IME the room/speaker interface is not relevant - from my perspective it's equivalent to saying that a real piano won't sound right unless it's placed in precisely the right position in the room ...
Yes, knowing what is causing the sound defects is key - which is what I address, and it turns out to be nearly all electrical in origin.
"For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible." - Stuart Chase
Credit where due; I took a week long class on "connectivity" from AMP. They went from intra-die up every link in the chain. Imagine a surface. A speck of gold bonds to it. Then another spec. They build up in a porous stack of grains as the slowly cover the surface. Thick enough, they plug the pores.
It was a Bell Labs engineer who said the red gel was basically Vaseline.
I saw one "decent" connector in an EDN about 20 years ago. It was a stack of kapton flex-circuits that were compressed by a plates and a through bolt. It was designed for fighter aircraft. Plain old barrier strips are darn good for speaker cables. Far better than binding posts or any exotic banana plug. You can take a solid wire off a plain old wall plug after 50 years and the copper is still shiny under the screw. Bare copper on bare brass with lots of force. Wire wrap would nick the wire on every corner and those tiny spots were air-tight.
We used to have a saying in the lab. "No such thing as a good connector" I wish I had a wonderful solution for everyone, but I don't. It does leave me with not chasing things I know are not significant in our application, even if theory says the parameter exists on some scale. That leaves me to concentrate on the 90% problem. Speakers.
The trouble is, 'I know' it is significant - because everytime I do something to fix it, the sound improves. Being a rational sort of guy, I therefore repeat the 'medicine' at every opportunity ... 😀
When I read that I thought someone was taking the p***. Didnt realise whose post it was!
There must be something vastly wrong with your system if you can manage to perform so many improvements.
Next you're gonna tell us you predominantly listen to pink .... noise. You know, to keep your ears calibrated or something.
almost there
While this is sort of what occurs, some of the details are incorrect. The "oxides" are not the problem "balling up" with gold plating under 100 uinch 2.5 microns";
rather, it is that the copper substrate, if there is no nickel or palladium, etc. diffusion barrier migrates through the micropores and then contaminates and oxidizes on the surface, exposing the micro-asperities as the primary contact points (the surface topography of the substrate is of prime importance here, hence the use of electropolishing for really critical applications)
This is a well established and resolved problem in engineering, radio wave astronomy, contact issues, etc.
The real problem is really bad plating, usual commercial coatings are, at most, 1/10 the required thickness (1/4u or less due to cost) and often w/o a diffusion barrier, hence the above problems.
I didn't take a week long course, I did this in the radio/microwave/aerospace industry for 4 decades, and helped determine many of the mil spec details
here are some typical data for precision work; you'll never see this on most audio gear though... waayy too expensive
http://www.ultraplating.com/specs.pdf
John L.
While this is sort of what occurs, some of the details are incorrect. The "oxides" are not the problem "balling up" with gold plating under 100 uinch 2.5 microns";
rather, it is that the copper substrate, if there is no nickel or palladium, etc. diffusion barrier migrates through the micropores and then contaminates and oxidizes on the surface, exposing the micro-asperities as the primary contact points (the surface topography of the substrate is of prime importance here, hence the use of electropolishing for really critical applications)
This is a well established and resolved problem in engineering, radio wave astronomy, contact issues, etc.
The real problem is really bad plating, usual commercial coatings are, at most, 1/10 the required thickness (1/4u or less due to cost) and often w/o a diffusion barrier, hence the above problems.
I didn't take a week long course, I did this in the radio/microwave/aerospace industry for 4 decades, and helped determine many of the mil spec details
here are some typical data for precision work; you'll never see this on most audio gear though... waayy too expensive
http://www.ultraplating.com/specs.pdf
John L.
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This reminds me of when rational-science types duke it out with faith-religion types. These never end well, if at all.
And as always, things like wire directionality having an audible effect on an audio system: only a double blind test can prove that it exists. By the way, James Randi is offering up a $1,000,000 prize if anybody can prove in a double blind test that a $7250 speaker cable is actually better than Monster Cables. Why hasn't anybody gone and claimed the money yet?
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Because that cable may alter the frequency response a bit, turning an extraordinary claim into a mundane one.
We actually set up a blind test on wire directionality with a very vocal guy who claimed that it was trivially easy to hear. When it came time to actually do the test (he was sent cables with the directionality randomized for him to sort), he backed out of it. Steve Eddy will remember this very well. 😀
We actually set up a blind test on wire directionality with a very vocal guy who claimed that it was trivially easy to hear. When it came time to actually do the test (he was sent cables with the directionality randomized for him to sort), he backed out of it. Steve Eddy will remember this very well. 😀
You're talking (writing) to an anomaly.
Best to regard it as an internet bot, with autonomous and interactive functions.
It's triggered by rational respond posts, for which the bot has algorithms which combine interesting sounding words to long sentences, but without factual meaning.
After a preset time has passed without a reaction, it returns to its default setting and posts a repeat message to trigger new candidates into responding.
The more you respond, the more active it becomes.
Only people who can hear the difference are allowed to take part. You obviously chose the wrong candidate.
In all seriousness, I will tell you its one great virtue: it doesn't seem to ever get angry or lash out. That's remarkable, but perhaps expected from an algorithm.
No, that person said they could hear wire directionality as a rule, but that he could not hear it in the test wires he was sent.
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