10 Biggest Lies in Audio

[Asit]

Thad,

Last Sunday Dr. Bass came to visit my place on his way back to Singapore. Pratim also joined in. Obviously Dr.Bass wanted to have a listen in my system. He also brought in a few of his audition CDs. Now, I have been having a problem with my amp for the last few months, namely the volume potentiometer is slowly giving up (it's from a very good brand, namely Alps Blue, but failures may happen at times with all good products). Usually the problem shows up in producing noise in one channel at a particular volume level.

I was playing the system after about a month. You can verify with Dr. Bass and also with Pratim independently that at least 5 times during the more-than-4- hour listening session, I uttered that my system was sounding a bit harsher than normal (especially in the tops). Dr. Bass was apparently quite happy with my system, but he also noticed this and actually wrote in a very detailed report of his impressions after he reached Singapore. Of course he has no idea of my system how my system sounded in its full health.

Well, what I am trying to say is that even slight changes of tonal balance can be detected, although this time this was not caused by burn-in of anything but actually deterioration of the volume pot.

The domain walls I described in one of my previous posts has no guarantee to stay at a fixed place as time moves on while it is subjected to a EM signal. Every configuration ultimately wants to settle in the lowest energy configuration, so it is not unreasonable to expect that after a certain time these defects (domain walls) will actually settle to some stable configuration, signaling the ned of burn-in, and the time taken will of course depend on the material specimen and may be called the relaxation time for the defects.

Regards

 

[Asit]

@Asit: What you are describing is theoretically true but hardly relevant for audio signals with 2V p-p and 20 KHz bandwidth. Even less effect for speaker cables where the amplitude is even higher. Few of these cable designers are the relics of cold war. At that time, the aim to make every element of the audio circuit transparent was essential. The task was perfect reproduction of hydrophone signals that was low amplitude and very noisy. So if you change the tonality of the signal then you may not identify whether a Soviet Akula class submarine left the harbor or a NATO Los Angeles class. Yes I do believe cables make a difference but in a very limited audio use case.

I somehow don't understand why the effect of cables/IC burn-in always changes the tonality towards good not the other way round. Few years back one of our respected Analog designer had designed a PLL (phase locked loop) circuit with band-gap reference voltage which had output voltage of 1.25V at the operating temperature of 50C instead of typical temp of 22C. His logic was that with all the modules running the chip's operating temp is 50C and the PLL works the best. Long story short, chip didn't passed the QC since silicon test is not done based on use cases and we had to redesign the chip which cost us few million dollars.
So my point is no respected circuit designer designs circuit hoping that burn-in will change the frequency response of the output of the amp/pre-amp/cd-player and make it better sounding.
OT: Of all the UCs that the state has built, you had to reference a Ph.D from the hippie-town

I do not understand what the absolute amplitude got to do with the effects of scattering. It's simply wrong. Are you trying to say that we see the sky as white? Far from it. No matter what the absolute amplitude is, the effect of any energy carrying signal passing through a material medium is scattering, which will rearrange all the individual pure signals in a wave packet, or in other words, the spectrum (the relative aptitudes of the different frequencies present) will change, which in the present example (music signal) will change the tonality, however small the effect may be.

Why does burn in always improve the sonics? Well, I have to confess I do not have a direct answer. But, please remember, in every dynamical system, the configuration always ultimately settles for the lowest energy state. This is a basic principle of physics, and has been verified in multitudes of physical systems, quantum or classical. My proposal is that this lowest energy configuration of the domain walls is what we find as 'better' sound.

All good designers I know (of course indirectly) pay a huge attention to what they call the 'voicing' of the equipment. While the thermodynamic (meaning macroscopic) properties of the passive components used may remain constant (and this is what I would presume the designers depend on), their microscopic properties certainly change and finally settle (as explained above) and this would of course have an effect on the sonics, again however small.

Please do not bring in our new recruit any more into discussion. As I see this was a mistake made by me in a public forum. However, in our fields, just a PhD is not a good enough qualification to be even considered for a faculty position. The person concerned has done PhD elsewhere, and after that has done a couple of post-docs each lasting 2 to 3 years. The person is considered one of the best (among comparable people in the world) in the field the person works in and has several publications in the highest impact factor journals.

Regards.

 

[doors666]

Nope, this does not destroy the signal. I have already said that the effect of the scattering is to change the 'quality' of the sound, that means the tonality of the sound. But remember this is a tiny effect, as also stated before, because after all we are using a conductor. The fact that these conductors have impedance is because these scatterings are taking place, otherwise there is almost no other reason for any impedance developing in a conductor (remember the electrons in the conduction band of the conductor are 'free', but actually in addition to the scattering there is also some electron-electron interaction, but there is NO phonon-electron interaction as the Fermi level is pretty high). Your question is more about the quantity of this equalization effect.

An integrated amp can be better or worse than a pre-power. Remember, in an integrated, there is also a pre section and a power section and they are connected through a passive component. In a good design, there usually is shortest lengths of passive components used, you must have noticed.

Please keep in mind that, in my original post, the main message I wanted to give is that, based on physics as I know it, there is enough reason for a cable to make a difference in the soinics and also to burn in for the material to 'settle'.

Regards

The burn in is still unexplained. Once you start conducting signal thru the cable, what happens over time? Electrons flow through the medium. These electrons cannot dislodge or move atoms or molecules. They keep moving in a loop thru the entire system. Once the current stops, most of them settle in the original configuration, the free state or say the outer most layer of the atom, that is the state of least energy for the electron in this case. Where is the permanent physical change taking place, its cant be in the rest of the atom? The only thing that can possibly change is the state of the electrons. Here also, only the electrons from the outer most layer are free to move anyway as soon as a potential difference is applied, the inner layers cant release their electrons without consuming huge amounts of energy as they are much more tightly bonded.

Now lets consider this case. I need a 10m interconnect. Lets say I combine a good 1m and bad 9m interconnect. What will be the combined effect. Will it be like a good cable or like a bad cable. It will be like a bad cable, because it has already changed the signal which cant be changed back.

Next scenario, Assuming the signal on pcb is good, which itself is doubtful. You are transferring the signal from your preamp pcb to amp pcb. What's involved is a crappy internal wire, connector, good quality interconnect, another connector and another crappy internal wire. Apply logic from paragraph 2, crappy internal wire has already changed the signal for bad.

Since all cables change the signal for bad as in taking you away from the original signal, sounds to me like no cables is the best option. Diyers should be making a single box containing dac, pre, power etc, or everything on a single pcb.

Is length important. Is an average 2 inch interconnect as good as a 2m great interconnect.

 

[Asit]

The burn in is still unexplained. Once you start conducting signal thru the cable, what happens over time? Electrons flow through the medium. These electrons cannot dislodge or move atoms or molecules. They keep moving in a loop thru the entire system. Once the current stops, most of them settle in the original configuration, the free state or say the outer most layer of the atom, that is the state of least energy for the electron in this case. Where is the permanent physical change taking place, its cant be in the rest of the atom? The only thing that can possibly change is the state of the electrons. Here also, only the electrons from the outer most layer are free to move anyway as soon as a potential difference is applied, the inner layers cant release their electrons without consuming huge amounts of energy as they are much more tightly bonded.

Now lets consider this case. I need a 10m interconnect. Lets say I combine a good 1m and bad 9m interconnect. What will be the combined effect. Will it be like a good cable or like a bad cable. It will be like a bad cable, because it has already changed the signal which cant be changed back.

Next scenario, Assuming the signal on pcb is good, which itself is doubtful. You are transferring the signal from your preamp pcb to amp pcb. What's involved is a crappy internal wire, connector, good quality interconnect, another connector and another crappy internal wire. Apply logic from paragraph 2, crappy internal wire has already changed the signal for bad.

Since all cables change the signal for bad as in taking you away from the original signal, sounds to me like no cables is the best option. Diyers should be making a single box containing dac, pre, power etc, or everything on a single pcb.

Is length important. Is an average 2 inch interconnect as good as a 2m great interconnect.

You have got it all wrong, I am afraid. But I am happy that you are making at least some effort in trying to understand the contents of my posts. However, I must also say that you are not reading my posts carefully. If you did, you must have noticed that the final state that I was talking about was not about of electrons, but of the domain walls separating one domain of perfect crystal to another separated by a defect of some kind (void in the lattice points, impurities etc). I said it clearly, under an external field, there is no reason for these defects not to move around, and they do and these are established facts in condensed matter physics. With time, they come to a final steady state which I would think of as a state with minimum energy (or maximum entropy).

Yes, all cables introduce their signature to the incoming sound. I have said this in many places in the forum. There is no absolutely neutral cable, I am sorry. Why is it so hard to accept? Isn't it natural to expect that any signal will change in a medium. In our everyday life there are numerous examples of it, and in physics it is an established fact and also a subject of intense research involving exotic matter or even forms of matter (for example, quark-gluon plasma).

However, this is not a disaster. Firstly, there can be and actually are cables (not necessarily expensive ones) which are not perfectly neutral (because that is not possible) but reasonably close to it. The other solution is to mix and match equipments so that finally the sonic signature is as close to neutral as possible, if the listener so desires. But you will be surprised to hear that, although many audiophiles are asking for a completely neutral sound, in practice, almost everybody likes it a bit colored, this way or that way.

Yes, it is always better to use shorter cables, shortest signal path, most non-interfering signal paths etc.

I am sorry, I am usually very busy till the evening. I may or may not be able to log in back during these hours.

Regards.

 

[jls001]

Let me phrase the question in other way.

Do the cable manufacturers know how would a material behave microscopically when it is subjected to the EM field? If the answer to this question is a NO, then what makes them qualified to claim exotic properties for the cables and sell them at 2000$?

I have never read or heard any cable manufacturer talking about microscopic effects of EM fields. This is not to say that there isn't such an effect. But I do believe most manufacturers are certainly aware of the effect of RF and EM in polluting the signal carried by the cable. Hence the claims about superior shielding
, blah, blah, blah....

Why is it always the costly cables are perceived to have "better behaviour around EM fields"?

Better Shielding could be one of the reasons. And if one is to believe manufacturers, the material (e.g. 99.9999% purity copper/silver/whatever; special construction of material like Prof Ohno's Continuous Cast method - and variations thereof - which produces very long grained copper crystals; alloying in certain proprietary proportions; use of exotic materials, etc), and perhaps the geometry (e.g. Cardas swears by the Golden Ratio for literally everything; others use the simple Litz braid)

If someone is making an end product claiming it has certain properties without knowing how he gave the product the characters in the first place, will you buy it?

If the end product is to your liking, why not? Did the Wright brothers set out to invent a flying machine because they knew the principles that went into making a heavier-than-air machine fly? No. After more than a century since the Wright brothers left terra firma, has the scientific community explained satisfactorily the principles behind flight? No (do google for the news item that came up some days ago about how the currently accepted explanation of how an airplane takes off is all wrong). This hasn't stopped pilots taking off merrily.

What is the probability of such a person to have come up with the actual product with claimed properties?

How probable? I don't know, but lack of the deeper knowledge of how things work hasn't stopped people from inventing lots of useful things. Scientific men can then write PhD theses to explain how said useful thing works BTW, that's useful too as it propagates knowledge and, more importantly, it will lead to improvements.

Can a monkey write a poem?

Good question Now the answer to this would take us headlong from audio into evolution science, an area as hotly debated as audio (if not more). So why jump from the pan into the fire?

 

[mohamednaseer]

Hi Friends,

When you write comment about anything.Please mention what are the cables you have compared ,cost and price and brand (model) of the cable and what systems you have used for the comparision and what is is your conclusion.Because saying High end cables are waste is easy.Commenter should need to prove with their personal experiance then only we can understand.Because some times i our members give their comment about the system even they have not seen the system.I think this is not possible.Apart from science judging the component with our own ears is the best way.

 

[sound1]

Can a monkey write a poem?

Yes, and it's called Eminem.

 

[alpha1]

With a biiiiiig helping hand from the marketing departments

Marketing departments, propaganda departments ...
and also the general affinity of human beings towards fairy tales.

 

[alpha1]

Asit, since you are scientifically inclined - would you let the forum know, whether you have conducted a double blind test to confirm the perceptible change in audio spectrum caused by the cables beyond what can be calculated mathematically as resistance, inductance and capacitance of the medium?

 

[alpha1]

Hi Friends,

When you write comment about anything.Please mention what are the cables you have compared ,cost and price and brand (model) of the cable and what systems you have used for the comparision and what is is your conclusion.Because saying High end cables are waste is easy.Commenter should need to prove with their personal experiance then only we can understand.Because some times i our members give their comment about the system even they have not seen the system.I think this is not possible.Apart from science judging the component with our own ears is the best way.

I hate repeating myself but what you are asking is a futile exercise in objectivity (unless its backed with a double blind test):

In the battle between what ppl want to believe in and what exists in reality, its what "they want to believe in" wins.

 

[arj]

Marketing departments, propaganda departments ...
and also the general affinity of human beings towards fairy tales.

There is also something called "Conspiracy Theory" Every body loves one and are willing to believe anything they read debunking a belief.
only way too beat its is to read about everything for information but believe only what you hear. believing what someone else heard is jut not going to work for you and by starting off itself by disbelieving something is just going to be your loss,

In this hobby there is lots of both and if you dont "hear" its asking for a ticket to be taken for a ride.

 

[square_wave]

I guess these discussions can go on till the cows come home.

We need to appreciate a fact here. Asit experienced differences in his system (burn in as well as cable differences). He is a physicist. He is curious. He then took the trouble of doing research into the phenomenon. He then took the trouble of writing his observations / conclusions on this forum for everyones benefit.

Now let me ask many of the naysayers to do one thing which will make this a meaningful discussion.

1.Assemble a revealing / extremely resolving system yourself or collaborate with a high-end dealer or a friend who owns such a setup.

2.Conduct a listening session to compare differences between cables.

3.Come back here and post your experience.

This will take the discussion full circle! Otherwise, we cannot take you seriously.

If you have already done such an experiment, please write about it in detail here.

 

[Asit]

Asit, since you are scientifically inclined - would you let the forum know, whether you have conducted a double blind test to confirm the perceptible change in audio spectrum caused by the cables beyond what can be calculated mathematically as resistance, inductance and capacitance of the medium?

Although I have not understood the word 'double' in your post, because I am not too much into these things, I have gone through experimentations which effectively you can call blind tests. Yes, definitely.

I will give you one example. I use ICs made by our ex-member Cranky (Sangram). He made many cables (silver, silver-copper alloy with a variety of RCA connectors, different insulations etc). His experimental test bed was my system. Many of these cables had very similar looks so that one cannot tell from a distance of 5 feet their visual difference. Once it so happened that he (along with a friend of his, not a forum member) kept on trying many cables in my system. I had something else to do in my bedroom, and Sangram kept calling me for my impressions without telling me anything about the cable. Of course the music used was one I knew by heart.

Each time I gave my impression and it was very consistent throughout the one hour, and actually the differences were very easy to pick.

Technically it was not a blind test, because I was not blind folded or anything like that, and we were also not careful about everything to do with a blind test. But honestly I can tell you I was giving my impressions without really knowing which cable was being used. That's all you wanted to know I guess.

Similar test have been done many times in my system and other systems I went to audition. You can also ask Vasu (myriad) when he came with his cables to my place, or when we went to hear Vasu's system after he upgraded last year. These may not pass stringently as blind tests, many of these were actually blind tests because we were not always conscious which cable was actually being used.

Now let me give you my findings. The more expensive cables were usually not the ones at least I liked. Let me give you another example. A few months ago, I brought an expensive cable (by my standards ) from SKS Traders for home auditioning for a week. You will be surprised to know that even my son found out the difference, and he did not know that a different cable was being used. Actually I returned the cable to SKS actually quite disstaisfied with it. The sonics were quite clean, that was the good part, but the soundstage became very small. It was a very compressed sound.

In the ned, let me also tell you, if you tried to find out the real spirit of my first post in this thread, you would find that I have no problem if somebody finds no difference due to cables or somebody does not find a cable to burn in. But I wanted to show, at least scientifically there are deep reasons to suspect that a cable can in principle make a difference (for better or worse) and cables can also burn in and the burn-in time will differ with different cables. Hence, I cannot appreciate harsh/sarcastic comments without appreciating the scientific reasoning (all of which are not easy to understand or are very apparent for a non-scientist). I am not forcing any body to believe in cables or burn in. Actually that was not the point at all. One should listen and decide for oneself, I have nothing to say there.

Regards.

 

[AMITNOIDA]

I guess these discussions can go on till the cows come home.

We need to appreciate a fact here. Asit experienced differences in his system (burn in as well as cable differences). He is a physicist. He is curious. He then took the trouble of doing research into the phenomenon. He then took the trouble of writing his observations / conclusions on this forum for everyones benefit.

Now let me ask many of the naysayers to do one thing which will make this a meaningful discussion.

1.Assemble a revealing / extremely resolving system yourself or collaborate with a high-end dealer or a friend who owns such a setup.

2.Conduct a listening session to compare differences between cables.

3.Come back here and post your experience.

This will take the discussion full circle! Otherwise, we cannot take you seriously.

If you have already done such an experiment, please write about it in detail here.

I also believe in impact of different cables on sound. Theory aside, it was personally heard and experienced by me even recently. In my recent audition of Zu Super Soul Fly Floor stander speaker with Leben amp, there was noticeable change when Mr. Jasdeep (the distributor) changed the speaker wire from one (I have forgotten the brand) to Zu Audio Speaker wire. The sound became more defined and comparatively pleasant to ear.

Square Wave suggested rightly. Perhaps it would end all the debates.

Regards

 

[square_wave]

There are many ways to test. The problems with double blind testing has been discussed in detail in many forums. None of these tests are fool proof. Heres a better way to test.

1.Identify one person who has years of listening experience and actually owns a very resolving / revealing system which he has painfully setup. This guy needs many years of experience comparing many types of cables. Do the test with his existing system.

2.Select a piece of music and give him couple of days to get familiar with this piece and how it sounds with his current cables.

3.Identify one different cable (maybe the speaker cable). Give this different cable also to him for two days to familiarize along with the selected piece of music.

4.On the day of the test, play the piece with his current cables first. Then keep playing the same music piece many times each time switching or not switching the cables.

5.Ask him to identify HIS cables each time you play.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Of course, when any one of us goes to the shop, auditions, makes a purchase, it will be a decision based on what we hear, although what we hear will also be influenced by psychological issues. Still, whatever the psychology, influence by beliefs, marketing etc etc, that final purchase decision is based on what we hear. It is going to be a subjective decision; just as subjective as the colour and fabric of the clothes that we buy. There's nothing wrong with that.

What I suggest is wrong is the almost phobic attitude of the audiophile community to any sort of blind test. So, what's so wrong with blind testing? If a handful of publications had taken this route years ago, this conversation, and many like it, would be entirely different.

... Because saying High end cables are waste is easy.Commenter should need to prove with their personal experiance then only we can understand.

Don't you think we should demand double-blind testing from the manufacturers and the professional reviewers whose publications have the resources to easily support such testing? Such a test might show that cable A at $10 is better than cable B at $1,000. It might even show that the technological claims made by company B are invalid. The companies, the publications, the authors, the "community" does not want to take that risk: there is too much investment, emotional, mental, and financial at risk.

Generally, there is ademand for the deniers to prove their point of view. No: that is not how it works! This is a consumer industry that pockets our money: it is down to them to prove their selling points.

This is not so much about selling to a handful of people who have, or have trained themselves to have, sensitive appreciation of their hearing abilities, it is about selling to get the maximum revenue from the masses, whether those masses are spending in the hundreds or in the lakhs.

Each is free to buy as they wish. As a consumer issue, though, I wish the audiophile community would put its weight behind a demand for blind testing. This is not about the ears, or the egos, of the few: it is about the ripping off of the many.

Asit, since you are scientifically inclined - would you let the forum know, whether you have conducted a double blind test to confirm the perceptible change in audio spectrum caused by the cables beyond what can be calculated mathematically as resistance, inductance and capacitance of the medium?

Asit has not claimed to lay before us anything more than theoretical possibility. To those who say, "a different analogue cable cannot make a difference," he is saying that, as a physicist, he can see that it is possible. He may have his own experiences and preference between specific cables; that is not what he is writing about here. No specific cable is concerned.

Referring back to the OP, I think people have chosen to throw stones at the easy target: analogue cables. Analogue cables is a small part of point number one on the list!

<crossposted>

There is a specific meaning to "double-blind" testing as a scientific method. the "double" means that even the testers do not know which is A, which is B, which is X. Thus, the subject of the test is completely isolated from any possible influence (those RF signals given out by the tester's brain ). I'm not a scientist; that is as much as I know about double-blind testing.

The test that Asit describes in his last post , as a test for personal experience and community testing is blind enough for me. In fact, I would say that it is impressive. It wouldn't be good enough if coming from a major manufacturer.

1.Identify one person who has years of listening experience and actually owns a very resolving / revealing system which he has painfully setup. This guy needs many years of experience comparing many types of cables.

Quibble: Why? What is being compared is the resultant sound. the fact that it may result from a cable change is incidental.

There is also testing that does not rely on our perception. If you can hear a difference, there must be a difference; if there is a difference, it can be measured.

To those who find this an objectionable statement, let me first clear the usual misunderstanding: my statement has nothing whatsoever to do with published or unpublished specifications, it has to do with comparing sound A to sound B.

To those who maintain that such a comparison is impossible, let me ask them how they think the music was recorded, and committed to the media they are playing it from, in the first place?

 

[cha_indian]

I completely agree on the author's views on Speaker cables and interconnects and the Bi-Wiring . Bi-wiring actually reduced the sound quality in my speakers.

 

[mohamednaseer]

yes Square Wave point is correct.Before judging the system one should have very well experience with the song.He must know what is real output of the song.Then only he can judge the difference in cable.Suppose a cable give bigger sound stage and good bass more than what is available in song is also not a good cable.Not only cable the whole system should give what is exacly in song.So listener must have very well knowledge in the song and he need time to understand the performance.For that using one cable for 2 to 3 days and keep on listen the same song and remember all the qualities of the cable and compare with other one.

 

[kaushik]

one funny story here ..
there is one experienced audiophile always dreamt of BnW and finally bought a pair in seconds... after a while he was unhappy with sound .
Many respected audiophiles auditioned the pair , they told some alignment issue ,triangle,8feet,weather effect , diffusion...>>?? but still the laid back sound is awesome, owner was unhappy

finally me and friends gave a check one by one standing near to each speaker .. bingo .. the cause was 1 dead tweeter

so what happened to all golden ears ??

 

[mohamednaseer]

Believe your ears hyeah: