Anyone care to guess the number of electrons per second (or even per microsecond, if you want to belong to the Church of Must Pass RF) in a femtoamp? Or a thousandth of a femtoamp? It´s a pretty darn big number, hardly a "few."
Your take??
It's complicated or am I missing s/thing?
So what's your take? It seems what we're trying to talk about is not only the number -- but also their state on arrival (physical, phycological and/or otherwise).
It's complicated or am I missing s/thing?
SY said:
Ummmm, eleventy-sebbin? 🙂
Let's see, since 1 Coulomb represents 6.24 x 10<sup>18</sup> electrons, and 1 Amp represents 1 Coulomb of charge per second, then the number of electrons per second at 1 x 10<sup>-9</sup> Amps would be (6.24 x 10<sup>18</sup>) x (1 x 10<sup>-9</sup>) or 6.24 x 10<sup>9</sup> or (in my best Carl Sagan impression) 6.24 billion electrons per second.
Yes?
se
Re: Your take??
Well, it's actually the EM wave that arrives, not the electrons. At least not the electrons at the beginning of the cable. The EM wave propagates far faster than the electron drift velocity and arrives long before any of the electrons at the beginning of the cable make it to the end, if they ever make it to the end at all seeing as audio is AC in nature.
se
Gregm said:
Well, it's actually the EM wave that arrives, not the electrons. At least not the electrons at the beginning of the cable. The EM wave propagates far faster than the electron drift velocity and arrives long before any of the electrons at the beginning of the cable make it to the end, if they ever make it to the end at all seeing as audio is AC in nature.
se
Koinichiwa,
I doin't know how and why, but I suddenly get the Idea that you seem to have been expecting complete answers from me, covering all and every angle in this and some other previous discussions.
But you see, with a lot of things I don't feel like doing that. You are smart enough and educated enough in the subject to be able to find your own answers. You may find that often I merely point people into certain directions - saying "have a look there!".
The reasons for that are many, among those chief is:
"Something given has no value and as a result is not valued by those you give it to. Make them work for it and they will greatly cherish the same self thing they previously would have thrown away as having no value."
So I both expect and encourage you to do your own work. I am happy to share experiences and ideas, but they are mostly meant as pointers to things not common on the beaten path.
While it may not seem like it at times, I have no interest to "convert" people to my views or "proove" to them that I am right and they are wrong. There is no milage in that.
What I do have an interest in is to make people think and to make them explore the things often less explored. I suspect it is that more than anything what some people identify as "Guru" attitude.
Sayonara
janneman said:
I doin't know how and why, but I suddenly get the Idea that you seem to have been expecting complete answers from me, covering all and every angle in this and some other previous discussions.
But you see, with a lot of things I don't feel like doing that. You are smart enough and educated enough in the subject to be able to find your own answers. You may find that often I merely point people into certain directions - saying "have a look there!".
The reasons for that are many, among those chief is:
"Something given has no value and as a result is not valued by those you give it to. Make them work for it and they will greatly cherish the same self thing they previously would have thrown away as having no value."
So I both expect and encourage you to do your own work. I am happy to share experiences and ideas, but they are mostly meant as pointers to things not common on the beaten path.
While it may not seem like it at times, I have no interest to "convert" people to my views or "proove" to them that I am right and they are wrong. There is no milage in that.
What I do have an interest in is to make people think and to make them explore the things often less explored. I suspect it is that more than anything what some people identify as "Guru" attitude.
Sayonara
hmm, maby an easier determination. does changing cables make more of a differance than moving 1 ft to the left? what about more effect as changing the position or angle of one of the spekaers? is this a HUGE effect, like a skipping CD, or a small one? when would you reccomed getting upgraded cables over say better speakers, better amplifer components, ect...
Hi,
What about when you suspect your cables limiting the performance of your loudspeaker, amp, preamp?
If you can do that for an outlay much more modest than changing any of the above then, why not?
It's not because there are some exorbitantly priced cables out there that you can't brew your own that can come close.
People often think that silverwire is expensive but in reality it is not that expensive at all, it offers the added advantage of lower series resistance which allows you to reduce wire diameter,
hence skin-effect if ampacity is not an issue.
Either way, it's a sound investment since if and when you upgrade yor other gear you'll be hearing it as is.
Cheers,😉
What about when you suspect your cables limiting the performance of your loudspeaker, amp, preamp?
If you can do that for an outlay much more modest than changing any of the above then, why not?
It's not because there are some exorbitantly priced cables out there that you can't brew your own that can come close.
People often think that silverwire is expensive but in reality it is not that expensive at all, it offers the added advantage of lower series resistance which allows you to reduce wire diameter,
hence skin-effect if ampacity is not an issue.
Either way, it's a sound investment since if and when you upgrade yor other gear you'll be hearing it as is.
Cheers,😉
Oops. Sorry, SY. Thought you were referring to Thorsten's 1 x 10<sup>-9</sup> figure.
At 1 Femtoamp, it'd be 6.24 million electrons and at one thousandth of a Femtoamp it'd be 6,240 electrons.
se
At 1 Femtoamp, it'd be 6.24 million electrons and at one thousandth of a Femtoamp it'd be 6,240 electrons.
se
Yes, that's right. And, as you point out, the concept of electrons "flowing" is flawed- except at DC. When quantum theory is invoked to explain audio phenomena, it's a good indication that (Ebers-Moll and the like aside) we're dealing with wild speculation on the basis of zero reliable evidence.
I'm coming a bit late in this discussion but I can only say one thing: I didn't believe cables make a difference, until I tried😉
Peter, the question is not whether or not, in specific situations, cables can sound different. It's trivial to show that they do. The question (in my mind, at least) was whether or not factors outside of well-established impedance parameters and integrity of connection have any significant effects at audio frequencies. The overwhelming evidence, when one bothers with evidence rather than fott-stamping and raw assertion, is "not."
If you like the way some exotic cable sounds in your setup, merely get a cheap cable with similar or lower DCR, then use some relatively simple passive component networks to match the desired Z. I've not run across any cases where, at these impedances and frequencies, factors like loss tangents made any difference.
BTW, a fun thing to try is to take a crummy capacitor of a hundred or two pF and have someone alternately connect and disconnect it across the amp output out of your sight while music is playing.
If you like the way some exotic cable sounds in your setup, merely get a cheap cable with similar or lower DCR, then use some relatively simple passive component networks to match the desired Z. I've not run across any cases where, at these impedances and frequencies, factors like loss tangents made any difference.
BTW, a fun thing to try is to take a crummy capacitor of a hundred or two pF and have someone alternately connect and disconnect it across the amp output out of your sight while music is playing.
SY said:
As for quantum phenomena, I'm still wondering why quantization distortion hasn't become an issue. Charge is quantized at 1.6 x 10<sup>-19</sup> Coulombs so you can never have a truly continuous, analogue waveform and will have a quantization error of +/- 1/2 quanta.
se
jh6you said:
Hehehe. Well, as long as people are going to go beyond simply sharing their subjective experiences and begin making objective claims, there will be discussions of science. I mean, there's simply nothing to argue when it comes to one's subjective experiences. Objective claims are a whole other matter.
Bill Nye, DIYScience Guy! BILL! BILL! BILL! 🙂
se
Steve Eddy said:
Every published paper in reputable journals on cable phenomena involving measurements and listening, from Greiner's JAES paper forward. And, one might add, if one is the cynical sort (who, me?), the total lack of any evidence to date presented in support of a thesis that factors outside of impedance are significant at audio frequencies. This desite the rather large amount of "superduper" cable sold with, um, rather extraordinary claims. I was disappointed that in the Stereophile article on cable measurement by Ben Duncan a few years back, they failed to provide L,C, and R values for the cables under test so that readers could verify whether there was anything unexpected going on. But that's the difference between junk and JAES. All it will take, as you allude to in another thread, is just one reliable paper showing audibility in a valid listening test to sway me and every other reasonable skeptic.
My first exposure to this was a blind cable comparison/demonstration by a famous speaker cable maker where the difference between his high-end cable and some zipcord was gross. Of course, the high-end cable had much more capacitance and was causing the weedy amp to break into oscillation and current limiting, an effect easily duplicated with the zip cord and a 29 cent capacitor...
SY said:
And that's really all you've got. A LACK of evidence. A lack of evidence of the existence of a thing does not necessarily prove the thing's non-existence.
So you can't rightly say that there's overwhelming evidence that parameters beyond L, C and R don't make a difference. You can only say that so far there is no evidence that they do. Anything else is merely speculation and educated guessing.
Anyway, just saying that if those who make objective claims to the affirmative with regard to cable differences are going to have their feet held to the fire of logic, reason and the scientific method, those on the other side of the debate should be held to those same standards.
So I hope you don't take this the wrong way.
se
Is This The Real MSB ?.
Is this low level step-wise conduction characteristic a factor in exciting low level quantum resonance or something conditions, or effecting other low level quantising characteristics.?.
Can local fields or dielectrics effect this +/- 1/2 quanta characteristic and cause statistical 'noise shaping' perhaps sort of like along the lines of Sigma-Delta DACs ?.
Eric.
Presumably this effect would become more significant as wanted signal level decreases - yeah ?.Steve Eddy said:
Is this low level step-wise conduction characteristic a factor in exciting low level quantum resonance or something conditions, or effecting other low level quantising characteristics.?.
Can local fields or dielectrics effect this +/- 1/2 quanta characteristic and cause statistical 'noise shaping' perhaps sort of like along the lines of Sigma-Delta DACs ?.
Eric.
Re: Is This The Real MSB ?.
Yes. Just as with other quantized systems such as digital audio.
Doesn't matter. Charge remains quantized regardless.
No.
However I do have some wire here that effectively deals with quantization distortion by way of dithering (using a Gaussian PDF) which decorrelates the quantization error from the signal so instead of signal-correlated quantization distortion, you're left with just a bit of quantum level noise.
se
mrfeedback said:
Yes. Just as with other quantized systems such as digital audio.
Doesn't matter. Charge remains quantized regardless.
No.
However I do have some wire here that effectively deals with quantization distortion by way of dithering (using a Gaussian PDF) which decorrelates the quantization error from the signal so instead of signal-correlated quantization distortion, you're left with just a bit of quantum level noise.
se
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