Solid Core Wiring

[arpinnurmela]

The part after, "As you pointed out..."

Come on... I was hoping for a discussion. I'm trying to zing myself so that I can just get the zings out of the way and we can have a more substantive debate on some of the ideas.

 

[JSmith]

was blown away by the sound quality of this approach

an obvious improvement in SQ

I assume you were able to measure this veil lifting experience? ... or are we talking your subjective impressions replying on auditory memory?

If relying on auditory memory I can then only assume you were able to switch between without knowing which was which and within 2 - 3.5s?

Have We Forgotten Auditory Sensory Memory? Retention Intervals in Studies of Nonverbal Auditory Working Memory

Researchers have shown increased interest in mechanisms of working memory for nonverbal sounds such as music and environmental sounds. These studies often have used two-stimulus comparison tasks: two sounds separated by a brief retention interval (often ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Though some researchers have estimated it to be 2 s or less (Crowder, 1976; Huron and Parncutt, 1993), longer estimates have included 3.5 s (Mcevoy et al., 1997), 4–5 s (Glucksberg and Cowen, 1970), at least several seconds (Cowan, 1984), 10 s (Sams et al., 1993), 10–15 s (Winkler and Cowan, 2005), 20 s (Watkins and Todres, 1980), at least 30 s (Winkler et al., 2002), and possibly up to 60 s (Engle and Roberts, 1982).

Please, post your results.



JSmith

 

[SIY]

Come on... I was hoping for a discussion.

Once you've done an experiment, sure.

 

[radix]

The phase issue was something I’m super paranoid about in these rewires. So I tend to check that one about 5 times or more.

It is common in speakers for one driver (individual speaker) to be wired in reverse phase from the others. You need to verify how they are wired before disassembly. It all depends on the speaker and crossover design.

 

[antcollinet]

Come on... I was hoping for a discussion. I'm trying to zing myself so that I can just get the zings out of the way and we can have a more substantive debate on some of the ideas.

How would you have a substantive debate with someone who stated that the earth is a flat disc carried on the backs of four elephants, themselves standing on the shell of the great turtle A'tuin swimming through space?

 

[SDC]

I used thick OCC solid copper core for internal wiring before.

Don't use them anymore cause IMO it is better to use flexible twisted cables even for short distances.

High sensitivity compression drivers showed me what is the real problem in amplifier cable and going solid doesn't help.

 

[arpinnurmela]

I assume you were able to measure this veil lifting experience? ... or are we talking your subjective impressions replying on auditory memory?

If relying on auditory memory I can then only assume you were able to switch between without knowing which was which and within 2 - 3.5s?

Have We Forgotten Auditory Sensory Memory? Retention Intervals in Studies of Nonverbal Auditory Working Memory

Researchers have shown increased interest in mechanisms of working memory for nonverbal sounds such as music and environmental sounds. These studies often have used two-stimulus comparison tasks: two sounds separated by a brief retention interval (often ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Please, post your results.



JSmith

JSmith. I wasn’t able to switch in that time frame. And these are only mine and seven other people's subjective impressions.

I’ll also do an Audacity. That will likely not show anything but at least we will have something to look at instead of vague descriptions and possible claims.

 

[arpinnurmela]

It is common in speakers for one driver (individual speaker) to be wired in reverse phase from the others. You need to verify how they are wired before disassembly. It all depends on the speaker and crossover design.

Yes. I was making sure to be paranoid about this as well as it was also a deep concern.

 

[arpinnurmela]

How would you have a substantive debate with someone who stated that the earth is a flat disc carried on the backs of four elephants, themselves standing on the shell of the great turtle A'tuin swimming through space?

Well, that’s an exotic idea. I’ve had plenty of these kinds of discussions in my life. I find them… interesting. It doesn’t mean I believe them. But interesting yes.

 

[arpinnurmela]

I used thick OCC solid copper core for internal wiring before.

Don't use them anymore cause IMO it is better to use flexible twisted cables even for short distances.

High sensitivity compression drivers showed me what is the real problem in amplifier cable and going solid doesn't help.

I’d like to hear more regarding what you think the real problem is.

 

[arpinnurmela]

Once you've done an experiment, sure.

Fair enough SIY. Now I have your terms of engagement which are reasonable. I probably will need to wait some time but I will come back to this thread with the data from the trial. The results would be interesting with a good number of people and trials. I doubt that it would “convince” anyone but it would at least enliven the decades long debate over cables.

 

[Promit]

Think about it this way Promit. We can be fairly assured that the strands are twisting around inside the wire. We can also be assured that the electrons are going to take the shortest electrical path. So why should we rule out quantum tunneling here? I think it should be considered to be in play.

Here's the thing. Let's assume that tunneling is indeed happening between strands. What is actually tunneling? Electrons are the only sane possibility for this discussion, I hope. What's the implication? What are the actual consequences of tunneling between the strands? Electrons cross between strands carrying charge is the only answer I can think of. But... current is already crossing between strands. That's the whole point of conductors in physical contact with each other. It doesn't appear to add any mechanism that wasn't already in play.

Secondly, what macro-level quantity changes as a result of tunneling? You can't simply claim that quantum tunneling happening in the wires somehow changes the output. Either voltage or current needs to change, as these are the terms driving the movement of a speaker driver element (cone, dome, ribbon, whatever). You've also hand-wavily proposed some time domain impacts in the form of "smearing", which would properly be some type of inconsistent phase relationship across frequencies. And all of these things can be trivially tested on a wire of any length without resorting to exotic physics or in fact any physics at all.

Ultimately you loop back to the same problem that every extraordinary audio claim suffers: either the differing hardware generates a change in the signal which can be meaningfully measured by lab grade test equipment. Or you claim is that the difference is detectable to human ears but not to test equipment. The latter option is something that the objectivist viewpoint (and thus the readership of ASR) soundly reject. To draw serious evidence for the former requires you to propose a measurable change of some type at the output end of the wire. A proposed mechanism is not a proposed change to the signal. Worse still, the mechanisms you're proposing are already well known and well understood because they're highly relevant to making high frequency equipment in RF ranges. The impacts to DC resistance, impedance, inductance, propagation rate etc for different gauges and constructions of wire across various transmission frequencies are perfectly well known and they don't affect high power audio signals. They're not even a conversation until you're in roughly the megahertz and up range.

The situation is of course exacerbated by your failure to run anything resembling an experiment, which makes me wonder why you're here at all. The entire existence of this site is to push back against the endemic "I could hear my credit card bill in the soundstage" that powers publications like Stereophile.

 

[JSmith]

So why should we rule out quantum tunneling here?

I personally don't think one needs to take this into account when listening to some tunes on their audio system... ymmv.



JSmith

 

[Chrispy]

The wires may be in physical contact but they will still have a quantum tunneling effect between strands.

Litz wire supposedly addresses these problems of time smearing by getting the wire small enough such that more of the current is forced to travel through the interior of the wire, each through a separate strand that is coated to prevent the quantum tunneling effect between strands.

Made me snort beer thru my nose!

 

[arpinnurmela]

I personally don't think one needs to take this into account when listening to some tunes on their audio system... ymmv.



JSmith

You might be right...

 

[SDC]

I’d like to hear more regarding what you think the real problem is.

Noise.

Even the slightest noise people say "I can't hear it 1-2 feet away." I think it matters.

And using exotic cable don't really help.

What matters is good cabling with the right cable.
Thick solid core is just terrible for internal wiring in small enclosure. It strains the joint and cable itself. Hard to take optimal routes and every compromise is a big minus.

For me, that out ruled every subjective goodness the cable could have brought.

And for thin flexible solid core. I'll use litz wire instead

 

[arpinnurmela]

Here's the thing. Let's assume that tunneling is indeed happening between strands. What is actually tunneling? Electrons are the only sane possibility for this discussion, I hope. What's the implication? What are the actual consequences of tunneling between the strands? Electrons cross between strands carrying charge is the only answer I can think of. But... current is already crossing between strands. That's the whole point of conductors in physical contact with each other. It doesn't appear to add any mechanism that wasn't already in play.

Secondly, what macro-level quantity changes as a result of tunneling? You can't simply claim that quantum tunneling happening in the wires somehow changes the output. Either voltage or current needs to change, as these are the terms driving the movement of a speaker driver element (cone, dome, ribbon, whatever). You've also hand-wavily proposed some time domain impacts in the form of "smearing", which would properly be some type of inconsistent phase relationship across frequencies. And all of these things can be trivially tested on a wire of any length without resorting to exotic physics or in fact any physics at all.

Ultimately you loop back to the same problem that every extraordinary audio claim suffers: either the differing hardware generates a change in the signal which can be meaningfully measured by lab grade test equipment. Or you claim is that the difference is detectable to human ears but not to test equipment. The latter option is something that the objectivist viewpoint (and thus the readership of ASR) soundly reject. To draw serious evidence for the former requires you to propose a measurable change of some type at the output end of the wire. A proposed mechanism is not a proposed change to the signal. Worse still, the mechanisms you're proposing are already well known and well understood because they're highly relevant to making high frequency equipment in RF ranges. The impacts to DC resistance, impedance, inductance, propagation rate etc for different gauges and constructions of wire across various transmission frequencies are perfectly well known and they don't affect high power audio signals. They're not even a conversation until you're in roughly the 30 megahertz and up range.

The situation is of course exacerbated by your failure to run anything resembling an experiment, which makes me wonder why you're here at all. The entire existence of this site is to push back against the endemic "I could hear my credit card bill in the soundstage" that powers publications like Stereophile.

Starting from the bottom. Yes. I get it, this site does exist for that purpose, and as such, I've asked for it.

It is well regarded physics that when electrons move between two pieces of metal that there is quantum tunneling, because the metal pieces can never be completely and perfectly together at the nanometer level. Think of the engineering that would be involved here. So this aspect of tunneling between two distinct pieces of metal should not be in question. And this tunneling does create a time delay, i.e. a phase shift in the signal. That's established physics. What should be in question is whether or not that tunneling could have any effect on what we hear. This was your second question. And I can't answer it cleanly, and I suspect that I won't be able to.

I will do an Audacity measurement so that I have something to look at with my eyes and will post it here for your eyes. I will do a double blind ABX and post whatever the results are.

And wrapping back, I am glad to be pressed on trying to validate my statements more than I have done thus far. As you point out, it is the entire purpose of the forum.

 

[arpinnurmela]

Noise.

Even the slightest noise people say "I can't hear it 1-2 feet away." I think it matters.

And using exotic cable don't really help.

What matters is good cabling with the right cable.
Thick solid core is just terrible for internal wiring in small enclosure. It strains the joint and cable itself. Hard to take optimal routes and every compromise is a big minus.

For me, that out ruled every subjective goodness the cable could have brought.

And for thin flexible solid core. I'll use litz wire instead

Yep. I've recommended Litz to lots of people over solid core just because of the flexibility issue. I've made two solid core silver headphone cables and love them. I've also rewired my RB300 tonearm with solid core silver running straight from solid silver clips to solid silver RCAs, the results are beautiful and magnificent to my ears.

 

[Promit]

It is well regarded physics that when electrons move between two pieces of metal that there is quantum tunneling, because the metal pieces can never be completely and perfectly together at the nanometer level. Think of the engineering that would be involved here. So this aspect of tunneling between two distinct pieces of metal should not be in question. And this tunneling does create a time delay, i.e. a phase shift in the signal. That's established physics. What should be in question is whether or not that tunneling could have any effect on what we hear. This was your second question. And I can't answer it cleanly, and I suspect that I won't be able to.

What I said initially in response - and there are a lot of responses so I don't blame you for losing this bit - what I said is none of these things are happening inside speaker wire. If you would like to design radio equipment or have keen hearing into the megahertz range (or hell, building transformers), then that's a rather different conversation about the physics of wire interconnects. But you're currently extrapolating RF band effects into audible music and this is a ludicrous thing to do. I looked up the skin depth for pure copper at 20 kHz and it's ~0.47 mm. In other words, it's not even in play for a normal stranded cable run.

Additionally, what you're doing right now is repeating the mistakes of every audio snake oil salesman and buyer for decades and it's tiresome for to have to educate someone yet again on the absolute basics of audio testing. I didn't catch if this video was already linked yet but for good measure:

 

[arpinnurmela]

What I said initially in response - and there are a lot of responses so I don't blame you for losing this bit - what I said is none of these things are happening inside speaker wire. If you would like to design radio equipment or have keen hearing into the megahertz range (or hell, building transformers), then that's a rather different conversation about the physics of wire interconnects. But you're currently extrapolating RF band effects into audible music and this is a ludicrous thing to do. I looked up the skin depth for pure copper at 20 kHz and it's ~0.47 mm. In other words, it's not even in play for a normal stranded cable run.

Additionally, what you're doing right now is repeating the mistakes of every audio snake oil salesman and buyer for decades and it's tiresome for to have to educate someone yet again on the absolute basics of audio testing. I didn't catch if this video was already linked yet but for good measure:

I was going to watch that video. Someone else posted it.

Did you mean nanometers at 20kHz? mm seems quite large based on what I’ve previously read.