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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
audio-union's avatar
audio-union
179 posts
 
I have spent decades of my life in research labs. Part of my work includes sound and conduction. Companies protect proprietary information. The general public (and in some cases even researchers) is always years if not decades behind in the understanding of a technology at the forefront.

Researchers making a profit from their work are not likely to share information until it has little remaining value. Sometimes information has strategic value to a government, in that case access is restricted. I refer to this as getting a visit from the "boys in black" should you step across the line. There is definitely considerable information related to sound and conduction that fall into that category.
thorloki
19 posts
 
Fellow audiophiles,

Mr. Ted Denney (Synergistic research) is only looking after his wallet, when he says that cables have directionality.

He calls himself "lead designer", I can understand lead designers for amps, preamps, speakers, DACs, but cables??

Synergistic research, and all other cable purveyors, simply buy bulk spools of cabe, cut it to various lengths, and terminate it, where is the "designing" in that?

Dear Mr. Denney, here is the challenge, if cables are truly directional, and, as you claim, you can hear the difference, then, you should have no trouble picking out systems where the wire is directionally "correct" and where it is "incorrect".

You should be able to pick out the correctly wired system 100% of the time, since, as you claim, the differences are obvious.

Go ahead, take up the challenge, let's see  how you do!

Enough, with the nonsense, if you can not hear something, BLINDFOLDED, it does NOT exist.

What you THINK you hear,  is simply the placebo effect and conformational bias.

There is a reason drug testing is done double blind, for some reason, I fail to understand, audiophiles can not seem to grasp this.

Let's all wait and see what Mr Denny's response is.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,014 posts
 
I think that the challenges about wires posed to the tecnological tools by the hypothesis of Anton linked to the specifity and irreductibility of human perception in relation to the limits of the mesuring process when we encounter human consciousness is the TRUE matter of this discussion, not only the protocols of a blindtest for it....

It is the reason why i am interested in this thread...

My 500 bucks audio syystem is complete, no upgrades are necessary, and with my mechanical equalizer working optimally for my ears, any cables upgrade, even positive, at costly price is not in my purchasing view... There is a qualitative treshold in sound experience pleasure... I reach it...And i listen music not sound difference, my hooby is not changing the gear to distract my boredom like some reviewer advocate...

Then it is the correspondence between this human consciousness of the sound and the presence and interruption or potential replacement by the most powerful technologies which interested me...

The only growing religion in the world now is a form of transhumanism for which there is no more place for the uniqueness of the consciousness and his irreductibility to matter and technology....

Then awake yourself to the true subject here and spare us the bad jokea about cables...

By the way i dont have a postive or negative opinion about cable direction "per se"... We need test and even  blindtest here if you ever need.... And also more than that we need thinking and this was my point...
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,014 posts
 
Researchers making a profit from their work are not likely to share information until it has little remaining value. Sometimes information has strategic value to a government, in that case access is restricted. I refer to this as getting a visit from the "boys in black" should you step across the line. There is definitely considerable information related to sound and conduction that fall into that category
Very good observation or experience...

It is clear for all to see that there exist 2 kind of science: one open and retarded, the other linked to power and money in advance and not to be found in peer reviewed litterature...

We live in 2 worlds....
One world is poor the other is not....No power reside in the first....

The survival of the world is related to the reunification of the world...
djones51
4,947 posts
 
You mean Self could just wrote what came to his mind? Honestly, i don't figure it out, what are your doubts. You weren't in such a hesitancy when you speak about wire direction.
Self wrote wire direction was nonsense . I don't doubt that. You said something about measurements. I haven't seen any measurements by Self so I can't comment on measurements I haven't seen.  As long as cables are not manufactured to be directional, if we're talking about basic copper interconnects that don't have a lifted shield or speaker wires of stranded or solid copper then NO I do not believe they are directional. If anyone claims they hear a difference without using some kind of control for bias then to me it's a useless claim. 
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