Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

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Re: Casual observations don’t cut it

Posted by tomservo (M) on April 18, 2007 at 10:12:11

In Reply to: "Casual observations don’t cut it in science." Oh baloney! posted by clarkjohnsen on April 18, 2007 at 07:34:51:

Hi Clark

As a long time optical engineer, you would have to agree I think that a casual observation is not something entered into the big book of facts. Lets say you ground a lens with some Glass you just made from sand in your driveway, with a Abby number that appeared to be unbelievable.
“THAT” isn’t enough to qualify you as discovering something new.
Before that, you would need to quantify the chemistry and have a battery of other measurements, finally, others would have to repeat your “Johnsonglass” experiment and get the same results.

What we are talking about in this thread is a casual observation.
IF it is real, then by comparing the difference of the signal at one end VS the other, one could quantify the effect.

Clark, here is the point, in ALL other areas of human perception, it is a well known fact that what you know effects what your sense tell you. So, it is “normal” to use tests that eliminate prior knowledge so that the subject MUST use the sensory input ONLY to make a judgment.
This is why an eye exam uses individual letters as opposed to having words to read and why there is no red light going on during a hearing test to let you know when the tone is present.
This is normal protocol, used to minimize the well known and powerful effect which for some weird reason the high end hifi world thinks doesn’t apply to them.
Instead the say “well its so obvious, your ears must be burnt out being a non-believer”.

So Clark, flip the shoe, when you were designing lenses, did you use formulas, the scientific method and measurements as you developed what ever it was? or as your position in hifi seems to be, did you do it all by how it looked with your eyes because numbers and optical measurements don’t tell you what you see?

My point in all of this is IF there is an effect that is large enough to be heard (as in altering the acoustic signal entering your ears), then it is also large enough to be heard as the difference between on end of a speaker cable and the other.
Outside the world of high end hifi (the rest of electronics), directionality at audio frequencies in cable is not “known” that I know of.

It is a simple matter for someone to do a null test and see what is there.
This would be most simply done by putting a speaker in another room, take a second identical speaker take its input and connect one side to the amp + and the other side to the test speaker +. Now, the signal going to the second speaker is “listening” to the difference between one end of the + or - cable and the other end, the listening speaker is NOT across the amplifier output.. With the test speaker in another room, this allows you to hear the difference signal more clearly.
To the extent the cable has resistance, this will produce a broad band music, to the extent it has inductance, it will produce hf content.
If the cable produced distortion, THAT is what comes out, all of it comes out in proportion to how loud that effect is on the speaker in the other room, follow?
Best,

Tom Danley

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