geoffkait:
Please explain precisely what you mean when you say that audio wire is "directional."
Please explain precisely what you mean when you say that audio wire is "directional."
Differences between cd transports?
Howdy,I borrowed a dedicated CD transport (Musical Fidelity) from a friend. I have found that music sounds much better with his transport than with the CD player I’ve been using to spin CDs. In both cases, I am using exactly the same DAC via the optical out connection from the transport and the CD player. So: is there any rational reason that, using the same digital to analog converter, one CD spinner should sound much better than another?Thanks!
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Well, finally you said something that makes sense. A wire company that makes wire. Well, shut my mouth and call me corn pone. But we were discussing cable companies, whether they made their own wire or not. Which would make it easier to control directionality of wire. Not that it’s terribly difficult in any case. Another obvious way to control directionality is make some interconnects with the first section of wire off the spool and listen both directions. Then you will know the direction for the entire spool. Or, just skip the whole process of controlling directionality and leave it up to the end user to figure it out. Assuming the end user cares, which he probably doesn’t. That’s what most aftermarket fuse companies do. |
I wish this forum would allow pictures. Cleaning up the basement collection this weekend. I have multiple spools of speaker cables, canard microphone cables, etc. I also own quite a bit of measuring equipment. I just tested a spool of Canare L4es6 cable. About 250ft left on the spool. Same resistance in both directions to 5 digits. Must be them crafty Japanese. Oh and Canare actually does make their own wire. |
a substantial step up then my perviously CD transport Cambridge Audio CXC Hi itzahk, What was the difference in sound quality between these two, or was it build quality you were referring to? As even the Sim uses a very cheap Sanyo dvd SF-HD65 laser/transport https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=%09+Sanyo+SF-HD65&_sac... The CXC uses at least uses a little better Sony KSS-213C KSM213CCM. Cheers George |
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the pseudo-scientist doesn't even know what a multi-meter is, and by extension, how to check for least resistance, but somehow he KNOWS no cable company has an electron microscope: all one needs is access to people who do. HMMMMMMMM. Go back to sleep folks, NOTHING to see here/hear geoff, you should know by now what happens when you try to teach a pig to sing |
wolf_garcia4,662 posts03-09-2019 3:15amPossible mental health alert: Geoffkait (or Kaitty) has utterly lost his ability to recognize a satirical post, or his reading comprehension doesn’t work if he fails to re-post a comment he’s responding to. I’ll re-post this part for his sake: "And if all of those little wires and board traces are directional, isn’t the sum of all of it working together resulting in directionality chaos? And if it is, why can things still sound fine?" >>>>>See, that’s what makes it this all so funny. What you perceive as satire or irony is actually reality. I’m pretty sure we covered board traces and why they aren’t directional in the last class. Your “satirical post” is true, all wires are directional, so ultimately everything should be controlled for directionality. See the irony? ”And if it is, why can things still sound fine?" >>>>>>Everything sounds fine to you so what’s the difference? 😳 |
astelmaszek93 posts03-09-2019 1:56am@geoffkait Since not a single high end wire company I know has an electron microscope and since you freely admit they don’t make their own wire, how would they know the directionality of the cable? Cable is spooled and respooled so many times before it arrives there. Each time this happens, the direction get reversed. I spent my Friday evening playing with cables. I tested Cardas, Kimber, Canare with a $1K Fluke AC ohm meter good to more zeros than would make any difference to a human ear. Zero difference in either direction. None. As in zero difference. Always shows same numbers, down to .5 digits. Let me guess, the ancient cables weren’t burnt in enough. Only way to figure out which way the cable was pulled via the dies would be an electron microscope. At one point in my life, I had an Elionix sitting in my basement, but I highly doubt a single cable company would be willing to compromise their marketing department by throwing a cool half a million just to figure out which way the spool was run. >>>>>Don’t be such a negative Nellie, astromatzl. The reason I use the expression “controlled for directionality” is because cable companies like Audioquest have figured out how to ensure the wires are in the correct orientation when the cable has been completely assembled and the directional arrows have been applied. 🔜 🔜 it’s not really rocket science. 🚀 There are a number of ways to control the whole process, from the time the wire comes out of the final die, to when the wire is put on the spool destined for the cable company. All it takes is a little coordination. The wire manufacturer could mark the end of the wire with red tape to show direction for the entire spool. Or measure the difference in resistance for a length of wire taken off the spool. See if you can guess which resistance value indicates the correct direction. 🔛 In the case of fuses, most are not controlled for directionality so the end user must try the fuse both ways and use his ears. “Since not a single high end wire company I know has an electron microscope...” >>>>>Why do I get the feeling you actually don’t know any high end wire companies? |
Possible mental health alert: Geoffkait (or Kaitty) has utterly lost his ability to recognize a satirical post, or his reading comprehension doesn’t work if he fails to re-post a comment he’s responding to. I’ll re-post this part for his sake: "And if all of those little wires and board traces are directional, isn’t the sum of all of it working together resulting in directionality chaos? And if it is, why can things still sound fine?" Kaitty...please...turn up your oxygen...something...I’ll try another rhetorical question: Does Dennis Had, who made my hand wired power amp, know which direction the allegedly directional internal wires are pointed? Wait...that’s not a rhetorical question, it’s a question I know the answer to. The answer is no. However, the amp sounds great anyway...mysteries abound... |
@geoffkait Since not a single high end wire company I know has an electron microscope and since you freely admit they don't make their own wire, how would they know the directionality of the cable? Cable is spooled and respooled so many times before it arrives there. Each time this happens, the direction get reversed. I spent my Friday evening playing with cables. I tested Cardas, Kimber, Canare with a $1K Fluke AC ohm meter good to more zeros than would make any difference to a human ear. Zero difference in either direction. None. As in zero difference. Always shows same numbers, down to .5 digits. Let me guess, the ancient cables weren't burnt in enough. Only way to figure out which way the cable was pulled via the dies would be an electron microscope. At one point in my life, I had an Elionix sitting in my basement, but I highly doubt a single cable company would be willing to compromise their marketing department by throwing a cool half a million just to figure out which way the spool was run. |
@tweak1 I also have a 105 and use XLR's out to my Hegel H360 integrated. Wondering if coax out (with Black Cat Silverstar MkII coax cable) might be a better option for red book CD's. Should I give it a try? Was thinking about Wireworld, but even their Starlight 7 Gold is $500 for 1.5m. I've heard on these threads that for digital coax, a length of 1.5 minimum is best for digital coax. |
Maybe 4 years ago I bought an Oppo 105 to play SACDs not realizing it does not output SACD, but plays it only when using the variable VC, so I used balanced cables, but wasn’t happy with it when playing red book cds. So I inserted my backup, a highly modded Pioneer PD 65, with outboard PS. It had toslink out but not coax out, so. I bought a WireWorld Starlight toslink cable I decided to upgrade the 105s power supply in expectation of using it for both, but was using the Starlite toslink for redbook. I still wasn’t happy, but was unaware that coax was superior (at least at this level). The Pioneer laser died and parts are no longer available. Being on a tight budget, I was not in the position to buy the much heralded Jay’s Audio transport, but I contacted them to ask why no toslink, at which point I learned of its inferiority to coax. So, I did my homework and bought a Marantz HD CD 1 to use as a transport and eventual backup. Again I used the toslink, but finally, I bought a hq WireWorld coax and was shocked. This is the kind of sonic upgrade I would expect from better components, be they amp, pre, dac... Even though I knew cables/ics matter a lot, I was not up to speed when it came to toslink v coax. Lesson learned. I am now back using the 105 for redbook and needing to use it direct to amp when listening to SACDs |
Somebody must have taken his smart pill today. Yes, all wire is directional, internal speaker wire, internal electronics wire, speaker wire, digital cable, interconnects, transformer wire, fuses, capacitor wire, all of it. That’s why many high end cable companies have been controlling directionality for 25 years. That’s also why power cords should be controlled for directionality. And why HDMI cables should be controlled for directionality. Note that fuses and cables and cords in AC circuits are directional. The more wire you can put into the correct direction the better the system will sound. (It’s quite common for audiophiles to believe their system sounds great. Just an observation.) 😬 Pop Quiz - How many times have I made those comments on this forum before it finally dawned on Wolfman? a. 5 b. 10 c. 25 d. 100 ”No matter how much you have in the end you would have had even more if you had started out with more.” |
So if fuses are directional, is the wire the fuse connected to directional? It MUST be, right? Are all of the other wires connecting everything else in a component also directional? I doubt that component manufacturers take the directionality of those little and not so little wires and board traces into account, and most of ’em are thicker than the fuse wire...And if all of those little wires and board traces are directional, isn’t the sum of all of it working together resulting in directionality chaos? And if it is, why can things still sound fine? Why? Why? Man...now I need a nap... |
Curious the number of persons who want to argue about the merits of cable vs toslink even though the initial poster is using toslink with both transports. So this is irrelevant. That said, the cable crowd seem to think there is only one kind of toslink, when there is a wide range. Yes a $2.00 toslink may sound worse than a $100.00 cable. I personally like Wireworld Toslink which was about $80.00. |
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@tweak1 No, my head would not explode when visiting Synergistic Research. If they have more than $1K of instruments in that two garage spot "warehouse" of theirs. If a single cable company ever published a study, I'd buy into their BS. And please don't tell me you can't measure this. I own a laser doppler vibrometer good to 100kHz. I'm sure your ears are more accurate than that. But no matter how many times I've pointed it at a tweeter, no matter what cable, it always shows the same thing when fed same wave. Funny how not one cable company seems to own a device like that. I suspect most of them don't even own a decent multimeter. |
Rebbi, good to see you here again! It has been a while. Regarding your quest for an explanation of what could account for the sonic differences you found to occur between the optically connected CD player and the optically connected transport, I think that the posts early in the thread by Kijanki and Mapman pretty nearly said it all. And I agree with their comments 100%. I would add one more possibility, though, to the two they cited (those having been timing jitter and read errors, with jitter being the more likely culprit if the player and disc are in good condition). It seems conceivable to me that in some cases sonics might be affected by differences in the amplitude and spectral characteristics of digital noise at RF frequencies that might find its way via power wiring (or perhaps even via the air) from those components to downstream points in the system. A number of other well intentioned responses, especially early in the thread, asserted that differences in the design and quality of various parts of the players, such as power supplies, laser mechanisms, digital circuitry, etc., could account for the differences you perceived. I don’t doubt that those assertions are correct in many cases. But understandably such assertions fall short of explaining ***how*** differences in those things end up affecting sonics. And the only means I can envision by which such differences in design can affect sonics, given that ground loops, impedance mismatches, signal reflection effects, and other such things that can come into play when electrical (rather than optical) interconnections are used, is by having effects on jitter, or on read errors, or on coupling of electrical noise to downstream points in the system via pathways that are unintended and non-obvious. All the best, -- Al |
astelmaszek88 posts03-07-2019 1:53pmDude, you sell bags of rocks to attach to interconnect cables. I’m done here. For a while I thought I was just dealing with a few misinformed/undereducated individuals. Now I realize I’m dealing delusions. >>>>English apparently wasn’t one of your top subjects in 7th grade. |
The subconscious mind interacts with room boundaries, i.e., closed-in spaces, producing a claustrophobic reaction that interferes with and degrades the listener's sensory perception. Now that's rich...Next time I make a donation to local orchestra I'll make sure they spend at least a portion on some Blue Meanie. |
The Blue Meanie is neither a damper nor a resonator so it's location on the wall, unlike dampers and resonators, is not critical whatsoever. A Blue Meanie can be placed anywhere on the wall; it can even be hidden behind a picture or bookcase. Four white 3/4" removeable paper stickers are provided to cover the blue dots if desired, making them less conspicuous. Codename Blue Meanies operates via mind matter-interaction. The subconscious mind interacts with room boundaries, i.e., closed-in spaces, producing a claustrophobic reaction that interferes with and degrades the listener's sensory perception. It's like putting in a better set of interconnects. Price $99 for set of 4 Blue Meanies. |
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@geoffkait Actually, sunshine, in case of a regular amp, there is a ground. Go grab a multimeter and test between "-" speaker terminal and the case. You'll get a reading close of zero. But what do I know, having only have designed, produced and coded hundreds of different devices. Anybody here can do this with their amp. And why do you think I put flow in quotes. Now, there will be no case to "-" connection on for example Luxman M900 amp, as it is a fully differential amplifier. Now, I looked you up, I finally realize why you spew this crap: you sell magic to believers. |
astelmaszek83 posts03-07-2019 12:01pm@geoffkait Take the case for two wires connected to a speaker, + and -. When the current travels toward the speaker on one wire it travels the opposite direction on the other wire. And vice versa. You have no idea what you are talking about. How do you think the woofer moves back? Which way do the electrons "flow" then? Take a quick look at a audio wave. Ever noticed it has a negative side? It’s called AC for a reason. Ever heard of balanced amplifiers: there is no ground. >>>>>First of all electrons don’t flow. In an AC circuit electrons are essentially at a standstill. You’re not even warm yet. Nice to see you went to 7th grade. How about 8th grade? Current flow through both + and - speaker terminals. It alternates. That’s why if you reverse the + and - cables the speakers will still play music but Polarity is Reverse from what they were before you reversed + and -. There is no ground. Duh! “If I could explain it to the average person they wouldn’t have given me the Nobel prize.” |