audiophile capacitor replacement

Because you CAN fool some of the people some of the time.

Even your dog can't hear 100 KHz.

At high currents, ballpark 100 amps for the wire sizes here, you can get some very strange effects from using ferrous wires. They can magnetize and saturate, and create a lot of crossover-type distortion.

Is barbed wire available in beryllium copper? Stainless? Gold plated?

John

Well, I can't really argue this, because the only #30 WW wire I've seen (tefzel, kynar, whatever) is touted as "OFHC Copper". I guess the question boils down to, if it's just wire-wrap wire, who cares?

Like, Audiophools don't wire-wrap, and wire-wrappers are more concerned with strays, so why even bother?

Oh, of course not. They just buy it from a copper refiner that can come up with a paper trail. I'm just wondering why, if I want to buy some 12/3 Romex, they don't specify "OFHC", but when I buy #30 WW wire, they do.

Oh, well. Who knows what's in the headbone of the marketing types? ;-)

Of course, John! None of these differences is enough to hear! I'm just jumping on the "bash the audiophools" bandwagon. ;-)

I wonder how much audiophools would pay for #9AWG Litz wire. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Oh, come on! Everybody knows the barbs form corona discharges! Most people feel that that really imparts a harsh sound, although some might like the side effects. ;-)

Cheers Rich

They need "Low oxygen listening rooms". Maybe 1%.

I NEVER buy wire that doesn't have the gauge marked on the wire, and on the spool.

ROTFLMAO!

Cheers Terry

AUDIO UPDATE

Testing the testers: Another exceptional paper from the 91st AES convention

By LARRY KLEIN in Radio Electronics June 1992.

Conventional listening tests have always been problematical for dedicated audiophiles. By "conventional," I mean tests posing as scientific with such methods as double-blind techniques, careful controls, statistical analysis, and instant switching with precise level equalization. The editors of The Absolute Sound, Stereophile, and other non-mainstream audio publications believe that those techniques obscure the sound quality differences that they hear so easily when listening under relaxed conditions, i.e., where an audio component is listened to for hours, days, or even weeks to evaluate its sound quality, and then its sound is compared to that of a reference component under similar listening conditions. If quality differences heard during this long term audiophile testing fail to appear under the tightly controlled "quick-switch" procedures, then, in their view, the purportedly rigorous scientific procedures (espoused by people such as myself) must be somehow flawed and thus terribly misleading.

Incidentally, it's worth pointing out that the contention between the two opposing camps seldom is reduced to determining which of two amplifiers sounds better Instead, the argument is usually about whether properly operating modern amplifiers sound alike or different. If, as claimed by most audiophiles, carefully performed switching tests based on double blind techniques (in which neither the tester nor the listener know the identity of the components being compared) are of dubious value, it's important that those involved in new-product and new-technology evaluations know that their tools are flawed. David L. Clark, of ABX fame, discusses these matters and more in the Audio Engineering Society preprint.

Ten Years of ABX Testing [David L. Clark (3167 K-1)]

About ten years ago, David Clark and his associates invented the ABX switch, a sophisticated component that enables a listener to do double-blind listening evaluations without the need for a second or third party to handle the random switching involved. The ABX switch automatically charts a listener's judgment about whether component A or B is the same as X, which might be A or B in a given trial series. At the end of the test series, the number of correct decisions is given.

When it became available, Clark and his associates thought that the ABX comparator would be a powerful tool for determining, once and for all, whether small differences in components such as power amplifiers are audible and commonly heard. However, the debate raged on as though the ABX device were never invented. When the ABX comparator confirmed that audiophile listeners consistently fail to identify components on a basis of sounds that they thought they heard, the audiophiles were not embarrassed. Most convinced themselves that they heard those differences clearly under normal, not test, listening conditions.

Audiophiles offered two explanations for their failure to discern acoustic differences during ABX testing:

(l)The switching relays and connectors used in the ABX switch introduce artifacts that somehow mask the differences, and

(2) short term, quick-switched listening does not permit differences that are readily apparent on typical long-term audiophile testing. In other words, the stress induced by a rigorous test de-sensitizes the listener and impairs his ability to hear differences that are apparent under more relaxed circumstances.

Clark set out to test the reality of the explanations and excuses. Two audiophile societies participated: The Audiophile Society (TAS), consisting mostly of true believers in high-end audio equipment and Clark's group, the South-eastern Michigan Woofer and Tweeter Marching Society (SMWTMS) who tended to be rationalists.

The test consisted of the insertion/non-insertion of a black box non-linear circuit that injected 2.5% harmonic distortion into the signal path. Two sets of tests were planned for each group. One employed the ABX switch for the typical quick-switch procedures preferred by the "scientific" audio group, while the other called for the long-term listening preferred by the high-end, everything-sounds-different crowd.

As might have been predicted, the "golden ears" of the TAS group refused to have the signal passed through the ABX comparator, and instead used a much slower, manually plugged 16-trial comparison test with a very expensive high-end system familiar to most of them. The SMWTMS group listened in an unfamiliar room to an unfamiliar sound system.

Double-blind black boxes

The second part of the test attempted to set up the long-term, relaxed listening situation favored by high-end audiophiles. Ten sealed black boxes were distributed double-blind to at least 16 members of each group. Half of the boxes contained the distortion circuit; the others were simply bypass circuits. Participants were instructed to patch their black boxes into the tape loops of their home preamplifiers and listen for as long as necessary to decide whether or not the black box was neutral.

No one in either group was able to distinguish the distorting box from the non-distorting box reliably in long-term listening on a home system. Moreover, no one in the TAS group could identify reliably the distorting black box in the manually patched series of relatively quick trials. However, with the ABX comparator, the SMWTMS group was able to differentiate between the distorting and non-distorting black boxes within 45 minutes. And they went on to perform just as well with the black box at even lower distortion levels!

This, to my mind, constitutes an ultimate rebuttal to those who claim that long-term listening is required for detecting differences, and that instant switching with boxes such as the ABX comparator somehow masks acoustic differences. To repeat: the Audiophile Society failed to detect the 2.5% total harmonic distortion (THD) under its preferred listening conditions. By contrast, the SMWTMS group, using the ABX switch, detected the distortion quickly and, later, at even lower levels.

Those who have been involved with ABX testing agree that the reason for the high sensitivity of the ABX procedure is the ease and speed of the comparison, which enables one to focus on the detection task. Dependence on one's memory of what one thinks one heard? interrupted by juggling cables while switching components?obviously does not make for reliability in evaluating components, despite audiophile claims to the contrary.

Final note

People I consider to be fuzzy minded, non-technical elitists are not the only ones who believe that rigorous double-blind testing obscures small audible differences under non-test conditions. When Clark was chairman of an AES Workshop on Esoteric Audio in 1988, he asked the audience to indicate by a show of hands whether they believed that different modern gain-matched power amplifiers sounded different from each other (it was assumed that all of the amplifiers would measure up well in conventional testing, and be operated within their ratings.)

Approximately 70% of the AES audience indicated that they thought the amplifiers would probably sound different! Along with Clark, I find that result disheartening, especially in light of all the carefully controlled tests and studies that have failed to show that such audible differences exist.

R-E

-- rational, scientific bull-hookey snipped --

Tube amplifiers sound better because the Bible says so.

If you don't believe me, give me a few hours of quality time with my New International Translation -- I'll find some verses that back up my position.

Ohhh.....David Clark...I actually met that guy... [Insert slanderous ranting here....] D from BC