John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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#83,501
Mark, I wish you luck. Some people conflate hearing with their imaginations with the real thing, even if such suggestions are terribly improbable.

Not that we shouldn't design/build our playback systems (or live sound for some of us) to our subjective liking. That's one's prerogative, but indefensible and not terribly useful to others.

And my post is 11 x 7591! Whoa. I was wondering if it was prime, but Morinix gets the prize for the most recent prime (83497).
 
#83,506
john curl said:
Condemning them without proof, seems to be the norm these days, but it does not help the matter.
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The burden of proof is on the person who claims that existing well-established science is wrong, not the person who asks for such evidence.

Dr. VandenHul, Dr. Malcolm Hawksford, and Ed Simon
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VdH I can't comment on. MH has a history of being confused e.g. he talks about partition noise where there is no partition ("fuzzy distortion"). ES is I believe simon7000, who often seems to stumble over experimental details, and who also enjoys setting puzzles?

I have long noted that ABX testing is 'flawed' somehow
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You have long noted that ABX delivers different results from the ones you prefer, but then you draw the wrong conclusion from this.

I seriously consider wire differences a mystery that has not been completely solved
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In most cases "wire differences" do not exist. Where they do exist there is a perfectly sensible explanation, based on boring things like L and C and R.

I think that we should talk more about wires, their construction, 'distortion', directionality, and any other factor that might make an audible difference.
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I have no interest in talking about faulty wiring.
 
#83,509
john curl said:
I think that we should talk more about wires, their construction, 'distortion', directionality, and any other factor that might make an audible difference.
I seriously consider wire differences a mystery that has not been completely solved, yet there is a lot of info out there about measured differences, including measurements by Dr. VandenHul, Dr. Malcolm Hawksford, and Ed Simon, for example. Those who do not seriously attempt to REPEAT their experiments have little reason to condemn them. I know each of these individuals personally, and I know each of them are both educated and interested in audio differences. Condemning them without proof, seems to be the norm these days, but it does not help the matter.
I realize that almost all 'subtle' differences in audio wires, or many other products, takes open listening---at least, blind A versus B comparisons, but not ABX comparisons. Still, that is how we hear, and if we want real results, we have to work with what works, rather than what throws out anything that does not meet an ABX test. I have long noted that ABX testing is 'flawed' somehow, and I have a number of reasons for believing I am right, but I will not go into it here. Too much flak, (I will get plenty already), so I will only say that over a relatively long listening period, I do believe that audio cables, and internal wiring are audible, and often NOT random in their effect. I personally take it into consideration with each design and audio system that I use. To ignore it is at your own loss.
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Some reliable evidence would be nice instead of words of encouragement for the true believers.....
 
#83,513
As my edit, not a white paper, not credited by any other physicist and some advertising BS from an audio cable manufacturer, you'll have to do better than that....
Why promote these myths, what do you gain....
And finally AC signals lets work that one out...LOL
 
#83,515
Ok, I just read the Hawksford article at the link given. Having worked with RF and microwaves for many years, the basic claims about transmission lines, skin effect, etc. appear reasonably correct, with some assumptions have been made along the way. However, the questions remains, can you reliably hear it? Human hearing is good at some things and not so good at others. After all, connected bundles of neurons operating in the brain also have their imperfections. Much more so than wires, for the most part. Still, we have good evidence that seemingly small imperfections in things like clock jitter in data converters are hearable in terms of spacial localization perception and so on. We don't have equally good evidence that transmission line effects in wires are hearable in most cases of audio amplification and reproduction systems (neglecting things like long distance telephone signals).
 
#83,517
Markw4 said:
Ok, I just read the Hawksford article at the link given. Having worked with RF and microwaves for many years, the basic claims about transmission lines, skin effect, etc. appear reasonably correct, with some assumptions have been made along the way.
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Unfortunately, once he reviews the basics, he goes terribly wrong. The math is fine, the interpretation is totally wrong. We've posted some pretty devastating critiques, and no-one who understands E&M thinks he's even vaguely correct. (hint: what direction is the Poynting vector?)
 
#83,518
It seems that, once again, MH knows just enough physics to confuse himself and impress others (who know even less physics). I had forgotten this particular article. I was thinking of the 'fuzzy distortion' article where he claims that highly correlated electrons will behave like individual charges when on an FET gate, which is equivalent to believing that we get partition noise at every junction in a circuit or shot noise where there is no potential barrier to cross.

It may shock some people to hear that one of the reasons we have peer review is that the fact that someone has a professorship in a reputable university is not a guarantee that everything he says within his own field of expertise is sensible and true. It is interesting that 'true believers' will quote a Prof when it suits them, but dismiss a whole body of knowledge (developed by the same sort of people in the same sort of universities) when it contradicts the 'one true story'.
 
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