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
@mahgister, your messages can be broken down into quotation, such a lively language. Above all you are a man of letters, need to write books, that's your calling. I see this clearly despite my poor English.
@perkri
I find the idea of listening to an entire spool of wire a very interesting idea. Always appreciated/enjoyed calculus. The whole idea of what happens when you look at something at its infinite limit. Is it zero, one or infinity.

Would be very interested in doing that experiment. Also curious how that spool effects the SQ - being that a spool is an inductor?

As far as I can get it, Ted_denney doesn't listen to the whole spool. He cuts a piece of wire from it, determines its direction, and then marks the entire spool. Then he can use the wire from the spool in his cables according to his idea of how the strands should be directed in cables. It is just more convenient way to work.

As for the spool, the way a wire behaves when you turn it into a spiral is very complicated, it's not just a combination of LCR in different proportions. For example, it matters which way the spiral is twisted relative to the direction of the wire (clockwise or wise versa). There are lots of interesting things about audio inductors and transformers, but we're talking about wire here.
Sine wave =360 degrees, single phase AC. Current changes direction at 180 degrees. 

anton_stepichev OP
 what have you read of Essien to this day? Which articles?

I think that perhaps in Essien experiences with string internal variable force of tension is the beginning of an answer.... If pitch is not reducible to frequency because of this mechanical invariant linked to tension perhaps a string like a cable react differently affecting the sound result when the orientation of his constituants fiber are twisted in one direction or the other....

I will begin the book tomorrow if i am lucky....I have 9 articles of Essien  +a chapter of the book.....

anton_stepichev OP42 posts04-20-2021 3:44am
@djones
Why is it too far fetched?
You make a claim saying there is only one conclusion, I give an alternate conclusion you say is to far fetched. I fail to see how humans have bias is more far fetched than unknown signals hidden in wire unknown to science?? Let's not assume bias is to far fetched since we know it's a common human condition. You make an extraordinary claim concerning hidden signals, do you have any extraordinary evidence?

The problem is that we both can't prove our point using standard tests. They don't take too much into account, I wrote about it in my last answer to you.


You mean like a blind listening test? If you can't prove it with a blind listening test, then it is not there.


This hypothesis also has drawbacks. The wire is heard equally well both as an acoustic cable and as an IC, especially the difference is clearly noticeable in tube amps. A tube is controlled by grid voltage, there is no current in the circuit of tube grid, which means there is no field.


What's an acoustic cable?  Do you mean speaker cable?  I don't think you understand fields. Applied voltage generates a field independent of current. That will be an electrostatic field.



Also, this hypothesis does not explain the audibility of power cables that emit nothing but 60 hertz harmonics.


The level of the voltage changes at 60Hz. The frequency of the current may have a fundamental at 60Hz, but there will be harmonics up to many KHz and above.