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FireWire directional?

mathomas

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(New here, first post. Be gentle ;))

(about 6:30 in)

The host of the YT channel “The Vinyl Attack!” recently accepted Danny Ritchie’s challenge to visit him and hear his listening room and learn. Apparently, the host’s first “cable makes a difference” experience in this visit was based upon the direction that a FireWire cable was plugged in.

I instantly mumbled “BS” to myself, but in the spirit of the video (to at least try to keep an open mind), I decided to search around a bit. However, I can’t find anything other than connector design that would suggest “directionality” in FireWire. Maybe I’m missing something. Is it a power thing, as elliptically alluded to in the video? There is mention of an “open” end and a “closed” end, and that ever-tricky “noise” phenomenon raising its head if the cable is the wrong way around. I found no mention of the open/closed concept. Maybe I didn’t search well enough.

There is more about measurements vs. the amazing human ear, but I’ll let folks watch the vid.
 

amper42

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All Firewire cables work in both directions. When you use one with a computer it does not matter which end is plugged into the drive/device or the computer. I have over 20 FireWire cables and this applies to all of them.
 
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mathomas

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All Firewire cables work in both directions. When you use one with a computer it does not matter which end is plugged into the drive/device or the computer. I have over 20 FireWire cables and this applies to all of them.
This is exactly what I would expect. I was trying to keep an open mind. He didn’t say the bits wouldn’t flow, just that “noise” could result, and to him it was audible (very much paraphrasing what he said).
 

SIY

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There is mention of an “open” end and a “closed” end, and that ever-tricky “noise” phenomenon raising its head if the cable is the wrong way around. I found no mention of the open/closed concept. Maybe I didn’t search well enough.
Danny is a master of FUD for fun and profit.
 

antcollinet

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I have no intention of watching that, unless somone convinces me they've used a properly controlled blind test and can still detect a difference. I suspect I won't have to waste my time.
 
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freemansteve

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Firewire is an obsolete serial bus technology, but I was surprised to hear that any interconnect cable of this type may have had an un-terminated wire inside, at one end (as stated in the video). I am not surprised that this "antenna" may have different effects, depending on which end is plugged in where. It doesn't really feel like a good cable test under these circumstances.

I'm also not surprised that two wines from different vineyards taste different. And unless a wine maker is able to blend between years to keep a reasonably consistent taste, it not surprising that the same wine, from the same vineyard may taste different year-to-year, if no blending is done. What was he on about?
 

SIY

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I'm also not surprised that two wines from different vineyards taste different. And unless a wine maker is able to blend between years to keep a reasonably consistent taste, it not surprising that the same wine, from the same vineyard may taste different year-to-year, if no blending is done. What was he on about?
You're making me happier about not bothering to waste the time watching.
 

Killingbeans

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There is more about measurements vs. the amazing human ear, but I’ll let folks watch the vid.

IMO, more like: There's not much to say about measurements vs. the not so amazing human ear.

Measurements have no problem surpassing human hearing in terms of both bandwidth and resolution by a ridiculously huge factor.

A sound wave in itself is not a complicated thing, especially not as an electrical signal. Things do get complicated when there's multiple sound waves interacting with each other and all of the physical objects they encounter.. and then all of the reflections from those encounters. But the base element is nothing special.

People often point at the wetware signal processing as the secret ingredient that legitimizes any snake-oil claim, but they forget that it has no physical connection to the source of the audio whatsoever. A sound wave that hits you is a sound wave that hits you, not matter what your brain does with it afterwards.

I'm not going to watch another video about Danny. He made this video a year ago saying that he would finally be putting some of his bonkers claims to the test, and we haven't heard a peep about it since:

 
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