Directionality of wire

@terry9 

Thank you sir.

I do recall a Mapleshade digital IC I bought (very affordable) that came with instructions that warned of intermittent audio (dropouts!) if connected in the wrong direction. And sure enough it was true! Now That's a directionality effect Anyone could hear! 

Again, not that I could explain that one either.

@shadorne,

"Exactly. Whatever experience that can be measured repeatedly and independently becomes accepted verifiable fact. What cannot or has not been successfully measured repeatedly and independently is in the realm of conjecture or hypothesis or 'marketing hype' or 'unsubstantiated claims'."


Agreed, all except that this leaves no possible room for personal observation. Yes, anyone can come forward and falsify an observation, but that is merely a complication of truth, not an elimination of it...simply because a false claim can exist does not mean that therefore a True claim Cannot exist.

What you claim in the above is essentially a denial of truth itself. Any verification of truth can potentially and legitimately originate from an observation. Without being granted that possible avenue of acceptance, the truth (according to what you said) is blocked from from ever becoming recognized.

That's a complete denial of the scientific method...which always begins with an observation, btw.

@shadorne

In the above I neglected to quote your entire post actually, sorry about that.

What I’m saying is that being paralyzed by the fact that there may be false claims afoot, in any circumstance, is essentially a form of hysteria.
In that case, as you point out, Nothing can be trusted...not even our own instincts to arrive at the truth for ourselves...!

Dude....chill...

True enough. Caveat emptor. Wouldn't have it any other way, myself.

I was only trying to focus on the theory 'apart from fact' in an effort to get a sense of what is in the minds of those who believe things like wire directionality might be real....or maybe I should say 'theory "apart from established fact"...or is it "apart from already established fact"??....or "the most familiar already established universally accepted fact"???....or whatever level of truth needs to be met - sometimes that makes my head hurt.

I myself have heard the directionality effect a few times over the last few years. Sometimes I've heard it when I didn't expect to. Sometimes I didn't hear it when I was expecting to. But, when on those (few) occasions that I did repeatedly hear it, most often I heard it a little more plainly with fuses than with wire in my setup.

Oddly, I can no longer hear the effect under my roof. I've been steadily acquiring more and more electronic noise reduction gear (quantum based) from Alan Maher Designs since coming across that site in 2010. Slowly since then the effect has started growing noticeably weaker as my system improved in sound and performance. Now I can switch out seemingly any wire or fuse and even while hearing an improvement or at least change in sound vs the original wire or fuse, I no longer can audibly detect any delta from directionality, no matter what the test. As if the rest of my system's performance has improved to the point as to 'swallow up' the differences, perhaps??...not really sure... I do know all the "hifi-ness" is gone...almost as if directionality and hifi-ness were somehow being 'bouyed up by electrical noise' as it were.

I can't explain or account for why that would be the case, I just know that it is.

@shadorne 

"I don’t deny truth. However, before attaching strong beliefs to unsubstantiated claims I require something more solid than conjecture. This is why man-made global warming remains a remote and infinitesimally small possibility to me as nobody has successfully proven the main hypothesis is true in our atmosphere (which we know for certainty is influenced by other natural factors to a much larger degree than claims for man-made effects)"

"This is not paranoia it is actually just being reasonable and independent of thought rather than being a sheep and blindly believing everything one is told."  

I think I will just leave that lay.

@geoffkait 

no crystals.

"Well, actually, ironically enough, that expression caveat emptor does NOT apply to fuses as much as people think..."

"Hmmm, are they getting ready to release a new fuse?"

Like I said, caveat emptor.

@terry9

I think you may be conflagrating "scientific research" with "empirical experimenting". Strictly speaking, it isn’t really necessary for us to ’establish facts’ or ’principles’ or in some way necessarily advance the cause of science in order to justify an experiment. We are hobbyists first. More often than not, we only need to enlighten ourselves, to address the unknown issues that are immediately in front of us, not the ones that define a specific school of scientific thought.

So if, say, we don’t know something...something even quite simple, like "How do I know if I really need room treatments??", or "Are the effects of insulation audible in audio wires??" and we have just no real clue as to what the possible answer might be, then likely as not, a simple, even rudimentary experiment might be in order. You know, the simpler the better. Like taking a bunch of sheets or towels or dirty socks or whatever and trying to systematically place them around the listening room to get a feel for not only whether or not you could benefit from absorption, but also where the most important problem spots in your room might actually be. Or deciding to take an old couple of pairs of Monster Cable IC’s you have lying around and take the time to strip away all the insulation on one pair and leave the other pair untouched (your control group) and swap them in and out of your system and compare them. I know because I myself found it necessary at some point to run both experiments.

It’s odd, but I think this is really a widespread problem in this hobby in particular...and in fact, it’s likely a problem for us virtually nowhere else in our lives. If we get our car stuck in some sand, we think to toss some gravel or other debris in front of the mired tire in order to get some traction. It’s just that we’re not having to do this while also trying to visualize how electrons might be moving through a lattice. Unfortunately, in this hobby many folks seem to be walking around with their minds already blown when it comes to how expansive most of the concepts are. And it’s particularly because of the newness of that state of expanded awareness that seems to readily interfere with our normal ability or inclination to reduce problems down to their simplest terms in order to get a better grip on them. It’s also odd to me in a similar way, that I think that people as a matter of course, can ’switch on’ this expanded frame of mind whenever they happen to be occupying themselves with the hobby and then switch it off when they’ve disengaged the subject matter...never once it having occurred to them to try switching it ’off’ once in a while when they are trying to come to grips with something new in the hobby.

And please don’t anyone get the idea that this has escaped the attention of manufacturers and marketers.

@terry9 

Alright, fair enough, I'm just ranting I suppose. My apologies if I've rankled anyone.