The Science of Cables

Whoops, forgot this wee bit.

I would argue that on a slightly handwaving way, you can study "electricity" using classical physics. After all, much of it can be understood through Maxwell's equations. However, if you do this, you simply have to consider the charge densities, dielectric constant, magnetic permeabilities, et cetera as black boxes.

Quantum mechanics kicks in if you want to understand why a material is a conductor or an insulator. In solids, you can treat these questions through the study of electronic band structures, which relies heavily on Bloch's theorem and also on the Fermi-Dirac statistics. These are all elements from quantum mechanics. Therefore, if you want to understand how these charge densities behave on a microscopic level, you need QM. In typical systems, we can recover more empirical notions of of electricity such as Ohm's law from quantum treatments.

Now, if you really want to study how electromagnetic fields and electrons interact with each other (in detail), you will have to go further and you need to consider quantum electrodynamics (QED). This will give you the most detailed description of how photons and electrons interact. I would argue, however, that QED is often a bit of an overkill for condensed matter or atomic physics problems (not always, but often). Therefore you will find many "effective models", which can significantly simplify things.

Among these effective models, you have for example the Hubbard model, which includes interactions between electrons, without explicitly including the fact that these interactions are mediated via the electromagnetic field. You have a whole zoo of similar models, so I will not go into all of them. The main point is that they usually focus on the behaviour of the electrons and do not explicitly consider couplings to the electromagnetic field. There are, however, models which study the response of the material to the electromagnetic field. Usually this leads you to models which treat quasi-particles, such as plasmons, polarons, and polaritons. I am a bit out of my field of expertise here, but I believe that these can be used to derive the parameters that go into Maxwell's equations. Note, however, that these models are still not explicitly considering full-scale quantum electrodynamics.

As I get the feeling that you are also interested in the radiation side of the story, let me shift gears a little. Radiation actually is a very old problem in quantum physics. It lies at the basis of the probabilistic interpretation of the theory and motivated Heisenberg to develop his matrix mechanics. Light-matter interactions in that time were narrowly connected to atomic physics and spectroscopy, later molecular and nuclear physics joined in, covering a range from microwaves to gamma-rays in the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, if we really want to understand in depth how the electrons (or nucleons for nuclear physics) in these systems interact with electromagnetic fields, we must again divert to QED.

Nevertheless, also on the side of the electromagnetic field, there are effective models. These can be found, for example, in quantum optics. In these models, you typically make serious simplifications on the level of the "matter" and focus on the electromagnetic field. Typically, the interaction between light and matter generates some type on nonlinear effects in the electromagnetic field, so I would argue that the vast majority of models in nonlinear optics are models where you had some type of interaction with matter, which you coarse-grain out. Note, however, that these effective descriptions do not even require quantum mechanics to make sense. You can usually do nonlinear optics using Maxwell's equations. If you want to see effective models of the quantum side of the electromagnetic field in action, you have to turn to quantum optics, where you usually include matter (like a "two-level atom") in a more explicit way, see for example the Jaynes-Cummings model.

With this little excursion into the realm of optics, you may notice that there was not a lot of "electricity". The reason why we did not really get into that, is because it is horribly difficult. The treatment of models in condensed-matter theory, which only deal with the interacting electrons are complicated on their own and so is the theory of the quantum and nonlinear effects in the electromagnetic field. There is, however, one additional playground which we can explore. You may wonder what happens when we consider quantum properties of the electromagnetic field and combine them with macroscopic conductors and insulators. This is done in what is called Macroscopic quantum electrodynamics, which can be used to study for example the Casimir effect.

To conclude, let me stress that genuine quantum effects in the electromagnetic field itself (so everything related to light et cetera) are quite rare in day to day life. The electromagnetic radiation effects that are related to electronics and electricity is described really well by Maxwell's equations. However, if you really want to understand what happens in materials through which your electricity flows, on a microscopic level, you will have to consider the quantum models of condensed-matter physics.

Disclaimer: None of these fields is really my speciality, so I would be happy if a condensed-matter physicist or a quantum optician could provide more details or corrections if necessary.

So as we can see from the above building cable is a piece of cake, like as been mentioned here by experts of every stripe all the laws governing cable building have been absolutely defined years ago ( well apart from that weird niggling quantum stuff and various inter-relational complexities ).

A couple of things when considering the cable building thingee.

The LCR wire model is applicable only with air as a dielectric. Makes perfect sense in that application. Once that wire is encapsulated in varnish, enamel, lacquer or dielectrics of varying consists then all bets are off. “Wire” then becomes an electrical system that is very different from the raw metal.

And this from here....   https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/rcl-part-2-roger-skoff-cables/

Let's see how. Let's start by simply accepting the engineers' favorite factors for cables: R (resistance), C (capacitance), and L (inductance). They say that those things make a difference, and it's true. Among other things, they can affect both the power level passed by a cable and its frequency response.

In thinking about this, remember a couple of things. First, that "resistance" is a term best applied to DC (direct current), and that with AC (alternating current) signals like music, wherever there is capacitive or inductive reactance (as there always is in cables), the more correct term to use is probably "impedance" (Z).

Second, remember that inductance, one of those favored factors, "…is the property of an electrical conductor by which a change in electric current through it induces an electromotive force (voltage) in the conductor." (read more HERE) What that means is that any current flowing through a conductor causes an electromagnetic field to form around that conductor (and out to infinity, in accordance with the "inverse-square law"), and that, when the direction of that current changes (as it does every time the AC current changes polarity) the field collapses and the collapsing field creates a voltage ("back EMF") that opposes the flow of incoming new signal. The higher the frequency, the more of an effect this has on the sound.

Remember, also, that capacitance, another of the "favored factors", is the ability to store energy (read more HERE), and that a capacitor is formed any time two conductors ("plates") are brought together, separated by a non-conductor "dielectric" (read more HERE). What that means is that every cable is, by definition, a capacitor, with its two conductors (positive and negative or "going" and "coming") being the plates, and the insulation between them being the dielectric.

Now, have you ever noticed that, when electronics designers or engineers call for a capacitor to be included in a circuit, they not only specify its capacitance, but also its type? (Ceramic, Film and paper, Polymer, air gap, mica, tantalum, and many, many others (read more HERE and HERE). If factors other than just the measured capacitance of a capacitor are important (and can make a performance difference) in other types of capacitors, how can those exact same things not make a difference in cables?

The amount of capacitance—and of inductance—in any cable or other capacitor is largely determined by how far apart the "plates" are spaced, with those two factors in a sort of "seesaw" balance:  The more capacitance there is, the less inductance, and vice versa.

Another very major factor is the material that the dielectric is made of:  For cables, virtually all of the various non-conductive elements are part of the dielectric. This is important in two ways: The first is that different dielectric materials have different dielectric constants (the ratio of the capacitance of a capacitor in which a particular insulating material is the dielectric, to its capacitance in which a vacuum is the dielectric, read more HERE). Or, to put it most simply,  the dielectric constant of a material is a number that shows how much energy any given volume of it  can store as compared to that same volume of vacuum. By way of illustration, the dielectric constant of a hard vacuum is 1.0, while balsa wood (a little stiff for most cables) is 1.4. Teflon® (there are several varieties) is around 2.0.  Polyethylene is around 2.2, and PVC and TPR (thermoplastic rubber), the two most popular cable insulators, by far, can have dielectric constants of as high as 6.8 (read more HERE).

Whatever the amount of stored energy, when the signal carried by the cable changes polarity, all of that energy is dumped into the signal path, canceling some of the incoming signal, or actually creating out-of-phase artifacts. This results in either the loss of low-level information or the actual creation of new information, either of which would be surprising if it didn't affect the sound!

The other important thing about dielectrics (which, remember, include the non-conducting elements of a cable) is their "dump rate"—how quickly they can release stored energy after the signal changes polarity so that they can start storing the new signal energy coming in. Dump rates vary wildly, with some materials, PVC, for example, being quite (relatively) slow and others (Teflon®, for example) being very, very fast. This can make a definitely audible difference (with faster dump rates that affect the incoming signal for less time being much preferred), and, surprisingly, the dump rate of a material and its dielectric constant are not directly proportional. Polyethylene is only around ten percent higher in dielectric constant than the best form of Teflon®, but has—while still vastly faster than PVC —an audibly slower dump rate, to lose low-level detail and "muddy" its sound.

There are still other factors that affect the sound of a cable—its "geometry"; the type, purity and crystal structure of the metal in its conductors:  the existence of mysterious (and perhaps mythical) micro-diodes at the crystal junctures of copper; the self- and mutual-inductance of both the cable and its connectors; how much and what kind of metal those connectors are made of, and many more, but I'm out of space for now.

@maplegrovemusic 

Guess it would be real interesting to find out who, on average, has the better sounding rigs. The folks who ultimately rely on the LCR or those that rely on the EAR.

So I can safely assume you are saying ixnay to a teaching career.

Darn, I’m crushed... I was so looking forward to it.

We’re on it !

And speaking of nonsense, when you gonna be calling NASA ? I mean they have apparently really dropped the ball on dark matter and only have a black box understanding of it. Though that being said science has for centuries also dropped the ball on gravity and all it has to show for our understanding of that fundamental thingee is another black box understanding.  

@cheeg and @boxer12

Thanks for your kind words....very happy you found those bits a worthwhile read.

And speaking of nonsense here is something that is also interesting....this from a bunch of rocket science type guys....

Just thinking out loud here but wouldn't it be nice if someone who knows better give these guys a call and maybe straighten them out before they make even bigger fools of themselves.

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy

Dark Energy, Dark Matter

In the early 1990s, one thing was fairly certain about the expansion of the universe. It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and recollapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. Granted, the slowing had not been observed, but, theoretically, the universe had to slow. The universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together. Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. So the expansion of the universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating. No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it.

Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations. Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of Einstein’s theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a "cosmological constant." Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein’s theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration. Theorists still don’t know what the correct explanation is, but they have given the solution a name. It is called dark energy.

What Is Dark Energy?

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the universe.

@isochronism

Taras, The need for cable elevators fully proves the existence of gravity!!

Of course it does.

But the point is not whether or not gravity exists, or dark energy for that matter, its the fact we can’t really explain either ( the effects sure, but not the operating mechanism ). Or using one of the terms mentioned in a quote I brought into this discussion earlier, we simply black box it. And that does not produce some useless bit of nonsense that is of no practical use but rather a clear indication of the limitation of science to rigorously define everything around us. Bottom line is we can’t. Dark energy is a force that we can see operating on the universe, writ large, that we can’t define, gravity is a thing we also can’t explain but we wouldn’t exist in our present form without it, and lets not even try to explain that other elephant in the room, time, because that will really mess up your head. And while we can’t explain those things we live in a world defined by those things.

And on a much smaller scale we have electricity of which we have this very very basic understanding, but as the quantum bit above indicates that understanding is just relatively micron thin ( we generally apply the most rudimentary understandings, like Maxwell’s Equations, which explain the effects, and black box the operating system components ). And yet we still use it, and in a fit of hubris fueled by a massive misunderstanding of what science is and the way science works we fool ourselves into thinking, because we can metaphorically turn on a light switch, we have got it all worked out. We absolutely don’t, in fact we operate under the delusion that 9x5=45 where in fact 9x5=42. Or put it another way we do the best we can to understand an absolutely complex universe with mental tools that we developed in a dark and dank cave hundreds of thousands of years ago. So lets not be too surprised that when we divide an infinitely complex universe with our meagre mental capabilities we don’t end up with a huge remainder. And that remainder is not nonsense, in fact it is the most important bit.

@ieales 

There is simple and there is simplistic, you may want to acquaint yourself with the difference.

@isochronism 

 

I was making a joke about cable elevators proving gravity.

Sorry if the response took the shape of a lecture but was in a rush this morning and just threw out what was in essence a rough draft that I didn't get back to edit ( the time limit on edits on this site is a bit on the tight side...and the dog ate my homework too.... ) Was hoping to have some fun with that by responding in kind ( to a nicely delivered funny ) but failed miserably. Again, much sorries.

@ brucenitroxpro

Speaking of evidence based research and academic rigour would be nice if you could provide a link to the study that your assertions made above are based on.

Thanks in advance.

@ stevecham

More flat earth.

Just way too funny. Actually more like curved space.

You may want to go take a peak at this thing called proof theory, which talks about what numbers can and can’t do. One of the things it says is that numbers are an abstract concept that relate most perfectly to themselves and only tangentially to the reality around us. And btw was a key development in the movement that led to the "quantum" revolution that has defined physics over the last century or so, which introduced us to the concept of curved space. So relativity you are much closer to flat earth than you may want to admit.

@ ieales

IF it’s not simple, just exactly what wire properties other than LCR affect response?

On page one are three quotes that I had to drag up a steep mountain through a monumental screaming snow storm to this thread to help illuminate the dark subject of cable building. Quite surprised you haven’t seen or read them seeing as they took up a lot of page one. They mention a thing or two outside of LCR (which for cable fundamentalists is The One True Gawd of Cable Building ) that pertains to said building. And yeah those things may be blasphemy for the card carrying Howling, errr, Hallowed True Believers and their various Ayatollahs but we ain’t stringing up old testament telegraph wires or wiring houses here. In fact, according to those quotes this cable building thingee is apparently pretty high falutin’ complisticated stuff but even NASA, the official home of rocket science, has recently bought into. Like it has quantums and phonons and nano-nanoisms and everything is spinning hither and tither. Geez makes my head spin just thinking about it, which I suppose explains the reverence that the Hallowed True Believers have for The One True Gawd of Cable Building. He makes things so easy, so simple, and doesn't make your head spin.

Just sayin’eh

@ rotarius

That does not apply to cables though

.

Ever hear of this thing called super conductors, which last I checked are cables. And these items are the focus of much effort to push the limits of our understanding of lots of things including things that help explain how the reality around us operates at the atomic and sub-atomic levels, which oddly enough tells us a whole lot about the universe writ large.

It’s just a cottage industry where some people source wire of various grades from the same known wire manufacturers .

You might have a point for most generic cables but metallurgy and processing is a big factor in the audiophile cable making endeavor ( and we have experienced this first hand as a supplier moved his base of manufacturing from Japan to Taiwan to China....it started as a great sounding wire and went to high level of mediocrity and finally stopped at absolutely awful ). And lets not even get into the complexities of making and then using liquid metal alloys as conductors which are not at all like wires.

@mkgus

They truly are better than the microphones used to take measurements. That’s crazy!

Actually it isn’t. OK lets look at it this way. As a machine a microphone is a speaker driver in reverse. And we all know that no matter how wonderful the driver design it will never ever replicate a real sound in any absolutely accurate manner, and we can easily hear that ( both the original sound and the replication ) and if the equivalence btwn drivers and microphones holds true and I think it does it should lead one to see the ear as the superior instrument ( sorry if that is a bit convoluted and circuitous and I hope youse guys get the point ) The other thing about microphones is their range is limited, and often brick-walled, by noise floors and ceilings, whereas the ear/brain has much greater range in that regard ( in fact in certain circumstances "looking" into noise floors the ear brain has something in the range of 50db advantage over microphone based measurement systems...and especially in the bottom 4 octaves ).

@ chrissain

Great post....yeah cables are in some weird way the audiophile's version of Keat's idea of negative capability ( or at least my most probably wrong understanding of same ).

@mkgus

 Is this related to the fact that when you are in a large, noisy crowd you can “tune in” to your conversation and clearly hear the person you’re talking to? There is some sort of highly advanced filtration going on in the brain in that scenario. A microphone cannot do that. It’s just a vibrating membrane - it can’t selectively hear what it wants.

Exactamondo....very well stated....and that ability is even much more pronounced in rooms that are acoustically correct ( in fact that is one of characteristics of a "good" room ). 

Btw a neat little bit of theatre that we sometimes do for clients is to record our conversation and then play it back. What you hear on playback is a conversation in a very noisy/echo laden room, something that was definitely not apparent in the original conversation because our ear/brains had done an effective job of editing the noise out by, uhhh, actively ignoring the noise. And this has proved a very effective sales tool cause after the shock wears off we usually get the contract.

So when time and budget allows film acoustics involves creating an environment around the set that not doesn't have the sound of the huge studio volume and is tuned to actually sound like what the set looks like. And all of this done with the strengths ( its really sensitive and picks up everything ) and weaknesses ( its really sensitive and picks up everything ) of the microphone first and foremost on the agenda.  

Btw this is also a pretty neat way of evaluating a listening space since it kinda short circuits that editing function and it very effectively deals with the low frequency issues that all rooms have. 

@stevecham

You have no idea what you are saying and this is just lame regurgitation of some nonsensical mumbo jumbo speak that you read in some quasi-science comic book.

Funny, I distinctly remember it as a graduate program at a university.

And I will leave you with the following to contemplate.

   As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

-Albert Einstein

@mkgus

Good luck putting those concepts in a formula.

   
Your post nicely nailed that. Now if I could add something. The reason that the formulas are lacking and the ear/brain has a marked advantage is the ability of the ear/brain to hear into noise floors/ceiling which as I mentioned earlier is a serious limitation for measurement systems. And this is especially important in the room generated lower frequencies ( room "lift" is a big issue below 500hz and it generally gets quite dramatic at around 125hz ) where we can be pretty successful hearing thru the reverberation artifacts and microphones not so much ( actually their issue is they pick up everything and can't separate the wheat from the chaff the way our ear brain has evolved to do...and while we can do that trick it is much more enjoyable not to have to, which is where successful room acoustics comes into play ).

And speaking of the experience issue mentioned above "my day job" is in the film industry were "we" provide/build good acoustic environments in which microphones can more efficiently capture sync sound off the floor. "We" have been doing this for over 35 years and have contributed to over 65 major film and television projects. We have successfully worked in tiny rooms and in rooms as large as 15 million cu ft, This is why I sometimes "lose my mind" and blather on about microphones and acoustics because this is what I have done, and if the repeat business is any indication, quite successfully, read, I would like to think I can speak from experience and a reasonable understanding of the underlying theory.

@ ieales

Film?!?!?! go away! <vbg> Z-curve? Bleccchhh. I effing hated doing music for films and TV! Great music buried for a door slam or tire squeal. What a waste!

Very sorry to hear that your experience with the great sausage making machine was such a bummer. For me it was for the most part awesome, the crews were great, the problems were wild and crazy which forced you to do what I sometimes call "acoustic trauma surgery" ( like whatever it takes, just save the scene ). 

@ ieales

To claim "TEO’s Liquid Cable interconnect cables are best characterized by their absence of character. … etc." strains credibility.

If the cables are not in fact a flowing material, then the "Liquid" moniker is just more marketing malarkey

A couple of things.

First the cables in fact use a liquid metal as a conductor, an eutectic alloy of gallium, indium and tin, which neatly undercuts your claim that the only metal that is liquid at room temperature is mercury. And btw it does not behave at all like that mercury based straw-man fabulation you just created, so we can throw that bit of nonsense out the window as well.

And two, if you haven’t actually heard the cables you most certainly have no credibility in making judgement about our cables, strained, diced, mashed or otherwise.

@defiantboomerang

So you piled thru Jackson, congratulations....and solved all the problems, double congratulations. Tough sledding that.

Could you please do us all a big favour and take a peak at the following thread....

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/doug-schroeder-method-double-ic

....and give us your ideas about what all the hub-bub is about.

Thanks in advance.

There is one more bit I would like to add to this discussion. Written by a gentlemen named Bob Smith, a really bright guy who I think has written something that is equal parts brilliant and provocative. It is a wee bit long but in my humble opinion a very worthwhile read.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5925b92115d5db394ff30043/t/5925e6e2be65945a7f0ab479/149565616...

And in case that link doesn't work its from....( its the article on sub-debye )

https://www.mytdss.com/engineering/

@glupson

You may well be right on that one cause haven't seen any reference to the eutectic alloy we use being found in nature. But I will stand by my contention concerning credibility that is strained, diced, mashed or otherwise.

@ defiantboomerang

The OP spews nonsense. That is all there is to it. A sad waste of time.

It is odd you say that because as that thread shows the response to using the method has been overwhelmingly positive ( and truth be known we have built cables in that manner and the change from a normal cable assembly is absolutely shocking ).Was hoping you would find this interesting and would comment on what you think is behind the very significant performance increases cited in the thread.

@jhills

Not sure how gallium, indium and tin, a semi liquid goop, 1/15th the conductivity of oxygen free copper, is somehow superior to pure grade, oxygen free copper as a conductor for cables. I guess whatever makes a great sales pitch and you can stick the highest $$$ to.

Don’t know about youse guys but I’m always been surprised/fascinated at the reactions of dogmatic true believers when they run headlong into some figment of reality that doesn’t strictly conform to their tightly held beliefs. Above is a case in point where we have a self confessed true believer confronted with something that tilts his world.

The response is interesting. We see the use of a rather unflattering term, goop, to identify a key component of the profane and sacrilegious object. The fact the descriptor is dead wrong ( semi liquid has as a matter of course very high viscosity, like magma, whereas the "goop" in question is on low end of the scale ) but what are mere factual details when we have witches to burn eh.

The second part of the response, about the "goop’s" conductivity, is even more interesting and revealing. And yes it is true that the conductivity of the "goop" is about 1/15th the conductivity of oxygen free copper, but that has to be considered across another reality, thousands of cables with the blasphemous "goop" have been sold to very happy customers, who for some reason think those cable sound wonderful despite said conductivity issues.

So what in such circumstances is a true believer to do because on the one hand we have the One True Faith and on the other a crowd of happy customers who have strayed off the path of righteousness. Well I know what this particular true believer has done in the past when he comes face-to-face with cable heresy, he invokes the time honored strategy of true believers and banished them into the realm of otherness, wherein those customers are in some form all brain dead idiots and the cable makers just low life thieves that a used car salesman would look down on. Thus a quick and simple manner order is restored in the true believers universe and life is good .

There is however another way to possibly look at that, a way that btw has helped the human race evolve from some monkey-like ancestor to our current wonderfulness. This way involves looking at seemingly intractable problems that challenge our preconceived notions of reality and not dismissing them out of hand but instead trying to understand the problem and come up with a solution that expands our universe of understanding. So we have high conductivity yet we have a cable system that for many observers works incredibly well, and yes that doesn’t make sense in our current understanding of things, but you also have to appreciate ( and not denigrate and/or ignore ) that it stands in quite stark opposition to that understanding. My thought is the forward monkey would try to figure out the problem and come up with an answer ( whereas the dogmatic monkey would most likely head back to the safety of his leafy home ). Like maybe consider that conductivity in and of itself maybe does not define whether a cable do its job well or not. And while we are at it figure why the Schroeder Method, despite raising the capacitance of a cable assembly and gravely and obviously sinning against the One and True LCR, produces such stunning results.

And just thinking, but maybe our company motto should be "Cables: the final audio frontier. These are the voyages of TEO Audio. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new ideas, to seek out new solutions and new technologies, to boldly go where no cable has gone before. "....full non sequiturs ahead..... but the split infinitives can’nae take any more, captain....

@prof 

Sound a bit familiar?

Yeah in fact something about the thrust of that post does sound familiar, it sounds like a fundamentalist who is backstopping his dogmatic beliefs with a scientific version of truthiness. 

And speaking of the absolute awesomeness of science here is something about one of the greatest scientists of all time....

I was reading many articles about estimates of the age of the Earth throughout the ages. I was dumbfounded when I read that Newton, arguably one of the greatest scientists ever to have ‘calculated’ the age of the earth, estimated that the Earth was created in 4000 BCE. Johannes Kepler arrived at a similar result

.
And then there was the comment from a physicist just before "Newtonian" physics got smashed by the quantum tsunami ( the following roughly paraphrased)...

....all we need is just a few more decimal places of precision and we'll have the whole thing figured out....

Yup, yup yup science is a real bedrock eh....actually it isn't, its just a tool to explore with, and fairly imprecise at that (  and some playing with the idea of chaos theory may help understand why that matters ) ....to believe otherwise displays a misunderstanding of science.

@ nonoise

That was very nice but I was expecting a earth shattering kaboom or something like this....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E

@ geoffkait

Methinks more like a retreat way way way back to the safety of the trees, errrr, telegraph wires...when life was simple and all you had to consider was which berry, errrr, L and C and R....and you could still buy something with a buck....and men were men....and so on and so forth!

Gosh, the simple life is so, uhhhh, simple. Reality on the other hand is all fiddly bits, and not at all simple no matter how hard and long you hold breath. or how blue your face turns. Much sorries, but that is, uhhh, reality.

@prof 

e.g. capacitance

Funny you mention that capacitance thingee. Maybe you should wander over and see how cable assemblies made according to the Schroeder Method are being reviewed. The users found the results fantastic, and this with a cable design that has double the capacitance of an ordinary "by the books" design ( read, none of the rolled off high end as predicted by the One True LCR deity).

Its a mystery, or maybe its a miracle, or maybe alien technology direct from Zar-Dot. Bottom line extra-ordinary results are the result.

@ieales

@prof +1 - keep on firing.

Yup, yup, great spot on advice there eh....like don’t give up, just keeping blasting away, and who knows, eventually you might actually hit something. I mean, with infinite monkeys, and infinite typewriters, eventually a bible appears, right. I guess that is just part and parcel of that hopey thang one has when one is a true believer. And here is a word of caution from someone living in the real world, this here reality is finite, read it does not have an infinite number of the bullets, or arrows or stones or whatever you are using in that firing process. Just saying that so youse guys don’t get all disappointed and mopey when you run out of ammo or the target turns into something totally unexpected, which you know happens, and with amazing regularity if you look at the historical record.

Point taken, though I came through a time when things may have been even more complicated and/or mysterious. Nobody knew anything, rumours were treated like facts because that is really all we had, there were almost no publications, and the best we could do was find liked minded crazies and huddle in dark basements and discuss what amounted to vague images in the tea leaf residue at the bottom of tea cups.

File under, " and you had a nail !?"....

@prof 

Have at it

.

OK. Here is your problem, at the most basic level you have confused science with its close relative applied science. The latter, also known as engineering, which generally defines its mandate with the term "good enough" whereas the former runs on the idea "its never good enough". Audio for many of us is hobby that involves pushing the limits ( its never good enough ) whereas for your preference, the pro side mentality, its more about just getting the job done ( like LCR is good enough eh ). So if you are happy with functional mediocrity go ahead and knock yourself out, but please don't try to impose your rather dogmatic beliefs on others. Its not only bad form, especially when you resort to calling the non-believers stupid or idiots or ignorant, but back-slapping self-righteousness is going end up really hurting your shoulder.  

And speaking of the One and Only True LCR, that trudgeon that the fundamentalists love to use to beat the non-believers about the head and shoulders so they will hopefully see reason, or at the very least just be quiet in the face of overwhelmingly superior knowledge. Well on the plus side of the ledger its really simple, its really easy to understand and thus allow the faithful adherents to appear intelligence when using it in an argument ( read, all the elements required for truthiness ). The problem with this is that LCR is very much more suited to dealing with DC, whereas audio signals are AC, and there is world of difference in terms of complexity between the two, the former is basically simple, the latter not so much.

Find below a fairly good overview that will hopefully give some insight into the problems of applying something simple like LCR onto something like an audio signal which, as mentioned above, is an AC phenomenon. See this as an expansion of a Roger Skoff line from a quote introduced earlier. Though it doesn’t include the more complex and equally important issues mentioned  earlier ....a short snippet of which is immediately below....then followed by the overview...

I would argue that on a slightly handwaving way, you can study "electricity" using classical physics. After all, much of it can be understood through Maxwell's equations. However, if you do this, you simply have to consider the charge densities, dielectric constant, magnetic permeabilities, et cetera as black boxes.

Quantum mechanics kicks in if you want to understand why a material is a conductor or an insulator

.............................................................................................................................

What is the difference between resistance and impedance?Asked by: Venudhar

AnswerResistance is a concept used for DC (direct currents) whereas impedance is the AC (alternating current) equivalent.

Resistance is due to electrons in a conductor colliding with the ionic lattice of the conductor meaning that electrical energy is converted into heat. Different materials have different resistivities (a property defining how resistive a material of given dimensions will be).

However, when considering AC you must remember that it oscillates as a sine wave so the sign is always changing. This means that other effects need to be considered - namely inductance and capacitance.

Inductance is most obvious in coiled wire. When a current flows through a wire a circular magnetic field is created around it. If you coil the wire into a solenoid the fields around the wire sum up and you get a magnetic field similar to that of a bar magnet on the outside but you get a uniform magnetic field on the inside. With AC since the sign is always changing the direction of the field in the wires is always changing - so the magnetic field of the solenoid is also changing all the time. Now when field lines cut across a conductor an emf is generated in such a way to reduce the effects that created it (this is a combination of Lenz’s and Faraday’s laws which state mathematically that E=N*d(thi)/dt , where thi is the magnetic flux linkage). This means that when an AC current flows through a conductor a small back emf or back current is induced reducing the overall current.

Capacitance is a property best illustrated by two metal plates separated by an insulator (which we call a capacitor). When current flows electrons build up on the negative plate. An electric field propagates and repels electrons on the opposite plate making it positively charged. Due to the build up of electrons on the negative plate incoming electrons are also repelled so the total current eventually falls to zero in an exponential decay. The capacitance is defined as the charge stored/displaced across a capacitor divided by the potential difference across it and can also be calculated by the size of the plates and the primitivity of the insulator.

So simply resistance and impedance have different fundamental origins even though the calculation for their value is the same:

R=V/I
Answered by: Martin Archer, Physics Student, Imperial College London, UK

Impedance is a more general term for resistance that also includes reactance.

In other words, resistance is the opposition to a steady electric current. Pure resistance does not change with frequency, and typically the only time only resistance is considered is with DC (direct current -- not changing) electricity.

Reactance, however, is a measure of the type of opposition to AC electricity due to capacitance or inductance. This opposition varies with frequency. For example, a capacitor only allows DC current to flow for a short while until it is charged; at that point, current will stop flowing and it will look like an open. However, if a very high frequency is put across that capacitor (a signal that has a voltage which is changing very quickly back and forth), the capacitor will look like a short circuit. The capacitor has a reactance which is inversely proportional to frequency. An inductor has a reactance which is directly proportional to frequency -- DC flows through easily while high-frequency AC is stopped.

Impedance is the total contribution of both -- resistance and reactance. This is important for AC analysis and design. At DC, reactive elements can be replaced with their steady-state model (capacitor->open,inductor->short) and resistance can be considered. (this isn’t true for transient analysis)

It is important to mention that while energy goes into both, it is only ’burned off’ through resistance. Power has to be given in terms of resistive power and reactive power. Resistive power actually burns off energy into heat while reactive power simply stores energy in E-fields and B-fields.

Often you’ll hear about the ’impedance’ of transmission lines, like the cables which run between components of your stereo system, and impedance of things like speakers. You’ll also hear that it is important to match these or else you’ll get reflection.

This is a much more complicated subject, which a few answers have commented on in recent questions about light and its speed.

However, what I want to mention is that when you hear about the impedance of a transmission line, like speaker cable or an antenna or coaxial cable or anything else, this does not represent energy which is "burned off" in the cable. This has to do with how energy is stored in the cable as it propagates down it. The cable does not (well, in reality it does, but assume the lossless case for simplicity) get hotter as a signal travels down it. It is not proper to think of a ’75-ohm cable’ as a 75-ohm ’resistor.’ That 75-ohms is purely reactance (ideally, though there really is attenuation in real cables).

Note that impedance and reactance are both given in units of ’ohms’ just like resistance. Capacitance is measured in Farads and inductance in Henries, and these relate to impedance, but they are not measures of impedance. As I said, the impedance of a capacitor is inversely proportional to its capacitance and the impedance of an inductor directly proportional to its inductance.

This may sound a little abstract. Impedance really is an abstraction of things that are far more complicated (things like time constants and rise times) that electrical engineers have to constantly consider. The idea of ’impedance’ allows for many of these things to be wrapped up into one subject so that they are easier to communicate.

The short answer is -- impedance includes reactance, and reactance includes effects which vary with frequency due to inductance and capacitance.
Answered by: Ted Pavlic, Electrical Engineering Undergrad Student, Ohio St.

https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae517.cfm

And just another thought.

In many ways our wee hobby is a "its just not good enough" thang. We have over the years been told, either individually, or as a group that our hobby and/or our particular way of undertaking it is foolish , silly, stupid, idiotic, don’t know the science, can’t understand the engineering etc etc but we have persevered and despite all the negative vibes we have, often inch by inch, moved the pile forward. In fact it could be that we have become so inured to this that it may well be now part of our culture’s DNA, or at least the minimum requirement for inclusion.

So where was I going with this ?....oh yeah.

OK, was once having lunch with one of the top noise/vibration control guys in North America who worked for the the largest noise/vibration control company in the world ( at the time ). He was still basking in the afterglow of just having received an Technical Achievement Oscar for an rather innovative use of one of their products ( it made film cameras much quieter and allowed for better recording ). So during the lunch I brought up the possibility of using said technique to modify stereo components. Well the rest of the lunch was dedicated to proving beyond a shadow of a doubt how that idea made absolutely no scientific sense. Formulas were throw out, scientific fact was cited etc etc. For some reason I didn’t back off and continued to pursue that avenue and eventually moved the pile forward enough that the gentlemen saw/heard my point of view and apologized for his earlier lambasting and then we laughed and had another beer. Read, stereo component noise/vibration control is now an accepted part of our hobby, despite all that day’s respectable evidence to the contrary.

So here we are again, different song but the tune is very very familiar.

And btw that product that won the Oscar, in base function it is not much unlike our very own GeoffKait’s Brilliant Pebbles concept....but that is another story for another time in a thread far far away.

And here is the mornings entertainment.....and prof et al is the guy on the throne....and Mr Columbus is the everyman stereo dude...hope you like it, I do and it pops into my head every-time I come across a "cable" food fight, errr, discussion or something similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgqW_hgpuEI

@prof

What’s wrong with being intellectually honest, consider the points someone is ACTUALLY making, instead of making stuff up to disparage?

And in that post you ACTUALLY make up a quote that is affirmative paraphrasing something that was conditional....that you then attribute to me.

"You are the one being dogmatic, and must simply enjoy mediocrity."

Exactly all your words not mine. But they really go well together don’t they. Well played. Intellectually honest indeed.

@prof

Here is a thought....if you had actually thought that there was a reasonable equivalence between my original statement and your "paraphrase" why make something up and then dress it up with quotes....why not, you know, just use the original quote, that would have been simple, and dare I say, intellectually honest and defensible. But no, that original quote was not good enough to express what YOU wanted to say, so you went that extra mile or two and made up your own quote and unwittingly and absolutely showed the true depths of your honestly, and this just after a mini-lecture on intellectual honesty ( and btw that depth of honesty that you displayed is one of the hallmarks of the mindset of dogmatic fundamentalists....as in, the reality doesn’t quite jive with my preconceived notions of what should be, so we’ll just cobble together something that does.....read, the big problem with dogmatic fundamentalism is that it is intellectually dishonest, and apparently not much unlike you...so I guess we can now safely say the conditional has now morphed into an affirmative eh...soooo.....nice shooting sparky, that was your foot you just hit ).

And then to lecture on the theme of shameless....wow, coming from you after that display of intellectual "honesty", that is really the epitome of rich.

And speaking of roughly paraphrasing, here is something from my past that fits nicely....

Son, I would stop whining about that F you just got on your paper. You have a much bigger problem. You just failed the course.

And that most excellent point to also keep in mind.

Please file under the lengths people will go to ram their point across.

Here’s an interesting article that turned up in my inbox a few weeks back. Excerpts follow:

“It was no surprise, then, that in 1983, the magazine jumped at the opportunity to conduct a double-blind listening test, which editor-in-chief Bill Livingston and his colleagues hoped would reveal, scientifically, that high-end cables were indeed a hoax and provided no higher performance than the everyday lamp cord in common use at the time.”

“The resulting article created a firestorm. As you’ll read, the panel identified, to a statistically significant degree, the 24-gauge from the other two contenders with pink noise as the source. More critically, they also identified, again with statistical significance, the Monster Cable from the 16-gauge with pink noise. But the latter results didn’t hold when choral music was used, and none of the Monster versus 16-gauge results passed the higher threshold of a 75 percent or greater detection rate said to be psychoacoustically significant.”

“SR’s editors, however, rewrote the ending to create something akin to a blanket condemnation of the category and pressured Greenhill to accept the changes, a decision he later regretted.”

“Today, 35 years later, the debate over audiophile cables remains as active as ever.".

In other words. Folks have heard a difference between speaker cables. The article way back in 1983 should have settled this there and then. But something got into the way of the truth. You can read the Sound & Vision article in full here, and here is the article “The Horse’s Mouth” mentioned in the S&V article.

Here are some excerpts from Stereophile’s article - “The Horse’s Mouth“:

“The striking outcome is that the panel accurately heard and named speaker cables in 5 out of 6 comparisons. The listeners felt pleased after this listening test battery: they had heard real differences! After the 50 hours of testing, scoring, comparing, and just plain listening, they were exhausted but felt accomplished. Both Monster Cable and 24-gauge wire could be heard reliably under double-blind conditions.”

…

Much can be learned from the coverage afforded the cable article. Stereo Review has used Larry Greenhill’s article by distorting it to represent their well-established editorial positions. International Audio Review has used it to draw attention to its role as savior of the consumer and of the high-end industry. The Absolute Sound has capitalized on the humor possibilities, and taken the opportunity to again attack Julian Hirsch—at whose feet I feel this matter is unjustly laid. Hans Fantel, who must have read only the conclusions and not the data, used the Stereo Review article to justify his hitherto-announced scorn for esoterica. The Wall Street Journal seemingly has no axe to grind, but Gregory Sandow has used their pages to not unfairly promote The Absolute Sound, for whom he also writes.

Significant harm has been done, however.

The underlined paragraph indicates the same article are interpreted differently by subsequent magazines to push their agendas. Herein lies the problem (in bold) - these articles have done more harm than good.

Significant harm indeed. Controversy sell magazines then, controversy drives advertisement traffic now.

https://www.snakeoil-os.net/news/under-the-sun/experts-doing-more-harm-than-good

Well that and the scar it leaves...the average chainsaw wound is apparently about 114 stitches worth of, uhhh, fun.

In our neck of the woods it generally only got to DEFCON Complex and Mysterious....though on some Saturday nights, especially when the Laughs were playing the Habs, things would get ugly...ever see a fight where chainsaws were involved ?

@geoffkait

OK looked it up. For some reason have never done seen that movie. So you got me on that one.

Here is the thing....understanding of stuff moves on....it does not stand still as it does in the minds of the fundamentalists such as the adherents of the LCR-or-the-highway Creed....bashing the Wright Bros because we have modern aircraft is just as wrong headed as bashing anyone for making a cable as well as they did given the most current state of cable building techniques available at the time.

To quote John Maynard Keynes

When my information changes I alter my conclusions What do you do sir?

Well what we did was not sit around and mope and bury our heads in the sand as a fundamentalist would do we acted on the new information and built cable assemblies that incorporated this idea and the results produced spectacular results. But what was especially interesting was the assembly did not produce a result consistent with the standard LCR understanding of what a global doubling of assembly capacitance would produce ( there was no high frequency roll-off, in fact the high end was significantly more delineated, and without any etching, and the sound stage got noticeably larger in every dimension ). Which is why I threw that weird result out to the folks here who claim to intimately know the workings of cable through the strict application of known and accepted laws that generally explain cable behaviour.

And btw we have tried several different cables assemblies using this idea and everytime we used assemblies that had proved superior in the past we got better results in what we call a Double Double configuration. So old methods still have validity in this paradigm, they just seem , uhhh, supercharged, in some way we really can’t explain. But the bottom line is they do, they really really do.

But hey you can stick to your I can’t be bothered what I have is good enough, even though the effort to do so is so relatively minimal if that is what you have to do, but a word of caution when you bury your head in the sand be sure to close your eyes cause you may scratch a cornea or something.

@douglas_schroeder 

Well lets kick this off on the wrong foot shall we...

 

Do these kind of questions ever appear in the Digital forum?

Why should they, digital has been perfect forever....well if you really want to nitpick probably from around 1928.

@glupson

"...we acted on the new information and built cable assemblies that incorporated this idea and the results produced spectacular results."

Would it qualify as

"Such a penchant for hyperbole"

?

hy·per·bo·le Dictionary result for hyperbole/hīˈpərbəlē/noun exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

spec·tac·u·lar Dictionary result for spectacular/spekˈtakyələr/adjective beautiful in a dramatic and eye-catching way. "spectacular mountain scenery"

What I heard was beautiful in a very dramatic and ear catching way and thus my description of the event as spectacular matches up well with the Dictionary result found above. And that description was not an exaggeration or something not meant to be taken literally, it was what it was. As an important aside I should note that I do have the decided advantage of actually being an aural witness to said event, read in the frame when the event occurred, and as a result very much unlike yourself.

So, no, not hyperbole, but most certainly spectacular.

@glupson

taras22,

I will take "eye-catching" as description of sound as licentia poetica.

The only way those findings may be considered non-hyperbolic by more than a few

Hate to nitpick but I definitely wrote "ear-catching", that being said you can take it any way you feel you need to try to score a point. But here is another point in the bigger picture, I am not the only person to have that experience, in fact if you have the nerve ( and frankly I really don’t think you do) to wander over to the Schroeder Method thread you will find almost all those folks who have tried this idea are describing it as some form of spectacular.

So just wander over there and maybe double down and tell all those happy users that they are all either wrong, disingenuous, deaf, sheeple, or whatever. I’m sure given your vast experience with such matters you will quickly win them over and save them from some awful audio misfortune. And be sure to tell them you have personally not experienced the sonic effects of this idea but as glupson the great you just have this gut feeling that this all is just more of that old-fashioned cable poppy-hooey. Believe you me at the end of the day they will love you for it.

@glupson

It may be due to its incorrect written presentation.

That is so lame.

@celander

Most excellent point. So as long as that is agreed-upon we can move on.

@glupson

Hate to nitpick but this is definitely what you wrote (copied and pasted from your post)...

spec·tac·u·lar Dictionary result for spectacular/spekˈtakyələr/adjective beautiful in a dramatic and eye-catching way. "spectacular mountain scenery"

Or, better to say, someone else wrote it for you. No "ear-catching" in sight

.
Here is what I, as in me writing something ( and not quoting something ), wrote ...please refer to the quote below.

What I heard was beautiful in a very dramatic and ear catching way and thus my description of the event as spectacular matches up well with the Dictionary result found above. And that description was not an exaggeration or something not meant to be taken literally, it was what it was. As an important aside I should note that I do have the decided advantage of actually being an aural witness to said event, read in the frame when the event occurred, and as a result very much unlike yourself.

Please note the 11th and 12th words. Now if I’m not mistaken they are ear and catching and together they say ear catching and I definitely wrote those words and to folks with their eyes open they are most definitely in plain sight. They were part of a paraphrase of a definition that was just above it. And btw that definition in actuality was written by someone else and is demarcated as a quote to indicate same ( this is how quotes work and why they are used...to properly attribute words to those who wrote them ).

Here is a thought, and don’t mean to nitpick, mainly because this is way beyond nitpicking, maybe you should invest in some basic reading comprehension or reading glasses, or both, because your latest attempt at scoring a cheap debating point has only yielded a classic face plant, and dare I say a spectacular one, as in dramatic and eye-catching ( though unfortunately for you in watching a train wreck kind of way ).