joojoo2915
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2006
- Posts
- 25
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Very sorry for the delay in reply, had to go to work at my other place of employment.
Quote:
As I understand it, people are very sensitive to slight derivations in volume, on the order of .1 decibels, or so. They don't hear it as being louder, but often hear it as sounding better. If you would like to do the test I'd love to hear the outcome, but I believe it would be difficult to match your amplifiers to within that degree of accuracy. If you haven't read the link I put in my first post, you should.
If you don't care to read the link I will summarize. Basically there is a man named Richard Clark who is famous in the car audio world for being very outspoken about the audio voodoo that goes on these days. He helped start a company in the late 70's called Auto Sound 2000 that holds the patent on the stiffening capacitor as well as other audio related goods. Anyway, he has a $10,000 amplifier challenge. He will allow anyone to compare any two production car audio amplifiers, with any set of speakers and if they can pick the correct amps 24/24 times he will give them $10,000. I don't know if he is even still doing his challenge, but thousands have taken it in the past and every one of them has failed.
If you do have very precise audio calibrating equipment and do take a double blind experiment, and pass, I will happily concede to your point that amplifiers sound different. All evidence that I currently posses, however, seems to indicate otherwise.
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You are absolutely correct. I am sorry, I wrote my first post late last night and screwed up. The wire needs to be capable of carrying the current, not the voltage. I do stand by my 22 gauge statement, though. If you visit this site and scroll down to '#16 Wire' on the right hand scroll bar and then scroll down the page to the first calculator you can enter the power output, speaker wire length, speaker wire gauge, and load impedance and it will give you the dB output loss incurred by the wire.
According to the calculator, with a power output of 500 mW (.5 watts), speaker wire length of 15 feet, 22 ga speaker wire and 32 ohm source impedance you will lose .13 decibels due to the wire. This would be absolutely worst case scenario. It is very possible you could hear the difference between this wire and a wire with a larger gauge, or one that was shorter but it is not something that can't be fixed by an extremely slight change of the volume knob. Electricity also travels at the speed of light, whether it is traveling through copper or through forged silver made by Himalayan monk blacksmiths, so I can't understand how speed would be a factor.
Again, I could be 100% wrong and there could absolutely be something I'm missing. In my experience, however, the explanation that I have given makes the most sense to me.
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Again, that was a very poor explanation on my part. The CD player reads the 16 bit words from the CD which it sends to the DAC to convert to 1/44,100th of a second worth of audio, in the form of AC voltage.
Mr. Hertsens as well as many other members of this board have far more experience in these matters than myself, I realize and respect that. My stance on these issues are based on what I've read, been told and experienced myself, while doing my best to maintain an objective outlook on things. I will continue to maintain my objective outlook and if I read, hear, or experience things that are more convincing to me than what I have in the past, I will have no problem admitting my stance was errant and ill-informed and move on. Until that time, however, I will continue to express the opinion that wire upgrades aren't all they're cracked up to be and amplifiers still sound the same so long as they are compared fairly.
Quote:
As I have the convertable, and you work for HeadRoom, I will submit myself to a double blind test on the modules I currently have. They all have the same gain and will all provide the same volume level without the amplifier having to be touched. All variables, except the amplifying electronics will be constant - PSU, main board, etc. There are 8 modules and I content that, double blind, I will be able to ID them, without the luxury of A/Bing them (including even getting the Home '05 and Reference '04 correct, despite the fact that they use the same electronics design and only differ in layering of the board, and the size of the capacitors). In fact, if you trust me, I'm happy to have a friend do it with me here - as the modules have no labels on them, he will have no idea which one is which, and I'll wear a blindfold, sitting 10ft away. I hold myself to getting 6/8 correct (i.e. no more than 1 incorrect, which therefore means 2). I will use the same track, from the same source and listen through it for each no more than 2 times. Also, as I won't know whether I was correct or not until the end of the test, I will not be able to use a process of elimination. |
As I understand it, people are very sensitive to slight derivations in volume, on the order of .1 decibels, or so. They don't hear it as being louder, but often hear it as sounding better. If you would like to do the test I'd love to hear the outcome, but I believe it would be difficult to match your amplifiers to within that degree of accuracy. If you haven't read the link I put in my first post, you should.
If you don't care to read the link I will summarize. Basically there is a man named Richard Clark who is famous in the car audio world for being very outspoken about the audio voodoo that goes on these days. He helped start a company in the late 70's called Auto Sound 2000 that holds the patent on the stiffening capacitor as well as other audio related goods. Anyway, he has a $10,000 amplifier challenge. He will allow anyone to compare any two production car audio amplifiers, with any set of speakers and if they can pick the correct amps 24/24 times he will give them $10,000. I don't know if he is even still doing his challenge, but thousands have taken it in the past and every one of them has failed.
If you do have very precise audio calibrating equipment and do take a double blind experiment, and pass, I will happily concede to your point that amplifiers sound different. All evidence that I currently posses, however, seems to indicate otherwise.
Quote:
Quote: Originally Posted by joojoo2915 ...snip...If a cable is capable of carrying the voltage (anything bigger than say, 22 gauge)...snip... Are you sure you mean that? Not very good for your credibility if you do. |
You are absolutely correct. I am sorry, I wrote my first post late last night and screwed up. The wire needs to be capable of carrying the current, not the voltage. I do stand by my 22 gauge statement, though. If you visit this site and scroll down to '#16 Wire' on the right hand scroll bar and then scroll down the page to the first calculator you can enter the power output, speaker wire length, speaker wire gauge, and load impedance and it will give you the dB output loss incurred by the wire.
According to the calculator, with a power output of 500 mW (.5 watts), speaker wire length of 15 feet, 22 ga speaker wire and 32 ohm source impedance you will lose .13 decibels due to the wire. This would be absolutely worst case scenario. It is very possible you could hear the difference between this wire and a wire with a larger gauge, or one that was shorter but it is not something that can't be fixed by an extremely slight change of the volume knob. Electricity also travels at the speed of light, whether it is traveling through copper or through forged silver made by Himalayan monk blacksmiths, so I can't understand how speed would be a factor.
Again, I could be 100% wrong and there could absolutely be something I'm missing. In my experience, however, the explanation that I have given makes the most sense to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joojoo2915 ...snip...Cable upgrades are absolutely not worth it. Music is just thousands of changing volts...snip... Are you sure you mean that as well? Ditto. I don't want to criticise you if it's all simply for typo reasons, however, if you do mean both of those comments exactly as you put them it shows that you know very little about electronics. |
Again, that was a very poor explanation on my part. The CD player reads the 16 bit words from the CD which it sends to the DAC to convert to 1/44,100th of a second worth of audio, in the form of AC voltage.
Mr. Hertsens as well as many other members of this board have far more experience in these matters than myself, I realize and respect that. My stance on these issues are based on what I've read, been told and experienced myself, while doing my best to maintain an objective outlook on things. I will continue to maintain my objective outlook and if I read, hear, or experience things that are more convincing to me than what I have in the past, I will have no problem admitting my stance was errant and ill-informed and move on. Until that time, however, I will continue to express the opinion that wire upgrades aren't all they're cracked up to be and amplifiers still sound the same so long as they are compared fairly.