We have some serious problems with attitudes and methodology in this community. :(
Your attitude of more money = better is a problem in modern audio components and your previous comment on your methodology is comical. So for once I agree with you.
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.
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@mahgister It reminds me of the story of the origin of the musical temperament. For the sake of convenience, they sacrifice the purity of the tone and gradually accustom everyone to the fact that it sounds normal. "In musical tuning, a temperament is a tuning system that slightly compromises the pure intervals of just intonation to meet other requirements. Tempering is the process of altering the size of an interval by making it narrower or wider than pure". wiki |
And nobody with limited financial resources who spent a significant amount of disposable money on something that makes no difference is going to go out of their way to show they wasted money. You are correct, we have serious problems with attitudes and methodologies, starting with the attitude of infallibility, followed by using methodologies that never test that infallibility. Glad you noticed. |
I use Russ Andrews/Kimber 8TC speaker cable for my L,C,Rs. Expensive. I use cheap Fisual cable for my surrounds. I recently bought a 200 ft spool of 14 gauge wire for UK £20. I experimented and have tried it with my main speakers. There is absolutely no difference in sound from cables costing hundreds of £. |
@joysjane The problem of anomalies arises only when some artificial equipment becomes an intermediary in the our perception of information about a living object or whatever it is that we consider the subject of art. NASA doesn't fit that description, so I agree with you. |
- 798 posts total