Help with my University Research Project

If you are interested in helping to shape a formal research project (Miami University/Oxford) concerning the effects of wire and electronics on the reproduction of music, then please read further. If anything, you might find my research proposal interesting.

I was a Chemist for a major oil company for a few years and have since quit my job to return to school. I am an Audiophile/Jazz Guitarist and a scientist so much of the HiFi industry goes against my better judgment. However sometimes I cannot argue with my perceptions (they are all we have after all).

I have a friend who is a professor of Physics. His current area of research could be summed up with this statement:

"I am concerned with the mathematics describing the differences in human perception of sound"

While 99% of his work is done with paper and pencil, he does have some very excellent equipment. He is also a music lover (though not really into HiFi) so I have described the "state of the union" with respect to the HiFi industry (he was very intrigued). We have discussed conducting research into this topic:

1. If person (A) sings middle-C, and then person (B) sings the same exact note they will sound different. The pitch is correct but the "tone" distinguishes the two. The reason is that when someone sings middle-C for instant, they are not singing only at the middle-C frequency. Instead what we hear is a combination of many different waves. All of them partially cancelling, partially amplifying one another. In essence there is a distortion around the note. (1st,2nd,3rd harmonics blah blah, lots of math) When a machine records these voices it does not perfectly reproduce the original subtle combination of waves. This is the reason that recordings do not compete with live performances.

Some cables and electronics (tube amps in particular) are inserting a distortion (some more than others) that alters the signal (this is not debatable). Sometimes, as is the case with good tube amps/really goo SS amps, there seems to be a more "real" presence to the music. This could also explain the reasoning behind the theory of "system synergy". By that I mean the matching of components/cables so as to present a more balanced musical presentation. We are postulating that the distortion, with certain component/cable combinations, results in the,(excuse this word), recovery of lost waves. This does not mean that the resulting signal is exactly the same, or that there is not some unwanted stuff in there. We merely suggest that it is the missing waves(distortion) that give music its "real" quality.

Keep in mind that the first step into any research project is to determine what has already been done. So the next several weeks will be devoted toward the reading of countless science journals.

I would like to hear you thoughts about my project, but more specifically, I would like to get a consensus on the attributes of certain component/cable or component/component combinations. For instance, Krell model *?* and XLO model *?* cables produce a *?* sound. I hope to determine a few generally accepted extremes with which to base my experiments on.

Thanks