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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
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,742 posts
 
Insults and rebuttals or pretense of competence versus incompetence are the sure signs at best of ignorance, at worst of stupidity...Even if those mocking are more competent...

An argument must be posed on the ground and the question accepted by all...

After that debating around it suppose a COMMON good faith enonciation of each one arguments WITHOUT acrimony and without mocking the other perspective...


By the way i dont doubt dletch2 or Anton_stepichev respective competences...

This is why it is an interesting thread...

But refrain the insults....We are not idiots here i hope....

All spirits must be also  open minds facing new possibilities...

In wire, sound, or hearing or in any other linked matters....

No one own reality....Even the more knowledgeable did not know so much....


dletch2
455 posts
 
No mahgister, really it is not stupid, arrogant, or otherwise.


It is like me trying to tell a PhD biologist how a complex biological process works because I read some articles on the web written by people who are no where near the level of that PhD biologist. That is where we are at in this conversation. I dismiss things out of hand, because that is the appropriate response. It is like discussing calculus with someone who has not mastered basic arithmetic or functions.


And no, wires do not have "micro diodes" or any other semiconducting properties at a bulk level, and even if they did, a semiconductor will always require exceeding a band gap voltage before any conduction occurs, and the differential voltage between any two close points on a wire is asymptotically 0V. No voltage, no conduction across a band gap. Don’t even try to argue a 3 port device because again, no differential voltage means no effective voltage field.


Dielectrics can have non-linear effects, but you don’t just get to say "aha". Those effects have to be quantified w.r.t. the signal level (exceedingly small), and in this case the differential levels would need to quantified which would be almost non existent at audio frequencies. I don’t have to look in a book or quote to write this. See my 2nd paragraph above.


We are not idiots here i hope....


If one does not accept one's limitations w.r.t. knowledge, and yet still speaks with authority on a non subjective topic, one must be responsible for how they will be viewed.


djones51
4,947 posts
 
I don't pretend to know things I don't, a lot of this I don't really understand but I know enough to know BS when I read it. I guess I need to go back to the beginning is this about a regular copper wire a conductor or a semiconductor like silicon where the charge carriers can be controlled. 
djones51
4,947 posts
 
Take this for instance , I don’t need a Nobel Prize in Physics to know it makes no sense.

Nevertheless advanced audiophiles even oriented mains cables, choosing the best sound position of the plug in the socket
Sound position of a plug?

Is there a freeze position for my freezer? 
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
I've been around and doing this long enough to know there are all kinds of things that are easily heard but so far as I know impossible to measure. Directivity is only one of them. Directivity is so obvious that one time when a new cable came it sounded so bad I was complaining to the seller- until it dawned on me I was in a hurry and had not checked and sure enough had put it in backwards. 

Why does my system continue to sound better and better hour after hour even after it has been on a good ten hours or more? Surely it does not take a full day to warm up? I had Chris Brady over one time, at the end of the evening he told me he was sure it sounded better than earlier. He was right, of course. But I knew he was coming, had it up and running several hours before he got there, for precisely this reason. Yet even after all that it still was getting better, and by enough that a guy like Chris could hear it.  

It would be nice to know why. We ourselves seem to be sort of hard-wired to want to know why. It is a shame though when this insistence on knowing why, or maybe more to the point being the one to know why, gets in the way of being able to use and appreciate what is going on, whether we understand it or not.  


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