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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
andy2
1,538 posts
 
I guess it depends on what you meant by "IDENTICAL".  

If two files are identical, using the same compress format (i.e. wave or flac ...), then for the most part they should sound the same.

That is UNLESS, each file comes from a different source, for example, one comes from a USB or one comes from HD, the playback could sound different.  Each source may have different interference signature on the DAC clock, then the sound could be different.

BUT if everything is the same: same file, same source, same equipment, then I guess it's hard to see how the sound could be different.

If you really want to down that path ... to the nth degree then anything is possible.
anton_stepichev OP
150 posts
 
@andy2
BUT if everything is the same: same file, same source, same equipment, then I guess it's hard to see how the sound could be different.

Yes, if you play copies of files from the same HDD, everything is PHYSICALLY the same, all the things being equal.

If you really want to down that path ... to the nth degree then anything is possible.

A preliminary logical analysis of a task is not at all an n-th degree, but the first thing anyone should do before starting to delve into technical details.

The preliminary analysis tells us that there is no physical or material cause-and-effect relationship in the situation with optimizing the sound of audio files (as well as with changing the direction of wires and some other things). Therefore the cause, the effect or both are beyond the scope of conventional physics, isn't it obvious?
andy2
1,538 posts
 
The preliminary analysis tells us that there is no physical or material cause-and-effect relationship in the situation with optimizing the sound of audio files
If you're talking about different file optimization, then sure it would have effects on the sound.  


anton_stepichev OP
150 posts
 
If you're talking about different file optimization, then sure it would have effects on the sound
I'm talking about exact digital copies of files that sound different after optimization with the Junilabs player http://www.junilabs.com/fr/products/audioplayer.html.




andy2
1,538 posts
 
Of course if optimized then it may sound different.  During playback, the audio file has to be "decompressed" or if you will "processed" by the CPU.  Therefore it will have its own digital interference signature which will affect the DAC clock.

File formats such as .wave or .flac are all in compressed format.  They have to be decompressed by the CPU before the DAC can take the digital data and turn into analog.
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