Now they say differences between interconnect cables are audible in blind listening tests.. :P

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As a practicing engineer in wireless communications, I am not able to justify/digest arguements like electrical "signals" travelling at velocities of around 3.2 m/s (not concerned about drift velocity of electrons here). For all pracrical purposes, signal velocity in cables carrying electrical signals is close to the speed of light in vaccum.
This is a simple source of explanation i could find from a google search regarsing the different velocities involved:
www.wtamu.edu

What is the speed of electricity?

The speed of electricity really depends on what you mean by the word electricity. This word is very general and basically means, all things relatin...
www.wtamu.edu www.wtamu.edu

Vineethkumar01 said:
I am not able to justify/digest arguements like electrical "signals" travelling at velocities of around 3.2 m/s (not concerned about drift velocity of electrons here). For all pracrical purposes, signal velocity in cables carrying electrical signals is close to the speed of light in vaccum.
This is a simple source of explanation i could find from a google search regarsing the different velocities involved:
www.wtamu.edu

What is the speed of electricity?

The speed of electricity really depends on what you mean by the word electricity. This word is very general and basically means, all things relatin...
www.wtamu.edu www.wtamu.edu
Click to expand...
 
Vineethkumar01 said:
As a practicing engineer in wireless communications, I am not able to justify/digest arguements like electrical "signals" travelling at velocities of around 3.2 m/s (not concerned about drift velocity of electrons here). For all pracrical purposes, signal velocity in cables carrying electrical signals is close to the speed of light in vaccum.
This is a simple source of explanation i could find from a google search regarsing the different velocities involved:
www.wtamu.edu

What is the speed of electricity?

The speed of electricity really depends on what you mean by the word electricity. This word is very general and basically means, all things relatin...
www.wtamu.edu www.wtamu.edu
Click to expand...
There is so much misinformation and obfuscation in the audio universe. I truly believe it is a parallel universe.
Cables do sound different, but not because of time smear or skin effect.
It is because of parameters like R/L/C, dielectrics, geometry, connectors and resulting attenuation.
Time smear is true though in case of sound transmission from speakers to ear, not in 1/2/3 meter cables.

Cheers,
Raghu
 
What is meant by "time smear"? Phase distortion/alteration? Perhaps a fixed delay in ms or seconds across the bandwidth or at some portion of the bandwidth?
 
Vineethkumar01 said:
As a practicing engineer in wireless communications, I am not able to justify/digest arguements like <snip>
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But are you an "audiophile"??? If yes, you would have known that you are an evolved species and can hear and imagine things that are not part of that theory you have been taught. You would have known that you wasted your time learning from your engineering textbooks. You would have got more information and learnt so much more just by browsing www.6loons.com.
 
Decadent_Spectre said:
What is meant by "time smear"? Phase distortion/alteration? Perhaps a fixed delay in ms or seconds across the bandwidth or at some portion of the bandwidth?
Click to expand...
Regarding smearing of a signal in time domain, here is my thought:

Let us consider a speaker trying to reproduce a sine wave of a given single frequency (a pure tone). If at the listener's ears the direct sound and a reflected version of the same tone arrives after some delay, these two signals will interfere and the time domain waveform will get "smeared". So for time smearing to occur, in general, two or more signals having a common frequency content need to interfere. The amount of delay determines the amount of "smear" .
For a broadband signal, in frequency domain, this causes comb filtering due to the constant delay across frequencies.
Another concept worth noting is that tones of two different frequencies when they interefere do not cause the above kind of smearing as they are orthogonal (not able to find a simpler word for notion of orthogonality).
 
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Vineethkumar01 said:
Regarding smearing of a signal in time domain, here is my thought:

Let us consider a speaker trying to reproduce a sine wave of a given single frequency (a pure tone). If at the listener's ears the direct sound and a reflected version of the same tone arrives after some delay, these two signals will interfere and the time domain waveform will get "smeared". So for time smearing to occur, in general, two or more signals having a common frequency content need to interfere. The amount of delay determines the amount of "smear" .
For a broadband signal, In frequency domain, this is comb filtering.
Another concept worth noting is that tones of two different frequencies when they interefere do not cause the above kind of smearing as they are orthogonal (not able to find a simpler word for notion of orthogonality).
Click to expand...

What you describe is a reflection problem. Does it really occur in cables?
 
Decadent_Spectre said:
What you describe is a reflection problem. Does it really occur in cables?
Click to expand...
I have not heard about or known about it.
edit: Recently i heard about a paper by the same author i refered in this thread having a written a paper on time smear etc in the past. But after a lot of controversy, it was taken down or something. In other forums i see that "removing" time smear related notions are also there behind the MQA format
 
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raghupb said:
There is so much misinformation and obfuscation in the audio universe. I truly believe it is a parallel universe.
Cables do sound different, but not because of time smear or skin effect.
It is because of parameters like R/L/C, dielectrics, geometry, connectors and resulting attenuation.
Time smear is true though in case of sound transmission from speakers to ear, not in 1/2/3 meter cables.

Cheers,
Raghu
Click to expand...
Is this from your own building & DIY efforts or reading the others opinions and other forums. Curious to know.

Decadent_Spectre said:
What is meant by "time smear"? Phase distortion/alteration? Perhaps a fixed delay in ms or seconds across the bandwidth or at some portion of the bandwidth?
Click to expand...
Time smear will be in msec and happens for HF/ LF / MF.
 
Recently I used 8 cable lifters to isolate my speaker cables from the ground. The difference it made to my sound was like going from veg biriyani to mutton biriyani. All of a sudden there were those micro dynamics that had eluded me all my life , that I had only read on pages of Stereophile and 6moons. On furthur digging I learnt that when cables are thus isolated, electrons are less prone to electromagnetic as well as cosmic microwave background radiations , hence the massive improvement !
 
Bloom@83 said:
Recently I used 8 cable lifters to isolate my speaker cables from the ground. The difference it made to my sound was like going from veg biriyani to mutton biriyani. All of a sudden there were those micro dynamics that had eluded me all my life , that I had only read on pages of Stereophile and 6moons. On furthur digging I learnt that when cables are thus isolated, electrons are less prone to electromagnetic as well as cosmic background microwave radiations , hence the massive improvement !
Click to expand...

I don't know about others but for me veg biryani is better than mutton biryani :) Not that I am a fan of biryani, a pedestrian dish.

I won't be using "cable lifters". I don't believe they make a difference. That aside if it works for you, great. :D
 
Decadent_Spectre said:
I don't know about others but for me veg biryani is better than mutton biryani :) Not that I am a fan of biryani, a pedestrian dish.

I won't be using "cable lifters". I don't believe they make a difference. That aside if it works for you, great. :D
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Read my post again. If you still don’t get it , look up a word starting with S , followed by A , R, C…. ending with I, C.
 
Hari Iyer said:
Is this from your own building & DIY efforts or reading the others opinions and other forums. Curious to know.
Click to expand...
I have recently made a few sets of cables from commercially available wire.
There are differences in how they sound because of the material, construction and sheathing.
In multi strand wire (lots of thin wires) all of them will conduct using up the cross sectional area.
And I do have a basic understanding of electrical engineering and physics.
If there is an article I can understand it (at least most of it).

My argument is not about cables sounding different. They do.
It's confusing when the science behind it is attributed to something that's not true.
You may have experienced many things in your DIY work and I respect that. Just attribute the right science to it.
It is a bit hard to believe that an audio signal of a few KHz will arrive at vastly different times in a 1 meter interconnect.

So there you go.

Cheers,
Raghu
 
raghupb said:
I have recently made a few sets of cables from commercially available wire.
There are differences in how they sound because of the material, construction and sheathing.
In multi strand wire (lots of thin wires) all of them will conduct using up the cross sectional area.
And I do have a basic understanding of electrical engineering and physics.
If there is an article I can understand it (at least most of it).

My argument is not about cables sounding different. They do.
It's confusing when the science behind it is attributed to something that's not true.
You may have experienced many things in your DIY work and I respect that. Just attribute the right science to it.
It is a bit hard to believe that an audio signal of a few KHz will arrive at vastly different times in a 1 meter interconnect.

So there you go.

Cheers,
Raghu
Click to expand...
I have discussed this concept last year in this link - you can refer this on this link https://www.hifivision.com/threads/time-aligned-interconnect-and-speaker-cables-diy.85141/

Attaching an US patent article which discuss further on this topic.

PS: Unable to attach document as its huge in size. Can you PM me your email id for mailing it?

keith_correa said:
But are you an "audiophile"??? If yes, you would have known that you are an evolved species and can hear and imagine things that are not part of that theory you have been taught. You would have known that you wasted your time learning from your engineering textbooks. You would have got more information and learnt so much more just by browsing www.6loons.com.
Click to expand...
An anology -

Just because you and me cannot see GOD does not mean GOD does not exist. There were several saints in all the religions who have realized and seen GOD and have recommended ways and means to realize HIM. Its just because we don't put enough efforts and hardwork to follow that and we don't see HIM and cry - GOD does not exist and GOD is fake etc etc.

Extending this-
Just because Keith and www.6loons.com cannot hear the differences between various conductors, dielectrics, skin depth etc. does not mean that the differences don't exist. Its just that they have not spend enough time and effort in getting things properly. If they follow all the recommended suggestions - perhaps they could also hear the differences. I am sure there are many FMs (like @jls001 ) who have experimented and experienced different cable attributes and how they sound different.

Further Extension -
I don't believe that a country by name USA exist - just because i have not seen it. But i am sure there would be 100s of FMs who have seen and visited USA. If i need to believe that USA exist - then i need to put effort to go there. I need a passport, a VISA, a ticket to go there. All this require time, effort and money to prove to myself that USA exist. Till then i will keep believing that USA don't exist (for me).
 
Hari Iyer said:
I have discussed this concept last year in this link - you can refer this on this link https://www.hifivision.com/threads/time-aligned-interconnect-and-speaker-cables-diy.85141/

Attaching an US patent article which discuss further on this topic.

PS: Unable to attach document as its huge in size. Can you PM me your email id for mailing it?
Click to expand...
Thanks. I am not interested in making audio life more complicated.
Enjoy your the fruits of DIY experiments.
Cheers,
Raghu
 
This seems good article. It's true that cables do sound different but there is no way to judge a cable without listening to it in the system.


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Why Audio Cables Sound Different

Learn why audio cables make a difference to the sound of your hifi system - cheap versus expensive cables and the electrical properties of interconnect cables
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