Al, thanks for keeping me straight.
Directional speaker cables - switching direction
Some time ago I started a thread regarding speaker wire directionality and my inability to understand how it could have any affect on sound quality. The question was inspired by the fact that, after quite a few years using them with my Martin Logan Odysseys, I discovered that the cables (Straightwire Octave 2) had arrows printed on them. Not surprisingly the opinions expressed were pretty strong on both sides of the argument but those supporting directionality were the most vociferous and in greater numbers, one to the point of being downright insulting. In no case, though, was an explanation given by those supporting the importance of cable direction for how this phenomenon occurs except that it should be obvious that when a cable is broken in in one direction only someone with an uneducated ear would be unable to discern the difference.
Even though I still don't get it I'm not taking the position that there is no validity to the directional claim; if there truly is I just don't understand how. This leads me to my two part question. I haven't been using the Octaves for a few years but now, because of cable length issues, I want to put them back in my system partly to avoid the cost of new quality cables.
IF, then, the directionality theory IS valid and I don't recall which way the arrows originally pointed or which direction they were "broken in" do those in support of directionality think I should install them with the arrows pointing toward the speakers
Even though I still don't get it I'm not taking the position that there is no validity to the directional claim; if there truly is I just don't understand how. This leads me to my two part question. I haven't been using the Octaves for a few years but now, because of cable length issues, I want to put them back in my system partly to avoid the cost of new quality cables.
IF, then, the directionality theory IS valid and I don't recall which way the arrows originally pointed or which direction they were "broken in" do those in support of directionality think I should install them with the arrows pointing toward the speakers
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"I find that the only evidence that has been submitted is evidence from people that could make money off of cables, like cable manufacturers." Not true. Just spend some time searching the archives on the subject on Cable Asylum and Tweakers' Asylum. Scvan, Your problem is unless the differences can be measured by existing test equipment the differences cannot exist. You posted on this thread that cable differences can be heard when connected to an audio system. Yet you have failed to say one way or the other the differences can be measured by any test equipment that exists today. If the differences cannot be measured then the differences do not exist and therefore are merely manufactured snake oil. |
Scvan, all Tara Labs cables are hand made in the u.s.a., years ago, Tara Labs did make some cables in china, they got into alot of trouble with saying that they were made in the u.s. and was not, now that was only the lower tier cables when all that happened, that said, I asure you, all Tara cables are hand made in the u.s., and the answer to your question, since I personally know and speak to Matthew Bond, The engineering department is in Australia where Matthew lives, there is a whole team that works with him engineering, Tara Labs also has the purest copper in the industry, 8-nines, occ copper is 6-nines, both are mono crystal copper, absolutley there is a sound difference between the two, I have owned them both, Tara Labs use to use occ copper before they started extruding their own copper, manufacturing is done in Ashland, OR. |
Jea48, excellent point. One wonders why nobody ever measures wire or cables or fuses to see if they meaure differently when inserted into the system one direction or the other. Wait, someone did meaure fuse directionality! Is that good enough for you? Hi Fi Tuning published the results of a third party test of HiFi Tuning fuses compared to some other fuses, comparing one direction vs the other and with and without cryo. So it's not true that differences cannot be measured and don't exist. They do exist and can be measured, and have been measured! Hel-loo! |
Am I the only one that clicked on the link and got 1000's of images of miscellaneous stuff? Using the same logic, obviously hi-fi does not exist: more_images I would really be interested in the study from hi-fi tuning. Can someone point me to a link? I am willing to concede that, at this moment, not everything in the universe can be measured. But I will not concede that anything in the audio domain cannot be measured. If you can hear a difference there are microphones that measure it with much better accuracy than human ears. Has anyone done these tests? tests To think a machine cannot out do you on this tests can easily be proven. Some may disregard laws of physics on this board, but doing so just goes to show that they are clearly not open minded and willing to use evidence to make judgements. I too believe in Santa Claus because you can't not measure his existence, he just has decided to not give me gifts in several years. |
I'm thinking that mono-crystal is the name used because single crystal is a real term and is only used in labs. Single crystal and mono-crystal are probably two different things. Here is a piece of single crystal copper that is not as pure as Tara Labs claims their copper to be. http://www.mtixtl.com/Mc-Cu-e-50D10C1.aspx I'm considering buying some Tara lab cables, and sending them to a lab to see what they really are. |
12-23-14: ScvanHere it is. My comments on it can be found in the first of my posts dated 5-14-12 in this thread. If I recall correctly, there was a revised version of this paper that was subsequently issued by HiFi Tuning, providing measurements of some additional fuses and incorporating some minor changes. I recall stating that my comments about the first paper remained applicable to the second one, but I can't find the link offhand. Regards, -- Al |
I must say this post is really inspiring me, maybe it is the spirit of the season. I'm thinking of starting some website that investigates claims of various manufacturers of all types of hi-fi goods. I see too much going back and forth, which is fine. But we should all have data on our sides to make a decision. Maybe a potential site that does measurement of goods, and then measurement of those goods in a fixed system. In addition to that, outside labs can give feedback. I think I am on to something here. I would really enjoy this and I think it would bring clarity and openness to this hobby. Hopefully it would propel things forward in the positive way. |
Scvan - the problem with your idea is that a lot of audiophiles believe that science isn't up to measuring audio equipment. As stated in the post just prior to mine, things can measure the same and sound different. I agree that it is impossible to measure every attribute of a component, but believe that a lot of things believed by audiophiles are not significant, if true, to be audible. |
It is true that some audiophiles believe in something other than science, which is fine. However, I don't think any of the manufacturers feel that way. I'm sure they don't just stumble upon something and say "hey this sounds great" and sell it. It probably does happen that way but 99.99999% of the time it doesn't. May some may disagree, but if it sounds different b/w two tweaks or components then the actual sound wave being generated by the speaker is different. If the sound wave is different a high-end transducer (mic) can pick that up and record it. It is that simple. Magic doesn't exist except on stages in Vegas. If nothing more than serving my own purpose, I think the data should exist and be available to the public. People fret on this board about picoseconds of jitter but then ignore other data. It is all very odd to me. |
Scvan, even assuming that we know everything (we had no idea about existence of transient intermodulation until 70') certain things might be very difficult to measure. How do you propose to measure signal propagation speed in the cable or characteristic impedance and dielectric absorption. What about shielding? How do we test coupling characteristic of different types of electrical noise (capacitive, magnetic, electromagnetic). What frequency spectrum and what type of modulation shall we use to emulate real life conditions. People who learned about R,L and C believe, that everything can be measured. There is a thread "Capacitor log Mundorf Silver in Oil" on Audiogon running for years (currently 2588 posts) where people discuss sound of capacitors. Would you tell them that two capacitors of the same RLC have to sound the same? How do you propose to evaluate digital cable that in my opinion is system dependent and might even sound different in identical systems at different locations. We don't even have clear way to measure amplifier's power and the one listed as the strongest might actually be not the loudest. Perhaps testing has some value - 20W amplifier is clearly not 200W but other than that testing IMHO is a joke. Are you, for instance, sure that 1% THD tube amplifier has to sound worse that 0.01% SS amp? Would amplifier with wider bandwidth always sound better? If anything, price or weight might be better indicators of sound quality. |
I wanted to follow up my previous post that was cut short to feed my kids. If there are physical attributes in audio equipment that cannot be measured but have a real impact on the sound, then the audio industry is effectively reduced from engineers and designers to a bunch of mad scientists developing products by trial and error. The real downside to this idea is that there would be no way to know if a given product would be better or worse in my system because it was developed using trial and error methods to please a few individuals in at most a few select systems. There would never be a reason to assume that an expensive product would perform better than a cheap one. I don't know how components are actually designed, but it should be possible to measure the final signal while changing specific design attributes one at a time to learn what the effect is. It seems obvious that the closer the original signal the final signal the better the product is. |
Mceljo, there are thing that cannot be measured but still can be optimized. You can see (oscilloscope) and hear the evidence of Transient Intermodulation but it is very hard and there are no standards to measure it. In addition amplifier with great other specifications can actually sound horrible. It gets extremely complex when you add system synergy. Often praised high Damping Factor in my class D amplifier is DF=4000. If it is good, then Atmasphere amplifiers with DF<1 (4000 times worse) should sound horrible, right? Atmasphere amps also have 10x higher THDs - they should sound very bad, right? Atmasphere designer must be one of those "Mad Scientists" :) |
Mceljo, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Quote from John Curl Interview. Page 15/18 and 16/18. "I was working with Noel Lee and a company called Symmetry. We designed this crossover and I specified these one microfarad Mylar caps. Noel kept saying he could 'hear the caps' and I thought he was crazy. Its performance was better than aluminum or tantalum electrolytics, and I couldnt measure anything wrong with my Sound Technology distortion analyzer. So what was I to complain about? Finally I stopped measuring and started listening, and I realized that the capacitor did have a fundamental flaw. This is were the ear has it all over test equipment. The test equipment is almost always brought on line to actually measure problems the ear hears. So were always working in reverse. If we do hear something and we cant measure it then we try to find ways to measure what we hear. In the end we invariably find a measurement that matches what the ear hears and it becomes very obvious to everybody." End of quote. http://www.parasound.com/pdfs/JCinterview.pdf . |
The most important thing in this hobby is keeping an open mind. Which can be rather challenging when one considers some of the things that have come down the pike such as wire directionality. Demagnetization of CDs. Demagnetization of cables. The Green Pen. Mpingo disc. The Intelligent Chip. Holographic foils. The Red 'x Pen. |
Jea48, That was a good article. What I picked up from it was that over 40 years ago he heard something on caps and couldn't measure it at that time. The ability to take measurements and analyze data has improved dramatically over the last 40 years. Any of us can quickly do a frequency response curve of our system at home that is probably much more accurate than could be done then. The hardware costs very little and the tools to do so are now free. I think the simplest thing that can be done is simple measurements of signal into a system from a source versus what is being output by a speaker (of course you can measure at any point in the system). If you can hear something you didn't hear before it is probably something that was picked up by a mic during recording and should be able to be picked up by a mic again. With modern computers it is pretty easy to compare these signals and find A X B differences and inaccuracies in the signal. There may be some not so well understood principles in audio reproduction, but if we can hear it I contend that is can be measured, maybe not understood, but at least measured. |
Ya, "they" found a way. Just remember why "they" looked for a way in the first place. As long as manufactures put arrows on cables to show signal flow direction and say try the cables in both directions for what sounds best in my system I will follow their directions. It's nice to know the theory why but in the end all I care about is how the cable affects the sound of my audio system. If somebody is hell bent on proving the theory why cables are directional then that person should by all means find a way to measure the differences. |
