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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
vinylguy2016
22 posts
 
What ever happened to science and the basic knowledge of electrical theory?  Do you think that legendary Marantz audio perfectionists like Sid Smith and Dick Sequerra would have recommended basic copper lamp cord of the proper gauge (depending on the speaker distance) to connect their superb amplifiers?  These guys were obsessively  fussy, with discriminating ears - to the most subtle nuances in sound quality.
C'mon audiophiles - time to get off your "snake oil" train and talk about putting effort and money into equipment that truly makes a technical (and thus audible) difference.  I have yet to read or hear any kind of logical explanation for the claims about the superior performance of pricey power, or speaker cables - other than purely subjective conclusions based on "so-called" listening tests.  Please note - the direction of current travel in a uniformly sectioned copper wire would have absolutely zero effect on the accuracy of the signal transmitted.  Where is the logical evidence to the contrary?
dletch2
455 posts
 
Please note - the direction of current travel in a uniformly sectioned copper wire would have absolutely zero effect on the accuracy of the signal transmitted. Where is the logical evidence to the contrary?


Neither copper nor the dielectric is truly uniform, so there goes that out the window. You still can't hear any direction, but lets stick to facts.
anton_stepichev OP
150 posts
 

cmichaelo2 posts
04-23-2021 5:16pm
Maybe someone already explained this, but I simply didn’t have the time to look through the whole thread. Due to manufacturing tolerances, a cable isn’t electrically the same from both directions.

Self proved that there are no audible errors in the signal, even in more complex cases than just a single wire.

It can be proofed by simple logic either. Let’s assume that the speaker wire has an error, but it is microscopic, on the verge of perception and measurement. Then, we will have to agree that the error is common to all the wires. And it turns out that, for example, in a RIAA corrector, the error of the wire going from the MC head to the transformer will be amplified almost 1000 times!

And how many different wires are there in the system? Hundreds. And all these errors that occurred in the preliminary cascades will be amplified by hundreds or tens of times and superimposed on the useful signal.

A microscopic error on the edge of perception multiplied by such a caos will become egregious. But we do not observe such errors.
So there is no polarity, semi conductivity or any other ELECTRICAL assymetry in a wire.



dletch2
455 posts
 
And it turns out that, for example, in a RIAA corrector, the error of the wire going from the MC head to the transformer will be amplified almost 1000 times!

Does not work that way. If the error is simply frequency response, the relationship between the perfect and imperfect signal never changes. That would be true for most things dependent on the cable with the exception of noise.

And how many different wires are there in the system? Hundreds. And all these errors that occurred in the preliminary cascades will be amplified by hundreds or tens of times and superimposed on the useful signal.

Again, see my last comment.


A microscopic error on the edge of perception multiplied by such a caos will become egregious. But we do not observe such errors.
So there is no polarity, semi conductivity or any other ELECTRICAL assymetry in a wire.

No chaos multiplier. We can observe asymmetry, just not easily at audio frequencies as the variation in the two port transfer function compared to the source/load impedance is not large enough at low frequencies. At high frequencies it is. This is simple fact. No point in ignoring it.


None of which matters to the audibility of cable direction. Unless you purposely went out of your way to create a cable that is directional, you will never hear the change in direction (shielding aside). I could certainly see someone who does not understand how cables (or electronics) work, doing something foolish, like

  • convincing themselves they can hear the direction in a single conductor, when what they really did was completely change the interaction of that single conductor with its surroundings
  • moving around speaker cables with non-fixed widely spaced conductors (Tellurium).
  • You have to be careful how the shield is connected for shielded phono cables, as the connection of the shield can have a big change on capacitive loading.
  • With a high capacitance interconnect, the connection of the shield, how the shield is connected in the component, and the source impedance can all come into play. Conductor to conductor capacitance could be 50pF/foot. However, you can have another 50pF/foot from cable to shield, and that shield could be signal ground, capacitively coupled earth ground, etc. The loading difference of a 6ft cable at 20KHz is 13K ohm versus 26K ohm. Some tube equipment has fairly high output impedance. If the connectivity is different in one direction from the other, there could be an audible effect, not just because of noise.


Self proved that there are no audible errors in the signal, even in more complex cases than just a single wire.

Technically I believe he proved he couldn't find any. He also said that wires can't be directional because the signals are AC. He was wrong on AC, so I am not sure how much faith I can put in his other findings. 

pcrhkr's avatar
pcrhkr
276 posts
 
I think the proper response is that it is not the percption of what the ears hear. But what is between the ears! 
Seriously, Some things cannot be measured as accurately as bio sense.  Example, a dogs smell is more sensitive than any current instrument. Because it cannot be measured does not mean it is not there.
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