Burn in.....The most prevalent marketing scam of audio today.
Companies use this non-sense to sway the semi educated who can't quite hear an improvement at the store but are willing to believe that they will magically get better with age.
Everyone here is familiar with burn in, it occurs when you get a new stereo component and you spend many hours listening to it very critically. Looking for any indication of improvement, we trick our brains into hearing what may not be there and after a couple of weeks our brains our "burned in" to the new sound and we are finally happy with our purchase.
Maybe this explains why people like their bose speakers
Now, while some or most speakers will undergo some minor suspension stiffness/damping changes in the first few hours of operation that is it. If cables or electronic components are so unstable and poorly designed that their electrical or mechanical properties change after days or weeks- you got ripped!!!
A few too many absolute statements here but I am confident it accurately portrays the situation, greed, ego and willful ignorance.
Companies use this non-sense to sway the semi educated who can't quite hear an improvement at the store but are willing to believe that they will magically get better with age.
Everyone here is familiar with burn in, it occurs when you get a new stereo component and you spend many hours listening to it very critically. Looking for any indication of improvement, we trick our brains into hearing what may not be there and after a couple of weeks our brains our "burned in" to the new sound and we are finally happy with our purchase.
Maybe this explains why people like their bose speakers
Now, while some or most speakers will undergo some minor suspension stiffness/damping changes in the first few hours of operation that is it. If cables or electronic components are so unstable and poorly designed that their electrical or mechanical properties change after days or weeks- you got ripped!!!
A few too many absolute statements here but I am confident it accurately portrays the situation, greed, ego and willful ignorance.
tnargs said:
I am not interested to prove anything. I just want to tread the fine line between blind faith and deaf defiance. I have heard capacitors, resistors, valves and cables changing the sonic outcome of any system that they have been substituted in. I have heard them changing their tone with time also. I just wanna know how and why, so to better control them and use them. And if all this is my fiction, because I am a human and its a human error, a dream, a fantasy, well, mea maxima culpa. I am human I cant help it.
nunayafb said:Burn in.....The most prevalent marketing scam of audio today.
Companies use this non-sense to sway the semi educated who can't quite hear an improvement at the store but are willing to believe that they will magically get better with age.
Everyone here is familiar with burn in, it occurs when you get a new stereo component and you spend many hours listening to it very critically. Looking for any indication of improvement, we trick our brains into hearing what may not be there and after a couple of weeks our brains our "burned in" to the new sound and we are finally happy with our purchase.
Maybe this explains why people like their bose speakers
Now, while some or most speakers will undergo some minor suspension stiffness/damping changes in the first few hours of operation that is it. If cables or electronic components are so unstable and poorly designed that their electrical or mechanical properties change after days or weeks- you got ripped!!!
A few too many absolute statements here but I am confident it accurately portrays the situation, greed, ego and willful ignorance.
EXACTLY
Gareth
I dont like expencive stuff, and I cant afford it either but I am not keen on this idea that nothing matters and that it all sounds the same, be it cables amps or whatever...what will be next?...all CDs sound the same?
Although I know different cables makes an amp or speaker sound different I dont do test or change cables at all...if it sounds good it is good, or good enough...its about knowledge, design and carefull selection
AND I have found a better way to make good sound...namely good amps and design of speaker crossover
if you cant hear any differense I am sorry to say its because you havent heard stuff that really works
But in the end it may be a matter of preference...some just like it LOUD while others prefer QUALITY...some like SPACIOUS sound while others prefer ACCURATE pinpointing...personally I like to have it all
but I am not keen on this idea that nothing matters and that it all sounds the same, be it cables amps or whatever...what will be next?...all CDs sound the same?Although I know different cables makes an amp or speaker sound different I dont do test or change cables at all...if it sounds good it is good, or good enough...its about knowledge, design and carefull selection
AND I have found a better way to make good sound...namely good amps and design of speaker crossover
if you cant hear any differense I am sorry to say its because you havent heard stuff that really works But in the end it may be a matter of preference...some just like it LOUD while others prefer QUALITY...some like SPACIOUS sound while others prefer ACCURATE pinpointing...personally I like to have it all
I have been using Litz wire, the real stuff, for a few years. This is magnet coil wire, from my transformer company, and is comprised of 140 strands of #40 AWG. I was looking for cables that did not interfere with our OPT performance, into an EnABL'd speaker system, so I was working with very low level, high coherence signals, in an attempt to discover what causes "tone" in a transformer. The results pointed to dielectric constant, charge threshold of the dielectric, amount of dielectric surface available and amount of wire surface area, not covered by any more dielectric than that found on magnet wire, as being important.
With a cable made of Litz wire you can hear differences among dielectric materials slipped on and off. This does indicate that alterations in tonal characteristics are likely only to be found in the E Field interaction with dielectrics, during field vector change, when the dielectrics would have an effect upon the amount and type of information either retained or lost.
Using different dielectrics in OPT's for guitar amps, it is quite possible to provide a tonal character that is recognizeable as that of a famous vintage guitar, amp just by manipulating the dielectric materials between coil antenna events, from primary to secondary.
In cables it appears that you can adjust dielectric materials to add or reduce what I have to call dynamic color. The difference between a length of Litz with no dielectrics down it's length, and that of a cable with too much dielectric material, is to go from a Brownian noise characteristic, with no emphasis to any portion of the music, to a circus band with far too much emphasis.
Using different materials, either as part of a woven or braided tube slid over the Litz cable, or as seperate tubes slid over a 100% cotton braid, does provide subtle but noticeable changes in frequencies above 1 k or so. For the most part, dielectric materials with a dielectric constant above 2.5 or so have an unbalance in their effect above 1 KhZ, with a rising response to dynamic information as the frequencies go up, to a peak and back down again.
I have not looked at any of this in a rigorous fashion. I discovered the factors only because the difference between bare Litz wire, strung in open air, and the more ordinary sorts of speaker cables was quite audible, much to my surprise. My intention was to remove the possibility of subtle interactions between cables, speakers and OPT's, just to assure myself that the OPT's were as neutral sounding as possible, when not intended for use in Guitar amps, but for audio reproduction amps instead.
So, I would suggest that if you are going to look into the cable sound event, you might want to start where I have, with a cable that has a large surface area, some cotton shoelace material and some of the other woven, partial cotton, partial plastic, tubes available at fabric stores, and see what you come up with. I don't think playing around with different, already finished cables, is going to teach you very much. At least, it was not helpful for me to do so.
Bud
With a cable made of Litz wire you can hear differences among dielectric materials slipped on and off. This does indicate that alterations in tonal characteristics are likely only to be found in the E Field interaction with dielectrics, during field vector change, when the dielectrics would have an effect upon the amount and type of information either retained or lost.
Using different dielectrics in OPT's for guitar amps, it is quite possible to provide a tonal character that is recognizeable as that of a famous vintage guitar, amp just by manipulating the dielectric materials between coil antenna events, from primary to secondary.
In cables it appears that you can adjust dielectric materials to add or reduce what I have to call dynamic color. The difference between a length of Litz with no dielectrics down it's length, and that of a cable with too much dielectric material, is to go from a Brownian noise characteristic, with no emphasis to any portion of the music, to a circus band with far too much emphasis.
Using different materials, either as part of a woven or braided tube slid over the Litz cable, or as seperate tubes slid over a 100% cotton braid, does provide subtle but noticeable changes in frequencies above 1 k or so. For the most part, dielectric materials with a dielectric constant above 2.5 or so have an unbalance in their effect above 1 KhZ, with a rising response to dynamic information as the frequencies go up, to a peak and back down again.
I have not looked at any of this in a rigorous fashion. I discovered the factors only because the difference between bare Litz wire, strung in open air, and the more ordinary sorts of speaker cables was quite audible, much to my surprise. My intention was to remove the possibility of subtle interactions between cables, speakers and OPT's, just to assure myself that the OPT's were as neutral sounding as possible, when not intended for use in Guitar amps, but for audio reproduction amps instead.
So, I would suggest that if you are going to look into the cable sound event, you might want to start where I have, with a cable that has a large surface area, some cotton shoelace material and some of the other woven, partial cotton, partial plastic, tubes available at fabric stores, and see what you come up with. I don't think playing around with different, already finished cables, is going to teach you very much. At least, it was not helpful for me to do so.
Bud
nunayafb said:Burn in.....The most prevalent marketing scam of audio today.
Companies use this non-sense to sway the semi educated who can't quite hear an improvement at the store but are willing to believe that they will magically get better with age.
Everyone here is familiar with burn in, it occurs when you get a new stereo component and you spend many hours listening to it very critically. Looking for any indication of improvement, we trick our brains into hearing what may not be there and after a couple of weeks our brains our "burned in" to the new sound and we are finally happy with our purchase.
Maybe this explains why people like their bose speakers
Now, while some or most speakers will undergo some minor suspension stiffness/damping changes in the first few hours of operation that is it. If cables or electronic components are so unstable and poorly designed that their electrical or mechanical properties change after days or weeks- you got ripped!!!
A few too many absolute statements here but I am confident it accurately portrays the situation, greed, ego and willful ignorance.
I have to differ from you, my experience is that everything has a burn-in period, even if I change a resistor in the signal path, it take about two days to settle. That is not in the brain, because I always have my reference amp that I compare with. My speakers took more than a week of constant playing before it settled.
I would be worried if there is no change in sound between a new and a used product, perhaps it is so bad that burn-in is not noticeable.
BudP said:
That's very interesting. Could you expand a bit please? I'm not acquainted with charge threshold... a link to a table please? And how is it related to dielectric absorption, which shows some correlation to what I hear; the DA models don't have a discontinuity. A threshold is audible out of all proportion (viz the early transistor amps with crossover distortion) so a threshold effect does capture one's attention.
Prove it......
You say you have a reference amp to compare it, this comparison is exactly what proves my statement. You say there is a difference because you are looking for one. Tell us what property this resistor had that it could affect the sound?
As far as I know the list is short:
Type, inductive, non etc.
Tolerance>>>actual value (difference between new and old Resistor? hmmm)
Temperature stability
Can you name another parameter that can affect the sound? Maybe color or price
I have heard of others testing people by asking them to compare a change that did not exist, they heard a difference anyways, ie compare two cables in a blind test even though the cables are not actually switched.
Why? What kind of argument is that? Most products degrade when used, are you saying that esoteric audio components increase in quality as they are used? If this is true then why don't they get better and better until they are perfect? How come all components eventually fail?
BTW, not attacking you personally here. Please don't take offense to the nature of my words, enjoy whatever you buy and ignore those who say you are wasting money. I am still irritated by a salesman from the other day and am venting here.
As an engineer I try and boil things down to a fundamental level and get around the marketing hype.
Most of the more plausible explanations for sonic differences lie in small effects. Crummy Schottky diodes at dissimilar metal junctions; dielectric absorption, domain switching in ferromagnetic materials, etc. All well known phenomena; the big question tends to be whether the magnitude of the effects is or should or should not be audible.
Then there's the brain's non-linearity. Second harmonics add a bit of richness, and are not considered audible below a couple of percent or so. 7ths are audible at far lower levels, and harmonically unrelated trash at lower levels yet. If musically unrelated, but with a consistent signal (for example crossover distortion's "time constant", or slew rate overload recovery time ) the distortion is still more readily audible. Such distortion often sounds as if it's an uppermidrange phenomenon, probably not coincidentally falling in that common 3-5 kHz peak most listeners have. The brain will interpret even very low upper mid distortion/emphasis as reduced bass; it's not reduced of course, and measurements will not pick up a frequency response change. Insistence that the FR has changed doesn't add credibility to the hearers' statements; yet they DO hear something that sounds that way.
One deniers' argument (not so often lately) is that changing cables "scrubbed" the contacts physically, leading to changed sound. Indeed, cables do need to be cleaned occasionally, particularly from oxide buildup if a poor or nonexistent barrier layer between the copper alloy and the gold allows migration. And it is generally accepted that cleaning, if only by mechanical scraping does improve the sound of dirty contacts. If you measure the resistance such corrosion adds, it is infinitesimal in relation to the circuit values. Yet it is audible out of all proportion. So there is one example of a generally accepted audible phenomenon with no "macro" measurement support.
Then there's the brain's non-linearity. Second harmonics add a bit of richness, and are not considered audible below a couple of percent or so. 7ths are audible at far lower levels, and harmonically unrelated trash at lower levels yet. If musically unrelated, but with a consistent signal (for example crossover distortion's "time constant", or slew rate overload recovery time ) the distortion is still more readily audible. Such distortion often sounds as if it's an uppermidrange phenomenon, probably not coincidentally falling in that common 3-5 kHz peak most listeners have. The brain will interpret even very low upper mid distortion/emphasis as reduced bass; it's not reduced of course, and measurements will not pick up a frequency response change. Insistence that the FR has changed doesn't add credibility to the hearers' statements; yet they DO hear something that sounds that way.
One deniers' argument (not so often lately) is that changing cables "scrubbed" the contacts physically, leading to changed sound. Indeed, cables do need to be cleaned occasionally, particularly from oxide buildup if a poor or nonexistent barrier layer between the copper alloy and the gold allows migration. And it is generally accepted that cleaning, if only by mechanical scraping does improve the sound of dirty contacts. If you measure the resistance such corrosion adds, it is infinitesimal in relation to the circuit values. Yet it is audible out of all proportion. So there is one example of a generally accepted audible phenomenon with no "macro" measurement support.
I have probably misled you to a degree. I should, to be more correct, have said that the relationship between electrical susceptibility of differing materials and their permitivity to a polarizing charge is not instantaneous or linear at low field strength. Each material has a differing response time to the application of a polarizing field and this is also modified by frequency.
This is not a breakthrough charge threshold, as in transistors where the dielectric leakage increases in a non linear fashion, prior to breakdown. This is at the other end of the scale, where a polarizing field is inadequate in strength to polarize the electron on the end of the dipole of the closest available dielectric, within a given period of time. I am not sure how this is related to dielectric absorption.
I do not know of any table that provides the simple or complex permitivity of differing dielectric materials. To get around this I look at the dielectric constant of a material, the ability to focus electrostatic flux in a given area.
In a general sense a dielectric material with a constant of from 2 to 2.8 will provide more low level wide band information, as coherent and intelligible information, than will one with a dielectric constant of from 3 to 8, in a dielectric signaling situation. The higher this number the longer a time constant there is, in response to a field.
Since an electrostatic moment occurs with every vector change in an electrical field, if you have a dielectric with a high dielectric constant your charge /discharge time, or permitivity, will affect the field integrity of a rapidly changing field. If the field is also of low relative charge and the vector change is small, those dielectric materials with a high dielectric constant, appear to be more prone to turn this sort of signal into random noise.
This complex permitivity also has a frequency dependent element. Again, specific information is not available to me, though I suspect it has been looked into in college labs at some point. You can get a rough idea of this characteristic by using woven tubes of differing percentages of high to low dielectric constant materials and simply noting the more obvious audible irritations to your threat assessment correlator. The thing that always notices when something sounds different and might be a threat. Best to do this blindfolded.
The use of Litz wire, with a combined surface area some 10 to 12 times that of a solid wire, with the same circular mils of current carrying capability, just maximizes the relationship between wire surface and a dielectric material with a constant above 2. You would be very surprised to find out how little dielectric material is required to change a cables response to a complex signal enough to notice.
As I mentioned, I make no claim to any rigorous study here. I just needed a tool to connect an OPT to a speaker, both of which will respond to information 50 or more dB below the average signal level, in a coherent fashion. And I needed that tool to be adjustable in it's emphasis of dynamic characteristics, if possible. Just how adjustable it turned out to be was quite surprising.
Bud
Originally posted by nunayafb
Prove it......
You say you have a reference amp to compare it, this comparison is exactly what proves my statement. You say there is a difference because you are looking for one. Tell us what property this resistor had that it could affect the sound?
As far as I know the list is short:
Type, inductive, non etc.
Tolerance>>>actual value (difference between new and old Resistor? hmmm)
Temperature stability
Can you name another parameter that can affect the sound? Maybe color or price
I'm designing and building my own pre-amp and amps and "fine tune" the sound mainly by listening. Therefore I use two amplifiers (at least) for experimenting, one reference, the other one with changed components, then I compare them to hear if the SQ is better or not. If better the reference get updated.
The resistors I use is mostly 1% metal film.
Yes it is quite easy to fool people, although when you know what to listen for, it is not that easy.
My experience is that "anything" including a mains transformer has a burn-in period that they change (improve), this time vary, normally between 2 and 10 days. After that each component have a certain live expectancy that it should stay the same.
That is part of the reason why I started building my own, perhaps not easier but very rewarding. Many brands are far more competent in their marketing hype than the quality of their designs.
André
Why Cables Do Sound Different.
1)The wave effect of the discharging electromagnetic turbulence.
2)Gauss plating limits on the dielectric filler.
3)Signal length relationship to the flux modulation distortion.
4)UGF factor multiplied with sinusoidal coherency.
5)Molecular connectivity ability at the phase-Bogen-Gossen measurements.
I think UGF is the more important factor of them all.
Magneplanar has it's own sound just like any other speakers. It is also (being dipole) very dependent on the size of the room and placement(just like any other speaker)
So here we have a classic very low distortion speaker that, according to someone has so much of it's own character that cabling and interconnect don't make the difference. True true.
I wasn't surprised by criticism of the construction of my interconnects. Statements like “22 gage is way too thick” or “some good quality RC As are atrocious”.
So what if I tell you know, “oops it was 30 gage” and the RCA connectors are WBT. It's not and they aren't. The way I see it, a good connector is physically strong. It has enough area or a mechanical trick to make a good solder joint. Gold plating ensures that after a year it will not turn green and degrade the sound. That's aaaalll folks. There's no magic to the connectors except how beefy they are made!
Analog-sa are you seriously suggesting that connectors would make an audible difference (given the fact that they aren't tarnished and physically fit)? If you are, this is a new horizon for me.
Then you purchased your fist set of cables, why did you expect it to sound bright??? Was it the capacitance or stated resistance per meter that you were aware prior to the purchase?
Sound Easy will solve cable mystery?
There's really no mystery. A correct measurement of the speaker output will prove either a difference or absence of difference in the signal. A measuring microphone is by far more sensitive the your hearing.
After all this, the reasonable question would be: why did you make your own interconnects in silver then?
So I can brag about them and because I had nothing to do on lunch time. I like making thing and that was just another thing that I've made.
1)The wave effect of the discharging electromagnetic turbulence.
2)Gauss plating limits on the dielectric filler.
3)Signal length relationship to the flux modulation distortion.
4)UGF factor multiplied with sinusoidal coherency.
5)Molecular connectivity ability at the phase-Bogen-Gossen measurements.
I think UGF is the more important factor of them all.
Magneplanar has it's own sound just like any other speakers. It is also (being dipole) very dependent on the size of the room and placement(just like any other speaker)
So here we have a classic very low distortion speaker that, according to someone has so much of it's own character that cabling and interconnect don't make the difference. True true.
I wasn't surprised by criticism of the construction of my interconnects. Statements like “22 gage is way too thick” or “some good quality RC As are atrocious”.
So what if I tell you know, “oops it was 30 gage” and the RCA connectors are WBT. It's not and they aren't. The way I see it, a good connector is physically strong. It has enough area or a mechanical trick to make a good solder joint. Gold plating ensures that after a year it will not turn green and degrade the sound. That's aaaalll folks. There's no magic to the connectors except how beefy they are made!
Analog-sa are you seriously suggesting that connectors would make an audible difference (given the fact that they aren't tarnished and physically fit)? If you are, this is a new horizon for me.
Then you purchased your fist set of cables, why did you expect it to sound bright??? Was it the capacitance or stated resistance per meter that you were aware prior to the purchase?
Sound Easy will solve cable mystery?
There's really no mystery. A correct measurement of the speaker output will prove either a difference or absence of difference in the signal. A measuring microphone is by far more sensitive the your hearing.
After all this, the reasonable question would be: why did you make your own interconnects in silver then?
So I can brag about them and because I had nothing to do on lunch time. I like making thing and that was just another thing that I've made.
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