In that clip he seems to be talking about expectation bias and attribution error.
That commentator doesn't appear to be a scientist or have a training in research. He speaks like hes a technician or engineer blind to his own ignorance.
The irony is while he smugly denigrates those poor gullible audiophools for being sucked in by their lack of psychological insight he demonstrates how trapped he is in his own self beliefs and blindness.
For a single ended connection you must remember kirchoff's law. so for a forward current (the signal) there has to be an identical return current. You want this return current to flow in the shield of the cable, but electrons being what they are the signal will take every path available to it, including down the ground wire. EE is not sometimes referred to as 'electron herding' for nothing. Annoyingly, if your equipment is grounded then the cases may be at different potentials and so additional current will flow in that shield. The papers by Bill Whitlock (on this site) are a good read even if JN doesn't agree with some of it 😛
But if you want to get a signal from A to B with maximum fidelity in a hostile environment JN has the T-shirt under his white coat.
Here's another article with lots of theoretical AND experimental findings on the effect of grain boundaries on electrical conductivity. It's from the 80's, so it seems that the scientific community has known about the conductive benefits of single-grain metals for a while.
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/jpa-00222306/document
Interestingly, that article also points out that a higher number of grain boundaries disrupts the electrical properties of insulators as well, meaning that more grain boundaries in insulators actually makes them LESS resistive and MORE conductive! From the article:
It's looking more and more like differences in crystal structures in metals absolutely affect the measurements of conduction through the material. This does NOT mean that single-crystal metals will necessarily make a system sound better though! And that's what I'm wondering from the community, whether they think the benefits of better conduction in single-crystal conductors could possible be heard in an audio chain.
Thank you to everyone for keeping it civil!
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/jpa-00222306/document
Interestingly, that article also points out that a higher number of grain boundaries disrupts the electrical properties of insulators as well, meaning that more grain boundaries in insulators actually makes them LESS resistive and MORE conductive! From the article:
It's looking more and more like differences in crystal structures in metals absolutely affect the measurements of conduction through the material. This does NOT mean that single-crystal metals will necessarily make a system sound better though! And that's what I'm wondering from the community, whether they think the benefits of better conduction in single-crystal conductors could possible be heard in an audio chain.
Thank you to everyone for keeping it civil!
most preamps have a series build out resistor for stability. Often in the order of 100-300Ohms. do you think the odd ohm in the interconnect will make any difference?
The bottom line is - in a fair blind test, no one has been able tell the difference in the sounds of different metals. Even fruits and vegetables.
No amount of marketing will change, no clever articles, no beliefs.
When a fair blind test comes along that shows otherwise, that will be of interest. So far, no evidence, just marketing and wishful thinking. Wouldn't it be great if it was as easy as buying fancy cables? Yes it would- but it's not.
No amount of marketing will change, no clever articles, no beliefs.
When a fair blind test comes along that shows otherwise, that will be of interest. So far, no evidence, just marketing and wishful thinking. Wouldn't it be great if it was as easy as buying fancy cables? Yes it would- but it's not.
Are you sure? I've seen a few pre-amp output amplifier stages but I don't see any 100ohm resistance in series. Or do you mean something else?
Dusty, no one rejects the fact tha metals has a fine grained structure. But by now, you must have understood that most of us, if not all, posters here is of the opinion that these don't matter to the result of for the cable being a signal transfer function. At least not for a human. It will even be hard to measure the differences with sophisticated setups (bridges and what not).
I think you need to , as we all did here probably, do you own tests and see what that gives you. Good luck - have fun!
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I think you need to , as we all did here probably, do you own tests and see what that gives you. Good luck - have fun!
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Now now, all I did was correct a few errors on his part...back in 2012 when I contacted him. I believe he fixed them all.
I actually do not understand the t-shirt reference. Are you thinking a big "S" reference? And white coat...on my first day of work here, I had a button down shirt and tie. My boss looked me over and said...you'll get over that.
I actually do have a t-shirt that says..."I can fix anything...where's the duct tape?"
jn
An added complexity is that hard tying both source and destination circuit grounds to AC ground establishes a new signal return path between them through the power cords' third wire grounds. Power cords are almost universally multiple gauges larger than the interconnects with much lower impedance. It's reasonable to suspect that much of the audio signal current is returning to the source through the power cords in these instances.
The 'G Word' document and his use of floating instrumentation amplifier input stages on Hypex modules suggests a concerted effort by Bruno to avoid that.
We are in violent agreement.
However, the power cord ground loop inductance causes a breakpoint within the audio band, as well as the two low level signal coaxes. So the return current path..... anarchy I tell ya, just....willy nilly.
jn
..ps...when people come to the realization that wrapping line level cords around the source AC power cables from source to load reduces ground loop interference...well, guess I won't have anything left to offer...
Granted, I only did this for small lengths, and have no experience above 125 foot unbalanced runs...well, for my hobby stuff anyway..
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And if it is just about the resistivity: why don't we buy twice as much $3/pound market-Copper instead of hardly-enough $300++/pound "single" crystal Copper?
Sure, but where would the magic be in such a mundane approach to solve a non existent problem?
I wonder if after the music goes from microphone, through the mixer, mastered to delivery format, player back through a D to A if the type of metal in a cable makes a rats rump worth of difference?
That’s what I’m wondering too!
But to be fair, it is the art of reproducing the total sum sound of all those components that fidelity is all about. I do want to hear every detail of that output, as a product of the output chain along the way, even if that means a “hi-fi” representation of a “low-fi” production.
Certainly more complex than focusing on the quality of electrons leaving the hydro plant. Who would have guessed the excellent work tomch did investigating ground relationships and loops in the context of a single gainclone extends outside the chassis?