Silvered copper sound like...well, I am not allowed to say that
Goldplated copper is supposed to sound very good, but havent heard it
Middle of the road would be tinned copper, which I use fore speaker wire...its OK, well mine are
Signal travels faster on the surface than in the middle, which should be why silvered copper just make things worse
Plus a million other design combinations, mostly strange ones
Well, I suppose thats common knowledge
Inductanse and capacitanse are other issues that an amp can be sensitive to
Then there is solid wire contra litz wire...solid wire is my preferred cable
Insulataion materials does make a difference too, but I dare not go too deep into that as I have found that with a good balanced setup those things doesnt matter all too much...a good balanced setup sounds good on its own, without much hazzle 🙂
btw, the term "revealing" is mostly grosely misinterpreted
Goldplated copper is supposed to sound very good, but havent heard it
Middle of the road would be tinned copper, which I use fore speaker wire...its OK, well mine are
Signal travels faster on the surface than in the middle, which should be why silvered copper just make things worse
Plus a million other design combinations, mostly strange ones
Well, I suppose thats common knowledge
Inductanse and capacitanse are other issues that an amp can be sensitive to
Then there is solid wire contra litz wire...solid wire is my preferred cable
Insulataion materials does make a difference too, but I dare not go too deep into that as I have found that with a good balanced setup those things doesnt matter all too much...a good balanced setup sounds good on its own, without much hazzle 🙂
btw, the term "revealing" is mostly grosely misinterpreted
Re: God is in the Nuances
Nik
I did try, but it set off my BS detector very quickly. I couldn't possibly plough thro' more than a couple of paragraphs it was so turgid.
You have to take account of every little clue and nuance when reading this kind of stuff nowadays. In days gone by, publishing was an expensive business, and this meant that a great deal of rubbish was sifted out by editors.
Nowadays ANYONE can publish ANYTHING with barely even a financial penalty.
This is a situation pointed out some years ago by Stuart Brand, in his book, The Media Lab.
Now we all have to evaluate all the information we recieve in terms of its provenance, i.e. to what extent can we verify its source and veracity.
Once a photograph was evidence that an event occurred, now it is not.
Sometimes all we have to go on is the very words. Even here tho' there are minute (and gross) betrayals of the comparative expertise and integrity of the writer. While it is possible to enumerate several characteristics, such as good spelling and grammar, a broad vocabulary and others, none of these alone condem a writer or piece by their absence. With practise, however, a reader can learn to distinguish quite quickly the likelihood of any true information being conveyed.
The trouble with keeping an open mind is that somebody will come along and put something in it. If I didn't have an automatic system that lets me know that there's no point in testing a load of cables because there just won't be any difference then I'd be just as likely to fall victim to the next religious zealot that I answer the door to.
BTW, it costs $100 pledge to get into this game...
w
Nikolas Ojala said:
Nik
I did try, but it set off my BS detector very quickly. I couldn't possibly plough thro' more than a couple of paragraphs it was so turgid.
You have to take account of every little clue and nuance when reading this kind of stuff nowadays. In days gone by, publishing was an expensive business, and this meant that a great deal of rubbish was sifted out by editors.
Nowadays ANYONE can publish ANYTHING with barely even a financial penalty.
This is a situation pointed out some years ago by Stuart Brand, in his book, The Media Lab.
Now we all have to evaluate all the information we recieve in terms of its provenance, i.e. to what extent can we verify its source and veracity.
Once a photograph was evidence that an event occurred, now it is not.
Sometimes all we have to go on is the very words. Even here tho' there are minute (and gross) betrayals of the comparative expertise and integrity of the writer. While it is possible to enumerate several characteristics, such as good spelling and grammar, a broad vocabulary and others, none of these alone condem a writer or piece by their absence. With practise, however, a reader can learn to distinguish quite quickly the likelihood of any true information being conveyed.
The trouble with keeping an open mind is that somebody will come along and put something in it. If I didn't have an automatic system that lets me know that there's no point in testing a load of cables because there just won't be any difference then I'd be just as likely to fall victim to the next religious zealot that I answer the door to.
BTW, it costs $100 pledge to get into this game...
w
tinitus said:
'Common knowledge' is what allows the greedy to grab one fact that would be relevant in some other context, and use it in another to bilk the gullible out of money.
This chorallary of the 'skin effect' is true, but entirely irrelevant at audio frequencies. You should be more worried about gamma rays and radiactive isotopes inducing stray currents in the wire.
The reason to use stranded wire is because it's more flexible and more durable, not because it coducts highs better. Everything else is just this century's equivalent of the Seance. Too bad no one would listen to Houdini anymore.
[I suppose I could make good money selling fake gamma ray shielding to 'preserve the tonal purity of music signals'.]
I too am very reluctant to believe people who sound very convincing 🙂 but when theories match my personal experiences I tend to like the simple logic in that
I believe its a fact that goldplated silver wire sound warmer and more mellow than pure silver
I believe its a fact that goldplated silver wire sound warmer and more mellow than pure silver
The metals are "noble". Gold has a nice warm appearance, and who can resist softly polished silver. They're expensive and sought after. Once the brain has this information, those materials will sound better, and there's nothing you can do about it. Try all you want, but you'll still be duped. In a truly fair test that eliminates simple resistance as a factor, brass will sound exactly the same.
Gold v. silver v. copper v. brass would be a pretty easy test. In fact, any cabling would be an easy test (as long as you don't think relays will destroy any differences).
Maybe, as a benefit to the diy community, we should set something up.
Make some cables, make a switching box, get a few people together, and follow a simple protocol. We'll never convince the extremists, but as a community, we might advance a little.
If someone is interested in getting their hands dirty, lets start another thread: 'DIY cable ABX'. If people will sport the cash, I can do the building. We could even send the gear around, letting different groups try it out.
We won't end the arguments, but at least we'll know the difference.
Maybe, as a benefit to the diy community, we should set something up.
Make some cables, make a switching box, get a few people together, and follow a simple protocol. We'll never convince the extremists, but as a community, we might advance a little.
If someone is interested in getting their hands dirty, lets start another thread: 'DIY cable ABX'. If people will sport the cash, I can do the building. We could even send the gear around, letting different groups try it out.
We won't end the arguments, but at least we'll know the difference.
I dont claim that various exotic metal sound better, but they does sound different without question, but whether the differense is needed is a different matter...I find it quite naive to think it all sounds the same, as with amps 🙂
I remember when I took my CD player to my friend to try and convinse him that he needed a better one
He began to tease me with AB blindtest, and I must say that I felt quite stressed having trouble to hear which was which
Then he tossed in another player, a 50 buck DVD
Surprisingly it was still difficult to tell them apart, but possible
Afterwards everything sounded pretty awfull
Today I really dont rate blindtest as valuable tool, its only good fore fooling the brain, which is known to be quite easy
I am confident that with my own speakers the differense would be clearly heard
We also tested my 50watt DIY amps against his newly bought Nakamichi 7AII...speakers Infinity Kappa9
Mine played with grace, ease, and magical musicality, very pleasing, almost electrostatical
His 7AII had punch but was sterile, mechanical and a bit boring
I remember when I took my CD player to my friend to try and convinse him that he needed a better one
He began to tease me with AB blindtest, and I must say that I felt quite stressed having trouble to hear which was which
Then he tossed in another player, a 50 buck DVD
Surprisingly it was still difficult to tell them apart, but possible
Afterwards everything sounded pretty awfull
Today I really dont rate blindtest as valuable tool, its only good fore fooling the brain, which is known to be quite easy
I am confident that with my own speakers the differense would be clearly heard
We also tested my 50watt DIY amps against his newly bought Nakamichi 7AII...speakers Infinity Kappa9
Mine played with grace, ease, and magical musicality, very pleasing, almost electrostatical
His 7AII had punch but was sterile, mechanical and a bit boring
Coincidently, one experience I had with a gang-bang listening test used a switchbox to choose lengths of wires of different composition. The guy running the "test" ended up picking the length of solder as the "best."
I *think* I heard a difference with the silver wire, but I wouldn't have confidence in being able to subjectively identify it in a blind test and, of course, had no way to assess whether or not there were other issues that could have caused the difference. The other wires sounded pretty much identical to me.
I am naive 😀 - I've never used anything but copper. The problem I see is that there are many dissenting opinions, and little (no) rigorous examination in a peer reviewed format that would give either side weight. I think testing them in a community format would be widely educational, and hopefully the most widely accepted format for results.
I'm not convinced, and I've yet to see anything but anecdotal stuff to show there is a difference, or that people can even reliably detect such difference 'blind'.tinitus said:
FWIW, I had some pieces of silver tubing from another project, 99.999% fine silver, about 2' long. I also had some very similar size brass tubing. I made up parallel runs- using the very low resistance tubing eliminated that as a concern, plus any imagined skin effects. Using these pairs as ICs between pre and power amp, I couldn't hear one tiny bit of difference. Between CD player and preamp I couldn't hear any difference. Some people claim to hear differences with less than a foot of silver, but I'm pretty skeptical. I also did differential measurements, and saw nothing. I did vector impedance measurements and saw no difference. The only thing I did see was that with square waves I could create all sorts of fun edge effects by sliding a small cap up and down the parallel rails, but there's no magic there, just the expected LC effects on edges that were way far out of the audio band.
Now, one interesting thing. I *was* able to hear a difference if I really relaxed and told myself that one or the other material was making a difference. I was actually able to convince myself of this, and be quite certain I was hearing it. The only problem was that I could just as easily reverse which material was causing the effect by telling myself what to hear. The fact that it's possible to do that even when knowing the truth shows how much the mind has to do with what we think we hear.
There is no reason for metals to sound different unless R, L or C is different in a way that affects the signal. Identical signals sound identical. Oxygen-free crystal micro-diode oxide rectifier magic silver nonsense is just that.
Now, one interesting thing. I *was* able to hear a difference if I really relaxed and told myself that one or the other material was making a difference. I was actually able to convince myself of this, and be quite certain I was hearing it. The only problem was that I could just as easily reverse which material was causing the effect by telling myself what to hear. The fact that it's possible to do that even when knowing the truth shows how much the mind has to do with what we think we hear.
There is no reason for metals to sound different unless R, L or C is different in a way that affects the signal. Identical signals sound identical. Oxygen-free crystal micro-diode oxide rectifier magic silver nonsense is just that.
Well, to me listening to music is about feelings, and if I feel nothing while listening its not worth listening to
At some time I listened to a Levinson amp on a pair of the big ProAc...no feeling at all and quite boring
My friends tell me that the ProAc play much better now he has bought a Gryphon 😎
Some of you say we cant hear any differense
I say that just because one cant hear any differense, doesnt mean that there is none
At some time I listened to a Levinson amp on a pair of the big ProAc...no feeling at all and quite boring
My friends tell me that the ProAc play much better now he has bought a Gryphon 😎
Some of you say we cant hear any differense
I say that just because one cant hear any differense, doesnt mean that there is none
tinitus said:Well, to me listening to music is about feelings, and if I feel nothing while listening its not worth listening to
At some time I listened to a Levinson amp on a pair of the big ProAc...no feeling at all and quite boring
My friends tell me that the ProAc play much better now he has bought a Gryphon 😎
Some of you say we cant hear any differense
I say that just because one cant hear any differense, doesnt mean that there is none
I'm *absolutely sure* I can make you feel better about your music if you send me all your money. Seriously.
Was is a ML334 and Response 3.8s?
Figures....... Stereophile magazine really raved about this combo!
I haven't read any audio magazine in over 5 years or maybe more. Disinformation at it's finast.
There is enough here....now if I only knew which info it was!
I guess that's the fun part....Anyone want some popcorn?
tinitus, I just made this comment on another thread yesterday, "One hundred years ago, there was no such thing as a Geiger counter. Did that mean there was no thing as radioactivity until the day the GC was invented? Perfect timing!"
I am trying to keep an open mind.
Regards//Keith
Figures....... Stereophile magazine really raved about this combo!
I haven't read any audio magazine in over 5 years or maybe more. Disinformation at it's finast.
There is enough here....now if I only knew which info it was!
I guess that's the fun part....Anyone want some popcorn?
tinitus, I just made this comment on another thread yesterday, "One hundred years ago, there was no such thing as a Geiger counter. Did that mean there was no thing as radioactivity until the day the GC was invented? Perfect timing!"
I am trying to keep an open mind.
Regards//Keith
Lemme see. First there are differences that can be heard and measured. Followed by differences that can be heard, but not measured. Then there are differences that can be measured, but not heard. Finally, there are differences that don't exist at all, yet can still be heard...
IMO, a system is a combination of many things, some of them psychological. When you get it right, some gut level emotional part of the music comes through with greater intensity. No problem there, my system works the same way. The danger lies in attributing certain properties to things that make no audible difference. It's incredibly hard to avoid this; it's like we're predisposed to it at some hard wired low level. Even people who intellectually understand the pitfalls, succumb anyway. That's why these conversations have been going on forever, and will continue as long as sound reproduction exists. I suppose we all have to work out some internally consistent belief system to make sense of things. 🙂
IMO, a system is a combination of many things, some of them psychological. When you get it right, some gut level emotional part of the music comes through with greater intensity. No problem there, my system works the same way. The danger lies in attributing certain properties to things that make no audible difference. It's incredibly hard to avoid this; it's like we're predisposed to it at some hard wired low level. Even people who intellectually understand the pitfalls, succumb anyway. That's why these conversations have been going on forever, and will continue as long as sound reproduction exists. I suppose we all have to work out some internally consistent belief system to make sense of things. 🙂
That $10,000 may go part of the way to establish a laboratory. Another $10K -$20K may get you through the process of selecting suitable subjects, another $10K will get those subjects trained, and so on and so on. It's going to take a lot more than $100 to participate in this discussion.
John
Neophytes...
Look folks - you can ramble on over and over endlessly like ball bearings in a box if you like.
You've all got to realize that the reference point for everyone here is likely to be extremely different. That's just the first variable.
Too many others to enumerate... you can figure them out on your own.
Fact of the matter is that for (to be very polite about it) most systems the differences, if any, will be difficult to discern out of all the other things that are present serving to homogenize and randomize the presentation to some degree or another. The degree is a key issue.
At one point in time I was running a "leaf ribbon" tweeter from 1.5kHz up that had extraordinary specs: 128dB max output, >100dB 1watt (for real) and <1%THD at FULL output!!
Let me tell you that you could hear a whole heck of a lot of things that were buried and blenderized in most speakers. AND, listening to very expensive and highly regarded standard tweeters next to it, they allsounded like "hash" by comparison.
That's one of my reference points.
Until you personally have such an experience, you can not know what is really there and what is not, and what is doing what to what...
Until then (if ur hearing still works ok) you are necessarily going to be a skeptic, imho. For good reason.
_-_-bear
PS. all differences can probably be measured, since you can measure a whole lot - the trick is to correlate the measurements with what is being heard, a very very good trick. No one has done it. So far the GedLee thing starts to do that. Maybe a few others...
Look folks - you can ramble on over and over endlessly like ball bearings in a box if you like.
You've all got to realize that the reference point for everyone here is likely to be extremely different. That's just the first variable.
Too many others to enumerate... you can figure them out on your own.
Fact of the matter is that for (to be very polite about it) most systems the differences, if any, will be difficult to discern out of all the other things that are present serving to homogenize and randomize the presentation to some degree or another. The degree is a key issue.
At one point in time I was running a "leaf ribbon" tweeter from 1.5kHz up that had extraordinary specs: 128dB max output, >100dB 1watt (for real) and <1%THD at FULL output!!
Let me tell you that you could hear a whole heck of a lot of things that were buried and blenderized in most speakers. AND, listening to very expensive and highly regarded standard tweeters next to it, they allsounded like "hash" by comparison.
That's one of my reference points.
Until you personally have such an experience, you can not know what is really there and what is not, and what is doing what to what...
Until then (if ur hearing still works ok) you are necessarily going to be a skeptic, imho. For good reason.
_-_-bear
PS. all differences can probably be measured, since you can measure a whole lot - the trick is to correlate the measurements with what is being heard, a very very good trick. No one has done it. So far the GedLee thing starts to do that. Maybe a few others...
Really? So does that mean when my wife came rushing into the room recently to ask me what I'd done to the system (I had made a change) as it sounded so musical and beguilling, was wrong? She must be right as she never listens to the system, so no perceptual bias there, right?Conrad Hoffman said:
DIY, have fun, don't spend too much on a given part so you feel you have to like it, tweak, change, enjoy the changes and remeber that no matter what, it'll sound different to you tomorrow, even if it's still the same.Conrad Hoffman said:
A couple of years ago, I built many, many amplifiers, mainly tube but some SS, in a wild variety of configurations over the course of a year or so. I owned almost all the parts but bought a bit of Lundahl iron for some, and no one but me got to hear them. Sometimes I was convinced of huge changes, but they seldom showed in any meaningful way on the bench unless there was a design or part flaw. I had a small bias for some types, most especially PP IT triode, but the real corker was a DHT PP pentode with lots of local feedback. Wunnerful amp if you could live with the output Z. Now I'm back to DR speakers from horns, I need more power, but I have a feeling I'll build another one day, and once the current system is finished, would like to experiment more with PPP with local feedback again. Lots of fun building amps with pretty glowing bottles.
FTR: I have no wife. I always found that line of 'proof' amusing though.
I don't know if my wife hears "better" than I do, but she certainly hears differently and has different standards of what's good or not. Over in another forum there's a thread about cats and dogs staying or leaving depending on whether vinyl or CD is being played. I'm certainly not of the opinion that everything sounds the same, but the "why" of it is fascinating.
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