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
mapman's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2xmapman18,857 posts
04-23-2021 5:12pm

My first question in order to be able to anser tht one would be which wire specifically are we talking about?

We are talking about any short piece (say 5 inches) of single-core metal wire of medium thickness.

All wires sound dissimilar when reversed, only to different degrees. To feel it clearly, you must have a special testing system. The simplest possible tube amp with no feedback which is paired with a single broadband speaker. The one I handmade for tests is: https://www.backtomusic.ru/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/schematics-testing-audio-equpment.gif. Using it, you can evaluate the coloration and right direction of almost any radio component (L,C,R) including wire. The test sample is connected to J1 and J2 connectors.




Using it, you can evaluate the coloration and right direction of almost any radio component (L,C,R) including wire.

Ok now we are getting somewhere. Have you done that? Where are the results published for those who might be interested?


I would believe whatever differences there are would show up most in cases where there is an impedance mismatch which is much more likely with zero feedback amps, but that should not really matter if one has addressed impedance matching between amps and speakers properly, which is the right way to do it for best results, so in that case impedance matching issues due to a zero feedback amp is a moot point.   


What ever happened to science and the basic knowledge of electrical theory?  Do you think that legendary Marantz audio perfectionists like Sid Smith and Dick Sequerra would have recommended basic copper lamp cord of the proper gauge (depending on the speaker distance) to connect their superb amplifiers?  These guys were obsessively  fussy, with discriminating ears - to the most subtle nuances in sound quality.
C'mon audiophiles - time to get off your "snake oil" train and talk about putting effort and money into equipment that truly makes a technical (and thus audible) difference.  I have yet to read or hear any kind of logical explanation for the claims about the superior performance of pricey power, or speaker cables - other than purely subjective conclusions based on "so-called" listening tests.  Please note - the direction of current travel in a uniformly sectioned copper wire would have absolutely zero effect on the accuracy of the signal transmitted.  Where is the logical evidence to the contrary?
Please note - the direction of current travel in a uniformly sectioned copper wire would have absolutely zero effect on the accuracy of the signal transmitted. Where is the logical evidence to the contrary?


Neither copper nor the dielectric is truly uniform, so there goes that out the window. You still can't hear any direction, but lets stick to facts.

cmichaelo2 posts
04-23-2021 5:16pm
Maybe someone already explained this, but I simply didn’t have the time to look through the whole thread. Due to manufacturing tolerances, a cable isn’t electrically the same from both directions.

Self proved that there are no audible errors in the signal, even in more complex cases than just a single wire.

It can be proofed by simple logic either. Let’s assume that the speaker wire has an error, but it is microscopic, on the verge of perception and measurement. Then, we will have to agree that the error is common to all the wires. And it turns out that, for example, in a RIAA corrector, the error of the wire going from the MC head to the transformer will be amplified almost 1000 times!

And how many different wires are there in the system? Hundreds. And all these errors that occurred in the preliminary cascades will be amplified by hundreds or tens of times and superimposed on the useful signal.

A microscopic error on the edge of perception multiplied by such a caos will become egregious. But we do not observe such errors.
So there is no polarity, semi conductivity or any other ELECTRICAL assymetry in a wire.