What do we hear when we change the direction of a wire?


Douglas Self wrote a devastating article about audio anomalies back in 1988. With all the necessary knowledge and measuring tools, he did not detect any supposedly audible changes in the electrical signal. Self and his colleagues were sure that they had proved the absence of anomalies in audio, but over the past 30 years, audio anomalies have not disappeared anywhere, at the same time the authority of science in the field of audio has increasingly become questioned. It's hard to believe, but science still cannot clearly answer the question of what electricity is and what sound is! (see article by A.J.Essien).

For your information: to make sure that no potentially audible changes in the electrical signal occur when we apply any "audio magic" to our gear, no super equipment is needed. The smallest step-change in amplitude that can be detected by ear is about 0.3dB for a pure tone. In more realistic situations it is 0.5 to 1.0dB'". This is about a 10% change. (Harris J.D.). At medium volume, the voltage amplitude at the output of the amplifier is approximately 10 volts, which means that the smallest audible difference in sound will be noticeable when the output voltage changes to 1 volt. Such an error is impossible not to notice even using a conventional voltmeter, but Self and his colleagues performed much more accurate measurements, including ones made directly on the music signal using Baxandall subtraction technique - they found no error even at this highest level.

As a result, we are faced with an apparently unsolvable problem: those of us who do not hear the sound of wires, relying on the authority of scientists, claim that audio anomalies are BS. However, people who confidently perceive this component of sound are forced to make another, the only possible conclusion in this situation: the electrical and acoustic signals contain some additional signal(s) that are still unknown to science, and which we perceive with a certain sixth sense.

If there are no electrical changes in the signal, then there are no acoustic changes, respectively, hearing does not participate in the perception of anomalies. What other options can there be?

Regards.
anton_stepichev

Showing 5 responses by audition__audio

I dont understand the concern of those like dletch2 for the rest of us deluded souls.  I also dont understand why these folks think that the biases they suffer are endemic to the human race and also the apparent need to put all of us hobbyists in such a narrowly defined box. I dont think it is such a stretch to believe that through experience and exposure to exceptional systems that some can hear better than others. I remain confident in the buying decisions I make and the methodology I use to make these decisions. Anyway,  as is usually the case, this thread is going nowhere.

Oh I dont see any reason that a passive cable should experience any sort of directionality. But I truly dont know and I truly dont care. If the maker of a cable puts arrows on the cable I will abide.

So dletch2,

Which of the Ace Hardware ground fault interrupters do you recommend? 

The Cliff Clavin of bias methodology. As my grandad used to say: "bias smias". 
And find a SS DAC that can do some of the things that arent measurable that make a tube DAC often sound better. Compare the number of tube DACs to the number of pure S.S. DACs. Compare what a single tube can do and then compare this with the amount of SS circuitry required to do the same thing. Increasingly, I think, this hobby is starting to understand the limits of measurement. How many years have speaker manufacturers made their designs low impedance to satisfy the consumers desire for more power only to find that low impedance loads dont sound nearly as good with 99% of amplification. 
alexberger,

Yes what you said about tubes! Do you think this linearity can be measured cause it sure can be heard in many circuits. Complex designs can often measure well but it is real trick to get them to sound as good as a simple design with or without tubes. This measurement thing is really a dead horse.