "a meaningless jumble (Hirsch & Watson)" and establish the well-known production/perception paradox—the most defiant challenge to hearing scientists to untangle the cobweb and explain hearing by psychoacoustic procedures."

This is indeed an unsolvable problem, and within the framework of modern knowledge, sound can be described and investigated only partially, its part, related to the most subtle perception, remains behind the scenes.


No, some guy (Essien) who is not an expert on psychoacoustics, neural acoustics, neural processing, etc. stated that he discovered the unsolvable problem, that no one else thought of as unsolvable, and assigned himself as the expert (without peer review). When I read the things he writes, like that paragraph above, it just sounds really silly to me. There are other words that come to mind, and none of them are remotely kind because, what he wrote is silly.


Let me giving you two really simple, common, every day examples to show how silly what he wrote is:


"OKAY GOOGLE"
"ALEXA"


I can have my Echo playing music rather loudly, yet the Echo can still pick out ALEXA out of that chaotic acoustic jumble.  Similarly, I can have my music rather loud, and my Google Home picks out "OKAY GOOGLE" from that chaotic acoustic jumble. Essien writes about sound like the brain does not even exist. How am I supposed to take that seriously. Good thing Amazon and Google figured out the production/perception paradox. 

dletch2
455 posts
 
Frankly, it is akin to a creationist trying to justify a 6,000 year old Earth using mysticism while ignoring everything inconvenient to the argument.
perkri
926 posts
 
These voice activated devices are truly amazing.

Now, if you have a radio on, at voice level volume, with a talk radio station on, and you have two people having a conversation in the room while you say "Hey Alexa", it’ll activate, no doubt. Now try to ask it something with the all that ambient playing, theres going to be a bunch of "Sorry, I didn’t understand that"...
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