Ethan Winer Builds a Wire Null Tester

[Wombat]

You should try and read the thread I had there about 4 years ago. I asked if anyone had evidence interconnects sounded different. I asked if all anyone had was anecdotal listening impressions to refrain from commenting. Most of the thread was angry posters who couldn't stand to see the topic addressed any other way.

Well I see it was actually 5 years ago now.

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...-than-fully-transparent-at-audio-frequencies/

That condition re anecdotal posting would be good for inputs to a 'soundstage' thread.

 

[pkane]

You should try and read the thread I had there about 4 years ago. I asked if anyone had evidence interconnects sounded different. I asked if all anyone had was anecdotal listening impressions to refrain from commenting. Most of the thread was angry posters who couldn't stand to see the topic addressed any other way.

Well I see it was actually 5 years ago now.

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...-than-fully-transparent-at-audio-frequencies/

Funny (and sad) to see how little has changed in five years on CA.

 

[solderdude]

It shows how little some folks understand about nulling, what it actually does and means.

Religious people don't like it and don't want to hear about their God not existing or not being the only true God.
In audio religion that person's ears, or those of their guru's THEY trust = God.

 

[svart-hvitt]

It shows how little some folks understand about nulling, what it actually does and means.

Religious people don't like it and don't want to hear about their God not existing or not being the only true God.
In audio religion that person's ears, or those of their guru's THEY trust = God.

I always find something lacking when people use that which cannot be proven (does God exist?) as evidence that people are delusional.

What is a fact, however, is that religious people live better lives (better health).

And because perception is such a big part of audio life, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that people who believe in their audio systems - even if measurements would show their systems are technically inadequate - are the most happy.

Do I advocate being delusional? Yes, a little bit of delusion may not be so bad after all, at least when it comes to insignificant things like home audio.

Do I advocate taking advantage of the informationally underprivileged? No, not at all.

 

[solderdude]

People all want to be conned, as in believe something they own/buy is better than is said/thought.
They just don't wanna know they are being conned.

 

[Soniclife]

What is a fact, however, is that religious people live better lives (better health).

Interesting what studies say this?

 

[svart-hvitt]

Interesting what studies say this?

You could make a quick Google search «do religious have better health». It will give you a brief overview.

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_health

One could argue, however, that many of the most backward nations are highly religious; so religion is thus bad for health. Or you could instead see how health within one country varies according to religious practice; then one could see that religious have better health in that group.

 

[andreasmaaan]

What is a fact, however, is that religious people live better lives (better health).

Is there evidence of this? Do you have a link perhaps?

EDIT: oops, I see you already answered this...

 

[svart-hvitt]

Is there evidence of this? Do you have a link perhaps?

EDIT: oops, I see you already answered this...

Yes, it’s hard to believe positive facts on religion, isn’t it

 

[mansr]

You could make a quick Google search «do religious have better health». It will give you a brief overview.

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_health

One could argue, however, that many of the most backward nations are highly religious; so religion is thus bad for health. Or you could instead see how health within one country varies according to religious practice; then one could see that religious have better health in that group.

I don't know about health, but the pious sure seem miserable.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I don't know about health, but the pious sure seem miserable.

Agree, they’ve lived according to modern environmentalists’ mantra - now supported by modern science - for centuries. So they seem to have gotten that one pretty right

 

[Johnny2Bad]

It is a signal you have to interpret based upon the digital data it carries. It only makes sense digitally. So there can be an examination of the original signal sent vs the received signal on an analog basis, but it could be of horrid analog quality and transmit digital information perfectly.

I'll sometimes use Diffmaker, and end up pissed off about it every time before I'm done. Even when it accomplishes what I wanted it to do. I also don't agree the non valid results are always obvious. Usually they are, but not always.

Like mostly all automatic functions, it's faster but not as accurate as a human. You can pretty easily do the same thing manually, and that makes for a good validation reference if for some reason the Audio Diffmaker result is ambiguous or you just want a reality check, or if you want to just not use it in the first place.

Syncing two objects was pretty much perfected 90 years ago (audio and movie images) so doing so with two files should be no problem for the people who frequent this place, and everybody here probably also knows how to null a signal and view / listen to the remainder. You just have to make the audio file yourself with a sync signal and use that for your source.

It is exactly as Blumlein already mentioned.

A digital signal is not an analog waveform. Listen to it and you will realize that it is not an analog signal.

... {snip} ...

If I can listen to it, it's an analog signal.

 

[svart-hvitt]

If I can listen to it, it's an analog signal.

It reminds me of my first PC, a Sinclair. It got its data from a tape cassette, making noises as I downloaded a program into memory. Those noises made a great impression back then.

 

[solderdude]

If I can listen to it, it's an analog signal.

Have you ever listened to a digital signal. I mean plug the SPDIF out of a source directly into an analog input and listened to it ?
Did you hear music from this 'analog' source (no cheating by using a DAC) ?
(B.t.w. I highly recommend NOT to do this because you risk blowing up tweeters , headphones and maybe even amps.)

Of course FM and AM radio is also analog and needs an detector yet is still considered analog.

I think it's a matter of definition when a signal is called analog or digital ?
The fact that both are bandwidth limited electrical signals says nothing about its nature (analog audio or digital audio).

 

[solderdude]

It reminds me of my first PC, a Sinclair. It got its data from a tape cassette, making noises as I downloaded a program into memory. Those noises made a great impression back then.

Yes, this was done so '1' and '0' could be transmitted via (analog) audio equipment such as radio and tape recorders but was a pure analog signal (a few tones) but did represent a digital signal.
That signal would 'null perfectly' in Ethan's test, an SPDIF signal will not.

 

[amirm]

And because perception is such a big part of audio life, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that people who believe in their audio systems - even if measurements would show their systems are technically inadequate - are the most happy.

I don't think this is the case. Because they believe everything makes a difference, they are forever chasing yet another change. And stressing over what change is better. And because invalid conclusions/placebo about audio fades with time, they will have their down moments with respect to purchases they have made.

Fortunately both camps enjoy music so to the extent that is the majority of time spent on the hobby, I would think overall both camps are happy.

 

[RayDunzl]

Single-ended cables like RCAs must have a current return path so you cannot lift the shield at one end.

I built some single-conductor interconnects, as an experiment.

They worked fine (no, I don't have an AP to be fanatical about it) between the 3-wire powered devices (as the Earth wire became the common return/reference).

Two-wire AC powered devices (no Earth reference) needed help. The sound was subdued/distorted as the signal source was floating...

 

[Blumlein 88]

Like mostly all automatic functions, it's faster but not as accurate as a human. You can pretty easily do the same thing manually, and that makes for a good validation reference if for some reason the Audio Diffmaker result is ambiguous or you just want a reality check, or if you want to just not use it in the first place.

Syncing two objects was pretty much perfected 90 years ago (audio and movie images) so doing so with two files should be no problem for the people who frequent this place, and everybody here probably also knows how to null a signal and view / listen to the remainder. You just have to make the audio file yourself with a sync signal and use that for your source.



If I can listen to it, it's an analog signal.

Somebody already mentioned the digital cassettes. Commodore had them as well as big mainframes with reel tape at one time. There were/are the phone modems. You can listen to those, but they are digital in nature transmitting digital information. Then there were keypunch cards and paper tape.

As for Diffmaker, it can do amazing things, and about as often fail and more often simply blow up. Now when it is amazing it takes two files that aren't digitally synched, adjusts for sample rate differences and then for sample rate drift. Then gives a nice deep null. In the course of doing that it will blow up nearly half the time. Heck I tried a file in it yesterday which was consecutive runs where nothing changed. It was a loopback so no synching issues involved. Manually there were nulls of about -106 db. Diffmaker said correlation null of 14 db. Nothing weird about the file.

@pkane is working on a similar bit of software. So maybe he'll get it finished and we can get reliable results more often than with Diffmaker.

When you get to deep nulling it takes so little to corrupt it. I'll sometimes embed two tones an octave apart. If you null them and the null residual is 6 db higher for the higher frequency tone you know the bulk of the residual is a time shift.

 

[amirm]

In all the times I have tried diffmaker, it has only worked once. Otherwise it usually crashes and sometimes generates garbage results. It is just too old and unmaintained. I wish the author would release the source code so that it could be fixed by the community.

 

[amirm]

I used to save my programs on Apple II. It was a pain because even after saving three times in a row to be sure, sometimes you could not read any of the copies. But when it worked, it was great as otherwise you had to print and retype the whole thing in!