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Elevated speaker wire/cable

GChief said:
Ha, my bad doing 3 things at once. I was commenting on psychoacoustics :confused:
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A little schifty but we will let it go. Psycho-acoustics is the proper arena to assess risers. However, the line "others have heard it so it must be real" is far from satisfactory and is not the same as making the direct claim that risers change sound.
 
pch300 said:
You can do a test to see if there is really an audible effect of raising the speaker cables or not.

Since the only thing your would be changing is the position of the speaker cables, do an experiment. Record the sound in the room with mikes and a digital recorder, or directly from the amp output without the mikes. Make one recording with the speaker cables on the floor, and another with the cables elevated. Save as two separate digital files, with all other audio equipment set at the same settings for the recordings. Evaluate with one or more of the following ideas.

1.) Play the two recordings and compare, using "good" headphones. Try to randomize this so you eliminate personal bias of knowing which file is which. I did this by renaming the files as apples and oranges or some other names, and listened only after enough time had elapsed so that I had forgotten which file was which (without looking at the file date, time, etc.) because I was performing this test by myself. You can ask a friend to record so you don't know which file was which.

There are other tests, but are more complicated to perform.

2.) Compare the two recordings using an audio editing program by subtracting one recorded file from the other. If no waveform appears in the difference file then there is no difference. If some difference appears, look at how small or large the difference is in signal strength, relative to the original signal strength. If you can audibly hear a difference, then it should be very apparent in the difference waveform.

3.) Use a null test with a speaker. Similar to #2 above, but requires more work to make the test reliable.
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I agree with your tests, however, if you believe something will make your sound quality better, it is most likely to sound better to you. So, anything, however weird that makes an owner of a good stereo system believe that it will sound better, actually does make it sound better to him or her. Doing the tests above would spoil the effect. If you know it is not any better, then of course it will not sound better. I think putting little statues of Buddha on each speaker is a good idea and simple way to improve sound quality. I encourage people to try this. Unfortunately, I know better, and so I am unable to improve my sound quality with these simple things like raising speaker wires or using statues. I have not used any marijuana since the 60s so that method of sound improvement is not available to me. It is legal in our state but I just don't like it. My wife still does and uses it in brownies now and then. I have almost eaten one of the brownies and was stopped at the last minute by my wife. She makes them atomic powered. I would have been miserable for many hours. In any case PCH300, what I am trying to say is that if someone believes that raising the speaker wires improves sound quality, it really does, for them. In this case, ignorance really is bliss.
 
Whether raising the speaker cables off the floor improves the sounds or not, I know that my hearing isn't acute enough to be able notice the difference anyway. :confused:
 
DaveVoorhis said:
Making physical changes to a system often changes perception, because hearing isn't just your ears, it's your brain -- emotions, cognition, knowledge, hearing, sight -- all working together to create the sense of sound. Your brain and state of mind are as much an effect on what you experience as the sound that enters your ears,
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Agree, my speakers sound better with the grills off so I can look at them.

I bet if an ugly speaker and a good speaker were made with all else being equal the good looking one would sound better. :)

I can admit I probably wouldn't like the sound of those big snail looking speakers because I just do not like the looks of them. I would try but I am sure the psyhco acoustics would win over.

Btw I am not dismissing anything, just playing.
 
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Just to play Devil's Advocate:

If somebody were crazy enough to send two enamel insulated wires down a steel I-beam to a speaker 100 feet away, nobody would doubt there'd be enough ugly and nonlinear inductance and capacitance to cross the threshold of audibility. And elevating that wire away from that I-beam might make an audible difference.

Back to sanity:

But plain ol' zip cord shouldn't have a problem in that worst-case environment, elevated or not. It has inherently low inductance *and* low capacitance. Go with twisted pair, etc., if you're in a tough environment.

If raising your cables mitigates hum and RFI, you might want to check out your amp. There could be a bad ground connection or a burned-out Zobel. And the speaker cable's characteristic impedance should be properly terminated by a Zobel at the *speaker* as well.

Those problems are the result of bad designs or malfunctions, lack of which are usually only implied when we have these discussions on audibility (of power cords, interconnects, amplifiers, etc.). The assumption is that we're talking about well-engineered and executed systems that are working correctly, not edge case situations. If elevating speaker cables makes a real(measurable) difference, then something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Pleasant aesthetics might distract you from the problem, but it won't make it go away.
 
NH-MAN said:
I can admit I probably wouldn't like the sound of those big snail looking speakers because I just do not like the looks of them. I would try but I am sure the psyhco acoustics would win over.
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Psychoacoustics won't make a transistor radio sound like B&W Nautiluses, er, Nautilii, uh, big snail-looking speakers, or vice versa. But given two sets of speakers that otherwise are acoustically identical, psychoacoustics might make the pretty ones sound better.
 
ironcoder said:
I agree with your tests, however, if you believe something will make your sound quality better, it is most likely to sound better to you. So, anything, however weird that makes an owner of a good stereo system believe that it will sound better, actually does make it sound better to him or her. Doing the tests above would spoil the effect. If you know it is not any better, then of course it will not sound better. I think putting little statues of Buddha on each speaker is a good idea and simple way to improve sound quality. I encourage people to try this. Unfortunately, I know better, and so I am unable to improve my sound quality with these simple things like raising speaker wires or using statues. I have not used any marijuana since the 60s so that method of sound improvement is not available to me. It is legal in our state but I just don't like it. My wife still does and uses it in brownies now and then. I have almost eaten one of the brownies and was stopped at the last minute by my wife. She makes them atomic powered. I would have been miserable for many hours. In any case PCH300, what I am trying to say is that if someone believes that raising the speaker wires improves sound quality, it really does, for them. In this case, ignorance really is bliss.
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I'd like to improve my audio experience; does your wife do care packages? ;) (J/K, by the way)

I think it's important, when referring to questionable / unsupported / unproven 'improvements' to include 'to me', 'in my experience or opinion', etc. Some things are proven fact, and don't need such disclaimers. I don't think many will debate whether 50' of 22 AWG wire used for speakers vs 14 AWG is inferior used on a 250 watt amp. But stating that an amp with transformer outputs sounds better than one without isn't so clear-cut. Similarly, some like capacitor-coupled amps, and others like direct-coupled amps. So many speak as if their personal impressions of things that can't be proven are universal truths vs opinion, and drama ensues. (Disclaimer- this is in general and not directed towards the OP)
 
ironcoder said:
I agree with your tests, however, if you believe something will make your sound quality better, it is most likely to sound better to you. So, anything, however weird that makes an owner of a good stereo system believe that it will sound better, actually does make it sound better to him or her. Doing the tests above would spoil the effect. If you know it is not any better, then of course it will not sound better. I think putting little statues of Buddha on each speaker is a good idea and simple way to improve sound quality. I encourage people to try this. Unfortunately, I know better, and so I am unable to improve my sound quality with these simple things like raising speaker wires or using statues. I have not used any marijuana since the 60s so that method of sound improvement is not available to me. It is legal in our state but I just don't like it. My wife still does and uses it in brownies now and then. I have almost eaten one of the brownies and was stopped at the last minute by my wife. She makes them atomic powered. I would have been miserable for many hours. In any case PCH300, what I am trying to say is that if someone believes that raising the speaker wires improves sound quality, it really does, for them. In this case, ignorance really is bliss.
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Yes, ignorance is bliss. I personally know people that swear by the improvement of raising speaker cables as well as interconnects. What helps the OP is if he performs the test #1 and hears no difference then he does not need to use risers. Some audiophiles have spent $$$$ on risers and who have not performed that test. Hopefully this sanity check will prevent circular searching for expensive 'upgrades' that aren't really audible.

However, if the test #1 shows a clearly audible difference to a number of different listeners, then we may have eliminated expectation bias as the cause of the original audibility claim. The key is doing the test correctly and accounting for and eliminating possible confounding factors. Such a test is time-consuming and tedious.

I'm in the process of testing an audiophile-grade power strip and cord. I performed several attempts at tests, unlike test #1. I have ran into experimental artifacts that need to be addressed. No results until I address those artifacts. Such is the challenge of proper testing.
 
cpt_paranoia said:
I didn't think GChief was supporting risers. Just pointing out that psychoacoustics is a real thing, and very relevant when training sonar operators in 'critical listening'.
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GChief used the word "science". Psycho-acoustics has to do with perception and behavior, not science. Because psycho-acoustics is not a science does not mean there is no value. On the contrary, salesmen have made good use and a lot of very real money by triggering impulse buys.
 
David_NC said:
I'd like to improve my audio experience; does your wife do care packages? ;) (J/K, by the way)

I think it's important, when referring to questionable / unsupported / unproven 'improvements' to include 'to me', 'in my experience or opinion', etc. Some things are proven fact, and don't need such disclaimers. I don't think many will debate whether 50' of 22 AWG wire used for speakers vs 14 AWG is inferior used on a 250 watt amp. But stating that an amp with transformer outputs sounds better than one without isn't so clear-cut. Similarly, some like capacitor-coupled amps, and others like direct-coupled amps. So many speak as if their personal impressions of things that can't be proven are universal truths vs opinion, and drama ensues. (Disclaimer- this is in general and not directed towards the OP)
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I would be happy to send you one of her killer brownies, but alas it is illegal. The marijuana here is cheap and she uses a special low carb brownie mix. The chemicals within the MJ are not released without heat. It turns out that just baking the brownies does not bring out all the power of the MJ. She complained that all her brownies were frozen and she wanted one. I told her not to worry and I nuked it in the microwave. It got a little bit too warm. When it cooled off, apparently, a lot more of the chemicals had been released. It knocked her down on the couch for 3 hours. I kept asking if she was OK. She just grinned and said I am fine. I have no idea why music sounds so much better to people who are under the influence of MJ. As this thread has pretty much proved, our perception of what something sounds like is hugely affected by our expectations. I guess we hear what we want to hear. I expect this fact means that if someone like myself is working on a stereo receiver and I think it is all fixed up, I should really not rely on my own hearing. I see ebay selling new distortion analyzers for 200 dollars. I guess I will have to buy one. I had been using an audio sweep generator and a scope to look at frequency response and the sine wave symmetry. This is really not good enough. My only method after those tests was to play music loud and listen. Clearly not the best idea when I already want it to sound good. Expectations too often become what we think is reality.
 
SoCal Sam said:
GChief used the word "science". Psycho-acoustics has to do with perception and behavior, not science. Because psycho-acoustics is not a science does not mean there is no value.
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Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of the perception of sound. It belongs as much to science as study of any other perception, such as touch, sight, smell, taste, etc.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics for an overview.

Behaviour can also be studied scientifically within psychology and/or sociology.
 
ironcoder said:
I have no idea why music sounds so much better to people who are under the influence of MJ. As this thread has pretty much proved, our perception of what something sounds like is hugely affected by our expectations.
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Hearing isn't just ears, it's ears + brain. Change how the ears work and hearing changes. Change how the brain works -- which is what expectations and psychoactive drugs do -- and hearing changes.
 
SoCal Sam said:
A little schifty but we will let it go. Psycho-acoustics is the proper arena to assess risers. However, the line "others have heard it so it must be real" is far from satisfactory and is not the same as making the direct claim that risers change sound.
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My favorite is "well, even my wife heard a difference!"
 
Aslong as you keep the runs as short as possible with the amp or amps near buy you will be OK. Interbal resistance and capacitance are the biggest enemies . When I was using tube amps I kept my runs to under 4 ft and the wire never touched the floor.
 
SoCal Sam said:
None are provable due to existentialism aka fallibility of our senses.
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None of what is provable?

Note that true proof is only found in mathematics; everything else is a matter of evidence.

Study of senses and behaviour rarely makes reference to subjective experience, which is unreliable, unquantifiable, untestable, and -- other than perhaps satisfying anecdotal curiosity -- is of little scientific interest. Instead, experiments are devised to treat acts of sensing as objective, observable, testable, and measurable/quantifiable phenomena that provide evidence for or against hypotheses. For example, my hypothesis might be that listeners can perceive differences in speaker cables.

If we wished to find evidence for (or against) listeners being able to perceive differences in speaker cables, we wouldn't simply switch cables and ask the subject what he hears. That's subjective and subject to conflation with cognition, experimenter bias, expectation bias, etc. Instead, we set up a double-blind experiment to sometimes switch speaker cables and sometimes not -- without experimenter or subject knowing whether cables are switch or not -- and then have subjects indicate whether they believe the cable was switched or not over multiple trials and, ideally, under a variety of conditions. If subjects report a difference in sound when the cable is switched at a rate above chance, then that provides evidence that listeners can perceive differences in speaker cables.

Done with appropriate rigour, it is repeatable, reliable, and statistically allows for variability and fallibility, in precisely the same manner and to the same degree as every other natural science, including chemistry and experimental physics.

Whilst it doesn't deliver provable results in the mathematical sense, no experimental science can deliver proof, it can only provide evidence for or against hypotheses.
 
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