Can cables be directional?
Posted by: Mekon on 22 January 2003
quote:
From Psuedo-science in audio by Doug Self
"Cables are directional, and pass audio better in one direction than the other."
Audio signals are AC. Cables cannot be directional any more than 2 + 2 can equal 5. Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point in further comment.
Anyone care to comment?
Arye said "Therefore it may be that under a test people have different experiments than when they are listening alone"
You dragon is now not only invisibile but floating and won't leave footprints in the sand I've just spread on the garage floor
This is a common observation though and one I have a fair amount of sympathy with as it tallies with my experience of dems which often feel like exams. The problem I have with this argument though is that it to some extent implies that the effects must be very subtle or fragile and this doesn't tally with the anecdotal evidence where such differences are generally "jaw dropping". If they really are that obvious surely they should be relatively easy to demonstrate in an experiment? Certainly this is the case with obvious (and measurable) differences like distortion.
"I guess that it is quite easy to test this argument with a group of people in a scientific way and to find if it is true or not by a statistical measurements"
Absolutely. That was Paul's original point.
"Engineers in the Israeli forum told me time after time that everything you hear must be measurable and if it is not – go for a psychological treatment"
Oddly enough many engineers are not actually very good scientists which I think is the case here.
Ross said "I do know that I have found cable directionality to be a real phenomenon for some - but not all - cables"
Actually you don't. In a scientific sense your experiences are no more, or less, evidence of cable directionality than reports of peole who believe they have communed with the dead via a medium. You may just have been hallucinating after staying up all night reading Proust (understandable as not many can resist the temptation of one more chapter to see how the Madeleines turn out).
My main point is that the oft-repeated views that "Science doesn't know everything" or "Just becuase Science can't measure it..." are every bit as fatuous and dogmatic as Arye's engineers and their ilk. One camp is simply assuming effects exist and the other that the effects do not and both are guilty of psuedo-science and woolly thinking.
Matthew
You dragon is now not only invisibile but floating and won't leave footprints in the sand I've just spread on the garage floor
This is a common observation though and one I have a fair amount of sympathy with as it tallies with my experience of dems which often feel like exams. The problem I have with this argument though is that it to some extent implies that the effects must be very subtle or fragile and this doesn't tally with the anecdotal evidence where such differences are generally "jaw dropping". If they really are that obvious surely they should be relatively easy to demonstrate in an experiment? Certainly this is the case with obvious (and measurable) differences like distortion.
"I guess that it is quite easy to test this argument with a group of people in a scientific way and to find if it is true or not by a statistical measurements"
Absolutely. That was Paul's original point.
"Engineers in the Israeli forum told me time after time that everything you hear must be measurable and if it is not – go for a psychological treatment"
Oddly enough many engineers are not actually very good scientists which I think is the case here.
Ross said "I do know that I have found cable directionality to be a real phenomenon for some - but not all - cables"
Actually you don't. In a scientific sense your experiences are no more, or less, evidence of cable directionality than reports of peole who believe they have communed with the dead via a medium. You may just have been hallucinating after staying up all night reading Proust (understandable as not many can resist the temptation of one more chapter to see how the Madeleines turn out).
My main point is that the oft-repeated views that "Science doesn't know everything" or "Just becuase Science can't measure it..." are every bit as fatuous and dogmatic as Arye's engineers and their ilk. One camp is simply assuming effects exist and the other that the effects do not and both are guilty of psuedo-science and woolly thinking.
Matthew