I joined two VW Forums to discover the Members are nearly all amateurs that have almost no knowledge of the product.
Some who should know better seem to be so badly educated and yet work as professionals in that field (automotive repair/technology) that I found I could not rely on anything from their replies. I gave up using the sites.
The manufacturer does not respond with any information.
The amount of energy that goes into threads like this always is truly amazing.
There is a serious topic/question at hand... tread dies off after a few posts.
Now we have the n-th thread about resistor sound, cable sound and what not
and it goes on FOREVER. 😱
There is a serious topic/question at hand... tread dies off after a few posts.
Now we have the n-th thread about resistor sound, cable sound and what not
and it goes on FOREVER. 😱
Andrew: try pistonheads. There was a guy there who was convinced his car went faster when he folded the rear seats down! these are the people who add up all the max HP gains on the hop ups they buy and are convinced they have 250HP when they only have maybe 190. When they go to a rolling road that gives an accurate figure they get grumpy and go to one that gives the number they want. I kid you not.
We had a local outlet called "Pistons and Components".
Now, they were professionals that knew their product.
I never got home to find they had supplied the wrong item.
Unfortunately they closed the Edinburgh outlet, Don't know if the Glasgow one is still operating.
And that reminds me of a Ford dealership in Edinburgh (maybe Laidlaws). They had two ladies that ran the parts department. They were brilliant. Far better than any other parts department I ever had to use.
Even better than the AVO dealership (my chassis number was AVO000075) in Semple Street (long gone). I had to return parts that were clearly never going to fit and usually they would not reimburse until after the manufacturer confirmed they were a faulty component. Ford rarely ever responded, so I lost out on quite a few occasions.
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Well, there was a little lower centre of mass there so maybe it helped the car going more stable, and thanks to that....
//
I wouldn't hurry for such a conclusion, but as you wish. I don't neglect the current achievements of technology and I do congratulate them, the people and the science behind them, but I also think that the audio domain should also deserve attention to innovations in any aspect.
Of course. Lots of experience.
I'm not chiding particularity someone, but a group with a certain behavior I think I described clearly in my previous posts
This doesn't mean I don't respect your approach towards knowledge if it is correct. Your level of discussion is at least mannered and argumentative, something that lacks much these days.
Newton's third law!
Is it certain?
I won't argue about this information, might it be a scientific analysis, because I haven't done anything better. But what if audible directionality of the described components really exists and your quoted explanation doesn't work for it. Will you dig further, despite many potential failures of finding a supporting evidence, or leave it be and choose the easier conclusion - nonsense 🙂?
Yes and no. But I wonder if it's worth to continue debating, because I already doubt it's going to lead to something useful.
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I can only speak for myself but I would certainly dig further, if there was good solid reliable evidence that indeed there is an audible difference. I do not believe that is the case though.
Jan
1. Anything audible, including influences by "something" new and unknown such as the Bulgarian Golden Ear (hereafter abbreviated "BGE") team's claims of "directionality" in electrical components, is always reproduced by a transducer that converts the electrical signal to acoustic waves, hence audible directionality should be measurable, please be kind expand on how we can measure it.
2. What if the vast majority aren't equipped with such golden ears as the BGE's in this thread, should people still hunt for brain ghosts that doesn't affect their reality?
3. Most obviously it isn't leading anywhere, because:
a) The vast majority can't hear it.
b) The BGE team haven't so far, besides trolling, produced anything tangible worth further relevant discussion.
Jan, you are putting the cart before the horse, ie you are relying on opinions/measurements experience from others and not experience of your own, and your statement suggests that you are not inclined to even try to discriminate fine changes according to direction of system cables or components.
I venture that if you were to diligently try to do so you may discover some subtle behaviours that 'don't add up' according to standard theory and common lore, and seed answers to long standing observed puzzling system behaviours.
A 'simple' system is likely to more revealing of these baseline behavious.
Dan.
As opposed to Narrow-minded Skeptical Ear, hereafter abbreviated "NSE". Sorry, couldn't resist it 🙂
Guys, this forum is centered around our hobby. I urged before, and I'm kindly asking you again let's try to stay civil!
Need I remind you that the original question of this thread was about the audible direction of Z-foil resistors in particular and not a general discussion whether you could hear/measure direction in components. So I am wondering who was doing the actual "trolling" all this time, huh 🙄
Measuring the effect of component directionality is really straightforward and almost anyone can do it. The method described is a differential test where the resolution is greatly enhanced before the subtraction by greatly removing any kind of signal components that have zero or low correlation to the test signal, read: noise reduction.
- define circuit you want to use, simplest thing would probably be a voltage divider (OK that's four combinations already, but still managable) and build it into a well shielded box
- select a short -- some seconds -- length of test signal which can be anything, including music
- play an "endless" loop, several hours in total, of this snippet with a good soundcard and record it with the same device, in sample-synchronous mode, 24bit
- remove the first hour (first 1000 loops or so) of it to reject settling effects in the setup, thermal stuff mostly, also make sure the environmental conditions are constant (no temp change etc, and preferable constant supply, no mains voltage changes -- hard to control but you can select a daytime where your mains is most constant)
- condense the recording in to one single length of the original snippet by time-domain averaging, this means that for every sample position in the sequence we use the average of all samples for that positions, this yields a 32bit floating point sequence where any non-correlated "noise" (hum, hiss, any spuriuos signals, etc etc) in the signal has greatly been removed (20...30dB can be achieved) whereas 100% correlated content will not be removed. Slightly decorrelated stuff will be reduced a bit, the higher the decorrelation the more so, therefore the reduction is frequency dependant. Still there is enough content of any effect that has signifcant correlation to the signal, which is what we assume for effect like directionality which we would think is a rather deterministic effect (correlated to voltage or current, not a random process).
This time-domain averaging is the only place were some specialized small tool, a PC program, is needed.
They key point is now that once we have several of these condensed snippets we can subtract them from each other to find the difference. This difference shows exactly what systematic change has been done to the signal because it eliminates all the content that is equally present in both snippets. You can analize it and you can even actually listen to it. Preferably one should equalize levels before subtraction because we want to have full rejection of the common signal. Also, any start time offset must be zero but that is a no-brainer and easily achieved.
To get a base line of the resolution of the setup you record at least two of these condensed snippets, subtract them and see what is left. Under perfect conditions all that is left is some sort of completely uncorrelated random noise. In practice there will be some signal left but it should be an undistorted copy of the original (but with some reduced high frequency content because uncorrelated jitter results in just this from the heavy averaging), as far as one can judge that when the signal already is in the noise floor. If the resididual is not very low and almost covered by the noise floor then something is wrong and you must find the cause and repeat the process.
Now we finally come to the actual test where we actually swap one component in direction and record again. I suggest 4 recordings of each orientation, so 8 in total, and after every round the component is swapped, so we have a ABABABAB sequence. This reduces the risk that a side effect (say, bad solder joint) dominates the result, we have to select those 2 from each set of 4 of type A or B that leave the best match (give the deepest null as described above) and use one of it (or do anothe time-domain average) to give two 'master' A and B we will use for the subtraction.
Finally, the difference of those masters, A-B, will show any changes that really come from the orientation change and this will have a high level of significance, a quite reliable result that is achievable even with amateur gear like any decent sound card.
Needless to say I can't be bothered to do this test myself but I'd be happy to help anyone trying this as much as I can.
- define circuit you want to use, simplest thing would probably be a voltage divider (OK that's four combinations already, but still managable) and build it into a well shielded box
- select a short -- some seconds -- length of test signal which can be anything, including music
- play an "endless" loop, several hours in total, of this snippet with a good soundcard and record it with the same device, in sample-synchronous mode, 24bit
- remove the first hour (first 1000 loops or so) of it to reject settling effects in the setup, thermal stuff mostly, also make sure the environmental conditions are constant (no temp change etc, and preferable constant supply, no mains voltage changes -- hard to control but you can select a daytime where your mains is most constant)
- condense the recording in to one single length of the original snippet by time-domain averaging, this means that for every sample position in the sequence we use the average of all samples for that positions, this yields a 32bit floating point sequence where any non-correlated "noise" (hum, hiss, any spuriuos signals, etc etc) in the signal has greatly been removed (20...30dB can be achieved) whereas 100% correlated content will not be removed. Slightly decorrelated stuff will be reduced a bit, the higher the decorrelation the more so, therefore the reduction is frequency dependant. Still there is enough content of any effect that has signifcant correlation to the signal, which is what we assume for effect like directionality which we would think is a rather deterministic effect (correlated to voltage or current, not a random process).
This time-domain averaging is the only place were some specialized small tool, a PC program, is needed.
They key point is now that once we have several of these condensed snippets we can subtract them from each other to find the difference. This difference shows exactly what systematic change has been done to the signal because it eliminates all the content that is equally present in both snippets. You can analize it and you can even actually listen to it. Preferably one should equalize levels before subtraction because we want to have full rejection of the common signal. Also, any start time offset must be zero but that is a no-brainer and easily achieved.
To get a base line of the resolution of the setup you record at least two of these condensed snippets, subtract them and see what is left. Under perfect conditions all that is left is some sort of completely uncorrelated random noise. In practice there will be some signal left but it should be an undistorted copy of the original (but with some reduced high frequency content because uncorrelated jitter results in just this from the heavy averaging), as far as one can judge that when the signal already is in the noise floor. If the resididual is not very low and almost covered by the noise floor then something is wrong and you must find the cause and repeat the process.
Now we finally come to the actual test where we actually swap one component in direction and record again. I suggest 4 recordings of each orientation, so 8 in total, and after every round the component is swapped, so we have a ABABABAB sequence. This reduces the risk that a side effect (say, bad solder joint) dominates the result, we have to select those 2 from each set of 4 of type A or B that leave the best match (give the deepest null as described above) and use one of it (or do anothe time-domain average) to give two 'master' A and B we will use for the subtraction.
Finally, the difference of those masters, A-B, will show any changes that really come from the orientation change and this will have a high level of significance, a quite reliable result that is achievable even with amateur gear like any decent sound card.
Needless to say I can't be bothered to do this test myself but I'd be happy to help anyone trying this as much as I can.
Thanks for the input, we are so far all very civilized, but you forgot to....
We want very much learn from you. 🙂
Nope, It goes the other way around, to remind you stay on topic, please tell us about your "the audible direction of Z-foil resistors" instead of derailing our questions and nonsense trolling, we want to learn from you. 🙂
ps. An off topic question if you don't mind, how many accounts have you, aka. BGE team, registered? 😛
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Here's what I can offer for your need to learn:
The OP needed the subjective opinions of forum members about the signal direction of bulk Z-foil resistors. He did not need measurements or objectivity.
If you want objective answers, based on the scientific model we discussed in this entire thread, I can not offer you any. If you wish, start another topic with the title "Please explain the theory behind bulk Z-foil audible subjective direction" and hope for good explanations.
If you are interested our BGE community. You are most welcome to give it a try, if you someday have the chance to travel. 😀
The OP needed the subjective opinions of forum members about the signal direction of bulk Z-foil resistors. He did not need measurements or objectivity.
If you want objective answers, based on the scientific model we discussed in this entire thread, I can not offer you any. If you wish, start another topic with the title "Please explain the theory behind bulk Z-foil audible subjective direction" and hope for good explanations.
If you are interested our BGE community. You are most welcome to give it a try, if you someday have the chance to travel. 😀
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No, his original wording was : "Is there anyone here who has tried to find the signal direction?" and OP did not specify how one must make one's findings.
So, trying to find something does in no way exclude a rational approach (like the one I outlined in previous post and which is based on listening), actually it rather promotes it.
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Ouch, no trolling for us objectivists, hmmm... but perhaps BGE's can share what species of mushrooms you are smoking so those of us objectivists who wish to become a little bit more subjectivized and susceptible can enjoy your party. 😀
How about subjectivist audiophile party on Varna beach the coming summer? 🙂
This is the 'fairies are at the bottom of every garden' argument. The burden of proof rests on those who claim to see fairies, not on those of us who don't believe they exist.Max Headroom said:
So which theory says that there will be no directional dependencies for electrical conduction through a solid.
The dependencies can be multiple and recursive.
Dan.
Although stated as a question, I think you should do some research before throwing groundless accusations at me. Check registration dates and forum activity of everyone of us. The account "selfy" is mine and is the only account I registered here. Additionally I can provide proof to the forum administration if required 😎
Yet again you are being rude. What part of "let's try to stay civil" eluded you?
We did not say we could measure it, that is why OP asked for subjective opinion. If you are interested in measuring audible differences, please feel free to start your own thread.
So far I was unable to correlate specific measurements and sound properties of components. Signal generators and oscilloscopes prove to be useful and reliable tools to a certain extent in building audio equipment, but eventually you enjoy and appreciate music with your ears and your mind.
I won't go into further detail here, since it would still be an off-topic discussion.
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There can be directional dependencies - that is how we make diodes. However, these arise when there is deliberate or accidental asymmetry in the composition of the solid. A resistor is designed to avoid such asymmetries. In its simplest form it consists of two leadout wires (of identical materials) with junctions (identical either side) to a resistive material, which will be intended to be symmetric. So we have symmetric construction using symmetric materials. Minor asymmetries due to construction (e.g. bigger weld on one end) only affect stray capacitance, which is small for a resistor and of no consequence at the low frequencies of audio.Max Headroom said:
However, let us suppose that we have a faulty resistor which has some diode-like behaviour. There would probably be no correlation between the orientation of the asymmetry and the printing. The correlation between perceived sound and resistor orientation would depend mainly on the circuit details, not the 'signal path' direction as in most cases DC bias would swamp any AC signal. Also, such an effect would be more commonly seen in cheaper resistors which get less checking at the factory - so people are looking for directional effects in the very place where it is least likely to be seen: expensive resistors.
A directional resistor is faulty.