Are audiophiles still out of their minds?

My opinion was stated in my post dated 3-15-2016 near the bottom of page 9 of this thread.

Regards,
-- Al
 

I think Geoff was pointing out how out of hand high end has become.

Having had a great many interchanges with Geoff in these forums, no, I don’t think that was his point.

Notwithstanding the $20 system he mentioned earlier in the thread that he currently uses :-)

Regards,
-- Al

Geoffkait 6-11-2016 6:04 pm EDT
Lots of notable people don’t believe in things like high end cables, or say wire directionality or aftermarket fuses or fuse directionality and other things that have been around like forever. But that in itself doesn’t mean they’re not true. That’s what we in the biz refer to as an Appeal to Authority, which as you probably know is a logical fallacy.

While there are those who would consider an Appeal to Authority to be a logical fallacy, as I see it such an appeal is not at all illogical. Rather, it is simply less than conclusive, to SOME degree. The degree to which it is less than conclusive, and the persuasiveness of the appeal, comes down to a matter of judgment, taking into account the credibility and relevant background of the particular authority, the persuasiveness of conflicting evidence that may be available, the nature of the particular subject, and perhaps other factors. And as always, the judgments of different individuals will frequently differ.

Regards,
-- Al

Thank you, Wattsperchannel.  I appreciate your post, as well as its tone, and of course I see nothing disrespectful in it.

I would speculate you are an engineer or have played one in a former life; but that is just a guess. I suppose a litigator could be an option as well.

Your speculation is remarkably on the money.  I am an EE (now retired) with extensive experience designing and managing design of defense electronics.  I am also a licensed attorney and patent attorney, although I haven't practiced as such.

Best regards,
-- Al

Wow!  Let the record show that on 6-15-2016 at 5:26 pm EDT Geoff submitted a post that I actually agree with 100%  :-)

As for the meaning of Czarivey's post to which he was responding, I'm not sure but my guess would be he was implying that a reason sonic quality should not be characterized in percentage terms is that a component of such assessments tends to be imaginary in many cases :-)

JL35, thanks very much for your comments earlier in the thread about my post that was quoted by Wattsperchannel.

Regards,
-- Al
 

Hey, Al, correct me if I’m wrong but the whole point of thorough and conscientious testing is to eliminate all those persnickety variables you refer to, or at least as many as you can.

Well, of course, Geoff. Not sure what your point is, though, with respect to my comment about expensive in-wall wiring vs. Romex. Obviously not many of us are going to do A/B comparisons of those alternatives. And I see little if any reason to expect the findings of those few people who may do such comparisons to be applicable to other systems and installations, considering all of the variables I cited.

Regards,
-- Al

Regarding the $24/foot in-wall power cabling, I would certainly envision that it might make a difference in many applications, to a greater or lesser degree depending on many variables. Including the length that is required; whether the incoming AC voltage at the particular location happens to be greater than or less than the voltage the particular components were designed to sound best at; the magnitude and spectral characteristics of whatever noise may be riding on that AC; whether the power amp is biased in class A or AB or D (which affects the extent to which the current it draws fluctuates with the dynamics of the music); the susceptibility of the components in the system to ground loop issues, which can also be dependent on how they are interconnected; and countless other variables involving the design of the particular components in the system.

However I also see no reason to rule out the possibility that depending on all of those variables the results that would be provided in many cases by the $24/foot wiring might be worse than ordinary Romex would provide, rather than better. Certainly from a subjective standpoint, at least.

Regards,
-- Al

My point is of course you can construct absurd cases where some generic wire might win in a shoot out with a superior wire due to some contrived assemblage of variables. But those case can be thrown out. They’re outliers. You cannot put the genie back n the bottle. Not with cables and wire, not with fuses.  Simply saying we can’t easily perform an AB test doesn’t actually mean your argument is valid. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. One trusts wire directionality is one of your variables.

Geoff, I wasn’t constructing any cases, absurd or otherwise. And I wasn’t addressing cables or fuses. My point in mentioning all of those variables was to convey the thought that the results provided by expensive in-wall wiring in comparison with Romex are (a)unlikely to have much if any predictability, and (b)are unlikely to have much if any consistency among different systems and installations.

Regards,
-- Al

Wattsperchannel 6-19-2016 5:34 pm EDT
I can’t think of a scenario where a combination of the variables you list would make well designed AC wires perform worse than romex (save for an extreme example of a reduced voltage drop leaving voltage above the component spec which, frankly, is hard for me to conceive).... Can you be specific with a scenario I am missing.

One example would involve ground loops, which as I’m sure you realize can cause or contribute to high frequency noise as well as low frequency hum, and in digital applications can cause or contribute to jitter.

See pages 31 to 35 of the following paper, by Bill Whitlock of Jensen Transformers:

https://centralindianaaes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/indy-aes-2012-seminar-w-notes-v1-0.pdf

As you’ll see, he explains that "what drives 99% of all ground loops" is imperfect cancellation at the safety ground conductor of the magnetic fields surrounding the hot and neutral conductors, resulting in voltages being induced in the safety ground conductor. As he indicates, Romex is particularly good in that regard, because of its uniform geometry. The $24/foot wire is described as having noise-rejecting geometry, which would seem to suggest that the hot and neutral are twisted or interwoven in some manner. Will that geometry be as good as Romex in terms of the uniformity across its length of the physical relationship between the two current conductors and the safety ground conductor? Who knows, but it certainly seems questionable.

Also, I recall seeing numbers on the inductance of Romex, which were somewhat highish. And the twisted or interwoven geometry of the expensive wire would seem to suggest that it has significantly lower inductance. While that geometry can be expected to be advantageous to the high priced wire with respect to pickup of radiated RFI, might the higher inductance of Romex be advantageous with respect to filtering of high frequency noise that may be present on the incoming AC? Again, who knows? But as I’m sure you realize, higher inductance means progressively higher impedance at progressively higher frequencies, and therefore more opposition to the flow of high frequency noise currents. How this tradeoff may net out in any particular application could very conceivably depend on the particular spectral characteristics (frequency distribution) of the noise and RFI that may be present.  And perhaps also on the unknown capacitances of the two kinds of wire.

On the other hand, though, higher inductance means more opposition to abrupt changes in demand for current, such as may occur in power amplifiers to a greater or lesser degree depending on their bias class. How much significance the presumably higher inductance of Romex may have in that regard, if any, figures to be highly dependent on the bias class of the particular amp. As well as on the length of the wiring, since inductance is proportional to length.

And of course different components will differ in their susceptibility to ground loop issues, in part due to how and through what impedance their internal circuit ground and chassis/AC safety ground are interconnected. And in part due to whether a given component is interconnected to other components via balanced or unbalanced connections, and if the connections are balanced whether the shield of the interconnect cable is connected to the circuit ground or chassis/AC safety ground in each of the interconnected components.

And beyond all that is the possibility that results that are "better" from an objective standpoint may not be preferable subjectively. For example, relative to digital applications see this paper by Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio, in which he states:

Another interesting thing about audibility of jitter is it’s ability to mask other sibilance in a system. Sometimes, when the jitter is reduced in a system, other component sibilance is now obvious and even more objectionable than the original jitter was.

And with regard to analog applications I have seen it said by a number of writers that low level high frequency noise can from a subjective standpoint sometimes result in improved perception of hall ambience, and an increased perception of "air."

The bottom line, as I said earlier: It’s all very unpredictable, and figures to be very system, location, and listener dependent.

Regards,
-- Al

Wattsperchannel 6-19-2016 11:48 pm EDT

Al,

I understand your points. I guess I was presuming if a person was going to take the step of using a wire with superior properties (capacitance, inductance et. al.) they would take the steps to engineer the system holistically.

Taking things one point at a time....

Wattsperchannel, thanks for the comprehensive and, if I may say so, the quite intelligent response to my previous post. You make a number of good points. I would just note the following:

1)While I completely agree with the desirability of "engineering the system holistically," and I share your belief in the desirability of "taking sound engineering steps to improve the performance of one aspect of a system" while also taking steps to correct (rather than compensate for) issues that improvement might reveal elsewhere in the system, identifying the root cause (or causes) of a sonic shortcoming can often be sufficiently difficult to make adhering to those philosophies problematical. To a greater or lesser degree, of course, depending on the particular issue and the particular audiophile.

That difficulty can also be compounded in many cases by unavailability of meaningful technical information about the products that are involved.

Finally, while as I say I completely agree with your philosophy, it’s interesting to consider that it would seem likely in a lot of situations to come into conflict with the "trust your ears" mantra that many and probably most high end audiophiles seem to subscribe to.

2)Regarding the mention of voltage drops in one of your prior posts, I would not discount the possibility that there may be a goodly number of circumstances in which a slightly larger voltage drop in the house wiring may produce results that are preferable to a slightly smaller voltage drop. As you are probably aware USA voltages can range from 114V to 126V and still be in spec, and as confirmed in a number of past threads here numbers in the area of 124 volts or so are not at all uncommon. And presumably equipment used in the USA and other 120V countries has most often been designed to perform best and to reach optimal internal temperatures at 120V. Although of course the sensitivity of different components to variations in that voltage can be expected to differ greatly. I would imagine that power amps, which in most cases do not incorporate internal voltage regulation (at least for their power stage), would be among those components that would tend to be most affected by that variation.

In any event, thanks again for your well stated response, which as I say I am in essential agreement with.

Regards,
-- Al

It appears to me that in the initial reference to "genuine audiophile" the poster was simply using the word "genuine" to mean something along the lines of "sincere." In other words, in contrast to an audiophile who is attempting to disguise an interest in promoting a product.

Regards,
-- Al

Geoff, the relevant part of his post was:

The problem is, there is too much misinformation/aka: b**s*** posted on this forum about TL and cables with fantastic magnets inside by posters who every man and his dog on here knows are NOT [emphasis added] genuine audiophiles.

"TL" is an obvious reference to a certain brand of very expensive cables, if that isn’t clear. "Cables with fantastic magnets" is an obvious reference to another brand of very expensive cables. Each of those cables is the subject of a very long-running and lengthy thread here, and in each of those threads the most prominent advocate of those cables is an individual who at times has been claimed by certain posters in the thread to be, um, insincere. Or to use some of my words that you quoted, to be "attempting to disguise an interest in promoting a product." In other words, to NOT be a "genuine audiophile," with "genuine" meaning something along the lines of "sincere," as I said.

Consider also the screen-name chosen by the author of the post we are discussing.

I believe that my interpretation was correct. Perhaps you overlooked the word "not" that the poster placed before the words "genuine audiophiles"?

Regards,
-- Al

Geoffkait 6-27-2016 10:08am EDT
Your conclusion is a judgement call, I’d opine, as to whether someone is being over zealous, insincere or dishonest, or shilling for someone. But I actually don’t think one can discern the difference between enthusiasm and insincerity or even shilling on the Internet so easily any more than one can detect irony or sarcasm is certain posts.

To be sure it's clear, I have not stated or implied any such conclusion. I was simply stating my interpretation of the last sentence in the gentleman's post, and I was stating it because the meaning of the reference in that sentence to "genuine audiophiles" was subsequently questioned. But I agree that any such conclusion would be a judgment call, and I agree that in many cases the facts may be hard to discern with any kind of certainty.

Regards,
-- Al

Silly question and am embarrassed to ask, but what does "TL" mean?

The reference to TL in the post you are referring to means "TARA Labs."  Not a silly question, though.

Regards,
-- Al