I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

[Curly Woods]

Originally Posted by BudP

Michael,

The above is the truth. All sonic differences lie in the dielectric components used in a cable. Ultimately all tonal and transient differences come down to losses, unless a serious mistake has been made with respect to materials and a resonance has been introduced in the audible frequency response. This is a difficult thing to do.

There are amplifiers with instabilities that require a certain combination of LCR to make them perform properly. Sy likely can name a few, but for the bulk of any differences you must look into dielectric materials.

May I suggest that you invest some money in some Litz wire and various woven tubes, available in craft stores in the decorative sewing departments. They will have cotton paired with, Rayon, Orlon, Nylon, Lycra (whatever that actually is), and likely others. The % mix is on the package. Use these as coverings for otherwise bare Litz wire cables and find out which "sound" the best to you. Then you might be able to begin to understand how these materials alter what you hear.

Bud

Bud anything that Aczel writes is not what I would call sound thinking from past readings of his work. Been familiar with his prose for many years. Not objective at all.

I do not believe that any of the amplifier designs that I have sold ever suffered from any instability. As and example the Krell amplifiers all could drive Apogee Scintilla and their one ohm loads with aplomb. Lesser amplifiers were known to go up in smoke even attempting to try and drive these speakers. But the ones that could, what a divine sound indeed. One of the few solid state designs that I ever felt had a musical involving sound.

[BudP]

As for wire purity, I can say that typical copper from C, with it's 99% purity might sound slightly duller than western mfg copper, typical 99.9999% pure. However, the examples I draw this from were in direct copies of some of our audio transformers, not a cable, and there are so many possible culprits, isolating it to the copper and it's higher DC resistance and more likely surface contamination, is a long stretch.

For bare wire, meaning no corrosion control, silver seems to have a slightly more useful benefit over the long term as it's corrosion is still capable of passing a signal. I do not know if either bare copper or bare silver have any inherent benefit when teamed up with specific dielectrics. I would be surprised to find this to be true.

As for the doubts about the statement I quoted, it does not matter who said it, this is how an electric field progresses down a locational conductor. And, since any particular electrostatic moment will take your entire system to express in, you have to judge the relative losses in the rest of the system dielectrics too, not just the cables. Amplifiers and other signal processing devices are not monolithic devices. There are a large number of different dielectric materials in them and each one of them will have a portion to add to the cumulative signal loss.

Bud

[Pano]

So you don't think that lead, iron, nickel, gold, zinc or whatever else wire would have an effect on the sound - if DCR is the same? I have made speaker cables out of solder - in a pinch. More than once. They did actually work.

And for dielectrics, how about good old PVC?

[cbdb]

Originally Posted by cbdb View Post

Great stuff. Particularly this statement; "Similarly, anything that takes place inside the conductor such as boundries, grains, and all that junk are irrelevant, since any energy that enters the surface of the conductor is lost as heat anyway. ... it never again contributes to the information travelling along the axis of the conductor"

cbdb, this is quite funny, when I first read Hawksford's paper, his 'explanations' coincided with listening tests I've done on many different cables without me knowing of his work. Then some clown that doesn't have the guts to state his name came along with the statement that you've quoted and you are amazed by that, very scientific indeed. Do you really think that "boundaries, grains and all that junk" are irrelevant?

Did you understand any of Hawksfords math? Did you understand any of the article other than his conclusion? I doubt it. The only reason you believe him is because it strokes your ego. (it supporrts your beliefs) How much of the article in the Audio critic did you read? Some clown who knows as much or more than Hawksford. Hawksfords "scientific paper" only shows up in a HiFi mag? With out peer review, that papers not, well, worth the paper....

And yeah I do think all that junk is irelevant until someone can prove it isnt. And you nor anyone elses ears are proof.

[BudP]

Pano,

I am not certain of the effect. The C wire, at 99% pure is polluted enough to require about two AWG sizes larger in diameter to provide the same DCR for a given usage length. So, a number of possible culprits to point towards for what difference was heard.

Vinyl is actually a good, if evil smelling dielectric. This would be raw vinyl. I have some bare copper Litz wire cables made with the stuff and it is just a bit less entertaining to listen to than polyurethane / nylon coated Litz with small amounts of polyethylene shrink tubing spaced down it's length.

A PVC coating on that same bare Litz wire was a bit more colored and slightly congested in character in direct comparison (these two bare copper Litz cables were all from Red Rose run by one M Levinson).

The lengths on the above three materials were all 3 meters per side.

I think that PVC in fairly short lengths will be a pretty benign dielectric and I use it on our output transformers without shame. Nylon selved Litz wire is also very neutral sounding, as you have heard for your self at Gary Pimm's, under some pretty revealing conditions. And, anhydrous Nylon paper (Nomex) is a marvelous dielectric material, though we use one of the infused varieties, as you know from our transformers you have worked with.

Bud

[anatech]

Hi Passion,
A bit late, but I just have to comment on your cable tests and reporting of the numbers.

No one in a technical field uses the decibel scale to compare differences in errors. The differences are always measured in relation to the input signal (in this case). Attempting to relate errors to each other greatly exaggerates that difference. Your actual numbers may be fine, but the reporting is entirely useless. Is this an attempt to prove the differences are easily audible?

The differences you hear may be perfectly audible to you, but presenting evidence this way runs the risk of diverting the attention away from the actual cause(s) for this.

On the plus side, you've done some experiments with great care in order to show these tiny differences. What is your error budget for your setup?

Hi Curly Woods,

I have no hard feelings toward anyone here. If you choose not learn to listen acutely, that is not my problem. I taught myself how and what to listen for from experience. If that is too far fetched for many of you to comprehend, I have nothing constructive to offer in a discussion here.

This statement tells me that you are only here to push your point of view. You are unwilling to consider any other position, and yet you ask the same from all of us. I must say that you are assuming a lot of everyone, rather unfairly I must say.

I do not know anyone who does not listen to the music. In fact, the people who don't understand electronics or know much about audio can be excellent judges of quality. They just know what they like or don't like. That's as simple as it gets. I know because I spent many years dealing with the public as an audio salesman, then a few decades dealing with them when things weren't working properly. These people do know what they are hearing, and 99% do not hear any difference between interconnects. That's probably because they have good equipment that is set up well. Not a single "passive preamp" among them.

You are on your own with this one. I will not play your games any longer.

Just because he, and many others don't agree with you is no reason to act like this. Try looking at you from another person's perspective for a change.

Over this period I can discern if the cabling has made a positive or negative impact on "my" system. Scientific, no not in the eyes of many. Does it work. It does for me.

That's cool. Then you have selected what works best in your exact situation. You can not take this data and extrapolate to anyone else's system though. Other than that, fair enough.

Does this make the scientific crowd happy.

That is an ill-defined term I think. Most people here listen carefully, but also own test equipment. I can tell you that if I hear something I don't like, I wish to "fix it", much like any other technical person. I am lucky in that I can usually find what bothers me and actually measure it. You seem to have a problem with SY as well. I can tell you from personal observation that he listens carefully. And yet SY has some equipment as well.

I think you take an extremist view, and that will clash with any moderate around here. It's almost like any involvement from any test equipment is a sin that calls for excommunication from your church of sonic heaven.

I have never twisted anyone's arm in an effort to brainwash or influence them.

This statement is not exactly true in effect. From one salesperson to another, you know full well that many customers come in looking at you as the expert. It's your job to select and match a system that will provide quality reproduction for many years. That means that all you need do is suggest something, and that is just as good as twisting their arm. This is what sales is all about. Sell yourself, then sell what you want. Accessories is the only item that offers a good markup, so you sell accessories. Stands, wire, speaker wire, tape (?) and cleaning supplies. You sell it all, if not, you are a poor salesman and can expect a talk from your manager.

This debate will go on for ever between those that do not believe that people hear anything and those that feel that they do.

As long as no consideration is given to the other argument, yes. As I have stated, most people accept a balance. It's an extreme view that will run into trouble. Extreme in either direction.

I am just a little tired of the constant innuendo that the moderators allow in this forum.

Well, thank you for your support. For one, we try to allow the adults look after themselves. Their are no hall monitors here. We are forced to step in once things get out of hand. Now, the "constant innuendo" you are talking about has two sides. Essentially you are talking about two sides to an argument. No one has complained that your constant harping of what constitutes the truth for you appearing in most the threads you participate in. So, look at your complaint again. Every time you post, consider that many other people may consider what you are saying as "constant innuendo" the other way.

I am not here to create issues, but it is obvious that somewhere we have a disconnect between what people hear and how it is proven.

You just insulted almost everyone here. Perhaps there is an improper connection between how you hear and how it is proved? I'm just looking at your argument the other way around.

I am trying to find out why these differences exist.

So is almost everyone else here. The only difference is that many of us do understand what certain measurements represent about sound quality. That is something you should investigate. All data should be good to you, considering the lengths you are going to reach your answer. Excluding repeatable tests or experiments will not help you get to where you want to go. What you may want to do is investigate audio measurements to see how it compared to what you hear. You can rent that equipment, you don't have to buy it like many of us have. Run your own tests.

Yes I got angry, any one would if they were continually called out as not being able to prove something.

You make the claim, you must be able to defend it. This is especially true if what you are claiming is in opposition to the accepted state of the art. It is that simple.

Doug you should have posted that you do not hear them. Obviously Passion and others do.

This is a clear example of what you say that is not supported through controlled experiments. Believing this requires a suspension of the laws of physics. The human hearing mechanism is not designed to differentiate between loudness differentials of those magnitudes. Any audiologist can tell you that, these people specialize specifically on what you can and can not hear. They test people every single day. Yes, I have had those tests more than once in the last three years.

I understand your opinion, but this does not change my views one iota. My years of being around very good audio equipment(as well as mid-fi) have allowed me to hear differences in all types of equipment. We will just have to disagree on this one.

This is my point. You are in disagreement with just about everyone and you have continually stated that your views will not change. You are not looking for answers, you are trying to browbeat other people to agree with your viewpoint. Much like a Missionary, you are right and it's up to you to bring the truth to the poor ignorant masses.

I have been to many CES's and meet a great many engineers from all of the upper end companies. They all have reasons why things sound different and I am sure that they fully understand why their designs sound the way they do.

This is exactly the reason why you think the way you do. The truth will never be told at sales events (been there myself), the truth interferes with sales. My own long experience has illustrated that salespeople are generally the most confused lot of them all. Consider that most of the info you get was from "white papers" (sales mumbo jumbo masquerading as technical truth), sales material and the magazines sold in most high end stores. Sales people were always the most difficult to deal with when it came to warranty issues and what their understanding of how things worked.

These have not been found or we would know the reason by now.

Many have. I told you this before.

Passion at least may have a viable clue with his testing.

I wish he did, but this is not the case. The numbers he was talking about are inaudible, so maybe there is something else at play here.
More importantly and stunningly basic to his testing is that he does not know what his margins of error are. In fact, it is possible the differences are swamped by the uncertainty of the test. In other words, the noise may exceed the measured difference! That would render the test useless, and misleading.

-Chris

[anatech]

Hi Curly Woods,

I do not believe that any of the amplifier designs that I have sold ever suffered from any instability. As and example the Krell amplifiers all could drive Apogee Scintilla and their one ohm loads with aplomb. Lesser amplifiers were known to go up in smoke even attempting to try and drive these speakers.

I was waiting for this.

The other amplifiers were not "lesser" by any stretch of the imagination! The load presented by these speakers was unrealistic and well off standard by anyone's metric. The designers of those speakers should have been fired simply for producing a product that was not matched for the market.

The big problem, sales people everywhere decided to use the Apogee Scintilla as a quality test for an amplifier. Words can not describe how utterly silly that was. Of course, these people were the same ones who thought using a Counterpoint (or any tube) preamp to drive Bryston amplifiers was a good idea too. The classic mis-match and almost every high end store did this.

I'm sorry, but you'll excuse me if I don't recognize the lack of knowledge that exists even to this day among audio sales people. We had to pick up the pieces and fight for warranty in impossible situations. How many other amps died driving Polk SDA's? Sales people are the ones who put equipment together with very little knowledge of how things work. Boom.

-Chris

[cbdb]

Originally Posted by Passion

Sorry, you still don't understand my measurements...

20dB (about 10 times) is the difference in the magnitude of losses between cable A and cable B. In cable A looses are 93dB below the input signal, while in cable B losses are 112 db below the same input signal. That 19dB difference is the actual difference, not using any scaling or tricks to show it in a misleading way. You just have to understand what these measurements mean (and then they'll be easy to accept.)

Best,

R

I dont think you understand your measurements. Sy is right. Its the signal not the losses that matter. For a 2v input one cable delivers 1.99v the other 1.9999v (a 20 db diff) You think you can hear the diffference? How bout a 60 db difff 1.9999v compared to 1.9999999999v do I need to go on? For an engineer your math isnt very good.

[jlsem]

I dont think you understand your measurements. Sy is right. Its the signal not the losses that matter. For a 2v input one cable delivers 1.99v the other 1.9999v (a 20 db diff) You think you can hear the diffference? How bout a 60 db difff 1.9999v compared to 1.9999999999v do I need to go on? For an engineer your math isnt very good.

In which post does Passion state he could hear a difference?

John

[cbdb]

Sorry I didnt mean him personaly. He was saying that these figures showed the reason people prefered high end cables. (I assumed he meant prefered there sound)