castleofargh
Sound Science Forum Moderator
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sorry but that's nonsense. just throwing quantum theory into our everyday use of electricity and wires is like saying we don't know how to grow vegetables because we haven't gotten a full grasp of the quantum state of the atoms in the vegetable. you can say it if you like, but really you just sound weird.Well Greg, I'd put it this way: I'm wise enough on the topic to know nobody really knows. We're all amateurs. That doesn't mean we can't have great science discussions, but it does mean, if we're honest with ourselves and our egos, we'll never come to any solid conclusions because there aren't any possible from us.
For example, our USB cables use electricity, one of the 3 forces within the framework we call The Standard Model which theoretical scientists would tell us is derivative of quantum field theory. The thing is, we know The Standard Model is wrong, just not how or where. That means our understanding of electricity is wrong somehow, which means our ability to predict its behavior is wrong in some way - we're just not sure how, when, or where. We can make good enough guesses to get the macros right, and usually keep from killing ourselves with it, but weird shiit is always happening. Have you ever tried to design an electronics product? If so, then you certainly know there's always some fresh new weird shiit!
Anyway, all of that means it's not possible for us to provide definitive non-religious answers about electrical behavior, just good guesses and what's worked for us so far.
here I believe you have to be careful about the difference between what you understand and what is universal knowledge available to mankind. I imagine that all electrical engineers have been tortured a few times with the game of simulating a wire as successive RLC components. hopefully nowadays teachers aren't dicks and they let students use some matlab program to do it all fast and clean.
of course you can always complain that it's only an approximation and that the result is only following the actual wire down to a µV or something and that's it's "dramatically" out of phase at whatever frequency. then you can declare that we don't know how things below µV impact our DAC, and once launched in that direction there really is nothing to stop you(aside from common sense). if you chose to go down the rabbit hole, it's all mystery and paranoia. maybe if I moved my cable one centimeter on the left, the resulting electrical properties would improve the sound? and what's fun is that it's actually possible, so long as you're ready to count any possible change of any magnitude as a relevant one. and when you got your wire and flexed it to straighten it up, that did change the electrical characteristics of the cable. hermagerd you just ruined your cable!!!! or maybe you could blame the guy who first deciding to roll it around something. if your limit is no limit, then everything is a drama.
at the end of the day, you have to make a choice. live the life of an unstable paranoid person, or define your actual needs and simply ensure that your cable will keep the signal within those defined parameters. I've said it many times, but if your concern happens to be fidelity, then you should probably invest some time and a little money in measuring the output signal instead of worrying about highly technical stuff while at the same time testing cables with medieval techniques.
if your concern is audibility, you should bother setting up actual listening tests instead of listening with your eyes.
if your concern is what your guts tell you when you try a given cable. then you already know all you need to know. the one making you happy is the right one. sound may or may not have anything to do with it, but who cares if the one true target is being happy. I fully support this approach as being a valid one in audio. it just disqualifies people from claiming anything about the objective nature of the cable and the signal coming out of it. because subjective stuff aren't objective. the end. ^_^