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 9 responses by antigrunge2

...unless you lead in front (in thought) you have nuttin‘ but ***holes in front of you... Another fine example of directionality ...


oooops: how decidedly unscientific of me!
I find it astounding that one of the most eminent cable manufacturerers makes an unambiguous case for directionality and yet all manner of pundits refute it without offering any substantive argument. This sort of thread is useless.
As to science: before Galilei the world was deemed flat because scientists didn‘t know what to measure: geddit?
Uuh ooh aah

we have the ‘scientists’ disagreeing. Maybe we are finally getting somewhere... Fat Chance!
Maybe we should get them to debate the conductivity aspects of molecular lattice structures in crystals next....
@kevn,

methinks the basic fallacy isn’t that computers can’t hear but rather that Human minds haven’t found the right measurement methods to program them appropriately. Ultimately AI will lead us to codify hitherto uncodified human sentiments such that computers can reflect them, we are just not there yet and I question whether pure two-dimensional, scalar models will ever appropriafely reflect the complex patterns of acoustics and human hearing.
@mahgister,

thank you for appropriately calibrating my comment: not l’Homme Machine but rather the current limitations to defining appropriate measurement in borderline acoustical phenomena were my direction of travel. This level of debate, though is a pleasure compared to the somewhat crude  ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t hear it’ nonsense.
...and drone on he will...One can only hope that he‘ll find his inner self eventually.