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 2 responses by nonoise

That's similar to what a cable maker did when I had him make some cables for me back in early '90s. He was a local out in Glendale so I went to check out his cables. He had a workshop in his backyard and in it he had spools of different brands of cables and practically every type of connector you could imagine.

I watched as he made some speaker cables for the length I needed. After deciding on which cable, he'd lay them out, one at a time and put the leads of his tester on both ends and check some measurements. Then he'd reverse the cable and do it again.

After orienting them the way he wanted, I asked him why he did it and he said he wanted them to all "go" the same way, and when finished with the assembly, marked them accordingly. 

I don't know what it was he was measuring or what he ran through them as he did it, but it was apparent that something was directional in the cable. I'm just surprised that people are still debating this.

All the best,
Nonoise