So here I am in my recliner reading the newspaper after supper listening to classical radio. What the heck, I will check my email. I come across an Audiogon discussion recap and link to this thread.As I read a few posts I get hooked, not because I have a strong opinion on the subject, but because the banter is at times informative and even more times evokes a good laugh. I start to imagine that all who have posted and others like myself who just read and are entertained went to the same high school and were in the same graduating class. During high school and ever since we have been fervent audiophiles. So here we are years later (45 for me) at our class reunion and a discussion of cables arises and spreads throughout the room. Lively, sometimes heated banter, along with rolling eyes, and gut aching laughter fills the place. It is probably good that this is only imaginary. Otherwise we may very well be a room full of bachelors.
andy2: "Einstein was known for this thought experiments. Nobody back there was asking for data :-)"
WRONG! Jeez, man o man....
His "thought" experiments, good grief! Sir, do you know anything about mathematics, like, say calculus?
You are wrong. There are theoretical physicists and there are experimental physicists and they NEED EACH OTHER. Theory is nothing without data to prove or disprove the theory. Until data is produced, it remains theory. Experimental physicists need theoretical physicists to determine what experiments to design and perform. In biological sciences, they are often the same person; in physics, they are often different people. Regardless, THAT is the scientific method. Einstein’s theories were eventually proven experimentally. For example the only way this electronic messaging works is to take into account, and adjust for (geosynch communication satellites), GENERAL RELATIVITY.
It is *misreported* on the internet in what appear to be otherwise authoritative articles on the Challenger Disaster investigation with respect to Richard Feynman. The article I just read, for example, described a hostile relationship between Rogers, the Chairman of the Rogers Commision and Feynman during the investigation. But that is incorrect. The hostile relationship was actually between Dr. Alton Keel, Executive Director of the commission, and Feynman. William Rogers was not technical and shied away from ego battles, not so with Drs. Feynman and Keel. And it was Keel who kept Feynman’s portion of the Final Report relegated to the Appendix.
to whit,
”The chief conflict, according to several participants, was between Mr. Rogers and Dr. Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist from the California Institute of Technology. They repeatedly clashed not only on how harshly to criticize NASA but also on how to conduct the investigation and deal with the press.
Indeed, only last week Dr. Feynman threatened to dissent from the commission's final report unless a section that he had written, which Mr. Rogers considered too harsh and emotional, was included as he had composed it. That last-minute fracas was resolved through the mediation of Maj. Gen. Donald J. Kutyna of the Air Force, a commission member who, through the course of the proceedings, became a close friend of Dr. Feynman. General Kutyna cautioned today that the issue involved only a few words and had been resolved to the satisfaction of all.
From the start, Dr. Feynman, known for his brilliant and original intellectual forays, was impatient with committee meetings, bureaucratic planning, formal hearings and detailed discussions of the best way to word reports. As far as he was concerned, the way to investigate a problem was to venture out as an individual and have long talks with the technical people who could explain everything they knew about the shuttle technology and its problems.
Some people here can travel backward in time. He claims he can measure and obtain data of an equipment before it was built. Now I need proof and data how he can travel back in time.
I think data is only part of the equation. If anything, data probably comes last. If you want to build anything, first you need a vision, some intuition, and some sound underlying reasons. Then you build a prototype. Then you measure and collect data. If it were data, Einstein would not have come up with his general relativity. In fact, people were not able to prove his theory back then because nobody was able to measure time and space.
To demand data or all else is like abdicating your mind. The world is too complicated for data sometimes. You have to rely on your tuitions a lot of time.
As going to the moon, I think data probably comes way after a bunch of people getting together brainstorming throught the night. Can you imagine one guy stood up and said "I ain't going in that rocket cause there is no data telling me it won't blow up." I am sure another guy would say, "But George, we ain't got a rocket yet so somebody has to go first".
Feynman’s contribution to the Challenger Disaster Final Report was disallowed until the very end when it was put into the Appendix as a sop. He was kind of a loose cannon. Not unlike some folks here. I’m not going to point fingers. 👉 👉
Man, I love eggplants. Nope, strictly a Boeing guy. I can still hear that French pilot as he flew into the ground at Paris. Nope, only Boeing for me. 💩🐍
It’s a two edged sword. Data dogma is what produced the Hubble telescope fiasco and data dogma is also what produced the Challenger explosion and the second space shuttle disaster when it disintegrated during reentry. Data dogma also resulted in the sales of all those horrible sounding solid state amps back in the 80s that boasted super low THD. Data dogma. Woof! woof! Bad dogma, bad! 🐕
@and2 If what you are suggesting is true, that believing in data is dogma then we would never had made it to the moon, for that matter concurred powered flight!
Please share with us the measurable, repeatable data the proves wire is directional AND that wire break-in is real!
@rlwd posted this which is spot on:
All us doubters are saying is "prove it". I don’t know how else you can prove it without a measurement. Most engineers embrace the adage "In God We Trust, all others bring data".
In the case of Mr Kait all he believes in is condescending insults and since he is not an engineer he would not understand the concept of "prove it" with measurable data.
geoffkait could use a bit of restraints in his posting and his reasoning. Saying I believe this or I don't believe this without exploring and thinking it through is just as bad. Einstein was known for this thought experiments. Nobody back there was asking for data :-).
@andy2 Unfortunately you are right about changing the topic, sorry about that. @morrowaudio did make a statement about it and i asked him to present his data that shows this to be true, ie testing that shows any difference of resistance/inductance/capacitance.
As for @geoffkait he has proven to be a quack, he will only respond with insults instead of providing us with real electrical engineering data to support his statements of wire directionality AND he has mentioned that he supports cable break in as well with NO meaningful data to support this claim either.
I'm not the least be surprised by Mr. Kait and his inability to share with us his engineering data, anyone who attempts to sell products such as:
Brilliant Pebbles The Super Intelligent Chip And my favorite, the Teleportation Tweak
Has to know what he is talking about and we all should believe everything he says!
I am just presenting the cases. As I mention, I am not either a proponent or opponent of "directionality". People believe however they believe. But I feel responsible for at least exploring the topic.
Andy2, you’re overthinking it. The reason cables are directional is the same reason fuses are directional, the same reason HDMI cables are directional and why power cords are directional. It’s the wire itself that’s directional. I’m amazing that so many here don’t know what directionality is since its been discussed here, pros and cons, for like forever. Cut me some slack, Jack.
We have gone from burn-in to directionality. I think the next pseudoscience ... err ... I mean cable topic to get a bunch of people worked up is does it make any difference if you let your speaker cables lying on the ground vs. having it lift off the ground? The reason behind this is that speaker cables are basically a transmission line. And all transmission lines are affected by the surrounding dielectric materials. By running the cables on the ground or your living room carpet, the ground in this case act as a dielectric material but in a non-symmetric way because the bottom half of your cables are in contact to the ground, while the upper half while the upper half is in contact with the air. So the signal may get distorted.
By lifting the cable off the ground, the dielectric is now symmetric as intended so the signal will not be distorted.
If you mean the pseudoscience statement you posted earlier? its NOT proof in any way, its a statement with NO actual test data to back it up. If you ask me your quote below is proof you do not understand how AC current works! If you said this in any electrical engineering class your classmates would laugh you out of the room!
>>>>Didn’t you get the memo? Maybe you were sleeping. You don’t need to be concerned with any signal travel in the “opposite direction,” only any signal travel toward your speakers, I.e., the correct direction. Follow?
Az, what are you talking about? I explained it already. God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. If you’re pretending to be dense you’re doing an excellent job.
Another case for the "directionality" people, is that even if both ends are not being bias differently and the current is truely AC, on the driving terminal in this case is the amp, the voltage is always slightly higher than the other end since there is always some resistive losses in the cable. Think of the cable as a simple voltage divider driving the speakers as a load. You have input voltage and output voltage. Obviously for a voltage divider, the output voltage is always smaller than the input voltage. So at least in this case, you have "directionality" because the one terminal is subjected to one voltage and another terminal is subjected to another voltage.
What I said above is just theoretical. In practical situation, I have to admit it would be different to hear the difference unless I guess have have a really exceptional system with top notch transparency.
Ok now you are lowering the conversation to insults, pretty low grade insults too which is just another way you are avoiding the very simple request to document your claims, is wire directional, and HOW would that work in a AC circuit??
@andy2 audio interconnections and amp to speaker connections are AC, there is no DC involved in these connections. There IS DC internal to pre-amps & amps, its what their power supplies are there for to convert AC power from the wall to pure DC, voltages depend on the design & function of these components.
I can see the argument for "directionality" if the condition is not symmetric. Let's say if one end of the cable is subjected to one condition, and the other end is subjected to different condition, then it's possible that the cable could be conditioned differently if you reverse the direction. For example, if one end is constantly biased to one voltage, and another end is biased to another voltage, then there is a possibility that the argument for "direction" has some merrits. No if the current is DC then of course you have directionality, no question about it. But music signal is AC so that is the tricky part to argue if you are the proponent of "directionality". But if the current is truely AC, then the current is always symmetric. But is the currrent always AC? Could there be a small DC offset current?
For example, you have an amp driving a speaker, one terminal of the cable is being biased by the amp output transistors and the other terminal of the cable is connected to the speakers. If the output transistors are DC coupled, then you have a servo on the amp output to adjust for the DC offset, but this servo circuit does have a small (maybe even very small)DC offset so there will be a small net DC current flowing from the amp to the speaker. So in this case, it's not symmetric and the "directionality" argument might make sense.
In the case of interconnect, you have a preamp driving the amp input. In this case, DC offset is not as important because you don't have anything driving the speakers. I am not a preamp or amp designer so I don't know how the detail of the preamp output design or the amp input design, but there is a strong possibility that the interconnect terminals on both ends are not being subjected to the same condition, so therefore there is an argument for "directionality" even if the current is always AC (for example the preamp output is capacitively "coupled" to the cable but the amp input is biased to some voltage). So in this case, you have a symmetric AC current, but non-symmetric bias condition on the terminals of the interconnect.
For the proponents of "directionality", the difficult part is that you have to make a case how a symmetric AC current has anything to do with "directionality".
For the opponent of "directionality", you have to explain how different bias condition on the terminals of the cable does not affect the cable if you reverse the cable direction.
I am not a proponent or opponent of "directionality" but I present some possibilities for the "directionality" argument.
Az, it’s OK that you were lying about being an engineer. I totally understand why you would do that. You must be the oldest Subway employee on the planet.
@teo_audio Well, if that were the case i would had trouble staying employed for the last 40 years.
So reading your response you are trying to say that in some cases AC current does NOT behave in the way science & engineers understand it?
Your statement sounds like the definition of Pseudoscience which consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual, but are incompatible with the scientific method.
Engineering fact and law reverts to Scientific theory.. in the moment you have unknowns and are in the act of exploring.
Laws and facts are for punishing the outlier for being different than the clan. It’s all theory in the given exploration... as the record is subject to change in the face of said exploration.
If it’s all facts and laws then the future will be exactly the same as the past. Science guides gently with aim and direction, it does not force and exhibit tyranny and dictatorial rule, like the laws and facts of engineering. If it does (exhibit forced prior conditionals)...it means no one will be alive or change or grow and we’ll all be mindless dead automatons. Humanity as a corralled and controlled commodity.
Is that what you are looking for?
Importantly... the very heart of science, what it is, how it works, what embodies it’s very meaning and flow --- is the outlier.
No outliers.... no science, no change, no life. All you’d be left with.... is a boxed dead commodity.
Here you go again, changing the subject without providing ANY proof of your statements? We are ALL waiting for your explanation on how wire directionality works in a AC circuit???
Come on, step up and share with us your vast scientific knowledge!
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
