Look folks, I am just trying to understand how wires work. I can measure 'differences' even today. Is it exactly 'microdiodes'? Who knows? Seems like a good hypothesis. Could it be something else, that gives similar results? I am open to any real suggestion. So far, no effective suggestions have yet been offered that are consistent with the actual test set-up.
For those who would like more info on this hypothesis, I recommend looking around the VandenHul website and look at VDH's comments.
For those who would like more info on this hypothesis, I recommend looking around the VandenHul website and look at VDH's comments.
john curl said:
Great. So am I.
But the "differences" you're measuring are differences in distortion. Distortion which, in light of these most recent measurements, apparently isn't distortion that's being produced by the cables themselves.
Given that the most recent distortion measurements indicate that the distortion you're measuring isn't being produced by the cables, why does this seem like a good hypothesis?
But John, on a much more modern, higher resolution system measuring significantly below where you're measuring, and even using the most bog standard cables commonly available, we don't get similar results. We don't get anything other than the generator's known distortions.
One real suggestion, and a good hypothesis is that what you've been measuring has ultimately been, for whatever reason, the limitations of your antiquated distortion analyzer.
There's no question that the Audio Precision System Two Cascade has significantly greater resolution than your 25 year old 1700B. Therefore by all rights if the distortion you're measuring is being produced by the cables themselves, that distortion should be far more evident when measured using the System Two Cascade.
But there is simply no sign of the picket fence of high order harmonics that your measurements show when by all rights they should be sticking up well above even the low order harmonics of the System Two Cascade's generator which are clearly evident in the AP plots.
Back in the old Mr. Huyn thread, Bob said to Mr. Huyn of your distortion plots:
Sorry if the graphs shake up your cozy little world...
What goes around seems to come around.
And it's worth noting that van den Hul's measurements, which you say he also used as evidence of his theory, were made with equipment as old if not older than yours.
se
Hi,
Certainly. I don't expect it to be easy or at all possible that the effect IS indeed diodic in nature.
Unless we're talking about heavily oxidized multi-strand copper wire perhaps.
We all know that that kind of wire has no place in audio or, do we?
Sp, what's going on?
Is it electrons jumping from one strand to another?
Hard to believe when you think it's electro-magnetic propagation that travels across the wire and electron movement is comparatively slow....
When we think about diodic or diode like behaviour, rectification at some frequency or frequencies should occur causing distortion.
All diodes, to some extent, present resistance which again would cause a voltage drop that, once again would be frequency dependent as diodes are non-linear resistors.
So, is this another urban myth?
Maybe, maybe not...I just don't think that with good, airtight insulation this is not likely to happen.
Other phenomena may be at work but diodic effects don't seem likely to me under the above conditions.
It is my feeling/experience that crossing of different metal boundaries can cause more worriesome artefacts than this one if at all it is real.
I've seen articles showing photos of this so called diodic effect but it doesn't prove a that it is indeed that and not somethong else that is being shown.
After all what was shown was distortion, not rectification effects.
To my ears solid core wire is preferable.
Why?
I can only guess, present suggestions, educated guesses, not prove.
Cheers,
Certainly. I don't expect it to be easy or at all possible that the effect IS indeed diodic in nature.
Unless we're talking about heavily oxidized multi-strand copper wire perhaps.
We all know that that kind of wire has no place in audio or, do we?
Sp, what's going on?
Is it electrons jumping from one strand to another?
Hard to believe when you think it's electro-magnetic propagation that travels across the wire and electron movement is comparatively slow....
When we think about diodic or diode like behaviour, rectification at some frequency or frequencies should occur causing distortion.
All diodes, to some extent, present resistance which again would cause a voltage drop that, once again would be frequency dependent as diodes are non-linear resistors.
So, is this another urban myth?
Maybe, maybe not...I just don't think that with good, airtight insulation this is not likely to happen.
Other phenomena may be at work but diodic effects don't seem likely to me under the above conditions.
It is my feeling/experience that crossing of different metal boundaries can cause more worriesome artefacts than this one if at all it is real.
I've seen articles showing photos of this so called diodic effect but it doesn't prove a that it is indeed that and not somethong else that is being shown.
After all what was shown was distortion, not rectification effects.
To my ears solid core wire is preferable.
Why?
I can only guess, present suggestions, educated guesses, not prove.
Cheers,
Frank, we are now talking about 3 separate possible distortion mechanisms. First, your primary interest is diodic distortion from current moving across strands probably already oxidized by exposure to air. This could be very real. Second, we have distortion in the external contacts of a cable as they are also exposed to air and vibration (yes, this matters). Third, is the distortion that I was looking for which would be intrinsic to the wire itself, and would be there with solid core as well as stranded. I think that all three are possible, and probably measurable.
fdegrove said:
I don't know that there's necessarily anything going on.
But if there is something going on and we truly want to find out exactly what it is and why, we first need to establish actual audibility of SOMETHING at least so we can have a known and reliable reference in order to put any subsequent theories to the test.
Otherwise we can sit here and speculate from now 'til Doomsday and not get any closer to the truth than we are now.
What's frustrating is that while thus far actual audibility hasn't been established, and while that's at least some evidence that there may not be anything going on, it's still not absolute proof that there isn't anything going on. While the failure thus far to demonstrate actual audibility may be sufficient for some to reach a firm conclusion that there can be no audible differences, for me, there's that bit of nagging doubt.
And I hate nagging doubts.
Which is why I would REALLY like to see someone once and for all demonstrate actual audibility. And why, instead of just dismissing the issue out of hand, I'm looking forward to these directionality listening tests.
Can't explain my particular preferences either. But personally I haven't any interest in speculating as to why until I can first demonstrate to myself that they've anything to do with actual audible differences. And since when it comes to the bottom line of enjoying reproduced music I don't really care why, I haven't much desire to demonstrate it to myself.
Though in the realm of general knowledge and curiousity, I would like to see the Great Cable Debate eventually resolved one way or the other.
That would free up much more time to spend doing um... er... hmmm...
ALL CABLES SOUND THE SAME!!!
se
Hi,
First of all, apologies for the way too hectic proofreading of my preceding post. It contains a number of spelling and synthax errors I'm not too proud of.
John,
Let's just say I'm in absolute agreement with the three most obvious and plausible causes of distortion here.
Just that you're already as I was too, addressing causes outside the cable proper, namely contact resistance at the connector side.
It's also at the connector that oxidation of wire is most likely to occur, or let say that region; the I/Cs extremities.
Mere soldering may set this of already....
And, to be sure not just that one single aspect: Peltier effects can be another player to name just one example.
Back to topic.
Yes, most cable is carelessly manufactured and at best exposed to air for a few hours (not just O2) before properly finished...But there's more than just that, insulators can chemically react with a copper wire as well, causing oxides of all kinds on the surface and in between strands.
This kind of contamination could theoretically cause all kinds of oddities.
Question is, how do you make this visible?
Not only that, how can we be sure it's that what we're showing and only that?
Surely, I'm not equipped for that.
I'd need assistance from the local university.
(A tip, Steve?)
Indeed, but I assume we can, to some extend, assume that diodic effects should be less present in solid-core wire? Less detrimental is perhaps a better way of wording.
Less total surface area being one argument.
Thank you very much for the reply.
Cheers,
First of all, apologies for the way too hectic proofreading of my preceding post. It contains a number of spelling and synthax errors I'm not too proud of.
John,
Let's just say I'm in absolute agreement with the three most obvious and plausible causes of distortion here.
Just that you're already as I was too, addressing causes outside the cable proper, namely contact resistance at the connector side.
It's also at the connector that oxidation of wire is most likely to occur, or let say that region; the I/Cs extremities.
Mere soldering may set this of already....
And, to be sure not just that one single aspect: Peltier effects can be another player to name just one example.
Back to topic.
Yes, most cable is carelessly manufactured and at best exposed to air for a few hours (not just O2) before properly finished...But there's more than just that, insulators can chemically react with a copper wire as well, causing oxides of all kinds on the surface and in between strands.
This kind of contamination could theoretically cause all kinds of oddities.
Question is, how do you make this visible?
Not only that, how can we be sure it's that what we're showing and only that?
Surely, I'm not equipped for that.
I'd need assistance from the local university.
(A tip, Steve?)
Indeed, but I assume we can, to some extend, assume that diodic effects should be less present in solid-core wire? Less detrimental is perhaps a better way of wording.
Less total surface area being one argument.
Thank you very much for the reply.
Cheers,
john curl said:
But don't see much likelihood of it in typical twisted stranded cables. That illustration on AudioQuest's site showing a strand alternately changing its position from the outside of the bundle to the middle of the bundle to illustrate their notion of "strand jumping" due to the different current densities between the outer periphery of the bundle and the center due to skin effect is highly misleading.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
In a twisted strand as they show here, the individual strands don't alternately dive to the center of the bundle and back out to the outside of the bundle. Instead, the individual strands maintain the same radial distance from the center of the bundle. Even their own drawing shows that much.
Now, if the strands were braided rather than twisted as they typically are, that would have strands changing position concentrically. Or if the cable were a rope lay (i.e. several bundles of twisted strands twisted together). But for your basic twisted multistrand wire, that doesn't happen.
By exposed to air do you mean oxidation or other airborne contaminants?
Except that this seems based on some rather wild speculations which I haven't seen any evidence to support.
I can't access van den Hul's website at the moment, but I seem to recall his claiming that this effect was due to copper oxide forming at crystal boundaries within the wire itself. Such a thing should be common knowledge to metallurgists, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of this being the case.
Perhaps. But at this point, whatever nonlinearities might be caused by these, they're currently below the System Two Cascade's radar.
se
Steve Eddy said:
Not to mention far below the resolution of ANY transducer used to hear it. Even if we take John's results for granted, the difference between El Cheapo and VDH are in order of 0.001% .
Hearable ? Errrr ... on what speaker exactly ?
Bratislav
PS if a piece of coax cable was making THAT much difference, I assure you that signals from the detector in a radio telescope would be carried by top of the range ultra high end interconnects at x000$ per foot.
They are NOT.
And signal levels we're dealing with there will make your average audio application look like a joke.
Hi,
Allow me to reply in your own house-style:
Why not?
No, you've just been mislead by the paper...How to prove it is another matter. They never do that, or do they?
Not as wild as you imagine...
Why do you need Aalt Jouk for? We (me as a designer and my partner doing the commercial work) supply a lot of bare wire to VDH, anything he fancies has been developped...Including dielectric barriers.
Uh? Yes. Uh?
Wazzdat?
I'll tell you. Some day...
Allow me to reply in your own house-style:
Why not?
No, you've just been mislead by the paper...How to prove it is another matter. They never do that, or do they?
Not as wild as you imagine...
Why do you need Aalt Jouk for? We (me as a designer and my partner doing the commercial work) supply a lot of bare wire to VDH, anything he fancies has been developped...Including dielectric barriers.
Uh? Yes. Uh?
Wazzdat?
I'll tell you. Some day...
fdegrove said:
Sure.
I thought I'd explained why not right after I said what you'd just quoted?
Eh?
Well, since I haven't seen any evidence that grain boundaries are comprised of copper oxide, I guess all I can do is imagine, eh?
Ok, so Aalt Jouk gets what he wants. What's that to do with his claims?
se
fdegrove said:
Careful. Sully mentioned Peltier/Seebeck effects on another forum and John chewed him out.
Well, I guess you'd need to figure out what kind of distortion it would likely produce, either frequency domain nonlinear distortion or time domain linear distortion and attempt to make the appropriate measurement.
As opposed to what? Some other distortion mechanism in the cable?
Well, if I hadn't mentioned it previously, Bruno works for Philips there in Belgium. You anywhere near Leuven?
se
Hi,
Audioquest's stab at it is just that, a stab.
Honestly, I don't believe a word of it. That's not to say the phenomenon doesn't exist. I just have a hard time believing strands changing position within a bunch of wires.
Depending on the manufacturer, I suppose we can have both types at once.
Yes, I'm only half an hour away from Leuven.
More importantly, I should get back in touch with a friend who works there as an assistant in the "Materials Research Department".
We lost touch when I moved to Germany a few years back.
I'll see what I can find on vdH's website regarding crystal boundary contaminants.
Cheers,
Audioquest's stab at it is just that, a stab.
Honestly, I don't believe a word of it. That's not to say the phenomenon doesn't exist. I just have a hard time believing strands changing position within a bunch of wires.
Depending on the manufacturer, I suppose we can have both types at once.
Yes, I'm only half an hour away from Leuven.
More importantly, I should get back in touch with a friend who works there as an assistant in the "Materials Research Department".
We lost touch when I moved to Germany a few years back.
I'll see what I can find on vdH's website regarding crystal boundary contaminants.
Cheers,
I don't know where and what was Mr Curl's answear about the Peltier effect, but I'll also try to give mine:
I've dealt with Peltier modules some years ago, and I studied basicly how they work.
From what I still know about that, it's one of the 3 thermoelectric effects (one other is the thermocouple, I don't remember the last one) and has to do with semiconductors. A peltier module is made of many P and N parts with a defined spacial organisation. Current flowing through this causes a temperature difference between the module's two faces.
I don't know how we could find any Peltier effect in a metal
I've dealt with Peltier modules some years ago, and I studied basicly how they work.
From what I still know about that, it's one of the 3 thermoelectric effects (one other is the thermocouple, I don't remember the last one) and has to do with semiconductors. A peltier module is made of many P and N parts with a defined spacial organisation. Current flowing through this causes a temperature difference between the module's two faces.
I don't know how we could find any Peltier effect in a metal
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