Why are you so sure that you are hearing the polarity and not something else?
The Contour System – Directional Wiring of Audio Parts
Hi guys!
The topic is about subjective homemade research of conductors directivity. I know most people don't believe in such phenomena so probably the story is not for them but for those who find it unbearable to listen to imperfect sound of chaotically directed wires and components.
As for me, I hear direction difference distinctly. The matter started from interconnect cables quite long ago, after a while I added to my research inner wiring of loudspeakers, then discover the importance of mains cables direction. After all I decided to find the directions of all the wires and components of my pretty vintage DIY tube mono SE amp and after everything had been done I drew a resulting schematic and wrote the article. It was in 2005, I have translated it in English only now. Hope you will find the article useful or just enjoy it.
Here is the Link: https://www.backtomusic.ru/audio-engineering/theory/contour-system.
The topic is about subjective homemade research of conductors directivity. I know most people don't believe in such phenomena so probably the story is not for them but for those who find it unbearable to listen to imperfect sound of chaotically directed wires and components.
As for me, I hear direction difference distinctly. The matter started from interconnect cables quite long ago, after a while I added to my research inner wiring of loudspeakers, then discover the importance of mains cables direction. After all I decided to find the directions of all the wires and components of my pretty vintage DIY tube mono SE amp and after everything had been done I drew a resulting schematic and wrote the article. It was in 2005, I have translated it in English only now. Hope you will find the article useful or just enjoy it.
Here is the Link: https://www.backtomusic.ru/audio-engineering/theory/contour-system.
Showing 23 responses by anton_stepichev
The article is not about cables, but about wires and the short single core wire is completely symmetrical if we are about audio signal. Just in case you missed it, the overall point is: - Every piece of wire is directional. - The preferred direction can be determined in every circuit of an amplifier. - Wires directions in signal and AC/DC wiring are arranged systematically in contours. There are some DIY tips and tricks also. |
If there is that much difference in the one inch of a fuse, I can only imagine what can be achieved with everything going the right direction. You say you were able to do this all the way down to the level of tube pins and RCA plugs? Incredible! Yes, EL-AL-AZ German 1938 tube sockets can be easily disassembled. Then pins are tested the same way as wires, then sorted and marked, at the end new sockets with correct pins directions are assembled. As for RSA, I use handmade ones https://www.backtomusic.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/cons.jpg. They are made the same way - first directions of old metal blanks are determined, then details of the plugs are lathed according to their direction and finally the plugs are assembled with right parts direction. If the difference I heard from just one inch of fuse was carried out across every wire in every part of the amp, I have to think the final result would be mind-boggling in ease and clarity, with a truly holographic 3D presentation. Which it better be, for the time it takes to get there! The thing is more complicated than it seems to be. When you orient the first few conductors in a good amplifier, the gain in clarity is as high as possible. If you continue to pick up directions from more and more conductors in the amp circuit, the quality gain begins to slow down. I think there are several reasons for this: 1 - There are limits to any perfection, and the sound tends to this limit exponentially. The further you go in your search, the more difficult it is to get a proportionate result. 2 - A person quickly gets used to the good and ceases to appreciate it. 3 - The more transparent your system sounds, the more difficult it is to find a recording that is at least somewhat commensurate in quality with your audio system. From some point on, you start to hear all the mistakes of sound engineers, musician kicks and other interference that is not noticeable on the average audio systems and it is very annoying. So the vast majority of recordings become uninteresting, but the little rest is revealed in such unexpected, astonishing colors that I am still quite puzzled how it ever could be. |
Nice job, that makes me think if same models sound identical when leaving factory. Of course they sounds different, the only question is to what extent. If we, for example, compare two modern conveyor amps made in the same day or week, they may differ just slightly. But if we compare any couple of amps of the same model with an issue date difference of several years, the contrast in sound may be as large as if it were completely different amps. And the old stock one will most likely be better, but it is impossible to guess for sure. |
Do you also have a sensitivity to absolute phase? I’ve often wondered if there is a correlation with cable directionality, but either my ears or my system isn’t up to the task. In my opinion, if there is any correlation, then no one can accurately determine it. The fact is that it is impossible to set up a correct experiment here, with all other things being equal. To determine the alleged effect of the absolute phase on the sound, you must assemble a phase inverter device that will contain a number of radio elements and wires including a bypass switch for comparison. During a comparison test when you listen either through the phase inverter or bypass it, the difference in sound will naturally be heard, but it is impossible to interpret it unambiguously, since the phase rotation device contains many parts and conductors that randomly affect the sound. The people who initially experimented with the audibility of the absolute phase were most likely professional radio engineers, among whom there are practically no people who accept the existence of sound of individual wires. However, these people heard the difference during the comparison tests and decided that this is how the absolute phase manifests itself. This opinion is widespread among audiophiles, but this does not naturally mean that it is true. I don’t see a way to solve this problem, but my opinion is - the absolute phase can not be heard. |
What else would the phase inverter change, then? I wish I could be as confident as you) There are two ways to switch the phase - analog and digital. I have already described my opinion about the analog version: it is impossible to put a pure experiment here. But the digital is also full of mysticism. I have my own experience in this matter. The code of any software player can be divided into the part that deals with the actual decoding of the sound and the part that creates the user interface (buttons, menus, etc.). It is natural to think that the sound is affected only by the first part of the code, the rest can be changed as you like. Once, for certain reasons, I decided to check this statement, and made several versions of the same type of software mp3 player for Windows with different interface. To do this, I used the "Multimedia builder". As a result, the player with the most complex interface - with a clock, track time, the ability to visualize music and many more, sounded the most muffled and and generally the worst of all. The most pure music played through a minimalist version of interface in which there was nothing at all except "open file" and three buttons. The experiment definitely indicated that: - The sound is affected by the entire code, not just the part associated with encoding and decoding the audio signal. - The simpler the software, the better it is for the sound. Both conclusions are mystical, but I got used to such things. And I have to say that to me the difference was quite significant. Therefore, when I am told that the phase inversion in the software player makes a difference in the sound and this proves that the phase is audible, I answer that unfortunately this does not prove anything. We don't know how the piece of code that responsible for inverting the signal would affect the sound in case it didn't invert anything, but was simply added to the player code in a way of interface or so. And we also don't know is the code in inverter part technically correct, mistakes are what make us human. I have found this mp3 player, you can try its sound if you have Windows - https://backtomusic.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/play.zip |
@bluemoodriver I admit this is a difficult question, the percentage of hits depends on many things. First of all, if we are talking about just difference in the sound of the same piece of wire, then here, with all other things being equal, the percentage of hits easily fits into 90% and sometimes 100% . Equal means that we must listen to the same piece of music, connect the test wire to the circuit in the same way (the same contact points of the test wire with the circuit) and hold the wire with our hands in the same way. The problem is that the wire has a transverse component of directivity, and if during testing you connect the wire in the same longitudinal direction but with different sides, the sound will differ, and sometimes this difference can be close in expression to the longitudinal reversal. Your hands also affect the sound when you hold the test wire in them. If you do not know this, then the repeatability in the tests may disappear altogether. So we have some difficulties even in simplest case, but in practice, it is impossible to listen to the same piece of music all the time and work with the same wire ceteris paribus. Here you should not just hear the difference, but choose the best direction in terms of the sum of the pros and cons of different wires. Each wire in addition to the direction has its own character (coloration) and different musical potential, it happens that a successful conductor in the opposite direction sounds preferable than an unsuccessful conductor in the right one. All this definitely reduces the percentage of hits in practice. In short - to be sure that the percentage of hits in long continuous tests is within 80-90%, the results should be rechecked with a fresh head. In responsible places, I sometimes do it even twice. @bluemoodriver It is not the difference in electricity signal that we hear while reversing wires. I have explained my point of view earlier. |
@Millercarbon Thanks for the good, Millercarbon. I make no amps or anything else for sale, all this is just intellectual pursuit, as you said. |
@russ69 Perhaps you need to enable some logic here. Directivity is detected in electrical circuits with AC and no current at all (think of tube grid). Starting from here for a well educated radio engineer there are only two logical moves: - There is no directivity at all. - Directivity is a property of conductors that has only an indirect relation to electromagnetism and acoustics. When we listen to music, along with acoustic vibrations, we feel some accompanying vibrations, which, judging by their subjective manifestations stated above, cannot be detected by any measuring devices. It's anything but electricity. I believe that since quite a lot of people around the world claim that they hear the direction, it does exists. It is also clear that it is not easy for a person to identify this phenomenon against the background of other manifestations of the audio signal from the first time, and sometimes after even many attempts. If you want to learn how to hear this phenomenon, then I would advise you to build as simple as possible a mono tube amplifier and listen to it through a bare broadband speaker without a housing. Another option is to buy an old tube receiver from the 1930s and use its amp and speaker as a wire tester after removing from it all the parts related to the RF circuits. On such equipment, the direction can be heard very clearly. Start tests with the speaker cables, listen through them to the music that emotionally affects you the most and at first focus on long tests - more than a minute in one listening session. I am sure that if not immediately, then after a while you will be quite normal to navigate the subtleties of the sound. Many people have come this way, and so have I. |
@mijostyn OK, this is your point of view. I believe you are not a layman, then please explain me the following: For example, I love Glenn Gould, I appreciate every note he has. I open YouTube with a professional remastering made by people with a philosophy identical to yours and hear a poor sound without most of the nuances inherent in Gould’s records. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjEAFWKCymY Then I take his record, digitize it on my amateur equipment, compress it into mp3 and upload it to the Internet. https://www.backtomusic.ru/19719 Please note that this is not an experiment, all other things being equal. In this situation, I am at a disadvantage because studio remastering was made from master tapes, and I did it from a vinyl that had already been recorded from such a tape some years ago. The LP sounds much worse than the original master tape (ask studio guys if you don’t believe it). I wonder why remastering from master tape made by professionals on very expensive audio equipment, sounds less expressive and is so poor in timbres and nuances compared to mine? Maybe their appliances have been broken that time? Then I can give you many similar examples if you want. |
@bluemoodriver The difference between vinyl and digital is really big. The digital is like McDonald’s meal, makes everything pleasant, smooth and equally delicious, but has less natural taste and not very useful. Vinyl, especially early mono before 1970, appeals to the senses, it is always different, like home cooking, it can be unsalted, or under cooked, but it feels like a natural product, the pulsation of life for which you can easily put up with clicks and interference. But there is also shellac, which appeals to the senses even more strongly. Recordings at 78 revolutions will be easier to compare - the experiment will be approximately all other things being equal, there were no tape recorders then and everything was written directly on the matrix. The difference here is more obvious, hope this tells you more. So young Yasha Heifetz 1917 acoustic recording, Ave Maria Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X02-C99cIuw My entry - https://www.backtomusic.ru/17723 |
@bluemoodriver, thanks for your attention to this complicated topic. We need to clarify something about the difference and hierarchy of values in music now. You talk about the technical characteristics of the surface-noise and frequency response - but the wires and their direction do not affect these things. Only indirectly, when the recording is lively enough to involve you in listening, there is an involuntary effect, when the noise and the frequency response curve seem to recede to the side and stop interfering with listening, and the music comes out to meet you. A good musical performance has a certain direct message to the soul that practically does not depend on the noise level and the linearity of the frequency response, otherwise no one would have listened to 78 records and CD cassettes before. This is a very subtle substance that is formed during a live performance, consisting of many elusive things - musical intonations and shades. This substance is hierarchically the most valuable part of music, it makes you a music lover, makes you tap your foot to the rhythm or takes you to the clouds. As soon as your perception begins to confidently distinguish it from everything else, you begin to look for only this component of the music in any record. They say in rock, people are looking for the Drive, in jazz - the liberation of the soul, in classical music - voices of angels. I have been researching this phenomenon for many years, trying to highlight it from the music so that the music will capture you even more. However, the selection of these subtle things almost always occurs at the expense of technical characteristics, it is extremely difficult to combine Hi-Fi and Music itself. So, according to my records, you do not need to judge the technical capabilities of vinyl, you can no problem playback vinyl linearly and without clicks, you just need a new record, an MC cartridge and a standard RIAA preamp. The potency of the music itself is another matter. My recordings pull out the soul of the artist, he opens up to you much clearer than the options on YouTube. It is at this point that I would like to draw your attention. So how do you like the singing of Heifetz violin and what about the difference? Perhaps your system is not open enough due to its complexity and the use of AirPlay, try an simplier system. Often Internet recordings sound more lively and clear directly from a mobile phone, no matter how strange it seemed to you. |
@clearthinkerAlmost twenty years ago, when I first realized that I was hearing the sound of a wire and that it was not a hallucination, I tortured myself and my friends long enough to test the audibility of these effects. Now I just double-check myself after a while and that’s it. At the same time some mistakes are still left, but blind tests are not a remedy for it. Moreover, in our case, the blind tests lead to system errors themselves. To evaluate quality of the wire we need, among other things, to assess expert’s involvement in listening, that is, how he reacts sensually to certain music, but the blind test was developed by scientists for quite another purpose - to determine the difference in the audible sound (frequency response, noise, distortion). This is the whole problem, scientists test the wrong thing, and then they believe the Stradivarius violins sound worse than some ordinary-level instruments. |
@mijostyn mijostyn, you often call others laymen and at the same time offer a false, pseudo-scientific method to determine the quality of wire. Let's assume wires are measurable and when the wire is reversed, it can change its sound by 1 db. But in your testing device, there are at least a dozen randomly directed conductors, which according to strict logic can give out 12 db of difference and you do not know exactly how much. Thus, you will try to estimate the influence of an amplitude of 1 db against the background of an unknown influence of the same nature, but at a much higher level, which in no way can be done accurately. You can't measure a wire sound with a device that contains wires, isn't it obvious? Anton, while all that true to some degree I find it most applicable in comparing performances of the same piece by different artists.You forgot to mention the visceral component to live music that is frequently missing from reproductions. As far as i can get it, you mean exactly what millercarbon have mentioned above. |
@ausaudio This is crystal-clear scientific logic. All radio-technical measuring devices are designed taking into account the fact that the conductor is a linear element. If we assume that the conductors are nonlinear, then we have to admit that absolutely everything we know about electricity is false, since all our knowledge about it is based on measurements. Therefore, there is not even a question whether it is possible to measure the non-linearity of the conductor or not. This cannot be done by definition if you want to stay within the laws of Electronic Engineering. |
@ausaudio ausaudio, you didn’t fully understand the post you quoted. Circuit design solutions for calibration of measuring devices also rely on the fact that the conductors inside the devices are linear. Think about it. |
Thanks for your kind words of support, millercarbon! @millercarbon You know, I came to the same conclusion. A person feels audio anomalies with some "sixth sense", but not with hearing. Otherwise, audiophile puzzle doesn't add up. |
@millercarbon I agree 100%. Successful 78 recordings sound extremely realistic on the gramophone, and I feel that no electrical system can so accurately copy the effect of a live presence during a performance as a mechanical gramophone. In this paradoxical situation, again, our misunderstanding of the properties of electricity and human perception can be traced. Or if you ever did the can with string thing as a kid, you can totally tell it is a real person and not a recording on the other end. The old telephone calls were like that too. Not this cell phone BS we have today. When using old dial phones, it was possible to evaluate the sound of audio systems and determine which wire sounds better. This is despite the fact that the frequency response of the telephone line was 500-3000 Hz. To me the situation is similar to that of a gramophone and suggests that the presence effect is completely independent of the frequency response. .....with all of that you know for sure you are looking at a trout. A real live trout. As opposed to if you take a picture or video of a trout, and look at it the same way, there is no doubt which is which... Again, I agree with you. In my experience, visual perception determines whether an object is alive or inanimate by some principle similar to hearing. I spent several years researching the distinctive features of b/w analog photography which to me is by far more live than modern digital one, and found out a lot of interesting things. the main one is the lens elements and even simple glasses, have directivity. The window glasses directivity can also be used in audio. After you choose the position of the window glass and fix it so as the picture outside the window is closest to the live one, then the sound of the system becomes more lively too, especially if the system is located next to the window. All our feelings are somehow connected. And probably there is no escape from metaphysics here. The glass directionality experiment is easy to perform by looking in different ways through any little peace of glass. |
@ausaudio Ausaudio, maybe it was in the USA, but I'm from Russia. Our first digital telephone stations appeared in the 1990s, and then only in large cities. In St. Petersburg (5 million people) back in 2000, some stations did not understand the tone set, that is, they were still relay, purely analog. But it's not about the dates, of course, but what I wrote, it's true. I had a favorite "audiophile" rotary dial Siemens phone with a carbon microphone, my friend had the same one, so I called him up and evaluated the changes in the liveliness and fullness of the sound of his system on the phone. Of course, it was not possible to evaluate everything, but in general it was clear what was what. Now with digital and even more so with mobile communication, this is simply impossible. |
@ausaudioI guess he's old enough to know what the U.S. analog phone line sounded like. You are doing nothing more than romanticizing a bygone era.There is a bit of romance, of course, the grass was greener, the girls were younger )). But no more than that. Old analog PSTN was pretty awful, almost all aspects of it. Low sensitivity microphone, low bandwidth, very low signal to noise. Modern communications, especially some of the Internet based voice platforms are so far ahead in voice quality a comparison is laughable. You were evaluating the liveliness and "fullness" from 300Hz - 3000Hz. Think about what you are implying. You are honestly comparing that to what is typically 50Hz - 7KHz, often with much better SNR, if not even wider bandwidth? Yes I am. I see that you can't believe that a less technically advanced device can sound better. I guess all the cables sound the same to you and have no direction, right? |