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
@dougschroeder

people hate it when you come on here and say stuff that just makes sense but creates work

people here want to sit on their behinds and type endlessly and argue

so please stop
If there is a shift, a skewing, imbalance tonally, dynamically, etc. then further exploration/discussion is necessary.



Yes, you either have some contacts you need to clean, you plugged the directionally shielded interconnect in wrong (unlikely), you need to get rid of those silly cables with the overpriced RC tone control built in, return those Tellurium speaker cables, because who thought a cable whose parameters shift big just by moving them was a good idea, or have someone make the change for you, because odds are you are imagining it.  Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is the most likely.
nobody who spends that much on wires is going to admit they make zero difference. 

period.

And nobody who is so chintzy that they won't spend any money on better wires is going to admit they might make a difference. 

We have some serious problems with attitudes and methodology in this community.  :( 


We have some serious problems with attitudes and methodology in this community. :(

Your attitude of more money = better is a problem in modern audio components and your previous comment on your methodology is comical. So for once I agree with you.