Let us assume that by some severe incompetence or extreme cleverness a wire maker managed to make a truly directional wire i.e. one which exhibited higher conductivity in one direction. Let us assume 10% higher conductivity in one direction - much bigger than is likely. This wire is then used as the 'flow' conductor in an audio interconnect. Assume conductor resistance of 1R (might be less for a short interconnect). Assume a load resistance of 10k (might be higher for many systems). Then the distortion produced by this highly unlikely wire will be around -106dB. Probably not audible. If we changed direction the distortion would be opposite polarity; the change of polarity would only be audible if the original distortion was clearly audible too.
Sorry to bring numbers into a discussion about alchemy.
Sorry to bring numbers into a discussion about alchemy.
Thank you for this. It's very enlightening for me. Very Brecktian.
I've heard that the English<French<Roman<Greek word "person" originally meant "the voice behind the mask". In this context it's easier to see the "personhood" of the dogs and cats and raccoons we live with.
All good fortune,
Chris
In the school science fair I wanted to transmit music from an IR LED to a photoreceptor. Having very little idea what I was doing, I never succeeded. However the circuit that was left on the bench was able to detect whether there was an energized extension cord near.
So in the science fair I simply brought the circuit and demonstrated that it would buzz whenever the extension cord was remotely close, it would work at a surprising distance.
I still have the 1st place ribbon, and I don't know how I feel about that.
Short answer....couple of decades, working out how to measure and analyse the effects, nope.
The problem, obvious when we read your posits, is you are chasing something that do not exists.
Nothing, in my knowledge, accurately reproduce sounds. No mike, no sound engineer that highly manipulate near every instrument you will listen to, in a totally artificial and subjective way, no speaker, and even, no electronic gear.
There is the difference between people that believe in a world of utopia, "accurately reproduced sound", and people living in a real world of "Nicely (re)produced music".
Let-me add that, for nothing in the world, I would like to live in your world: When the production of a record is successful, it sound hundred time better than the "real thing" (that had never existed in studios, because, most of the time, even the musicians were not playing in the same time and even, often, the same place). And the subjective way most of these records are produced offers hundred times more pleasure to the listeners.
As I say often, hifi is a make believe game, and designing an illusion show with the methodology of rocket science will not produce a success on Broadway. Although the same laws of physics apply in both cases.
And, as I presume that even Von Braun had to appreciate the Broadway shows, I will never understand the aggressiveness of the pseudo-scientific fundamentalists of this forum.
You are totally free to prefer the gears that measure the best, let the others choose the ones that sound the best.
Bon voyage.
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Last few months I got several cables open on one channel but did not get any "directional" defects at all so no chance to measure any of such stupid defect. Your example show that logically, less distortion is to be expected at higher impedance load. Yet Ed Simon stated :
Also do you have any opinion or comment on what JN said?
We'll forgive you just this once.... Try not to do it again....
Perhaps Max should apply some goop to himself... Goop bootstrapping goop?
Yes as usual, you think that such an anomaly would never have been observed in any physics experiment or R&D lab. People have used lock-in amplifiers to observe extremely small signals for decades in many contexts.
But as I asked, every wire or cable has a self noise. Have you considered one direction preferred over the other in the basic formulation of Nyquist's theorem? As jn points out the due diligence on these things is a pain a big pain.
Ed,
Great thanks for being one of the only people to actually try and generate data!
In a wide-band (10Hz-1.6MHz / >90dB dynamic range) single-ended distribution with literally thousands of high-quality Kings and Amphenol BNC connectors of supposedly superior characteristics we saw sooo many oddities which were difficult to explain. In all cases these disappeared when the offending connector was cleaned or cable replaced. As a result of this I set up connector cleaning and maintenance as a PM task which the techs despised.
May I suggest if you are going to investigate further, since you have already vindicated soldered joints of any wrong-doing, take the raw cable stocks and solder them to the test jig sans connectors?
I have had a lot of experience with nickel as a conductor: in addition to numerous connector problems, one of the steps in molding optical discs is the creation of a stamper for the mold. This is done through nickel electro-deposition. One of the issues which is primary in creating a family of stampers is forcing nickel passivation, something it also does by itself naturally which is the growth of an oxide film. When making stamper daughters the nickel mother had to be partly passivated to allow separation, but not too much or current flow would be insufficient.
My point being nickel is a poor connector material which is pervasive in cheap RCA connector manufacture, and can cause problems both at the male-female interface as well as where the wire is crimped to the nickel terminal tag. I submit that in further testing and discussion about wire or cable characteristics, no nickel-bearing connector systems be used or considered for testing...please! Indeed connectors of any type need to be omitted, they are a confounding variable.
Thanks again for all your efforts!
Howie
Didn't find that to be a problem, presumably there is a much more intimate contact between the metals when plated vs spring loaded contacts. It looked to me like nickel connector performance was very dependent on contact force, as one factor.
The original version everything was soldered in for testing. As mentioned the tests were on cables being directional, not wires. Although some testing suggested there may be an issue with wires, particularly at frequencies getting to be around a few hundred kilohertz. I suspect this is due to skin effect and surface micro-fractures.
The conclusion in my article was that most folks testing cables would notice a difference as they would be cleaning the connectors as they inserted and removed them.
Now the critics keep assuming things that ain't so. I drive the shield of the cables under test with the same signal as the center conductor from a different resistor divider. The ground link has changed from a copper wire to a copper ribbon to silver.
Today's picture of a cable under test forward and reversed.
Attachments
Maybe some clues as to what is going on re wire/cable directionality.....
I have 12" M-M RCA cables as connection of DAC to my amplifier.
When reversing the direction of these cables the nature of the depth information changes, subjectively 'sorta' like when reversing speaker polarity and reversing only one cable causes a sideways shift in perceived centre image and tonal asymmetry.
I am yet to confirm but I suspect that cable/circuit noise behaviour is different for each half cycle thus causing subjective directional behaviours.
I keep my connectors polished and contact oil treated, and reversing both the IC cables direction does not alter LR image positional or LR tonal balance so I am confidant that connector contact resistance is not the issue.
Also considering that wire drawing deforms the wire directionally, I think it is safe to assume that discontinuities and dislocations will have a mechanical directional bias or asymmetry.
Dan.
I have 12" M-M RCA cables as connection of DAC to my amplifier.
When reversing the direction of these cables the nature of the depth information changes, subjectively 'sorta' like when reversing speaker polarity and reversing only one cable causes a sideways shift in perceived centre image and tonal asymmetry.
I am yet to confirm but I suspect that cable/circuit noise behaviour is different for each half cycle thus causing subjective directional behaviours.
I keep my connectors polished and contact oil treated, and reversing both the IC cables direction does not alter LR image positional or LR tonal balance so I am confidant that connector contact resistance is not the issue.
Also considering that wire drawing deforms the wire directionally, I think it is safe to assume that discontinuities and dislocations will have a mechanical directional bias or asymmetry.
Dan.
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