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I am being talked about in reference to distortion in wire, etc, so I might try to clarify things. First, I have measured cable differences, especially at low operating levels, that I would not normally expect. While, statistically I might find that cheaper cables like RS measure worst, it is not ALWAYS the case, and some wires, that start badly, seem to break-in with time and signal, and measure better. I think that a fuse is so nonlinear in nature, that it would be almost impossible to measure fuse 'directionality' without laboratory conditions and a good deal of computer time.

Since fuses are supposed to heat up, I'm not sure how they could ever be linear, I don't know of any material that doesn't change resistivity when it warms up.

And a fuse that doesn't warm up isn't a fuse.

I don't doubt that some wires have distortion, by the way, but when I see it, there usually seems to be some very dumb connector, or a level of cheapness that would make Mr. Tandy wince.

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Physiological results show clearly that you can hear at most 5.5 dB down into such noise in one ERB (or critical band for this discussion), which sets an absolute lower limit of audibility that has never been challenged by test results.

Thus, you are stating that if you are listening at 85 dB (for example) any distortion/noise/etc. which differentiates a cable would have to be no more than 79dB down to even be perceived under the best of conditions? (leaving masking effects aside).

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Physiological results show clearly that you can hear at most 5.5 dB down into such noise in one ERB (or critical band for this discussion), which sets an absolute lower limit of audibility that has never been challenged by test results.

Thus, you are stating that if you are listening at 85 dB (for example) any distortion/noise/etc. which differentiates a cable would have to be no more than 79dB down to even be perceived under the best of conditions? (leaving masking effects aside).

Ignoring masking effeects, if you are listening at 79dB, you are comfortable if the results are 79+10+5.5 dB down, (level plus absolute threshold at ear canal resonance, plus 5.5 noise masking tone) which works out to about 95dB down. The 6dB SPL noise is broadband noise, and in the most sensitive ERB's amounts to about -10dB SPL, just at the dL of hearing. It's only 6dB SPL when you look at it in terms of total energy across 20-20K. It's pretty much white.

However, simultaneous masking tops out at the same frequency at 30dB, and at about 70dB or so for far-frequency masking, unless you're talking about masking extremely high frequencies downwards, in which case you can probably contrive 90dB if you try hard and melt your tweeter.

Got it!

Thanks

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A reasonable answer, considering the amount of research and knowledge needed to recognize and solve the puzzle.

Magnetohydrodynamics have something to do with it. I haven't studied them nor Maxwell's equations, and the last time I dealt with a LaPlace transform was in college. But I gather that these are prerequisites for delving into the how and why.

That sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys. (Yes, I'm only joking.)

But, seriously, here's a name for the cables you're selling you might consider using:

Slurry with the Birefringence on Top

http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Distortion_AES_I.pdf

http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Distortion_AES_II.pdf

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That sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys. (Yes, I'm only joking.)

But, seriously, here's a name for the cables you're selling you might consider using:

Slurry with the Birefringence on Top

He's here every Tuesday, folks! Be sure to tip your waitress, and try the veal!

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Now one example of human hearing that stands out to me and I would be curious how you see it fitting in with current understanding of human hearing limits is human echo location by blind people, using just clicks of the mouth.

Well, call me ignorant, since you already have, but I don't see the point of the question, the answer seems obvious to me, all you have to do is look at the dL's for interaural time difference and the nearly 100 year old understanding of the precedence effect.

What happens in blind people is not that they capture more information with the ear (as you said, and that information is quite limited, but with particular nonlinear adaptations (which everyone has) that make it still very useful, precedence effect being one of them) but that they are very, very trained listeners.

The arguments here about the audiblity of distortions in cables, etc, are not of a level that the auditory periphery (meaning up to the auditory nerve) can capture, well, except for cables that I do say we can all call "just broken". I would hope it's clear to all of us that when you cheap out enough, and you make bad enough connections, something has to break.

A particularly relevant number is the level of noise due to thermodynamic noise at the eardrum, and it's very, very close to the absolute threshold of hearing. Physiological results show clearly that you can hear at most 5.5 dB down into such noise in one ERB (or critical band for this discussion), which sets an absolute lower limit of audibility that has never been challenged by test results.

JJ please show me where I am calling you ignorant, again you reading hostility where there is none.

Echo location in humans is very relevant because awhile back you quoted various scientific studies and went on to state that everything is understood about the ear and its limits are known, specifically it looks like you are suggesting the ear is not as sensitive as those who say they can hear differences (you could well be right).

I have no problem with that because as I said it is very difficult to argue against those studies.
However if your going to state that hearing is concluded, then that means there is no room in your thoughts and discussions for the new ear model study I linked and that blind people use more parts of the brain to process sound (parts of the visual cortex).
These are important because you state:

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and it's very, very close to the absolute threshold of hearing.

This is why echo location using human vocal clicks is interesting, because I am not sure those scientists and their studies actually can model/predict the extent and behaviour of human echo location and IMO echo location is on the absolute threshold of hearing and perception (an assumption until further research is done combining this and other factors).
Now as I am not sure if those studies you rightly mention can correlate to this.
Hence why I am asking;
Is it possible and can you using those older scientific studies that you mentioned model/predict/identify behaviour of human echo location using vocal clicking?
If it is not possible to use those current studies, then this suggests there is more scientific research to be done on human hearing and what defines absolute threshold of hearing.
And why I brought up those two studies; the ear model suggesting the ear is more sensitive than thought before (this needs further research of course as most subjects do) and the research proving that more sensitive hearing in blind people is due to additional parts of the brain being used to process sounds (this does not necessarily mean it must be limited to blind people and like other research would need further investigating).

You may suggest the discussion is on distortion, but it is more than that because throughout the discussion it is about cables,perception,measurements specific and general,etc and this has caused a lot of interesting discussional points.

IMO the distortion measurementis are interesting not necessarily because that is what we hear (or not) but that it looks like there may be a specific behaviour for each cable used.
Please appreciate that a site forum is not always the best mode of communication and its always best to approach and respond with that in mind.

Thanks
Orb

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it could come back to transformer isolation, which is not anything wrong with the amps power supply.

Which is a part of the power supply. End of discussion, I'd think. Yes, electrostatic shielding adds cost and weight, but there are also such things as line filters, and you can get a pretty ()*& good one built into an IEC plug for very little money compared to the total cost of manufacture.

I do not think this is end of the story as you raise interesting points that do not necessarily relate to what actually happened, but justifies your comment;

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So maybe you could ask John Curl what was wrong with the amplifier's power supply, then?

This suggests then Bruno Putzeys was wrong with his conclusion and other engineers as well, even though they spent the time discussing and pondering this.

But to reiterate Bruno, what is noticed/measured is not related to the power supply per se but engineering considerations of RCA cables connecting two seperate audio products, and also the pin 1 issue of balance connection when considering floating I/O (electronic floating stage) and transformer isolation (galvanic isolation).
In reality the issue with RCA affects nearly all audio equipment, in fact the only one I can think of using transformer isolation as an option is Nagra.

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Blast from the past! SE wrote me to ask if I would come here. So:

My goodness is this thing still going on?!!

Unbalanced cables are notoriously sensitive to contact noise in connectors (what with the same connection being responsible for equalising ground potentials and providing a reference for the signal), and RCA connectors are notoriously liable to develop such trouble.
What I remember John explaining during our chat was that somehow his setup highlighted these.
The unbalanced I/O of the AP test sets are floating so such problems would not ordinarily arise.

During my measurements in 2004 -done by request of SE who wanted a second opinion whilst being embroiled in a discussion with John- I still occasionally got distortion but when that happened I always checked solder joints and cleaned the connectors which invariably solved it.
Again, in a system with non-floating I/O this might still not cut it.

So where John and I agree is that these (and some other) problems are real.
His test setup was not so much different from the kind of condition under which these cables would be normally used.
The worst thing you could say is that it did not allow proper control of all variables involved.
After all, a layer of oxide on the connector shell belongs neither to the cable, nor to the test equipment.
Same for a circulating current.
But that does not mean the readings are meaningless.
The same problems arise whenever an RCA cable (and occasionally XLR, see "pin 1 problems") sits between two boxes.

Where John and I take different routes is not in the physics but in emphasis on where to start working the problem.
I'll first try to address it electronically (design circuits which are minimally sensitive to anything a nonideal cable might throw at it).
His is first to attack the connection (use cables & connectors that don't cause problems for most circuits).
This is as literally as I can remember what we said.

Both go a long way, but for perfect results you need to do both of course.
You can't design an input that'll successfully recover an audio signal transmitted along two parallel wires, and you can't design cable that will prevent hum in an unbalanced connection with a ground loop and stamped sheet-steel pcb-mounted RCA connectors.

Now note that I didn't bother reading much of this thread. The lone fact that nearly 6 years after all this I could still suddenly be yanked back into the same discussion says something.
I hope you'll understand that I'm not going to follow up on this thread, but I hope that this reply will be helpful.

Thanks
Orb

Just bringing this back into play, although the testing and associated comments go beyond the common known hum,etc.

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To cover a bit about transformer isolation that hopefully some find interesting anyway, rane covered this quite awhile ago and at AES (I think but different presentation) in the past.
http://www.rane.com/note110.html

The 2nd section; The Next Best Right Way To Do It, covers transformer isolation in audio.
This is why the conclusion by the engineers involved in the JC measurements discussion state the interesting differences between AP and real world audio.
Although to stress this is only a plausible explanation that needed further testing.

What would be interesting is if someone has access to an audio pre/amp product that does transformer isolation (alternative is electronic floating stage).
http://www.nagraaudio.com/highend/pages/faq.php
The only ones I can think of at moment is Nagra (but this may only be balanced I do not know).
So ideally if this could be RCA connected then in it would be interesting to see if cables are audibly different, in theory they should be near identical or very close in this setup (ensured connector is unplugged and re-inserted before each listen).
Or ideally any other pre and amp that utilises transformer isolation.

I thought Stereophile reviewed one of the Nagra amps but I cannot find it.

Still if this is not possible, anyone know of external transformer isolation products to connect preamp and amp?
The difficulty is that ideally we would want RCA and not balanced so listening to various cables for differences may be easier, however I bet any products are RCA to XLR and possibly directional.
The solution would rely on 3 sets of cables, but the cable between transformer to audio box (pre and amp) would not be changed.

Something to consider trying if you really are interested and usually feel you can tell RCA cables apart.

Cheers
Orb

Cheers
Orb

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http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Distortion_AES_I.pdf

http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Distortion_AES_II.pdf

Perhaps we can summarize the results of the Geddes papers as: What is barely perceptible to you might be very annoying to me? Obviously, there are many types of distortion in sound, and many sources of the distortion. But what's not at all obvious is where all of the various distortions are coming from. I.e., they are not all coming from the audio equipment, speakers and cables -- e.g., THD or IMD and the room -- e.g., comb filter effect. Not by a long shot. They are also coming from unknown sources, this is the Big Surprise. No, I'm not referring to radio sources in Sagittarius A. This is why the old naysayer (neighsayer?) warhorse, "Everything in audio can be measured," is simply the wrong approach and stiffles progress. But this is all very hush, hush.

I, personally, am a little confused.
Yes, I do believe that the grounding system of the ST1700B and the Audio Precision are different enough to perhaps be the reason the 1700B picks up this difference in cables and the Audio Precision ignores it.
However, I do run the 1700B from an isolation transformer, rather than just from the power line, along with the scope, and earlier HP spectrum analyzers, such as the 3580 and 3581. However, with the 3563, that I use in conjunction with the 1700B, today, it is impossible to isolate it with an isolation transformer that I have available, as it requires too much current, however it still works about the same. Therefore, I don't think that lack of line isolation is the significant contributor.
I DO always clean all series contacts with Cramolin and industrial isopropyl alcohol before testing, and this is important.

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Is it possible and can you using those older scientific studies that you mentioned model/predict/identify behaviour of human echo location using vocal clicking?

To answer your entire thing in one question.

Using the knowlege of the ear's filterbank bandwidths, the knowlege of the time extent of a minimum phase filter of said bandwidth, and the knowlege of the firing rate of a neuron, the ITD sensitivity of the auditory system is predicted to within 10%. ITD means "interaural time difference"

Vocal clicks, etc, are very, very far above both absolute threshold and maskign levels, so the issues of ultimate sensitivity do not matter.

Note that vocal clicks, etc, do not work so well when you have a lot of background noise.

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It's about your cables.

I've only started reading it, and only the past two pages.

IF you want the full answer, it's about half a bil in gold bullion. The short answer is only a few mil. In bullion, of course. I'm not greedy. I'm putting the puzzle in front of you, which is far more than you had before - Take it for the gift that it is. If you think I have some sort of false humility that is more a reflection of your own thought processes and actions, not mine.

Oh, thankyou so much for the "gift" KBK! This is the same gift you offered when the Teo cables thread was running in the Manufacturers forum. Your gift then was nothing more than subterfuge wrapped in a bit of sparkly science/mathematics paper. At no point have you demonstrated that you or anyone involved with Teo cables knows even one of Maxwells equations much less all 20 and how they relate to these silly, high resistance cables you sell.

So where is this "Skunkworks"? "Oh I can't tell you that!" gasps KBK, "they'd send the CIA around to my house and feed me a truth serum before poking me with a poisoned umbrella!!!"

Rule number one of selling bogus HiFi products: Create a story that makes the potential buyer think that you have scientific knowledge of the highest order. Knowledge that puts you stratospherically above the average person. Then begin quoting stuff you've got off Wikipedia to drive the point home. Then tell the sucker that you can't explain the workings of said product unless the subject can attain your own level of scientific knowledge.

Sound familiar? A tried and true KBK tactic. Never answer a direct/simple question with a direct/simple answer. Always try to make the questioner look like an undereducated pleb by intimating that he has already supplied the answer by hinting at the colossal science/mathematics involved in the creation of the cable.

Does it make anybody think that perhaps our paint salesman knows nothing of the science and math to answer the question? Or maybe that the math and science don't even apply to the cable?

Once again, everybody ignores my simple question. The Teo cables have a series resistance orders of magnitude higher than copper, maybe it is this resistance, interacting with the impedance of the amplifier and speaker crossover that causes the Teo cable to sound "different"? After all, if highly trained audiophile ears can pick up such minute nuances as they claim, a high resistance speaker cable must be creating massive alterations in the system and therefore the sound.

P.S. Eagerly anticipating Kait's pointless non sequitur in response to this post.

And here I thought Kait was a troll.

But no, it's Bogus Audiophile, shooting his mouth off while running his tricycle over his ukelele.

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Is it possible and can you using those older scientific studies that you mentioned model/predict/identify behaviour of human echo location using vocal clicking?

To answer your entire thing in one question.

Using the knowlege of the ear's filterbank bandwidths, the knowlege of the time extent of a minimum phase filter of said bandwidth, and the knowlege of the firing rate of a neuron, the ITD sensitivity of the auditory system is predicted to within 10%. ITD means "interaural time difference"

Vocal clicks, etc, are very, very far above both absolute threshold and maskign levels, so the issues of ultimate sensitivity do not matter.

Note that vocal clicks, etc, do not work so well when you have a lot of background noise.

Thanks, do you feel this also take into consideration that in the study the person was using the clicks to create an image? They had to describe the shape and name the item.

The FR and repition of a dolphin click is far superior to that of a human for echo location.
Both of these are why I am thinking this is or near to the limits of human hearing/perception, as its the level of detail the blind person retrieved in the test.

Thanks
Orb

Does anyone know that actual basic measurements of this cable? Capacitance? Resistance? etc? I have asked this a number of times as well.

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Once again, everybody ignores my simple question. The Teo cables have a series resistance orders of magnitude higher than copper, maybe it is this resistance, interacting with the impedance of the amplifier and speaker crossover that causes the Teo cable to sound "different"?

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Thanks, do you feel this also take into consideration that in the study the person was using the clicks to create an image? They had to describe the shape and name the item.

You do realize that this kind of recognition is of cues that are well over threshold, and the question is one of intellect, not of basic hearing thresholds, yes?

There are limits to the basic auditory periphery. That's what I cite as limits. When you are over those limits, you're into the CNS and the brain, which is well known to be plastic and adaptable.

So, your question has nothing to do with the basic limits of hearing, rather with learning. I would expect a blind person to have a lot of practice here.

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Does anyone know that actual basic measurements of this cable? Capacitance? Resistance? etc? I have asked this a number of times as well.

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Once again, everybody ignores my simple question. The Teo cables have a series resistance orders of magnitude higher than copper, maybe it is this resistance, interacting with the impedance of the amplifier and speaker crossover that causes the Teo cable to sound "different"?

More series resistance, same sink capacitance? Seems like an obvious choice, but what order of magnitude are we talking about here?

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Does anyone know that actual basic measurements of this cable? Capacitance? Resistance? etc? I have asked this a number of times as well.

I understand measurements are being taken at this time, and I'm fairly certain the results will be made public.

Cool!

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The Teo cables have a series resistance orders of magnitude higher than copper

LOL at the irony! As Buddha noted in his opening post to this thread, "Ethan said the cables must have been broken."

Yep.

Do we know how much $$$ they sell for?

According to THIS review, they "start at" $2400 per pair.

Yep.

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"Because I quoted Fresh_Clip" is not an answer, either.

Sadly, that is my answer. Are you saying Mr. Clip would lie? Of course, Ken could easily settle this by posting some numbers.

--Ethan

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Glad you are so trusting when your bias is pandered to.

You think an "orders of magnitude" (that's powers of ten, by the way) difference is an appropriate expectation or postulate?

Have you ever measured any wires with orders of magnitude differences like you claim?

If so, then even DBT and measurement should easily be satisfied for people looking for differences!

OK, how many orders of magnitude?

Gallium would be 0.000000147 ohm.m

Copper is 0.0000000168 ohm.m

Now Ethan is saying we can hear differences at these scales of resistance?

According to Wikipedia:

Gallium has an electrical resisitivity of 270 nano ohms

Figures dont make sense

You would need 300,000 meters approx for 1 Ohm ? thats around 300 miles, thats superconductivity !!!

Maybe i did underestimate hifi cables !!

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That's good news. Ethan seems to be endorsing the notion that we can hear varying resistances of those scales/levels!

So, the cable is 1 square meter in cross-section, you're saying?

Do you REALLY know how to convert resistivity into resistance for a conductor?

Or what exactly did you think it would make the resistance of a 1 cm square cable 1 meter long? Do tell, please?

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Figures dont make sense

You would need 300,000 meters approx for 1 Ohm ? thats around 300 miles, thats superconductivity !!!

Let's say that the cable is 1 mm square in conductor area.

That makes the resistance of the cable 270 x 10^-9 * 1 / (10^-6)

Which is .27 ohm.

Resistivity is ohm-meters. You have to multiply by the length in meters and divide by the conductor area in square meters.

Tsk.

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J_J, wake up, my good man. Ethan pointed to the resistive characteristics as being the reason for the different cables' audibility.

I pulled the data for the metals for him.

Are you joining Ethan in claiming these values created the sonic differences?

Hmmmm.....Do I see a Randi challenge in someone's future?

From Wikipedia - Audiophile:

Criticism of Audiophile Marketing Practices

"Criticisms usually focus on claims around so-called "tweaks" and accessories beyond the core source, amplification, and speaker products. Examples of these accessories include speaker cables, component interconnects, stones, cones, CD markers, and power cables or conditioners.[16] Manufacturers of these products often make strong claims of actual improvement in sound but do not offer any measurements or testable claims. This absence of measurable (rather than subjective) improvement, coupled with sometimes high prices, raises questions about the truthfulness of the marketing.[17]

It is possible to spend over one hundred thousand dollars for a pair of loudspeakers, tens of thousands of dollars for electronics, and more than seven thousand dollars for cables.[18] An example of this type of marketing, and the associated reviews in magazines, is the $1,499 power cord, for which the reviewer states that "The choice of power cord one makes to transmit AC over the final feet to a component has the potential to be the most influential sonic link in a music system's power chain."[19] Another example includes a line with $2,000 power cords.[20]

Roger Russell

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Thanks, do you feel this also take into consideration that in the study the person was using the clicks to create an image? They had to describe the shape and name the item.

You do realize that this kind of recognition is of cues that are well over threshold, and the question is one of intellect, not of basic hearing thresholds, yes?

There are limits to the basic auditory periphery. That's what I cite as limits. When you are over those limits, you're into the CNS and the brain, which is well known to be plastic and adaptable.

So, your question has nothing to do with the basic limits of hearing, rather with learning. I would expect a blind person to have a lot of practice here.

I guess we need to let this drop because I was hoping for an explanation in detail and on the mechanics involved (building an image in the mind from echos and reflections and what are all the threshold parameters for it work,etc).
I think if we tried to clarify this in detail it will just drag on.
Without greater detail then the summary post quoted leaves too many loose ends, just some quick points include;

1. You suggest learning and intellect is part of echolocation and has nothing to do with threshold of hearing, but most of the research names you mentioned not long ago involved training the listeners as well, so why the difference?
In reality with echolocation the listener spends much longer training audio perception than for research experiments; months to years for echolocation to days and weeks for threshold auditory tests.

2. A study has proved though this goes beyond just training listening/perception, because it has been shown that those blind listeners with better hearing compared to others (a threshold test) used additional parts of the brain, if I remember specifically parts of the visual cortex (this is nothing to do with echolocation per se but points that we cannot assume the extent of adaptability/hearing perception for echolocation or other threshold tests involving humans).

3. Comment on auditory cues is unfortunately too vague as it is, without it being described against the mechanism of echolocation.

4. Only a very limited number of blind people are acknowledged with credible (in terms of scientific) echolocation, so this is not something that is easy to learn or adapt to.

So you could be right that it is about intellect (if you ignore the research identifying hearing improvent of those using visual cortix), but without a lot more information and detail both of us are making assumptions.
I doubt anyone else is interested in this discussion anyway bah
So for me might as well drop the topic, ah well hindsight would be useful.

Thanks anyway
Orb

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Without greater detail then the summary post quoted leaves too many loose ends, just some quick points include;

1. You suggest learning and intellect is part of echolocation and has nothing to do with threshold of hearing, but most of the research names you mentioned not long ago involved training the listeners as well, so why the difference?

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In order to get thresholds that are actually thresholds, you have to train the listeners to be able to hear to threshold. This task of clicks, etc, is a different training, but you have to train people to hear, no matter what it is you want them to hear.

4. Only a very limited number of blind people are acknowledged with credible (in terms of scientific) echolocation, so this is not something that is easy to learn or adapt to.

It's not surprising that some people can do this and some can't. Neuroplasticity varies greatly among people, after all, not everyone can learn to do tensor math, or play chess, or whtaever...

This is hardly surprising.

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J_J, wake up, my good man. Ethan pointed to the resistive characteristics as being the reason for the different cables' audibility.

I pulled the data for the metals for him.

Are you joining Ethan in claiming these values created the sonic differences?

Dear Mr. Bu Da, I am not claiming anything except that somebody or other up there rather improperly used their understanding of resistivity to calculate a ridiculously small resistance.

WE still don't know the cross sectional area. Also, I want to know what happens to these cables when your heat goes out in the winter.

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Are you joining Ethan in claiming these values created the sonic differences?

Have you noticed that Ken has not told us the resistance? Do you think this is a coincidence?

--Ethan

>>> "Does anyone know that actual basic measurements of this cable? Capacitance? Resistance? etc? I have asked this a number of times as well." <<<

The Cable Controversy has been rumbling on now for the past 30 years and people are STILL waiting around for measurements !!! Logic tells us (or should tell us) that during those past 30 years, if there WERE any meaningful measurements - which made sense to engineers and correlated with people's listening descriptions - then they would be common knowledge and, if important, would be used by all cable manufacturers !!

Because there aren't such meaningful and generally acceptable measurements doesn't that tell people that you might be looking in the wrong direction for answers ??

Brian W may mock Geoff (in jest or not, I don't know) but one of Geoff's latest replies is to the point :-
Quote by Geoff Kait :-
>>> " This is why the old naysayer (neighsayer?) warhorse, "Everything in audio can be measured," is simply the wrong approach and stiffles progress." <<<

Yes, every time it ("Everything in audio can be measured,") is said, it does stiffle progress !!!! As we see, time and again, on the various 'threads' !!

Fresh Clip refers to a 'high resistance' measurement of the "Liquid Cable"!! Completely ignoring (as do so many) the description given regarding the improvement in the sound which people HEARD - they were not reporting on what they 'measured' !!!!!!!

THAT is where you start (or should start) your investigation as to what might be happening !! You HAVE to explain what people are experiencing (hearing) - to repeat again Buddha's experiences :-
>>> "I'm going out on a limb and just giving pure, unadulterated subjective opinion next - the Liquid cable did a fabulous job in the department of delineating multiple singers singing harmony. It was kind of a thrill to hear the small timing and timbral differences of singers singing together to make a unified sound.

Actually, there is more to say about the TEO's - we played The Beatles FLAC files via those babies and it was the level best I have ever heard The Beatles. I won't name names, but there was not a soul who was not knocked out by the sound of these files

Nobody will IMO ever invent methods of measuring power cables, that in a convincing way will disclose any transducing/electrical properties (other than the already known factors) of such a cable, that may establish any cable as superior to another with the same (known) properties.

We may infinitely discuss characteristic impedance (series inductance and parallel capacitance per unit length), loss resistance (including additional resistance due to skin-effect losses versus frequency), dielectric losses versus frequency (loss tangent, etc.), velocity-of-propagation factor, overall loss versus frequency into different impedance loads, hallucinations, placebo, idiocy, lunatism, etc.

Still we cannot prove any cable is "better" than any other, as we know of no such parameters, that would qualify one cable as superior to another. We can hear a difference in some cases, but which parameters would prove it's "better"? And why is it a problem that some people actually believe that cable A sounds better than cable B? There are more factors in this of which we don't know very much either, than just the properties of the cable.

I have 3 different kinds of power cable: The standard ungrounded attached one, a computer grade grounded one, and a "high end" grounded one. In the cases where I have had an opportunity to swich, I guarantee you a deaf turtle would be able to point out the difference/improvement. If anyone can't hear that much, they have a whole other kind of hearing than I have, though not necessarily a worse one.

There may be a chance far into the future (or more likely never) that such measuring procedures will be known, of which we may rest assured that we have found the answer to the endless cable disussions. Until then we might as well accept that in some cases there is in fact an audible difference in some cables compared to other ones. We might also just as well accept, that we have no clue as to why, but this does not change because some people claim we are hallucinating. As long as we cannot pull new revolutionizing methods of measuring cables up from the magician's hat, we will see no proof whatsoever.

But who really cares? We may all respond differently to what we hear, who knows? I guess we all have cables that satisfy our needs to some extent, and that's about it.

Exactly so. I will admit anyday that it is a mystery to me too. But I trust my ears, and turn the other cheek if someone calls me names because of that. I let the naysayers ramble on, because I won't let anybody take away my good experience. I will in return let them have theirs

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Nobody will IMO ever invent methods of measuring power cables, that in a convincing way will disclose any transducing/electrical properties (other than the already known factors) of such a cable, that may establish any cable as superior to another with the same (known) properties.

We may infinitely discuss characteristic impedance (series inductance and parallel capacitance per unit length), loss resistance (including additional resistance due to skin-effect losses versus frequency), dielectric losses versus frequency (loss tangent, etc.), velocity-of-propagation factor, overall loss versus frequency into different impedance loads, hallucinations, placebo, idiocy, lunatism, etc.

All of those physical parameters are based on the analysis of solids with respect to the very absolute core (base physics) of their definitions and what standards have been used to define their associated mathematical adjuncts. When you get to fluids, you have to use different parameters - and the science of that, is far from complete. First you have to figure out what the parameters are. Prior to that, you have to know what it is you are looking at. You have to build a proper map, and, as is usual -the map is not the territory.

I'm aware liquid cables are a whole different ball-game, but I just needed to air my general views

"But the fact that there is such disparity in opinion on this after 30 years would point to very very small differences, if they do, in fact, exist."

If the differences were always very very small, there would be no dispute. It's because folks report such widely varying results that makes the whole thing so intriguing. One side accuses the other of hyperbole or having supernatural hearing, while the other side accuses the first of having a hearing disorder or being all thumbs. What else is new?

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WE still don't know the cross sectional area. Also, I want to know what happens to these cables when your heat goes out in the winter.

The area may or may not be revealed when Teo Audio is ready to do so. Why is that so important, other than so you can whip out your calculator?

Teo Audio is a Canadian company. Their products carry a lifetime warranty.

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Have you noticed that Ken has not told us the resistance? Do you think this is a coincidence?

--Ethan

Ethan, Ken neither has the time nor the inclination to post much further to this thread, no matter how much you or anyone else tries to goad him into dropping what he's doing to placate you. Your attitude isn't conducive and helpful, either.

May: Geoff and I are friends. But he does test my patience at times.

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The area may or may not be revealed when Teo Audio is ready to do so. Why is that so important, other than so you can whip out your calculator?

Why do you want to keep this a secret? Why do you try to poison the well? What do you have against calculators. Should we stick to abacuses?

Note: I can play this kind of well-poisoning game, too, but I generally don't. If, however, this is how you wish to carry out dialog, ...

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As to the cables, he is under no obligation to give up any information he is uncomfortable disclosing. I do not begrudge him his proprietary privilege.

Quite so, but until then, we can't reject the mundane in favor of the unknown here...