A challenge to the "measurement" camp

It's all some people have. Actually if we follow this report (from 1995) it shows pretty much that resistance is important and perhaps inductance. That doesn't fit the voodoo narrative perhaps?

Gravity presents as a force, and if two objects are held apart, there is no acceleration, but there is still a force of attraction. What we don’t know is if gravity is truly an independent force as theorized or some manifestation of other forces.

geoffkait23,260 posts07-06-2020 2:46pmGravity is not a force, it’s an acceleration. Without mass there can be no crackers and wine.

You are probably right, but I keep having hope for you.

geoffkait23,260 posts07-06-2020 2:35pm
phcollie
I think it is a waste of time and effort explaining to someone that they are wrong.

.... and yet people have made antennas out of liquid metal almost exactly like the material claimed to be used in the Teo-Audio cables and guess what, those antenna have a characteristic inductance, why, because any time you have two conductors in proximity you will have inductance, period, end of story.

This article is from 1995 and is as wrong now as it was then it its conclusions and methodology.


I wouldn't say that the article "nailed" anything, except perhaps to illustrate what actual engineers have been saying all along, that LCR parameters are what matter, not all manner of made-up voodoo.

But let's talk about the bad engineering in the article. A sine-wave tone burst is "Not", big emphasis on "Not" only inclusive of that frequency. The waveform as presented has near infinite frequency harmonics, which is required to start and stop a waveform instantly.


Let's unwrap this statement, "The other wilder, more wavy response is the imperfect damping measured at the speaker end. The different responses directly show each of the cables' ability to aid the action of the amplifier's NFB". This makes the assumption, not correct, that high damping leads to best sound. Arguably, lower damping can lead to less distortion. But again, the point is taken, that LCR, particularly L, and not some made up specification, is what matters. What can't be stated unequivocally is that high or low is best, at least not for a single run, and not for any given speaker and speaker/amp combination ... or was it really L??   0.5mm twisted lamp cord will have less inductance than 1.0mm twisted lamp cord (normally) because you can keep the conductors closer together which leads to less inductance. Resistance is higher. So those 1KHz waveforms are not measuring the impact of L, they are measuring the impact of R .... and in many ways they are measuring things not at all about the cable, as the frequency of the oscillation is independent of the cable.

The 15Khz tone has oscillations at 100KHz approx, all amp/load induced as the same frequency as the cable and low and behold, the oscillations match ... NOT the L, but the R most closely (as I predicted above). The author may not have predicted it because he is not a good engineer.

Surprisingly at such a high frequency, some of the fat, low-resistance cables are damping best—if not in the order one would predict from their CSA:

At 125Hz, oh look at that, pure resistance based results.

1995 is the year of the report linked to by Teo_Audio

You can of course clearly point out his erroneous statements?  I found some I disagree with, but I am not calling him a clown, so surely you can point out clearly what statements he made that are erroneous w.r.t. this piece on cable "synergy"?

I believe almost all of it was written in 1995, except a follow up from 1996 about LRC measurements, and a very short more recent preface. I believe the only 2008 part is the first photo, and then a reference later that the photo was to prove EMI rejection of a cable ... that should have been pretty obvious.  There is a real disconnect between what was measured and the conclusions that were arrived at, and even the claim w.r.t  the inductance/capacitance accuracies (and knowing the meter and test processes) show a lack of understand of the underlying measurements.  Speaker cables are the low hanging fruit in audio w.r.t. correlating measurements to potential audio effects and even then it becomes difficult without making conclusions well supported by data.  Interconnects gets much harder.

You just inadvertently made djones51’s argument, and if you don't think you did, then you made the argument the video was trying to make.

andy2 OP1,181 posts07-07-2020 5:25pm

Just a 20hz to 20khz sweep from your speakers. Use two different speaker cables in the same system and room. I can tell from that which gives the flattest response which will be the best cable.

Things are not as simple as you think. No cable will be "flat". Any cable will have dip and bump at different frequencies. Not only that, there is phase shift too.

What Mr. Pebbles means to say is "one of the theories of gravity is", but he is trying to look like he makes less mistakes than he really does today. Ego thing.

I counted 5 pages in the search where @geoffkait brought up gravity Andy2 so that is that 100-150 posts, and there are probably many many more, I just got bored. Not sure why he insists that gravity is the warping of space is anything but a theory when there are no doubt 100's of high quality science sites that quite clearly say it is a theory and many, oh Nasa for one, list 10's of other theories and what the current thought is on their potential validity. Dogma?  Ego not allowing to admit being wrong? First page on Google Search says so?

3. You don’t understand what these plots illustrate nor the concept of bulk LRC.

Personally I have not put myself into a bind since I have no made any challenges, and have only voiced basic support for the concept in the video that using cables for "tone controls" is rather silly ... $1000’s to replace pennies of components, maybe a few dollars in low volume ... makes total sense to me.

Air core inductor? ... going to be very flat out to fairly high frequencies. Stable plastic and air dielectric capacitor? Yup, that is going to be fairly flat as well out to higher frequencies. Of course, I have actually measured these things so I am not guessing, and I understand the properties of the materials enough to ballpark how they work.

Distributed impedance? .... we are no where near where transmission line effects are a concern, and given the small values of the cable to the speaker/amp, a single bulk value of RLC is sufficient, but it is not like you couldn’t divide it into 2, 4, or 8 and do a simple piece-wise calculation or determination that was well beyond audible detection.

You may be trying to make djones51 look like he doesn’t know his stuff, and maybe he doesn't, but this is a public forum, and there are people who do, and you are not in that camp.

andy2 OP1,188 posts07-07-2020 9:40pm

Uh, I hope the inductance vs frequency is ruler flat

You realize that even the inductance vs. freq. of an actual inductor is not flat, don’t you? Now being a cable with distributive characteristic, I am not sure how it will be flat. Same for capacitance and resistance. They won’t be flat.

I never deflected from any position I took nor did I make any contradictions. The inductance and capacitance of speaker cables will be very consistent over frequency. That you don’t understand what this means is not my problem.


As far as I can tell, djones51 called your bluff w.r.t. the measurements for two cables and you skating like Disney on Ice trying to avoid the fact you don’t have any and probably can’t even get them or even know how.

People are free to see my recent posts on differential input amplifiers for phono stages, setting azimuth on phono stages, practical concepts w.r.t. class-D amplifiers and phase shift, linear phase/all-pass filters, the impact of input resistance and inductance on AC power line rejection of amplifier power supplies, etc.  With the exception of Mr. Pebbles who insults anyone who knows more than him, it is pretty obvious which one of us has a greater understanding of the electronics aspects of audio.

His "theory" of skin effect at the frequency where he points it out is almost definitely wrong. W.R.T. inductance, changing, again, unlikely to be the effect of a simple cable. It is pretty much a given there are additional elements in this cable.

The impedance frequency plot as requested by djones51, will reveal the critical composite of this data ...

1. The lols are on you, since you discredit him, but were able to pick an obscure video by him. It seems you follow his video .. ahem!

2. He believe cables should be competent and does not believe there is any reason for them to be expensive, nor should they be tone controls. The piece you linked to proves his point not yours. He even has a section on the website for cable performance basics, none of which take much expense to accomplish.

andy2 OP1,194 posts07-07-2020 11:33pmLols about flat inductance and flat resistance. Watch this vid at 1:55 mark.

It’s all over the place after 10KHz. This vid from a guy who don't believe in cable lols.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6evV01Z-mWY

A working theory of gravity. There are quite a few. In addition to the QM issue, scientists have had to make up the concept of dark matter to match relativity results to what they observe.  Why someone would feel the need to insist on something being right that they had no hand in developing, measuring or verifying, and for which their life would not change either way? Baffles me. Mr Pebbles?

djones512,445 posts07-08-2020 7:17amOur working theory of gravity is Einstein's theory of general relativity. It's held up pretty good so far. But we still haven't unified gravity with QM, either our working theory is right and we haven't figured it out or their could be another theory or a tweak of Einstein's theory. I believe the point is it isn't settled science.

speedbump6, with odd exception, I don't think anyone is doubting that personal preference is what matters or even suggesting otherwise, unless the discussion is about accuracy, then personal preference goes out the window.

But if nothing of audible significance happens in, say between two wires, then you will not prefer one or the other. Of course, it a cable is acting only as a tone control there are cheaper paths.

@geoffkait ,
No frequencies? So you are admitting that transmission line effects have 0 impact on audio? Nice! I knew you would come around eventually.

>>>>>>Even more disturbing perhaps, the signal in audio systems has no frequencies at all. Not in the power cord, not in audio interconnects, not in digital cables, not in wires, not in fuses, not in speaker cables. Voltage and current are frequency independent. It’s Nowheresville! 🤗

I will as soon as I dig myself out from all the brown stuff someone has been spreading.

geoffkait  23,353 posts
07-08-2020 11:05am

The signal in audio cables do not (rpt not) carry audio frequencies, they can carry RF frequencies. 😬 Nobody agrees what the signal is, where it travels in wire or how it’s affected by vibration and RF.


So cut me some slack Jack!

The problem speedbump, is that the controlled tests that have been done, and unfortunately there have not been a lot, are not very supportive of the theory there are easily noticeable differences between cables. My own work under contract in acoustics (speakers), showed we could swap cables and assuming level matching, differences were not noted. Customers (companies) would even bring in their latest toys and were disappointed to not reliably detect differences.

It may not be obvious across my posts, but I have said that I am not advocating the cheapest speaker cables, and that design does matter to a point and it takes a level of cost to get there, but that cost is really quite low, and does not require exotic wire, exotic materials, exotic connectors, etc.  I truly believe that if silver was the color of copper and copper was the color of silver, people would claim copper sounded "brighter". The power of self suggestion is strong, people extend that claim to digital cables even though there is no correlation in properties. Ditto when people say a cable is "fast" or totally expanded my sound-stage. No, you probably just had dirty contacts or a loose connection but that is a harsh reality to accept. I could make a speaker cable that acted as a tone control, but it would be cheaper to use a few $ of passives. This is just speaker cables.  When you get into interconnects, even though the signal levels are low, the relatively high output and input impedance compared to the cable properties means the cable, exception for noise rejection, has even less room for vendor / vendor differences though that does not stop them from making up reasons, all which sound good, and if true, would actually be pretty easy to measure, but they never do, just like they never do public controlled listening tests.

The joke is on you. You act with a maturity of a child. "lols" ... what are you 12? Grow up.

andy2 OP1,195 posts07-08-2020 6:59pm

The impedance frequency plot as requested by djones51, will reveal the critical composite of this data ...

I am pretty sure he has no clue lols. This is too funny. Like the three stooges.  

You offered any measurement requested. One was requested. Now you are backing out and calling other people names and making childish remarks. You are correct, the ship sailed Captain.

@andy2 ,

You made a challenge. It was called. You owe djones51 two frequency plots for two cables. Do you even know what one of those would look like? I have my doubts. You just skate and blame others. I will let you in on a secret. Everyone reading this thread with few exceptions sees right through you.

YOU made a challenge.
YOUR challenge was called.
YOU are making excuses.
YOU are transparent.

1. DC resistance can be found at the low frequency point.
2. AC resistance due to inductance is proportional to frequency.
3. AC resistance due to capacitance is proportional to 1/frequency
4. AC resistance due to skin effect is proportional sqrt(frequency)

Absent intentional magnetic materials in the cable, inductance will be highly linear, and for these dielectrics and fields strengths so will capacitance.

djones51, asked for a frequency response of the cable. That means just the cable and the frequency response will give you the AC resistance (impedance) over frequency. If you are doing it properly, you are also providing a phase shift into a given load, so now you have made it even easier to extract L and C from skin-effect.
With an essentially infinite number of data points at reasonable precision as would be expected in any response plot, I have more than enough data to extract the characteristic R, L, C, and the skin effect characteristics. Heck, there is even enough data to create reasonably accurate models of non-linearities in L.

When you said "Nobody on this earth has any clue" what you really meant is that YOU HAD NO CLUE.

he has no clue is nobody on this earth has any clue how to

All you have proven to me is that you are not qualified to "educate".   You have posted some graphs, but shown no evidence you understand what they mean. If anything, you have shown you don't. You certainly haven't shown maturity.

andy2 OP1,204 posts07-08-2020 11:20pm

Until now, you have offered only insults and claims that djones51 is clueless.

That is because after getting a good education from me,

Glupson,

A quick perusal of andy2's posts reveal an unmistakable pattern. If there is something he does not agree with and if the disagreeing poster does not "bow down", he simply insults them and of course, out comes the lols. He doesn't disprove them, he just insults them. Even when evidence is given, he won't admit his error. I appreciate what you are trying to accomplish, but I just don't think the maturity is there.

This appears to be a good time for a lesson on statistical inference. I don’t know either Glupson or andy2 personally. Based on a brief post analysis, using statistical inference, it does appear that andy2 has more knowledge of audio. Based on those same posts, I could also make the inference that Glupson is more intelligent, has better self control, is likely considerably more successful, and obviously significantly classier. One of them probably gets angry when told he has to wear a mask inside a public building. I think we know which one.

I can't speak for glupson, but if a post is made respectfully, even if I totally disagree, I am going to be respectful in return.  I may make the odd exception if the post is really really silly, but will at least try to just shake my head and walk away.

Yup, unfortunately there are people who behave like this in the real world.

andy2 OP   1,208 posts

07-09-2020 6:30pm

To the crybabies welcome to the real world lols.

Should we just cut to the chase and assume @andy2 , that you have absolutely no intention, as you stated you would, to provide full measurements on any two cables requested? If that is the case, just try to be a decent and honest person and say that you have no intention of keeping your word and following through. It will save everyone a lot of posts.

If you keep up with this charade of adding more conditions, it only shows that your original challenge was dishonest and not made in good faith. An appropriate noun to describe someone who behaves this way would be a fraud.

That appears to not be happening so I’ll switch to USB cables. I want the THD+N and Jitter plots from any DAC you choose switching only the USB cable. If possible do a IMD test and Tone input/ sample rate . Use any two cables you want. You want an explanation of how I will use these before you show the measurements. The cable that shows the lowest distortion on Tone input and THD+N or SINAD and Jitter is the better cable.

It appears @andy2 has forfeited the challenge @djones51, that means you win the challenge by default. Well played sir!

Yes.

If you think otherwise, you don't understand what would be measured. An oscilloscope is also just one tool.

If you lose the childish and ignorant attitude, I would consider explaining it to you, but I doubt both that you have the relevant knowledge to understand, or that you will accept the answer given the childish, and technically ignorant first post.


However, here, perhaps this will help:   https://www.amazon.com/Measurement-Instrumentation-Application-Alan-Morris-ebook/dp/B0148FPMNW/ref=s...

You are all over the map even with the few posts you have made.  Bye bye.

speaker cable companies claim they’re cables are capable of

tanktop 5 posts

07-10-2020 9:29am

If you think otherwise you’re brain dead!

How, quantum entanglement?

The only people who make the claims you make Teo are people who don’t truly understand the technology. I have heard enough live and recorded music in short succession in a variety of situations to know, without any doubt, that well implemented high-res digital is the most accurate recording and playback, superior to analog tape at any speed. People who make claims about "missing resolution" in digital especially high resolution do not understand the technology. It is an ignorant position taken from a position of lack of knowledge and experience.

p.s. ever heard of FM or AM radio? ... been around way before digital.

when we get to the end of all that, we find that analog cables, in an all triode or v-fet system, is the only real functional signal capturing and playback chain.

No, that is just silly. You are confusing pleasing with accurate and they are not remotely the same thing. You are trying to take the complexity of sound, the ear and the brain, and claim the equivalent complexity in a signal in a cable or the storage of "data" required for that signal whether analog or digital. They are not remotely of the same level of complexity. It is a weak argument that is again, only made by people who have not thought this through.

The magic of the music has nothing to do with the format, it has to do with the industry. You seem to be joining mahgister on the conspiracy front.

@drbarney1 , you should question most of the marketing w.r.t. cables. Most of it is made up with no evidence that what they claim is what is causing any audible difference. This is not a "measurements" thing. If what they claimed was true, they would show it with good old fashion listening tests, heck, they would at least "try" to quantify what they claim, but they don't. Why? ....

... and doing a wonderful job at it :-)

thyname744 posts

07-12-2020 1:11am

Oh I know. I was just pointing out the stupidity of some folks around the nets

There is a reason why Sonos has sales of $1 Billion.

... and doing a wonderful job at it :-)

thyname744 posts

07-12-2020 1:11am

Oh I know. I was just pointing out the stupidity of some folks around the nets

Never argue with idiots. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Mark Twain .... probably

Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick

You have pretty much completely discredited yourself already .... and now you don’t even know your own thread.

A challenge to the "measurement" camp

I will supply all the measurement you want.
andy2

andy2 OP1,226 posts07-12-2020 6:59pm

Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that is measured matters.

I am sure there are people in this thread will try to argue with this. I mean there’s guy on another thread thinks he can tell which is a better cable by just looking at some basic measurements.

You tried @djones51,  but obviously @andy2 , the person making the challenge, is not at all confident in his challenge, or he would have supplied the measurements when you took him up on the challenge. 

No, fisherman who are just letting out some line to give you hope, but mainly we are just letting you two "run at the mouth". It is rather funny that you two think people will look "highly" on you two for your childish behavior.

It seems blabbering and insults is all he is capable of, well that and reneging on a challenge that he made. If he had any respect left, he would just delete this testimony to his inadequacy.

@djones51, jokes on us expecting @andy2 to behave like an adult. He just regurgitates things he reads without understanding it in any detail anyway. That is why he can’t provide measurements. He has 0 ability to do that.  The paper you posted will be way over his head.

Nelson Pass’ article is a marketing blurb meant to fool people like Andy2, who don’t know much about amplifier design. Obviously it worked.

Of course, someone observant would say, HEY! the distortion went up from 3 to 6 to 10db feedback, but at 15db feedback, it looks like it goes down some. Why didn’t your experiment include 20 or 30db of feedback Mr. Pass? .... well @andy2 , why didn’t it? You are the "expert" according to you. So tell us why he didn’t include 30db of feedback in that graph, and better yet, what would have happened with 30db feedback in an amplifier capable of properly implementing that.

We all wait with bated breath for your wisdom ....

The whole point of the post (or poster) is to "stifle". Why do you keep participating speedbump6? What's up with the whole virtue signalling thing?

glupson,

Something tells me the answer to your question may be revealed in @andy2 's inability to answer my question about feedback.

rixthetrick,

This is a relatively well known potential noise source, but a lot of it has to do with the bandwidth of the feedback network, not to mention it takes a fair amount of RF to inject anything audible, and it needs to be AM modulated in some fashion.

---- IF YOU HAVE SILENCE ON YOUR SPEAKERS WITHOUT A SIGNAL, THERE IS NO RF INJECTION VIA THE SPEAKER CABLES ---- ... that should be pretty obvious, but alas, it seems not to be. Put your head up against the speakers ... anything that seems RF related? .. No? .... it will be 10's of db quieter at your listening position.


All those no global feedback amplifiers? ... they are fairly immune to RF injection on the speaker wires.

Next you have to look at the RF source and modulation scheme. Remember cell phones not too long ago where you could hear them in your computer speakers? That was time division multiplexing, essentially bursts of radio with burst rates in the audio bandwidth. Your modern cell phone, WIFI, Bluetooth, FM and TV do not use that modulation scheme.  Those cell phone signals did not inject via the connection to the speaker, they connected through high impedance analog nodes at inputs to amplifiers.

Of course, this is all assuming things like no EMI filtering capability in amplifiers, and that is going to come down to the experience of the designer, but my experience is mass-market stuff in that regard is actually better, not worse, especially if it incorporates digital as they need to ensure nothing gets out, not just nothing gets in.

The video shows that weaving conductors (tight twisting) will reduce effectiveness as an antenna. That is nothing new. However, it **claims** but provides no proof at all of anything audible, which would actually be excruciatingly easy ....

REPEATING AGAIN --- IF YOU HAVE SILENCE ON YOUR SPEAKERS WITHOUT A SIGNAL, THERE IS NO RF INJECTION VIA THE SPEAKER CABLES ----  that should be pretty obvious, but alas, it seems not to be. Put your head up against the speakers ... anything that seems RF related? .. No? .... it will be 10's of db quieter at your listening position.


Keep in mind the owner of GR Research is not an engineer.

I wouldn't discount everything the owner of GR Research says. I think he is more on the ball w.r.t. speaker burn-in than many others out there who claim it is almost instantaneous, which is not a small number of people.

mahgister,

The whole point of a power regenerator is to decouple the output AC from the input AC.  PS is claiming changing the input AC cord significantly changes the sound.


If that is the case, then their device does not do what it is supposed to do.

The GR Research guy knows his stuff on some things, not on others. Paul from PS .... ya, those are mainly marketing blurbs and miscellaneous ramblings.


When you hook up an expensive power cable to your Power Regenerator, and then claim that it sounds better, the natural inclination of most engineers would be "what did I do wrong in the design of my power regenerator", not "wow this cable is awesome".