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.
BUT.. 15 year ago I polished off a 35 year old bottle of Tequila at my daughters wedding.. I bought it when she was born.. I still got one waiting for my son 15 years later and but it's 54-55 years old now..
He needs to marry the girl.. BEFORE I sell it for the 1000.00 I been offered.. LOL I use to like good Tequila TOO MUCH.. Beer, less than a 6 pack in my life. Wine for cooking... I'll taste it though.. I don't cook with crappy tasting wines or vinegars..
This guy thinks like a "Left Handed Master Mechanic"
Rare sort of bird..
Thank you OP for your open minded approach to a long over due LOOK at WHY?..
I’ve always said the same thing. A person can call you on the phone 50 years sense the last time you spoke, amazingly you instantly recall his or her voice... THAT ability is DEAD on in regards to the way a construct can sound. MEASURE THAT.. You can’t. It is directly associated with a FEELING a true 6th sense.. Honestly I have a 7th sense about people too.. The reason I like animals.. They do not lie..
I personally look at the wire and you can SEE the way the material is drawn through the different tool dies, you can SEE the direction.. Tool marks don’t lie either.. Peoples good or BAD hearing might not always hear a difference, but after building a valve amp (per se) and sticking to the rules of "LOOKING" at the wire being used, it can make a heck of a difference..
James B. of Ampizilla, only drew wire off the spool in ONE direction AFTER he looked at it under a microscope..
He is also the guy that WELDED in his power cables and believed in cold fusion weld. Solder was an afterthought..
50 years ago.....50 YEARS AGO....
THAT was a serious amp builder, Single malt didn’t hurt either .
@ausaudio
The person who posted that comment on telephones was from the USA.
I 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?
If people have qualms with the concept of directivity, I suggest they turn their fuses by 180 degrees. If they can‘t hear a difference, two options are available:
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.
The person who posted that comment on telephones was from the USA.
You are doing nothing more than romanticizing a bygone era. 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?
@ausaudio Hate to break it to you, but phone lines have started to be digitized in the early 70s, and by 80, 40+ years ago, your phone call almost definitely passed through an ADC and DAC.
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.
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.
Well, how does one even respond to something like this? Sort of shoots the whole thread in the foot.
Hate to break it to you, but phone lines have started to be digitized in the early 70s, and by 80, 40+ years ago, your phone call almost definitely passed through an ADC and DAC.
To me the situation is similar to that of a gramophone and suggests that the presence effect is completely independent of the frequency response.
Fascinating ideas and thread...
I am sure that Anton is on the right track...
Just a word about my own experience and listenings experiments in acoustic...
We dont listen first to frequency like a mic does with a tested frequency response...
We have 2 ears which are very different fom one anther , and i used this in my last acoustical device....
We listen not first to some frequency like assume those who use an electronic equalizer and a mic with a tested response frequency for a PRECISE ARTIFICIAL location...
We listen to some multi dimensional complex different wavefronts, a bunch of frequencies with a "relatively" large bandwidth,( like the voice timbre of a singer) coming from the tweeter, the bass drivers, and from early and late reflections in a PRECISE NATURAL time frame...
Human ears evoluted to locate real sound like voices in space and human timbre recognition is key to social relation...
I used this fact creating my H.M.E. (Helmoltz mechanical equalizer): imagine a snake with head and tail...
The HEAD begins a few centimeters from the tweeter of one of my speakers with 2 pipes near the tweeter and 2 bottles near the port hole; then going to my left on the first reflection point with 6 pipes; then to my rear with the MAIN BODY of the snake, 8 pipes ,one 8 feet high; and then goes to the second reflection point to my right, with 6 pipes and finally ends at the TAIL, with 3 pipes near the bass driver of this speaker, with one bottle near the port hole....Asymmetric distribution of pipes and bottles and differences between them are very important at the head and tail....
Then asymetrical "DIRECTIVITY" of the wavefronts coming from each speakers and their reflections in the room is paramount factor to recreate 3 dimensionality of the music with my H.M.E. ....All this is related to the serious studies about thresholds in timing perceptions experiments of some complementary acoustical factors like LEV and ASW....
Audio is acoustic experience first....
I think that analog is more resistant to negative impact of a lack in acoustic control.... This is the reason why analog appear superior to digital....Time is the most important factor in acoustic, and timing of bits is mathematically equivalent but not acoustically equal to the real timing of frontwaves for the 2 ears... We need good concrete acoustical settings to recreate the original acoustic live event where choices made by recording engineer are trade-off choices altering the timbre original experience for example.... The information "cues" in the recorded cd or vinyl need to be activated in a room or in space... If good acoustical controls are not there in our room the analog sound is more resistant in a destructive acoustical environment or in an not enough controlled one...
In fact, the effect of gravity on the electrons flowing in the wire is also a huge factor on sound. I can hear the difference like day and night.
My setup on the moon sounds so much better since gravity is less. I had to also carry my own audiophile air there for the experiment since I could not have heard anything in a vacuum. It was at perfect nitrogen and oxygen concentrations for perfect sound.
However, I am sure there are members here whose ears are so sensitive they can even hear in a vacuum. Please let me know so we can plan an expedition together to a planet or an asteroid whose gravity is much less 🤣
In fact, I hear that music sounds better outside the solar system. I need to investigate :-)
@millercarbon
The one time I heard a 78 on a gramophone was some years ago but I still remember the feeling....
With the gramophone it is more like the singer is in there. Listening to
it is like, there's a person somewhere in there singing, and I'm
hearing it through this metal and stuff. But she's in there!
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.
I doubt he understands anything, fully or otherwise. Your description was perfectly clear and irrefutably logical.
The part about feeling goes with the way you describe cassettes or old 78s. The one time I heard a 78 on a gramophone was some years ago but I still remember the feeling. In audiophile terms the sound was just as crappy as you would expect. But the way I have tried to describe it, it is like our systems when they are really good create the illusion of the singer being there in front of us in the room. When we do this with analog in particular the illusion can be tingly-real. With the gramophone it is more like the singer is in there. Listening to it is like, there's a person somewhere in there singing, and I'm hearing it through this metal and stuff. But she's in there!
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.
Very hard to explain in terms of anything we can measure. Very easy to understand in terms of things we know and feel. Another example I like to use, if you see a trout in a brook the image of the fish is distorted by the water, by the waves, by sunlight glint and glare off the water, silt and whatever else might be in the water, but yet 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. The video however good is never gonna be confused with the fish. Probably no amount of pixel or wavelength counting will ever figure this out, but we do it with ease.
Something is going on, whether it is with tubes needles or the direction of wires or whatever, something somehow improves or shortens the link, the connection between things. Between us and them. Sorry, but it really is hard not to get metaphysical about it.
@ausaudio Unfortunately someone has presented you with false knowledge. Those familiar with precision measurements and precision equipment are well aware of the impact of wires on measurement and regularly compensate for them. If they did not, no RF measurement would be accurate. There are enough references in the physical world, to act as calibration sources for something even as simple as wire.
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 As unlikely as it sounds there really may be a point where its more feeling than hearing.
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.
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.
Unfortunately someone has presented you with false knowledge. Those familiar with precision measurements and precision equipment are well aware of the impact of wires on measurement and regularly compensate for them. If they did not, no RF measurement would be accurate. There are enough references in the physical world, to act as calibration sources for something even as simple as wire.
Much of our knowledge far transcends measurements, which only seek to validate physical theories, not create them on their own. There is much to learn still, at the extremes, but we are not talking about the extremes in this hobby.
Anton, You are new so let me explain. There's only a very small number of productive, thinking, sentient people here. There is a relatively larger number of these who come and read (lurkers) but seldom if ever contribute. The reason they do not contribute is they run into all these people who do nothing but mess things up. Some of them deliberately, some through no fault of their own. They just don't get it. But rather than try and understand they argue and joke and mess things up. It is just what they do.
That is what is going on here. You are doing good work. Frankly you are doing some of the best work that has been posted here in a very long time. Maybe ever. Who knows?
But look, your observation about "a certain direct message to the soul" is genius. So genius I quoted it at length. Only look what happened- right over their heads!
Now you are applying the same logic and coming up with even better conclusions:
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
. More genius that not only will no one get, but to the extent they do will only argue with it. Well, I get it. There's a few lurkers I can guarantee she, er I mean they will get it too.
There was a post I put up on April 1st of last year you may find interesting. Nowhere near as tightly reasoned but right down the same track. Yeah, posted April Fool's Day, knew nobody would get it anyway. Bet you do though. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/april-fool-s
Really appreciate everything you're doing. Keep it up!
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.
@mijostyn Since the birth of remote control in audio it has become
easy to switch sources. I have my old blind relay driven switch box with
RCA ins and outs but I have not pulled that out in decades. I decided
on the wire issue decades ago.
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.
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.
Bingo! This guy gets it! He totally gets it! No wonder he is so good!
The lay
audiophile does not have access to this kind of equipment thus is flying
blind. It is easy enough to build AB switch boxes. I'm surprised nobody
sells them.
They are available from multiple vendors. Van Alstine's has been one of the more popular - it's probably still available even though it doesn't seem to be on its website now. It's not just a switchbox, but a true a/b/x comparator. The Manley SkipJack can also be used. WireWorld makes its own box solely for the purpose of evaluating cables. I've long that it odd that the measurementalists who claim cables can't make a difference don't seem to avail themselves of some of these tools.
@clearthinker Differences in SQ can only be confidently distinguished by properly run blind testing.If you are not testing blind, your results are personal and subjective and therefore not useful.
Almost 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.
Differences in SQ can only be confidently distinguished by properly run blind testing.
Blind testing certainly has its place in audio - although not so much for the typical audiophile - but this statement is completely false. Those who insist on blind testing usually cite "placebo effect" or "expectation bias" as justification for their rather odd belief system. Those are very real mechanisms, no doubt, but they are not absolute. Placebo effect will not cure cancer. No blind testing is required to distinguish between extreme examples of audio components, nor is it always required to detect one that is malfunctioning.
If you are not testing blind, your results are personal and subjective and therefore not useful.
You’d be better off speaking for yourself rather than for others. You may well indeed require blind testing to know how something sounds, but that’s not a universal trait.
So, @clearthinker, please tell us about your blind tests. How were they conducted, how many test subjects, what were the results?
Exactly clearthinker although, people who are use to listening to known defects are better at identifying them without blind testing. The lay audiophile does not have access to this kind of equipment thus is flying blind. It is easy enough to build AB switch boxes. I'm surprised nobody sells them. Since the birth of remote control in audio it has become easy to switch sources. I have my old blind relay driven switch box with RCA ins and outs but I have not pulled that out in decades. I decided on the wire issue decades ago.
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.
Anton, "...your perception begins to confidently distinguish it from everything else..."
Differences in SQ can only be confidently distinguished by properly run blind testing. If you are not testing blind, your results are personal and subjective and therefore not useful.
@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.
If I had said “an automatic gearbox is better than a manual, therefore streaming is better than vinyl” you might have had a point. But I didn’t so you don’t.
bluemoondriver you have a very creative, flowery, and expressive literary style, approach, and content but what you have suggested, expressed, and explained is what is known as a "faulty analogy" so I suggest you pursue, explore, and investigate the basics, fundamentals, and foundations of elementary logic.
I get it, I really do! For the same sort of reasons, I only build and ride steel-framed bikes - I would never want to own or ride a carbon fibre framed bike. I’m only interested in my sailing boat - I’d never want a jetski. I only brew and drink real ale and I never touch Budweiser or other cold and fizzy synthetic apologies for a proper drink. My car is a manual - an auto just feels wrong. All these are preferences and there are substantial measurable differences between them. In every case the carbon fibre frame is stronger and lighter than the steel; the jet ski is faster and more reliable than the sailboat; the lager is more consistent and thirst-quenching than the ale; the car computer makes better and quicker gear changes than I ever could. No question. Nor is there any question that the digital stream is measurably better in every way than the vinyl; simply much closer to the master than vinyl can ever be, and a difference so great that no wire tweak can get close to addressing it. But like bikes, boats and beers, there’s no accounting for taste.
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.
Don’t think so... let’s see. We listened to the youtube, web-linked, and 2 Qobuz versions of what (as far as I can tell) the same performance. Can’t know for sure. Each was sent to the same rig by Airplay at 44/16. Three inputs sounded very similar with only my daughter able to claim hearing a distinction between the youtube and Qobuz versions. All of us very easily heard a very substantial difference between them and the uploaded vinyl version. Expressed as a preference, none of us enjoyed listening to that version due to the noise, and the lifelessness (to our ears). So I did try to talk about inputs, only. And then wondered if the difference between a recording of a vinyl play and a digital stream can be so great, why are we worrying about wire directionality?
Thanks for posting those links - fascinating. All subjective I know. To my ears the Youtube version sounds like it is the same as the one found on Qobuz labelled as a hi-res remastering. You can find on Qobuz the same piece without that remastering badge and at red book and when I asked my daughter’s young and very musical ears which of these two she preferred she said the standard res version sounded “fuller and richer”. She also thought the Youtube copy sounded closest to the hi res badged version we found. (The youtube was airplayed to the system so was red book). We then played the same piece from your website. Sorry to say, the two young faces and my old face in the room screwed up - “yuk”. Nobody liked the noise, nor the sound. One comment was “it sounds ancient and like it’s being played through a sock”. Only opinions and everyone has their preferences. My family is not conditioned to the vinyl sound, for sure. But the point must be that when differences between youtube, Qobuz, and masterings, and vinyl copies are so large, how can the tiny effects of wire directionality matter much? No amount of wire fiddling is going to clean that dull and noisy vinyl...
@mijostyn wire is in no way shape or form directional. This is a great example of how our minds can trick us. Lay instinct is wrong 90% of the time..
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.
First of all, connecting the shield to one side only creates a great antenna. You can pick up all kinds of signals this way. Second of all wire is in no way shape or form directional. This is a great example of how our minds can trick us. Lay instinct is wrong 90% of the time then, if you want to hear something you will. If you blind yourself and have someone else switch back and forth you will not be able to make out any difference. You have to be honest with yourself and understand just how tricky evaluating by ear only is. The differences have to be pretty severe to be able to notices them reliably by ear only. A lot of these myths were started by dishonest companies trying to separate their gear from the pack appealing to lay instinct. What makes sense frequently does not.
@bluemoodriver Anton - you set out the pass mark, you’ve done lots of work, so what was the result? Is directionality easy to hear as MC says, to the extent of 80-90% correct identification in blind tests?
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 Also, as the Audioholics guy is saying just now on his video, the differences between speaker cables measure at below 0.06dB. Utterly impossible for the human ear to detect. If one cable to another has so little effect, will turning the same cable around have the 10x greater effect needed for any audible difference to be heard when blind? Really?
It is not the difference in electricity signal that we hear while reversing wires. I have explained my point of view earlier.
@russ69 I must admit I have trouble hearing directional changes. How does that mater on an AC circuit?
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.
@Millercarbon Once having done all the work to map and sort you probably could build an amp that would far outperform what anyone would be able to get from the same parts any other way. Have you built complete amps for sale? Or is this more of an intellectual pursuit?
Thanks for the good, Millercarbon. I make no amps or anything else for sale, all this is just intellectual pursuit, as you said.
Anton - you set out the pass mark, you’ve done lots of work, so what was the result? Is directionality easy to hear as MC says, to the extent of 80-90% correct identification in blind tests?
From the article: “Subjective measurements can be considered reliable if one expert or several experts in a blind test have estimates repeated in, say, 80-90% of cases.”
So that’s the pass mark for directionality having an effect. Any results?
Also, as the Audioholics guy is saying just now on his video, the differences between speaker cables measure at below 0.06dB. Utterly impossible for the human ear to detect. If one cable to another has so little effect, will turning the same cable around have the 10x greater effect needed for any audible difference to be heard when blind? Really?
I must admit I have trouble hearing directional changes. How does that mater on an AC circuit? I understand how my copper cables are constructed and use them as instructed but I fail to get the concept into my brain.
There was an audio internet site that was run by a bunch of Japanese audio enthusiasts. They were among the first to use those NOS WE 16GA speaker cables. They were very fastidious about it, trying all the types they could get their hands on.
Many here tried those cables and loved what they heard. Going through what else they were into showed them to check directionality in the cables they used when building their gear, if I'm not mistaken. It's been quite awhile and I can't locate the site.
Good work Anton on something I have been thinking about for a long time. The fundamental idea is sound of course but in practice daunting and so congratulations for taking on something so many others simply throw up their hands and mock as impossible.
Once having done all the work to map and sort you probably could build an amp that would far outperform what anyone would be able to get from the same parts any other way. Have you built complete amps for sale? Or is this more of an intellectual pursuit? Either way, awesome!
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