I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

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Weeellll.... that may not always be a bad thing, you know. Tho we do try to avoid it.

The ear tends to like a harmonic structure where the harmonics fall off in a regular and even manner. What if something upstream has a distortion heavy in odd order harmonics? Would adding some even order distortion bring it back to a more pleasant balance? Or vice-versa?

It's is not necessarily the amount of harmonic distortion we hear, but the structure. See the work of Matti Otala et al.

You're awesome.

Edit: In an attempt to answer that question (oh boy!) it seems to be a lesser amount of total harmonic distortion to put pleasant effects at the output of a gain stage rather than on its input. Simply put, its like fooling with the speaker is much nicer than a wild eq setting. Perhaps this is because fooling with the speaker can make pleasant harmonic balance changes whereas an eq isn't as effective for that job? Well, I don't really know. 😉
 
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I'll go even further- as the "cable that will be EQ'd," use some Romex or heavy zip cord. Try it first blind without the EQ, since it's possible that the EQ is superfluous and the differences are inaudible with the chosen room, equipment, and source. If it's distinguishable, it would be fun to duplicate the fancy stuff with cheap wire and a couple of cheap passive parts.

The cable I use will have lower resistance to start with, must I compensate for that with shorter length or larger dia? What if capacitance and / or inductance of my cable measure lower than "heavy zip cord"?
 
LOL! Tell that to my ex-wives.

Oh, do you have some to spare?

Okay, seriously, the case of the ex-wives isn't much different although there's an additional factor. Its hard to translate parable type communication into the actual intended topic. But, the additional factor is that one or more of the people involved are so darned cute that is hard to concentrate. Although pleasant, it also decreases the odds of success on communication.

I once had a really nice tall blondie who would fight with the toaster each and every morning. . . topless. Our work time was different and mine was later, so this would wake me. I had mistakenly assumed that it was inability to operate the toaster. The real cause is that it was the attention of me getting up to provide assistance each day, never saying an unkind word, smiling, dropping the toast in (the correct order) each workday morning. The toaster worked perfectly well at any other hour of the day.
I misread this communication, but still have the toaster.
 
The cable I use will have lower resistance to start with, must I compensate for that with shorter length or larger dia? What if capacitance and / or inductance of my cable measure lower than "heavy zip cord"?

Larger diameter would be my first shot at it, just to keep things on an even basis. I wouldn't bother with EQ or impedance compensation unless you find that in your initial round of blind testing, you can distinguish the two- the scale considerations we looked at earlier suggest that these variations are generally well below expected audibility.

If you can distinguish the two, the next step is to remove the frequency response as a confounding variable. It's doubtful that a "fancy" cable will have less capacitance than thick zip cord. Usually, they trade off L for C. That can be compensated for by a Zobel.

I'm laying my bet that, if you truly do the test in a controlled way, you won't have to get to the second step.
 
Do you have proof of that or is it possible that the effect get lost in the way we measure? The suggestion that it show as phase noise on ac may correlate with blurring the soundfield as well as affecting small detail.

That wasn't Scott's statement, he was quoting from the, ummm, paper of Bob's. About three seconds of thought will allow you to understand why that statement is gibberish.
 
Hmm, I'm not sure where you came up with this one 🙂.

A generalization from whenever I've encountered your posts that your peers treat you with respect. I haven't gone searching your posts, but rather my opinion is from spotting the posts at random within threads that I was already reading.

When I start this winter's project with:
One thing that I'm supposed to do, and I don't know if I like it or not because it isn't completed yet;
One thing that I'm not supposed to do, and I like it greatly except that its scale needs increased;
One thing that can substitute for either, and I don't actually want to substitute;
And these three things are for exactly the same task.
I'll be in way over my head, and I hope to see you there.
 
That wasn't Scott's statement, he was quoting from the, ummm, paper of Bob's. About three seconds of thought will allow you to understand why that statement is gibberish.

OK, I see now but if you look past these unimportant sh** that you guys are so clever to pick out, you may just recognise a possible explanation for the effects that we delusional types hear and try to explain.

Not all are experts at everything, some are blessed with facts, other with ears. 😀
 
It's doubtful that a "fancy" cable will have less capacitance than thick zip cord. Usually, they trade off L for C.

A nanofarad cable capacitance makes no change to the LTSpice plots posted earlier.
Googling for capacitance numbers for 16 gauge, I stumbled across Roger Russell's recommended cable length chart. To be kind, I chose the 6 ohm/16 gauge rec for the graph below since Dr K used a 4 ohm tweeter for his MTM. Most users following Russell would I expect go for the 8 ohm rec.
 

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May as well spell it out.


Hmm lets see 1/f noise is only relevant when f=0. ???

Meaning each and every time there is an attempt to express the peak placement of a transient the system re-settles to a stable point of a 'momentary DC conditional'. At that point ---it collapses/slams to zero and then recovers in an opposite motion/spin/polarity.

Or, thousands of times per second on the single point that the ear uses to understand and decipher signal by, ie --- the peak edge of the transient. The situation is far more complex than it appears.

If you wish to comment Sy, please go back and address the point that for Einstein to produce his engineerable and complete Unified Field Theory, which he handed to the world in 1927-28 in Russia, of all places..he had to drop special relativity and General relativity (Yes he did, he dumped them BOTH). This is mentioned, as for Einstein to do that, he had to actually, for the first time, dump Heaviside and dump Lorentz and use the PROPER full 20 equations 20 unknowns of Maxwell's ~REAL~ Treatsie on electromagnetism. The one with the quaternion notation that explains torsion-tensor spiral multi-direction/vector wave particle forces in explicit perfection. Ie, the missing piece of the math that is confounding us - to this day. This was what was in the Unified Field Theory of 1927-1928..and it worked beautifully. But shush, you are not supposed to know that. Go back to sleep.

WWII and the scientific paranoia that arose in the early/mid 30's surrounding that -- assured that Einstein was suddenly silent due to the forces that surrounded him and the same forces laid waiting for others- concerning any such work done by anyone, anywhere. After the war, the whole situation of extreme secrecy was far worse and has carried forward to this day.

Einstein never revisited it as when he became a foundling member of the Builderburgs, he was forced out of his own knowledge base. He spent the rest of his life warning us.
 
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