What do we hear when we change the direction of a wire?

You’re confusing two different systems. One system is audio reproduction, it’s pure science even when it was wax cylinders doing the recording and playback . The other system is our human auditory system. How each of us " perceives " music is user dependent.

Yes and no....

There exist and must exist CORRELATION FEEDBACK ONGOING PROCESS between these 2 system.... And these correlation parameters are not determined only by the known actual law of audio reproduction but can and would be dictated by NEW conditions of experience by the users and new experiments...Psychoacoustic for example will evolve integrating human perception and neurophysiology and physical acoustic phenomena....

Then saying that :

We can measure what goes down a wire with great accuracy. Humans can’t. Matters not what happens after. The electrical signal was either recreated properly or not.

Is equivalent to saying that the conditions of experience are always the same for all users and for all time... And saying that tools could measure what "goes down a wire with great accuracy" but humans could not, to justify the impossibility or the value of a perceptive experience, is equivalent to the saying that human is ONLY an imperfect deluded measuring tool.... Which is dumb to say the least....Because it is human perceiving consciousness that correlate all POSSIBLE measuring tools....It is human perceiving consciousness that could change the conditions of the experience and create new dimensions or new experience through new parameters and creating new measuring tools to explore new dimensions with new parameters....It is ONLY consiousness that could give meaning and interpret the tool....

Then arguments against the possibility of wires direction and a related new qualitative experience is only a circular vicious circle around the measuring fallacy.... No one can lift itself by the hair....Save perhaps it seems dletch2... 😊

No measuring tool work in a grid of measuring tools without a human perceiving consciousness at the beginning of the grid and at the end....There is NO EXTERNAL reality without any conscious participation, which is anyway the greatest discovery of the XX century called quantum physics...

Then technological idolatry is only a blind religious belief in a complete external reality...It is the Baron Munchausen religion....Also the vision of some monotheistic cult where the Earth is given like an EXTERNAL object to exploit for men....

Sorry but science has already establish against ANY belief favoring the contrary view the fact of consciousness participation.... There is no absolute objective external reality independant of any consciousness or independant for ALL consciousness...Materialism is dead in the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics; held from 24 to 29 October 1927 and buried after Alan Aspect experiment in 1982....

No engineer or audiophile will ressuscitate it....


Then no reasoning could a priori replace or ridiculize a future proposed  experiment based on an alleged perceptive experience like Anton proposed here ....

John Archibald Wheeler, from a transcript of a radio interview on "The Anthropic Universe":

Wheeler: We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what’s happening in the distant past why should we need more? Martin Redfern: Many don’t agree with John Wheeler, but if he’s right then we and presumably other conscious observers throughout the universe, are the creators — or at least the minds that make the universe manifest.[83]

Is equivalent to saying that the conditions of experience are always the same for all users and for all time... And saying that tools could measure what "goes down a wire with great accuracy" but humans could not, to justify the impossibility or the value of a perceptive experience, is equivalent to the saying that human is ONLY an imperfect deluded measuring tool.... Which is dumb to say the least....Because it is human perceiving consciousness that correlate all POSSIBLE measuring tools....It is human perceiving consciousness that could change the conditions of the experience and create new dimensions or new experience through new parameters and creating new measuring tools to explore new dimensions with new parameters....It is ONLY consiousness that could give meaning and interpret the tool....

Let me rephrase it for you so you understand my point ...


1+1 = 2
1.001 + 1 = 2.001


Now whether you perceive it as 2.002 or not, really does not matter. It is 2.001.  What you perceive is your current interpretation of reality. Reality did not change because your perception did. Tomorrow you may perceive it as 1.999. It will however, still be 2.001.  


We are talking electrical signals, which means we are essentially talking numbers. We can measure the number and know it is right. Today you may perceive the number differently from yesterday and tomorrow you  may perceive it different again, but it did not change.


That is point one.


Point 2.  The human eye has a central resolution of about 6 million photosites, give or take.  If I more an object 0.01mm, no matter the resolution of the human eye, you will never be able to detect that, let alone measure it with any reliability. An instrument with a few thousand photosites could be created to both identify the movement of 0.01mm and how far.  Give it 6 million photosites and it will measure to 0.01mm in 2 dimensions and detect movement in both.


Now, that instrument may not be able to identify let alone be able to appreciate the Mona Lisa, but a similar one could tell you if there was a subtle change in the color of even the smallest element of the Mona Lisa based on a reference, and if you moved the painting 0.01mm. It has no idea what a picture is, what it represents, etc.  That in no way at all negates its ability to compare, with vastly greater detail than any human can, a change from a reference.


That is what analyzing an electrical signal does. It allows us to determine a change, from a reference, in vastly greater detail than any human can. It is not even close. We have enough body of evidence to be confident that identified changes may or may not be audible. There is a grey area, and normally engineers will be very clear about this and even state that that something is in the range where it may be audible. Thermal modulation of a fuse in a speaker line would be a good example. It is in the range of audibility, and even though no one has shown they can pick out reliably a properly sized (not grossly undersize) fuse, it is accepted it could be audible. However, when the identified difference is far away from any evidence of audibility, then we confidently say no, you won't hear a difference --until proven otherwise--. Proof is not some conjecture on an audio site. It is a properly implemented test to eliminate bias. 


Contrary to the ignorant opinions on thes forums, these tests actually do matter, at least if you care about audio reproduction. If we can't ascertain what is truly audible and matters, then how can we ever hope to move the science of reproduction forward. If you can't build on past work, then you are just continually recreating the wheel.

Let me rephrase it for you so you understand my point ...


1+1 = 2
1.001 + 1 = 2.001

Let me rephrase it for you so you will understand my point ...


f(x) = kx(1-x)

It is an iterative process...

Nevermind where you are in the n’th stage of the process there always will be a new stage which will enter in the cycles....

Between perceived phenomena and consciousness there is place for unknown or new phenomena to appear...

Then eliminating bias is a good procedure in testing.... we must do it....

Cultivating bias is a good procedure in training perception....We must do it....

Correlating the two IS science.... Not one without the other .... It is an iterative process not a static addition or substraction....

"That is what analyzing an electrical signal does. It allows us to determine a change, from a reference, in vastly greater detail than any human can. It is not even close."

No measuring will replace human perception , a tool, so accurate it is, work from some chosen parameter in ONE chosen dimension and cannot replace human experience....

Not only can we build on past work and testing if it is the correct chosen direction for sure, but we can also change direction and create new tool: like a directional wire to satisfy our confirmed perception ....

Tools dont compete with human perception they only serve it....The way we decide....

Technology ask for standard practices...

Science ask for innovative thinking...

The two are not opposite at all....

Nobody is against virtue(measuring) but sometimes evil(creativity) serves a greater good....

 No measuring will replace human perception , a tool, so accurate it is, work from some chosen parameter in ONE chosen dimension and cannot replace human experience....

The one thing human perception is not, is accurate. 

@dletch2

Meanwhile you put forward a second assumption that in a short piece of wire the frequency response can change when the wire is reversed. And It follows from the content that these changes in the frequency response go without the presence of signs of electrical asymmetry of the wire. According to Ohm’s Law, this cannot be.

Again, Anton, you are assigning words to me that I never said. There can only be a change in frequency response if the wire is not symmetrical. No Ohm's law violations required.

These are exact quotes from the discussion you entered in halfway through:

1 - @cmichaelo: "Due to manufacturing tolerances, a cable isn’t electrically the same from both directions."
2 - @anton_stepichev: "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! .... But we do not observe such errors. So there is no polarity, semi conductivity or any other ELECTRICAL assymetry in a wire."
3 - @dletch2: "Does not work that way. If the error is simply frequency response, the relationship between the perfect and imperfect signal never changes".


@dletch2, the meaning of what you said is clear: you claim that when a wire is reversed, an "error is simply frequency response" is possible without the occurrence of "ELECTRICAL assymetry".

Now you retract your words, OK, but then again there is the question of amplifying the error by a factor of 1000, which somehow escapes measurement.

Why can't your super-accurate instruments measure it?