Hopefully not too many people try and drag their piano with them to the bathroom - might get swelling of the timber ...
BTW ... I stand corrected, the earth is the centre of the universe, then ...
BTW ... I stand corrected, the earth is the centre of the universe, then ...
Last edited:
There is indeed a real scientific phenomenon at work here called the placebo effect. The effect is not fully understood, but when it is, I'm sure these threads won't need to drag on for hundreds of pages. 🙂
Patient: "I'm normally happy with my audio equipment, but this recording here makes it sound bad...."
Doctor: "try this homeopathic remedy...."
Replace doctor with audio salesman recommending swapping wire orientation.
Patient: "I'm normally happy with my audio equipment, but this recording here makes it sound bad...."
Doctor: "try this homeopathic remedy...."
Replace doctor with audio salesman recommending swapping wire orientation.
I should add that people often get objectively, measurably better after taking placebos. The mind is powerful and ill understood.
I apologise for the triple post, but as a professional classical musician, I can assure you that a crap room will make a really great musician sound crap. 🙂
We often practise on purpose in horribly dry sounding rooms to hear all the little faults. We would not prefer to have an audience in this said room.
We often practise on purpose in horribly dry sounding rooms to hear all the little faults. We would not prefer to have an audience in this said room.
I would love to see some info on static, and how that effects the sound... of course one wonders what those ESD stickers are about, and all the engineering effort that has gone into looking at static and how to avoid its build up🙂
Just stoking the flames
Just stoking the flames
I would love to see some info on static, and how that effects the sound... of course one wonders what those ESD stickers are about, and all the engineering effort that has gone into looking at static and how to avoid its build up🙂
Just stoking the flames
That's easy.... All the sparks, crackling, and zapping distracts one from enjoying the music, and hurt when they hit your ears!! 😉😉😉
How does the entire image shift sideways, and how do you know it wasn't your head position?
What level of control was used in swapping cables?
How were the source return currents controlled, or was 80% of the return current via the grounding conductors?
There are far too many uncontrolled factors here to determine if directionality existed.
What, sparks against the ears hurt??? Shirley you jest..
jn
Re the "Noise Harvester" turning stray signals into light - some years ago a friend and I built a high power fixed frequency sine synthesizer(1kw @ 200kHz, if memory serves), which used switch mode FETs to achieve high efficiency. Because of the topology, stray inductances and fast(=efficient) switching, voltage spikes were being generated, so a snubber using schottky diodes and a capacitor was implemented. When we were calculating the power dissipation required in the bleeder resistor, I noticed that it was about equal to the cooling fan draw - so we used that as the bleeder for the snubber circuit. The fan was a DC brushless model, 12V; it would "wake up" at about 8-10 V, and shut off ~6V. At light loads, the fan would cycle on & off; at full load, the snubber would run ~14V, and the fan would run full tilt - neatly tracking the power transistor dissipation.
My own opinion on the various supercables is if you want to listen to music that has been put through various unknown twists and weaves in your expensive interconnects, which yield a twisted and gnarly sound, go ahead - it's your money. I prefer flat frequency response and controlled impedance in my interconnects, so that I can concentrate on controlling speaker response and its interaction with room acoustics. To that end, I use multi conductor flat cables - 104 ohm impedance divided by 32 pairs in a 64 conductor flat cable yields 3.25 ohm. Put an R+C to compensate for the speaker inductance and it presents a pure resistance to the amp from mid audio to megaHz. Plus the WAF hidden under rugs or painted to match the baseboard is high.
For my normal consulting fee of $200 per hour, $50 per hour travel time, plus expenses (airfare, lodging, equipment rental - you don't expect me to lug my 250 MHz scope, TDR, pulse gen etc etc around the country?) plus $100 per foot of cable, I'll come to your house, measure your loudspeakers, and make custom perfectly* matched cables. Zobel networks for speakers with "interesting" impedance curves extra. &:>)
* "perfectly" in this context means +- 10%.
"it's like saying that one can't travel round a corner in a car above a certain speed without coming to grief. Well, if the only thing you have as a reference are vehicles made earlier than the 60's then of course that will be the conclusion one comes to …""
No, what I'm saying is that if you have a 60's swing axle Corvair of a recording, it doesn't matter how much snake oil you pour into the engine($300k tube amps!), transmission(Cocoanut Audio cables!!); you can even put snake oil in your tires, if your subjective opinion is "I can feel a difference so it must be better" (Quantum Purifiers!!!). It still won't corner worth shite. or be "pushed, kicking and screaming" into audio nirvana.
My own opinion on the various supercables is if you want to listen to music that has been put through various unknown twists and weaves in your expensive interconnects, which yield a twisted and gnarly sound, go ahead - it's your money. I prefer flat frequency response and controlled impedance in my interconnects, so that I can concentrate on controlling speaker response and its interaction with room acoustics. To that end, I use multi conductor flat cables - 104 ohm impedance divided by 32 pairs in a 64 conductor flat cable yields 3.25 ohm. Put an R+C to compensate for the speaker inductance and it presents a pure resistance to the amp from mid audio to megaHz. Plus the WAF hidden under rugs or painted to match the baseboard is high.
For my normal consulting fee of $200 per hour, $50 per hour travel time, plus expenses (airfare, lodging, equipment rental - you don't expect me to lug my 250 MHz scope, TDR, pulse gen etc etc around the country?) plus $100 per foot of cable, I'll come to your house, measure your loudspeakers, and make custom perfectly* matched cables. Zobel networks for speakers with "interesting" impedance curves extra. &:>)
* "perfectly" in this context means +- 10%.
"it's like saying that one can't travel round a corner in a car above a certain speed without coming to grief. Well, if the only thing you have as a reference are vehicles made earlier than the 60's then of course that will be the conclusion one comes to …""
No, what I'm saying is that if you have a 60's swing axle Corvair of a recording, it doesn't matter how much snake oil you pour into the engine($300k tube amps!), transmission(Cocoanut Audio cables!!); you can even put snake oil in your tires, if your subjective opinion is "I can feel a difference so it must be better" (Quantum Purifiers!!!). It still won't corner worth shite. or be "pushed, kicking and screaming" into audio nirvana.
Michael Talbot lists some fascinating examples of this in The Holographic Universe.
Even ventured to posit that scientists create new particles in order to find them!!!
If one's only criterion is that it be different then of course you will spend until eternity chasing your tail ...
If you tinker with your system then one of several things can happen:
1) No apparent change takes place
2) You hear more "detail" but it's exaggerated, somewhat 'shouty' - unpleasant in the long term - Dan's "false detail"
3) Becomes "nicer" because "detail" is discarded- you hear less of the unpleasant stuff because a good, thick, syrupy goo has rounded off all those rough edges
4) You hear more of what is in the recording, and it is easier to listen to a specific part of the structure of the sound - you can tune in, focus on what a particular musician or sound element is doing, understand the contribution of that to the overall sound - and do this with ease, without feeling stressed or becoming fatigued
Personally, I enjoy the last way - and so I refine my system to achieve that. And, it appears to work even with what are technically poor quality recordings ...
Feel free to add more - I just put up the key ones from my POV, to differentiate what I'm looking for, from a couple of the types of sounds that I often come across - which to me are very much going the "Wrong Way!" ...
Luxury Version sighted
Just came across this on eBay, Create Audio luxury version nano fuse tube.
"Actually fuse affect audio performance".
And may be seen with the naked eye.
Just came across this on eBay, Create Audio luxury version nano fuse tube.
"Actually fuse affect audio performance".
And may be seen with the naked eye.
Measuring is a bit like schrodinger's cat, when you measure the problem isn't there, its like blind testing, the difference disappears in a blind test, this is well know to certain factions of Audiophiles, a fact I discovered when visiting another forum, where mentioning measurements, DBTs or engineering would get you instantly banned ( a narrow minded view on the universe, that showed their collective ignorance).
Of course you could try solution 9...
Learn the required engineering discipline and do the job properly, instead of airy fairy views and possible causes that are not investigated properly or put down to strange phenomena that only affects audio equipment.
Maybe we should develop a Maxwells demon detector, and measure the concentration of said demons in a particular piece of equipment of cable, where they seem to prefer to congregate.
Of course you could try solution 9...
Learn the required engineering discipline and do the job properly, instead of airy fairy views and possible causes that are not investigated properly or put down to strange phenomena that only affects audio equipment.
Maybe we should develop a Maxwells demon detector, and measure the concentration of said demons in a particular piece of equipment of cable, where they seem to prefer to congregate.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.