From: francis@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Francis Vaughan)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Science versus TechnoBabble and Golden Ears
Date: 8 Oct 92 08:48:17 GMT
Reply-To: francis@cs.adelaide.edu.au
Organization: Adelaide Univerity, Computer Science
NNTP-Posting-Host: heruka.cs.adelaide.edu.au



Perhaps I may regret posting this, but it seems that
more than a few protagonists are not listening (reading?)
what one another are saying in the debate over scientific
validity of claims for hifi improvments.


It is really important to realise that often the pro-science
camp is not saying that there are no improvments to be had
with certain tweeks and expensive components, but rather that
the reasons advanced for why these tweeks or designs make the
sound "better" are bogus.

Take for example interconnection cables.  My favorite bit of
technobabble comes from Monster cables.  One can pick up a
glossy brochure (the production of which counts for a
considerable fraction of the final cost of the cable) and
discover that they market "time aligned" cable.

The brochure will tell you all about how "ordinary" cables
"smear" the time alignment of the sound, but their cable
using special patented and proprietory designs, does not
smear the timing of the different frequencies.  Of course
this "time smearing" can only be dispersion, a well
understood and very real fact of life with cables.  However
it is here that idea of dispersion within the cable and the
claims made by Monster are completly at odds.  The
dispersive effect is essentially non-existent at even the
most ludicrous of frequencies at which claims may be made
about human hearing.  Monster however show diagrams of
cables wound with - thick wires for the bass notes, middle
sized wire for the mid range and lots of thin wires for the
high end.  They are implicity claiming that dispersion
occurs within audible frequency ranges.  More than that,
they are making claims about the physics of signal travel
down wires that are patently false.  

Maybe their cables do sound really good in your system, but
the reasons advanced are not the answer.

Skin effect is another good one.  We have seen time and time
again claims that the skin effect in interconnection and
speaker cables is an important contributor to the sound. 
Yet it is trivial to prove that this is not possible from a
simple application of the relevant and well understood
physics.

This is not to say that the cable in question is not in some
way contributing to a change in sound, but only to say that
the cited scientific principle is not contributing.

Other claims are made for designs of cables.  Golden ratioed
cables to minimise the effects of resonances. Egad!  Again
there are well understood facts of life in cables that can be
measured that do indeed cover some of these assertions. 
Piezo-electic effects, changes in resistange due to
mechanical stretching and magnetostriction come to mind. 
Again a quick analysis of the numbers reveals that the
effects are so miniscule that it would not be possible to
detect them.  They would be so far beneath the noise floor
of the rest of the audio chain to be utterly lost.


It is altogether reminicent of the changing face of
schizophrenics of history.  At the turn of the century a
schitzoid would assert that he heard devils, later some other
person was "controlling their mind with radio waves" and
now, radio and deamons being passe, their minds are being
controlled with computers.  It is little more than invoking
the latest science or technology and asserting that it is
the cause with no understanding of either the science or the
problem.

Making a few bucks from pseudo-science has been with us
with since before snake oil, and will probably be with us
for a long time yet.

At the end of it all we are left with slow but real
scientific progress.  Real advances are made by people that
understand the problem and the underlying physics, and who
are able to apply scientific method to isolate and quantify
effects and make use of this knowledge.


More than enough for now.


					Francis Vaughan