Why!? Please Tell Me Why!

[jabbr]

27 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

Not the audio signal. Back-EMF (Electro-Motive Force) yes. A speaker is sending back a lot of electricity because speakers work by pulling and pushing. But it’s not the audio signal it sending back to the amp it is this opposing power.

and that’s the effect of the difference.

[mav52]

2 hours ago, marce said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_factor

Forgot the link...

 

Thanks

[GUTB]

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”. Everyone knows that audio signals are directional. The source generates the signals and something receives them. Speakers are a load on the amp. It’s easily understood and no one seriously debates any of that. The debate isn’t with the facts, it’s with me because it’s a social requirement for me to be defeated. I could say the sky is blue and extreme pedantry would be deployed to argue with me. Truth by popularity is why I don’t engage at length because it’s pointless, unless called out by my fans (I have a duty to my fans).

 

 

[Ralf11]

6 hours ago, jabbr said:

Beating this horse because as @Ralf11 suggests, I also suspect it illustrates a wider problem than @GUTB understanding of signal transmission, and apropos to this thread because pseudo scientific marketing is used to promote ridiculous audiophile products -- I mean if you want to spend $100,000 on cables because you like their appearance, then fine, but don't because you've been sucked in by marketing prose.

 

A "signal" is information. A signal is directional, information "moves" from one place to another. There is a source of information and a destination and the signal carries the information.

 

There is a field of "information theory" which deals with signals. Indeed the source of the signal expends energy in its transmission, and so in this sense there can be considered an "energy flow" or "entropy gradient" that goes from the source of the signal to the destination. This flow is not directly a flow of electricity, or electrons.

 

An "electrical signal" uses time varying voltages and currents to carry information. There is a difference: an electrical signal uses current flow, they aren't the same. Indeed in a balanced signal their is no net current flow because current in one direction is matched by the opposite current. Nonetheless the source expends energy and the signal is indeed directional.

 

Now of course there are crystalline, semiconductor, doping, junction and other physical properties that do indeed affect directional current flow in electrical circuits, and it is possible that a cable could incorporate such elements but these properties are eminently measurable -- the characteristic curve of any transistor, or diode etc. etc. and short of that some marketing speak which discusses cable directionality based on some special crystalline structure is designed to make to think the cable is "special". There are very good reasons to use balanced signal transmission and now we would need to carefully think about the implications of cable strand asymmetry on balanced cables ... hmmm haven't heard about that, why?

 

Good post - also see the Mansr addendum just below it

 

yes, I was thinking of information theory when I posted before

 

Benchmark has a good Appl. Note just out on the benefits of Balanced cables - and why Star-Quad configurations are best.

[Ralf11]

10 minutes ago, GUTB said:

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”. Everyone knows that audio signals are directional. The source generates the signals and something receives them. Speakers are a load on the amp. It’s easily understood and no one seriously debates any of that. The debate isn’t with the facts, it’s with me because it’s a social requirement for me to be defeated. I could say the sky is blue and extreme pedantry would be deployed to argue with me. Truth by popularity is why I don’t engage at length because it’s pointless, unless called out by my fans (I have a duty to my fans).

 

 

 

Everyone knows that you don't know. 

 

Several people have tried to help educate you on this thread and elsewhere, but it will require some effort on your part.  You will have to read books.  As Shannon might have put it you will have to expend ENERGY (which has an associated INFORMATION aspect) in order to acquire INFORMATION.

 

"You'd get right to work if you had any sense

You know the one thing we need is a left-hand monkey wrench"

[jabbr]

44 minutes ago, GUTB said:

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”.

 

You are the one who states: “everyone knows cables have directionality” and “everyone knows that cables get better with burn-in” etc. Or “everyone knows that Class D sucks”

 

This is called argumentum ad populum 

 

Are you able to have an intelligent discussion? Demonstrate your intelligence. 

[Albrecht]

58 minutes ago, GUTB said:

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”. Everyone knows that audio signals are directional. The source generates the signals and something receives them. Speakers are a load on the amp. It’s easily understood and no one seriously debates any of that. The debate isn’t with the facts, it’s with me because it’s a social requirement for me to be defeated. I could say the sky is blue and extreme pedantry would be deployed to argue with me. Truth by popularity is why I don’t engage at length because it’s pointless, unless called out by my fans (I have a duty to my fans).

 

 

So true. And it represents the "cult-of-personality" way of thinking of those anti-audiophiles making assumptions, instead of getting the facts and/or doing the investigations themselves.

[marce]

21 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

So true. And it represents the "cult-of-personality" way of thinking of those anti-audiophiles making assumptions, instead of getting the facts and/or doing the investigations themselves.

Have you actually read any of the information that has been put up, please stop trolling these threads...

As far as I can tell there has been a civil discussion on the complexities of signal transmission and whilst there are some differing views I cannot see any hostility or anti-audiophile rants... For ***** sake if we were not audiophiles we would not be here disucssing all this, we'd have a life.

[pkane2001]

45 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Are you able to have an intelligent discussion? Demonstrate your intelligence. 

 

There should be a Turing test instead of Captcha to join social sites....

 

[marce]

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”. Everyone knows that audio signals are directional. The source generates the signals and something receives them. Speakers are a load on the amp. It’s easily understood and no one seriously debates any of that. The debate isn’t with the facts, it’s with me because it’s a social requirement for me to be defeated. I could say the sky is blue and extreme pedantry would be deployed to argue with me. Truth by popularity is why I don’t engage at length because it’s pointless, unless called out by my fans (I have a duty to my fans).

 

 

It's not truth by popularity, it's truth by the laws of physics.

The transmission of power is directional, it goes from the source to the destination, driver to receiver, but ponder over this, those electrons only wobble about almost in situ in the presence of an AC signal. The transfer of energy (power) I believe is more down to the EM waves and here I bow out and hope someone more versed in physics can explain it. Entropy may be involved, as said this is where the physics comes in, a good tome to start digesting is Ralph Morrision's "The fields of Electronics".

[Ralf11]

7 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

There should be a Turing test instead of Captcha to join social sites....

 

 

Post of the MONTH!

[Fluffytime]

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”. Everyone knows that audio signals are directional. The source generates the signals and something receives them. Speakers are a load on the amp. It’s easily understood and no one seriously debates any of that. The debate isn’t with the facts, it’s with me because it’s a social requirement for me to be defeated. I could say the sky is blue and extreme pedantry would be deployed to argue with me. Truth by popularity is why I don’t engage at length because it’s pointless, unless called out by my fans (I have a duty to my fans).

 

 

 

A perfect example of Poe's Law.

[Nordkapp]

29 minutes ago, marce said:

For ***** sake if we were not audiophiles we would not be here disucssing all this, we'd have a life.

Haha. So true! 

[semente]

 

[mjb]

What I think is amazing is that there’s 20 pages of discussion over an obviously  manipulated image.

[Nordkapp]

5 minutes ago, semente said:

 

This pretty much sums up where we are all heading one day...The downward audiophile spiral. #6) I can spit on her. LMAO. 

[Nordkapp]

4 minutes ago, mjb said:

What I think is amazing is that there’s 20 pages of discussion over an obviously  manipulated image.

Bro, that pic is real. Seriously. 

[GUTB]

Speakers, speaker cables and the amp form an interactive impedence network that is more sophisticated than the simplistic view of speakers putting a load on the amp in a unidirectional fashion. BUT in the neurotypical conversational-generalized sense, the statement that speakers are a load on amps is still true, and everyone knows it.

 

The same thing applies to the direction of audio signals down an interconnect cable. The signal flows from the source to a receiver down a cable. The mechanics of energy transmission, potential change, wave propagation, etc, are more complex than that — HOWEVER it remains completely true that audio signals flow in a direction. A source has an amplification circuit that drives a signal across an interconnect cable.

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, Summit said:

 

Martin-Logan's ESL speakers doesn’t have better horizontal dispersion than many other speakers. The dispersion is lower than most other speakers. To have low horizontal and vertical dispersion is normally a good thing and result in less unwanted reflation from the sidewalls and ceiling.

I agree that M-Ls have pretty low VERTICAL dispersion (and that's a good thing!) as do a lot of speakers including all models of the Quad ESLs and all Magnepans, but you are wrong about the horizontal dispersion. Due to the M-L's curvature of the screens, it is quite good. Like I said, I can sit most anywhere in my listening room and still get a decent stereo image. 

 

I once reviewed a pair of hybrid ESL speakers from a company called Innersound. They were very similar to the Martin-Logan arrangement and even looked a lot like M-Ls. Where the resemblance stopped was that the Innersounds had flat ESL screens. While I thought that the speakers sounded very good, I mentioned in my review that were I to have kept them, I would have had to search antique shops all across the nation looking for one of those head clamps popular with portrait photographers in the 19th century. These clamps held people's head still for the excruciatingly long exposures required for portraits in those days due to the insensitivity of the photographic emulsions used then. You see, once you found the "sweet spot" in the triangulation between right and left speaker and the listener's head, you couldn't move your head AT ALL lest the high frequencies go away! And when I say listener, I mean listener - as in one single listener, because only one person at a time could listen to them! It hasn't escaped my notice, of course, that Innersound is now out of business. That's my definition of poor horizontal dispersion, and M-L s don't fall into that category. 

[jabbr]

36 minutes ago, GUTB said:

The same thing applies to the direction of audio signals down an interconnect cable. The signal flows from the source to a receiver down a cable. The mechanics of energy transmission, potential change, wave propagation, etc, are more complex than that — HOWEVER it remains completely true that audio signals flow in a direction. A source has an amplification circuit that drives a signal across an interconnect cable.

 

Right.

 

(see, I’m not arbitrarily disagreeing with you)

 

My objection was that if the directionality of cables has to do with crystalline structure — this theoretically might affect the movement of electrons ... yet the movement of electrons is not the same as the signal flow. 

 

Speakers are a load in amps — that’s a reasonable statement. 

 

Heres the thing: if cables did have directional impedance, it would cause measurable distortion. Has anyone ever measured such distortion? It’s not like the cable would be better in one direction because in an AC current — audio signals use AC currents — 1/2 each cycle would be one way and the other 1/2 the other way — so my point is that even though the signal is directional, the currents vary back and forth — a directional cable would be a distortion. 

 

In reality cables conduct equally in both directions and these crystal structure / extrusion explanations are likely faulty

[Albrecht]

1 hour ago, marce said:

Have you actually read any of the information that has been put up, please stop trolling these threads...

As far as I can tell there has been a civil discussion on the complexities of signal transmission and whilst there are some differing views I cannot see any hostility or anti-audiophile rants... For ***** sake if we were not audiophiles we would not be here disucssing all this, we'd have a life.

The thread is a troll....  There has been a lot of discussion surrounding all sorts of things in this thread. For heaven's sake, don't add fuel to trolls, and stay out of discussions of things that you don't know anything about....

[Solstice380]

1 hour ago, marce said:

The transfer of energy (power) I believe is more down to the EM waves and here I bow out

 

I, too, understand this to be the case.  And that’s where I, too, bow out. ?

[Nordkapp]

20 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

The thread is a troll....  There has been a lot of discussion surrounding all sorts of things in this thread. For heaven's sake, don't add fuel to trolls, and stay out of discussions of things that you don't know anything about....

Hey, stop that. This is a quality thread. One of my finest!

[Albrecht]

25 minutes ago, Nordkapp said:

Hey, stop that. This is a quality thread. One of my finest!

[Speedskater]

5 hours ago, GUTB said:

This thread is a good example of “truth by popularity”. Everyone knows that audio signals are directional. The source generates the signals and something receives them. Speakers are a load on the amp. It’s easily understood and no one seriously debates any of that....................................

From a flow diagram this is completely correct. DC power, AC power and signals all flow from source to load.  However this description won't fit into Maxwell's Field/Network Theory or Ohm's/Kirchhoff's Circuit Theory's. So if we are going to discuss how an interconnect system works rather than what it accomplishes, we need to use one of those two theories and Circuit Theory is a lot more convent to this type of discussion.