Science is also about experimentation.
Science is also about experimentation.
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A gentleman is defined as someone who knows how to play the accordion, and doesn't.
Or better yet, start a "Why Audiophiles Are Full of Shit" thread so he can post all his engineering theory in a thread where people are really that interested in it. Every time I open this one up, there are far too many of that guy's posts to skip over.Originally Posted by BobM
"Engineering theory"? You mean all that unproven stuff about electricity and resistance and the speed of light and stuff? Cause, like, it's pretty tentative.
Not all audiophiles are full of shit. Only the ones that tell you $1500 cables sound different from $30 ones.
So says the person with no ears, only a calculator and a book of theory (and no actual training). So sad that you refuse to perform even the most basic tests to see if there might be something there that your book of theory doesn't cover.
But we digress, so before this degenerates any further ...
Does anyone else notice that the sound improves at night? Cleaner power coming from the power company? Less industry sending grunge through the lines? Just quieter in the house? What's your story?
Same question, does the sound get better when there is more or less humidity in your home? (raining, snowing, winter, summer)
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A gentleman is defined as someone who knows how to play the accordion, and doesn't.
Years ago I used to find that sound was variable and generally better at night. What cured it for me was installing grounding rods. I have 3 8ft copper ground rods buried outside my listening room. Its connected by copper wire to a Nordost Q-Base 8 grounding strip. All of my line level gear is plugged into it. System went dead quiet - blacker backgrounds. Sound is very consistent now. I'm entertaining going one step further and installing the Entreq grounding system. Two of my friends are using it and have found it to be beneficial.
I do find humidity to be somewhat of a factor. I'm probably crazy but I always think the system sounds best when it snows.
I see that you are struggling today.
Speaking for myself, if there are legitimate technical and/or experimental reasons why something should or should not make a difference, I think its relevant to know what those are. I need to know how most efficiently to allocate my time and resources. I can evaluate for myself whether I find the arguments persuasive, but its worthwhile to know what they are.
I do not trust my own perception because it is frequently wrong - so is that of every human that has ever existed. That is whole point of scientific controls in establishing what's true and what's not.
True dat.
LOL you're right!
I haven't found this to be true...sure would be nice if you were right on this one. What cables in the $30 dollar range would you use to blind test with? Please be specific. I'll sell some cables and send you some $$$ if the $30 stuff produces no discernible difference.
Nobody in the history of Earth is going to A/B $30 with $1,500 cables and say, wow, you know what, I was wrong! The cheap cable is fine and I apparently just pissed away enough money to put a down-payment on a new house! Human nature won't allow it. The only way you can really test this stuff is a strictly controlled double blind environment where even the people administering the test don't know which is which.
Humidity is the presence of moisture in the air. Sound waves travel through the air. Dryer air has lower "impedance" for sound waves.
True dat.
Listen, I'm not going to comment on the questions of atmospheric pressure or humidity or time-of-day, because those are legitimate variables and I do not have any evidence, one way or the other, of their effect. It's impossible to A / B test those parameters. Yes, they probably DO have an effect. What it is, exactly, I could not say.
But interconnects? Speaker wires? Those are hoses. They carry water from the faucet to the nozzle. If your hose it too small it restricts the water flow. If it's of a certain size, it'll carry the maximum water pressure available to you at the faucet, and it doesn't matter what color the hose is, it doesn't matter if it's made of plastic or rubber, it doesn't matter if you decorate it with 24-karat gold glitter. The water will still be delivered just the same. Getting a bigger bore hose -- say a firehose -- isn't going to deliver more water than your faucet produces. You'll just have a half-empty hose.
Cables are not rocket science. They are just a length of wire to carry electrons. In double blind tests this has been proven over and over and over. NOBODY CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE.
Point me to one scientific study, with true rigorous controls (unlike Mr. Fremer's amusing tirade above) and I'll change my mind.
Incidentally, lest anyone ask, I have done some pretty extensive A / B testing of speaker wires and interconnects to reach this conclusion. Obviously I haven't tested every cable and certainly not the uber-expen$ive ones, but I have tried out (on a trial basis) some $100 interconnects -- which was the most I could ever see spending. And I did a lot of reading.
I have Kimbercable to my high end and 8-gauge zipcord to my low, just because I had to buy them to try them. In both cases, 16- or 12-gauge zip sounded identical.
For interconnects I use mostly gold-plated Monster Cables, though decent name-brand high-quality cables (any!) in the $30 range sound identical. I can move them around to prove it.
I have wasted some money, and I'm not proud of it.
PS - Another amusing story. My stereo system is off to one side, not between the speakers, so the distance to the two speakers is not the same. I bought identical lengths of speaker wire for both sides, and leave the short one coiled on one side. Why? Because I didn't think about the fact that electrical signals travel at between 67-84% of the speed of light (depending on the conducting material) and that extra 12 feet of speaker wire isn't going to make one whit of difference to the signal delivery. Again, I made a stupid waste of $.
Last edited by rcarlberg; 03-21-2015 at 11:32 AM.
If you coil your cable aren't you creating... er, a coil? That would have at least some measurable effect on the current going to the speakers, wouldn't it?
Err, no. The hose is sealed.
I readily admit that I have not demoed various speaker wire in any kind of controlled environment nor have been able to do any kind of A/B comparison. That being said, to take your analogy a bit farther, don't think about the output of the hose as the quantifiable outcome of the process, instead think about the taste of the water coming out of the hose as part of the result as well. In the case of speaker wire and analogue interconnects, I think they all add or subtract something from the sound. Silver is known to add more clarity, copper is said to have an overall warmer sound. Some audiophiles use their speaker wire and ICs as tone controls in their systems to a small extent. I have no doubt that these things affect their listening pleasure.True dat.
Listen, I'm not going to comment on the questions of atmospheric pressure or humidity or time-of-day, because those are legitimate variables and I do not have any evidence, one way or the other, of their effect. It's impossible to A / B test those parameters. Yes, they probably DO have an effect. What it is, exactly, I could not say.
But interconnects? Speaker wires? Those are hoses. They carry water from the faucet to the nozzle. If your hose it too small it restricts the water flow. If it's of a certain size, it'll carry the maximum water pressure available to you at the faucet, and it doesn't matter what color the hose is, it doesn't matter if it's made of plastic or rubber, it doesn't matter if you decorate it with 24-karat gold glitter. The water will still be delivered just the same. Getting a bigger bore hose -- say a firehose -- isn't going to deliver more water than your faucet produces. You'll just have a half-empty hose.
Cables are not rocket science. They are just a length of wire to carry electrons. In double blind tests this has been proven over and over and over. NOBODY CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE.
Point me to one scientific study, with true rigorous controls (unlike Mr. Fremer's amusing tirade above) and I'll change my mind.
I bought some speaker wire a number of years ago that was somewhere between $30 and $1500 (and a hell of a lot closer to $30) and have no urge to change. IIRC, it is a hybrid of copper and silver, so I have a foot in both camps!
Think of a book as a vase, and a movie as the stained-glass window that the filmmaker has made out of the pieces after he’s smashed it with a hammer.
-- Russell Banks (paraphrased)
Electrons are what comprises the signal, not the conducting material. Different materials conduct at different speeds, due to complex factors like the number of free electrons and their strength of binding (way over my head) -- but I can't hear the difference between 67% of light speed and 84% of light speed over 20 feet of wire -- can you?
Cables will not filter the sound -- except in the extreme case of 26-gauge zip.
And I believe what you're hearing there is mostly IM distortion from the conductors being so close together that they induce current in each other?
Last edited by rcarlberg; 03-21-2015 at 12:06 PM.
I suppose if there's nothing else around to interact with the coil it doesn't matter.
Lots and lots of unshielded wire around a conductive core can create an electromagnet, due to induced magnetic fields. 12 feet of shielded wire coiled in air, not so much.
Amen Brothers BobM and Rael. It's a shame that he insists on ruining the discussion for so many of us and that the moderators don't seem interested at all in addressing the problem.
Robert gets off on thread crapping. Always been that way and will never change. Learn to ignore him. Its hard I know.
Easy to ignore a PE member, but the disruption is what takes its toll on certain threads.
I've thought about this for an hour or so, and think I have the reason the analogy isn't apt.
"Taste" in water comes from impurities, compounds dissolved in the water. If water from a rubber hose tastes of rubber, that's because you're getting microscopic particles of rubber in your mouth.
That doesn't happen with wire because what current is, is electron flow. You're not going to get molecules of copper or molecules of silver getting into your signal, the electron flow. Electrons are electrons, regardless of the conducting material.
Therefore, although the SPEED of conduction can vary from material to material, the "taste" (so to speak) of the signal will not -- can not -- be affected. It wouldn't matter if you used a coat hanger (Google it if you don't recognize the reference...)
Last edited by rcarlberg; 03-21-2015 at 02:04 PM.
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