Debates are adversarial events. In debating class people can be assigned to debate a position they don't even believe in. The aim is to win however you can within the rules, if there are any. Making an opponent look like of fool, being dishonest, exaggerating, and trying to keep an opponent on the defensive, are all good if allowed and aid winning.
Adversarial debate is used in legal cases too where both sides are supposed to present their best cases, and juries are supposed to find the 'truth' which is often presumed to lay somewhere between to two extremes being advocated.
All the above is very different from scientists who see things differently agreeing to work on a research project together to see if they can find any scientific consensus at all. That was the method usually used by Daniel Kahneman when someone strongly disagreed with him. He invited a big critic of his, Gary Klein, to do a shared research project. The paper they eventually published was subtitled, "A Failure to Disagree." https://www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/sites/de...sforIntuitiveExpertise_AFailureToDisagree.pdf
In the case here it isn't just Dan, but also Ed, John Curl, morinix, and a few others who may prefer to quietly read along, who believe that cables can have audible directional characteristics.
At least Ed is trying to make some progress with measurements. He does tend to work as a loner it appears, but he seems interested in improving his methods to some extent, so long as he can do it alone.
Describing what cable direction sounds like in terms that only Dan knows the meaning of is of no real use to anyone that I can see.
Its getting to the point non-cable guys are growing increasingly tired of hearing nonproductive, effectively useless claims and implausible theories. Pretty soon they are just going to try to get the cable guys to shut up and go away.
The cable guys need to understand that and decide if they want to do anything to change where things are going or not.
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Actually, there was not - John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II
The information I give in that post and my next post still stands.
Precisely, indeed I view the 'naysayers' as defending beliefs and that's why I post my observations only, theory explanation is what I seek.
I have two things going on here, one is altering system noise the other is exploring directional properties.
Through evolutionary improvement of my PB systems subjective low level detail and changes in this low level detail is now very clearly apparent.
This has enabled me to now much better note and understand the subjective consequential effects.
This has revealed cable direction to be a relatively important property in the case of the mid-fi system I am currently running.
If the root cause is connection quality then so be it, however experience shows this not to be the case in this system (and other systems).
This cable directional property 'bit me in the ***' long time ago regarding a turntable cable issue because I believed what I was told in lectures, that is cables "do not, will not and cannot exhibit directional properties".
Experience has shown me in the case of multiple audio systems that this statement is plain wrong.
Ok, so this leads to decisions on measurement protocol and subsequent evaluation of measurements data.
I am working on this and I have obtained preliminary results that seem to indicate that the property is real.
I will repeat measurement experiments soon and when I have robust data of course I will present it for discussion.
Dan.
I observe that there is some kind of property in cables that causes consequential effects in downstream equipment and that reversal of cable direction alters these downstream consequential effects.
I am also progressing with testing.
I did try to explain what the subjective differences are but it seems that nobody paid attention.
I can try again if somebody wants.
Dan.
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Dan I would suggest removing the connectors. Solder the cable ends directly to the sender-receiver circuits. (I do solder directly on the cartridge pins)
George
Agreed. I'm happy to change my point of view if someone is able to demonstrate their ability to pick it out without peeking.
Probably not, establishing the effect as real could be complicated. As an anecdote, in his presentation in Burning Amp 2016, Nelson Pass explained about how an addition of a source resistor to a source follower reduce the amount of THD and change spectral distribution of the harmonics of which he claimed can be reliably identified by Joe Sammut but not being able to do so well himself. As Mark said, it is very difficult to conduct an experiment to measure difference contributing to a noticeable difference without someone being able to reliably tell a difference. I have not seen hard data from either sides.
Great, I highly appreciate any scientific effort from either sides. Anybody has a good idea on what and how to measure? I'd like to join the fun if required gadgets are affordable.
Sometimes I simply envy those who did not notice any difference in cables and consider them very lucky, less botomless money pit to fully enjoy their ultimate audio entertainment. I consider myself not as high on the luck scale, but grateful enough for being able to hear only very subtle difference so that I do not miss much by abstaining from outrageously priced exotics.
You try to explain, it seems, it terms of listening experiences that most here do not share. It is as thought you talked about subtleties of colors of exotic flowers to people who are largely color blind. The words have no meaning because there is no shared experience behind it.
For example, you talk about excess system noise, but I don't hear much noise anymore. I don't hear frequencies well, nor soft sounds. That, and I never paid a lot of attention to noise to begin with. Distortion is another matter, that I have heard and disliked since at least the early teens. As a result, telling me what to listen for is useless. Lot of other old men here too. They may not hear they way you do or process hearing noise the same way your brain does. Repeated attempts to get them to listen more closely aren't working, and may never work even if they tried as hard as they could.
It's up to you to find another approach for convincing them, if you care to try. I have suggested ways, but you seem to have no interest. You only say that people don't pay attention to what you say. Well, maybe you don't pay attention to what people are trying to say to you?
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Hi George.
Thanks for the suggestion but in this case is not appropriate or practical as I am setting out to measure effects in a 'typical' household system and the test protocol requires reversal of one or both cables quickly before continuing with the next step.
Residual heat from soldering process would add a confounder in this case.
Dan.
But that is much easier to write down as to concede in reality that someone else was able to demonstrate.......
Unfortunately we lost that thread, but without stating (before) what criterion/criteria has to be met by experimental results it will most likely not work as intended.
That´s what the "we act like Bayesians (often) without realizing it" implies, if you - deep in your heart - set the prior belief at zero, there will be nothing able to convice you that the opposite is true.
LIGO?Max Headroom said:
If you need to distinguish between positive and negative signal then this is possible. Just make a different meter.
Somewhat irrelevant stories don't really cast any light on the debate. However, the story does have some relevance: Galileo was proved right by producing evidence. Where is the evidence of cable directionality due to die direction, extrusion direction etc.?john curl said:
Length of cable (in wavelengths) is a factor, as I keep saying.simon7000 said:
Measurements or raw data seen on an instrument?john curl said:
Higgs was not reporting a phenomenon which existing physics says should not happen. On the contrary, he was providing a possible explanation for something which was known to be the case (particles have mass) but did not fit the standard theory. He also predicted that if his idea was correct then a new particle with certain properties should eventually be discovered.indra1 said:
I don't think Maxwell's equations need to be defended. As they are well supported by evidence all they need is to be asserted when people try to deny them. The same for information theory: two data files cannot be both identical and different. I find it interesting that you seem to major on observations which, if true, would require fundamental change in well-established science. I think you will have to find your own explanations, as thus far you have failed to establish any evidence that the phenomena exist.Max Headroom said:
As his name was (miss)placed here,
Discovery of Galileo’s long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition
George
Discovery of Galileo’s long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition
George
It's possible innit'.
Sure, know of anything in software please ?.
How is this so when the only changes are cable direction and minimal, hopefully nil positional change.
In metallic conductors, impurities, crystal boundaries and dislocations are causes of noises.
From ingot to wire strand seems a pretty torturous process, anybody here have good first hand knowledge of wire and cable manufacture ?.
What does annealing and cryo treatment really do to metals etc ?.
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Were you not saying that there could be defects in cables (wire and connectors) that may result in directional property within the understanding of physics? Could it not be possible that due to cost competitiveness or other factors, some percentage of regular usable commercial cables are in fact slightly defective yet noticeable to some people? I have not come across noticeable wire directionality but noted subtle difference on several line level IC, people with more sensitive hearing may find it troublesome yet others simply never notice for various reasons.
I hope some of us can work together like the people of CERN to find a reliable way to obtain hard data on the subject. Tasking the onus of proof to cable proponents has been so far unproductive.
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When I read the stuff posted here I get a laugh remembering that Dr. Weiss and I had a discussion on whether 1/f noise is a fundamental property of all processes. I told him that in my experience, for semiconductors, it was and I have measured it down to 10 micro-Hz. He said that he was not convinced that was true for all processes.
LIGO is limited by the thermal noise (motion) of the gold atoms coating the mirrors (it is a big parametric amplifier after all). That puts wire directionality pretty far down on the list.
Um, your "belief"is that cables are directional, and you are endlessly defending this belief.
By your definition, you are acting as what you consider a naysayer.
You've already come to your conclusions, and are attempting to convince others.
That's not how it works, that is the same pit many others fall into.
Any experiment must be well documented, controlled, repeatable BY OTHERS. Anyone saying "every time I do it it's the same" isn't bringing anything to the table.
The strength of a sound theory is the ability to predict an outcome and have a repeatable test to demonstrate the accuracy of a prediction.
As to your theory explanation, you reject all explanations which do not match your conclusions.
You need a clean slate. Erase all memory of pseudoscience white papers, and start over with some good textbooks.
Jn
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