Scientists make progress by first learning from those who have gone before. This may require reading books or papers written 30 years ago or more. A person who refuses to do this is certainly not a scientist. Those who refuse knowledge will have to settle for ignorance instead.eriksquires said:
I'm happy to be deprecating, but not by the basis you claim.
I only reach my conclusions about people who can only quote old texts, or who are unwilling ot listen to questions becuase they wish to rewrite the problem to suite their own mental maps. Yes, science is cumulative. But when experimentation and observations cease it is not science, it's history, and those practicing it historians, and not even very good scientific historians.
Real scientific historians know that all scientific fields have this pattern happen routinely. Knowledge is gained, it replaces old knowledge and is by many treated as fact that will never again change, until it forced to. My statements of this are self evident to anyone who has actually studied the history of science.
For audio technology to go beyond where we have been we have to be looking for new measurements and ideas and for those to become more common. For instance, in the great pop-culture of speaker measurements we rarely see compression and distortion measured. FR and impedance are treated as gospel. We need to socialize more important measurements because FR and impedance alone are doodoo. The key word here is "alone."
Beyond what any audio analyzer would tell you today, where is the imaging Q? Where is the warmth, or naturalness and air ratio? Where is the Richter scale of best classical speakers, or most visceral? Are they in measurements already understood but not popularized?
Engineers and scientists working to connect perception with measurement and experiment are at the cutting edge. The rest of us are stuck within the boundaries of measurements and discussion frameworks set up for us long ago.
Best,
Erik
...not spending any time on cable stuff. The issues concerning researchers are signal processing, acoustics, speakers, mikes, formats.
Come on Erik. I base my comments on direct quotes of your words.
Come on Erik. I've provided links to documents that were written fairly recently, and you've neither recognized them, nor answered them.
This isn't rocket science, Erik. Esoteric cables either provide audibly improved or at least audibly changed sound quality, and they have been given many opportunities by many careful experimenters to perform and they failed.
You should be more careful about contradicting yourself, Erik. If science is cumulative then definitive experiments are definitive experiments and we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel to satisfy people who are committed to denial of the egregious flaws in their baseless theories.
Scientific historians know that if you keep performing the same experiment and nothing changes, then it is magical thinking to believe that anything different will take place just because someone's baseless theories are at stake.
Trouble is Erik, that you try to talk the talk without walking the walk as your single blind (not properly double blind) listening tests show.
The problem isn't that our current measurements fail to show the audible imperfections of our speakers, the problem is that the progress towards effectively dealing with those audible imperfections has been very slow.
I think that one reason why the progress towards effectively dealing with the well known audible imperfections of loudpseakers has been very slow is that so much time and effort has been wasted on junk science like esoteric speaker and interconnect cables.
You may rarely see them measured Erik, perhaps because you are so distracted by your apparent obsession with esoteric speaker cables.
Furthermore, it appears that when it comes to measurements, it appears that there is far more talk than personal accomplishments for you, Erik.
Speak for yourself, Erik. But, perhaps you should first inform yourself better, and discover that speaker directivity is more important than impedance and distortion.
...and what an impressively uninformed, unscientific (historical or otherwise) and closed-minded opinion it is.
I accept your hypothesis, though your use of semantics is silly.
My point is, a simple experiment showed a difference to me. It did not show value. I could not really run a double blind experiment, I ran out of eyes to blind, but it was enough for me.
If your hypothesis is true, then I wish we had a good way to express this to most people, as opposed to worshiping at the feet of cable makers for expensive tone controls. Alternatively, I wish I had a way of understanding WHY imaging changed. It could have been a case of serendipity, where a negative effect (the change in response caused by the cables) produced a desirable effect we could mimic, or even sell in a box.
Best,
Erik
By the way, Arny, you calling anyone "depricating" is funny. Is there anyone on this board more deprecating or willing to use deprecating labels to judge the opinions of others than you are? At least historians are respected in some countries.
Hahahaha, that's rich.
My points all stand. I'd like to see science progress. I don't like people who quote and paste math to ignore the perceptions or experiences of others. Neither science nor engineering can progress without working from observation. Too many, yes, like you, discount all observations and replace them with old data. <yawn> I find that disappointing.
Best,
Erik
Hahahaha, that's rich.
My points all stand. I'd like to see science progress. I don't like people who quote and paste math to ignore the perceptions or experiences of others. Neither science nor engineering can progress without working from observation. Too many, yes, like you, discount all observations and replace them with old data. <yawn> I find that disappointing.
Best,
Erik
Steer clear of personal remarks and criticisms or there will be penalties. Read the rules.
AntiCable Level 1 Classic speaker cables arguably wore the inductance crown until they discovered the advantage of twisted pairs with Level 2.
I was involved with the design of a CCTV system.
It used quite long runs of cables to the camera's.
I investigated different cables for the job.
I was amazed just how different two pieces of copper wire could be.
Some were quite resistive while others very low resistance.
Obviously capacitance and inductance play a role too as we didn't want the signal attenuating much.
It used quite long runs of cables to the camera's.
I investigated different cables for the job.
I was amazed just how different two pieces of copper wire could be.
Some were quite resistive while others very low resistance.
Obviously capacitance and inductance play a role too as we didn't want the signal attenuating much.
All fun stuff indeed. I'm not saying we need to value cables, in fact it's the opposite. I find the prices for expensive cables obscene beyond measure.
I wish I had had long ago the tools I have today, I probably could have had at least a small grasp on the situation.
But even when, if not especially, when we talk signal processing, I look forward to subjective opinion getting tied to a control, or slider on my PC to allow me to change a parameter of my experience on demand. Or even if it cost $5.
Conversely, I'd much rather have an automated way of measuring "imaging" or "warmth" than rely on the journalists (that is a deprecating label these days). For instance, what causes depth of imaging? Do some tube amps do it better? Why? Where's my JRiver/Media Monkey plugin for that?
That's really where I want to get to. Arguing whether I could hear a difference when using different cables is pointless. Yes, I heard it. No, it wasn't worth the money.
Best,
Erik
Dwarf pitching hadn't gotten into vogue when my degree was fabricated.
For the record, I am using Radio Shack flat cable wherever possible for speakers, and as i build a lot of amplifiers, the run is usually less than 24"
Some enterprising individual has probably made a fortune selling the ceramic insulators used in 440VAC lines as supports for speaker cables.
Not just fun, Erik. It is the stuff that matters, unlike obsessing over things like esoteric cables, shatki stones, and mpingo disks.
Your actions say the opposite.
That could be just a deflection.
Thanks for admitting that you really don't have a clue about audio cable technology.
They exist.
Two words: Sighted (or single blind) evaluation.
I'm sure you've been told this before: imaging sonics are perfectly preserved if the frequency, phase, distortion, and noise performance is within fairly easily obtained performance specs.
But, that requires logic with at least one level of indirection in it, and it is beyond the comprehension of many.
CCTV can have a bandwidth of 10MHz. If the impedance is not 75R you get frequency response errors. High frequency signal loss is a big problem due to dielectric losses and conductor skin effect. Nothing magic at all, just the very predictable consequences of frequencies roughly 1000x audio and much greater distances than you would get in a HiFi system
Cables and termination make a big difference in high bandwidth video. (It's what I do for a living) In audio it's a lot easier to get it right.
You must be looking at the wrong "datasheets", maybe the ones which worry about warmth, soundstage, graininess, blackness and similar nonsense.
Here is a humble *Brazilian* low cost speaker datasheet:
http://www.jblselenium.com.br/marcas/upload/50281f68c7ed0181e308cd43ee4aa770.pdf
it shows, along a ton of other useful data:
* Power compression at 3 levels: 0dB , -3dB , and -10dB .
* definition of power compression (how they measure it)
* harmonic distortion curves ( not just "a number") at 10% nominal power, from 20Hz to 20kHz
* full formula to calculate voice coil temperature
* explanation about non linear elements
and tons of extra data such as VC wire length.
Do esoteric speakers show such real verifiable practical data?
You are mixing the perceptual part of stereo reproduction with what comes out of the amplifiers and ultimately the speakers... also when you mention warmth then we are getting into feelings you get from the music...
With cables we know how signals flow, we understand cable construction we can measure the minute differences between cables... the point is can we hear a difference between properly engineered cables (i.e. no extremes of inductance or capacitance).
As to other comments on cables Davidsrsb has answered... we put all sorts of signals through cables from DC to GHz all have their problems and solutions we have advanced our understanding and measurement techniques since Mr Heaviside gave us the basics for transmission line mathematical modelling (telegraphers equations) and thus our understanding of how to get a signal from a to b have increased, hence you being able to type your views and others answer it as....
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