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

Two aspects of human hearing that may or may not shed light on this.  

One, really low bass is non-directional. We sense almost nothing but volume. It is for all intents and purposes mono. Yet mono always sounds like it is coming from right between the speakers. Low bass is not mono like that. It is more like what out of phase mono sounds like, coming from nowhere and everywhere. Yet when playing music it never sounds like this either. It always sounds like it is coming from some definite location.  

Another one, really high ultra-sonic frequencies. We cannot hear these at all! At least not on a hearing test playing only these frequencies, we hear nothing. But all instruments have higher harmonic overtones extending well up into the ultra-sonic range. When these are reproduced it lends a wealth of detail including depth of image that improves not only treble but midrange and bass as well.  

These might seem to be very different, the extreme low bass on the one hand and the beyond treble on the other. But I think they are very much the same. I think in both circumstances what is happening is our brains assemble it all into an auditory model of the world around us.   

How this all happens is anyone's guess. It sure does seem pretty obvious though that it does indeed happen. 

The cells in the ear that detect these ultra-sonic frequencies, by the way, are three times as many in number as detect the sounds we can hear. So good luck figuring out how to measure for that. 

Sorry anton, you deserve better. Problem is you are working on a high level.   

manueljenkin, click on the users name, and select Message User from the drop down menu. 

Feynman tells the story of all these great physicists sitting around the table at Los Alamos- Bohr, Fermi, et al- trying to figure out what is going on. First one, let’s say it was Bohr although I don’t remember. Not important. What matters is he nails it. Absolutely nails it. Accounts for everything. Feynman is thinking wow that was fast we are done!

But then they continue around the table, and one after another proposes alternative explanations. Feynman is all, "WTF?!" Not literally, but he really is wondering what is going on? Can they all not see the first answer is the one?

This continues until they all have spoken. At which point the leader says, "Well it is settled then, Bohr’s theory is the one." They all agree. And just like that they are done.

Marvelous story. A lesson for us all.

You tend to complicate things,

The understatement of the year.

and with this approach it is almost impossible to understand the problem,

Indeed.

Why is it I can't help feeling I've seen this all before?  https://youtu.be/EZSx3zNZOaU?t=46

Resort? Simple and basic reasoning is how we understand something as complicated as human DNA. Simple and basic reasoning is how we understand something as complicated as how we came to have DNA at all.

The origin of species by means of natural selection, otherwise known as Darwin’s theory, accounts for all life on Earth, yet is extraordinarily simple: Species produce more offspring than are viable in the environment. Offspring are not identical, they vary in their characteristics. Nature selects for the most successful variants. These pass on their successful variant genes to the next generation.

Simplicity is not a "resort" to be taken when all else fails. Simple and basic reasoning is a virtue.  Indeed, it is the very foundation of the scientific method.

you seem to be making some assertions which may not really be completely true.

"Seem" to be. "May" not "really" be. "Completely". Awful lot of qualifiers for just one sentence. Would it not be more clear and direct to say, "You ripped my whole story to shreds, and I don't like it one bit"?  

There is nothing wrong, when confronted with a genuine mystery, in admitting it really is a mystery. 

All of of you need to spend some time on a psych ward just to see some brains that are really not working right.

Thank you, Doctor. https://youtu.be/pGtGEI_I4kw?t=29

Nor me. But one thing keeping the Hateful 18 list has taught me, some of these very disturbed people do come back again and again. You have spotted them doing it. Others have spotted them doing it. Not asking anything extra. Just when you spot them, report them. Wave the troll alert flag, let everyone know, when enough are saying yeah this is the same troll different name then Tammy can suspend them, a lot faster than this last one.

My recommendation is everyone new has their posts auto-reviewed for something like the first month/50 posts, something like that. They will still appear but not right away, only after being reviewed. Same as some others do it. This strongly discourages trolls since they are all very simple minded creatures barely able to think five seconds ahead, they are all here for the instant gratification and attention. So deny them the instant gratification and attention. 

Ignore them, report them. That simple.

thyname-

Well …. It looks like DLetch2 is gone. Whether banned or just quit on his own, I have no idea.

Honestly I am not surprised, following the previous patterns of this guy, most recently posting as Audio2Design, before that as AtDavid, Roberttdid, Dannad, and perhaps other names I lost track of.

One thing I guarantee is he will be back. Guaranteed. It will be easy to spot. Again.

When that happens, let Tammy know. Report his posts, state in the reason his other names so she can suspend right away. 

Another one Johnnyaudiogoon, same thing. Tammy asked for help spotting him. 

I've been around and doing this long enough to know there are all kinds of things that are easily heard but so far as I know impossible to measure. Directivity is only one of them. Directivity is so obvious that one time when a new cable came it sounded so bad I was complaining to the seller- until it dawned on me I was in a hurry and had not checked and sure enough had put it in backwards. 

Why does my system continue to sound better and better hour after hour even after it has been on a good ten hours or more? Surely it does not take a full day to warm up? I had Chris Brady over one time, at the end of the evening he told me he was sure it sounded better than earlier. He was right, of course. But I knew he was coming, had it up and running several hours before he got there, for precisely this reason. Yet even after all that it still was getting better, and by enough that a guy like Chris could hear it.  

It would be nice to know why. We ourselves seem to be sort of hard-wired to want to know why. It is a shame though when this insistence on knowing why, or maybe more to the point being the one to know why, gets in the way of being able to use and appreciate what is going on, whether we understand it or not.  

Depending, you say? So if the wire is not connected then it transmits nothing. So it all depends on the wire being connected. Interesting. Very interesting.  

Just one question: How does the wire know?

As I understand, you agree that the audibility of the power cable can not be caused by physical reasons, and this is actually all that we need for the moment.

Fascinating. So we got a guy saying the audible differences can only be caused by metaphysical reasons. While at the same time insisting everything be proved with numbers. This is Spock-level raised eyebrow fascinating.

On a more pleasant note, I believe we are all Russian. This is after all why we call it Mother Russia, is it not?

Actually dletch2, if you can be bothered to read what you just wrote it clearly says you cannot hear. Others can, but you cannot. So you rely on your "knowledge and experience". Whereas if you could hear you would rely on that. Therefore you cannot hear. Nor reason, apparently.

I wonder, in your scientific and philosophical inquiries, have you ever studied the phenomenon of people incapable of noticing their own circular reasoning?

None of our sensory systems fire off a signal that says to the brain, "Incoming! 92.7dB at 5kHz!" Not at all.

You may want to learn more about our auditory system before you make posts about how it works because our auditory system does respond to specific frequency stimuli, and the response level is related to the volume, just as you claim it does not. There are more complex processes after that, not fully understood, but at a base level, what you wrote is wrong.

So you're saying neurons do say, "Incoming! 92.7dB at 5kHz!" You seriously believe that? Really??!

Have we figured out what we hear when we change the direction of a wire yet?

Not in the sense of what is the cause. But thanks to Ted Denney we have what it sounds like.

I think the only possible way to understand the nature of sound perception is to focus on studying a short piece of single-core wire.

There may be something to that. It seems to me it is all down to propagating a field. The field starts with sound pressure waves in air. These pressure waves are a manifestation of the repulsion of electrons in the outer shell of air molecules. So even sound turns out to be electric fields.

In the same way, when we make a gramophone recording. Even though it is all mechanical springs and levers and horns still it all comes back to electron fields pushing each other around.

Probably in most wire there is something asymmetrical going on that inhibits the coherent flow of this field.

For sure it cannot take much. Searching through user reviews of parts like caps it is clear seemingly insignificant construction produces big changes in sound quality. These parts all measure exactly the same yet in many ways sound completely different.

Seems to me this is all down to their ability to propagate this field in a coherent manner. This idea is reinforced by things we can do that are "outside" the signal path, at least in terms of what most today consider to be the signal path.

The prevailing myth is current moves along a wire. Occasionally some will acknowledge the field around the wire. Hardly anyone seems to think the field itself is the signal.

ted_denney nailed it:

The differences heard are the difference between a more solid and focused sound, and one that is phasy and incoherent. 

The first time using one of his Blue Fuses the sound was more dynamic with a blacker background, but also was not solid, focused and coherent. I have used lots of Synergistic over the years, it is always solid, focused and coherent. So within about a minute of listening I switched the fuse around. It was immediately apparent this is the correct direction. 

Now I am in the process of upgrading my crossovers. I know from experience there are huge gains to be made from using higher quality caps, inductors, and resistors. This is strange only in the sense that these are all specifically designed to measure the same. The whole point of manufacture is to have them all be electrically identical and interchangeable.  

Well they are in the sense that they work. They most definitely are NOT in the sense that they all sound the same. This is beyond debate. The differences are so obvious and easy to hear it can only be the people who argue this have never tried, or they have and simply refuse to believe their own experience.  

I do not however think this means there has to be some additional unaccounted for signal there waiting to be discovered. I find it much more likely we simply have vastly underestimated the human sensory potential.  

When we "sense" something with our senses it is nothing like what a meter does. The meter measures one tiny little aspect of one tiny little thing. Our senses are comparatively universal. Psychologists have a devil of a time designing experiments precisely because we have so many different ways of sensing things. It is extremely challenging to narrow them down. This is not even talking about mental aspects, the "bias" card so many scoundrels love to play. This is simply the way we work, and it is vastly different than any meter. 

None of our sensory systems fire off a signal that says to the brain, "Incoming! 92.7dB at 5kHz!" Not at all.

What happens instead is millions of neurons become excited and send an electrical impulse down the axon to a synapse. Millions. Just because it is sound, do not for one minute think this means all the neurons are in the ear. Every sensory neuron is doing this! Simultaneously! Throughout your whole body!   

It is even kind of silly to focus so much on just what we "hear". I don't think we have even a very good idea what that means, "to hear".  

Case in point. I know Townshend Podiums work. I know how they work and that they do in fact work. Had a guy recently use them and he was disappointed. In talking to him it turns out one of the things he likes about his speakers is the way they send bass through the floor up into his legs and butt sitting on the chair. He misses that and his speakers don't have enough bass to make up for what he lost. Which, just to make sure everyone gets the point- is what his skin and bones are feeling not his ears!   

We hear with our whole bodies. Another example, my Aunt Bessie, deaf from birth, "heard" me playing music one time. Actually she felt the vibrations coming through in the next room. She came and stood right in front of the speaker, put her hands on it, face lit up with delight. Then there was the recent story of the deaf audiophile who "listens" by holding a balloon. He can differentiate between speaker cables! Thus this legally stone deaf audiophile can "hear" things other audiophiles- who supposedly are not deaf- cannot. 

This is all due to a cascade of millions of neurons firing more or less binary signals that somehow somewhere coalesce into an awareness of music. Or whatever.  

That's on our end. What about the "signal"?  

It is the same, as the French say, only different. On the signal end it is not millions but trillions, or quadrillions, of electrons. Not even electrons really, the electron is merely the particle we posit carries the field. Really it is the field we are talking about. Physical electrons really do not move from one place to another. No electron went from the recording studio to your listening room. It was the field did this. Not the particle. The wave. 

Science cannot even answer the question- is light a particle? Or a wave? Sounds impossible but it is not. Look into it. When we do an experiment to see if light is a particle, sure enough, we detect photons. When we do an experiment to see if light is a wave, what do you know? It is a wave. 

So what we seem to have is a situation where we sample a field of almost incomprehensible complexity (performed music) transform the sample into a field wave (signal in a wire) and transform it back again in our rooms where once again it is sampled only this time by a sensory apparatus (us) of almost incomprehensible complexity. 

I don't think there is anything extra. Pretty sure all we have to do now is figure out how to comprehend the incomprehensible.