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Psychoacoustics... where does it start and stop, what’s the proof?

mudlark said:
Get a grip man, it's a cable.
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LOL

spacey said:
And a digital one at that! so it should make fekkall difference... The info transmitted is just 1's and 0's, innit.
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My understanding is a 0 is represented as anything between 0 and 1 volt and a 1 is represented as anything between 1 and 5 volts.

So perhaps the issue is how long does it take to charge the cable to change from one to another.

There is also the issue of jitter and clocking. A picosecond is a million millionth of a second. Not very long. However in ten picoseconds an electrical signal can travel about three millimetres.
 
spacey said:
Just wonder how much of this game/hobby/neurosis is based on psychoacoustics...

I've just bought a cheap'as'chips USB cable from't ebay, this one: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/710-5...0001&campid=5338728743&icep_item=271025364205
When i got my DAC, the UK retailer, Unilet, sent me a 1m LAT International USB2 to try out. This one: http://www.latinternational.com/index.php/wire and cables/usb 2 cable.html

After exchanging it for the Lindy cable mentioned above, i find myself much preferring the new 0.5m lead. What gives... maybe the shorter the USB cable the better?

But then again, it’s all bull-shit, right ;)
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jirij said:
I had pretty long post about my test of two cables, with the methodology and stuff, but the entire thread the post was in got deleted, so I can't link it.

However the tests I performed were small and even given the limited precautions I was able to take care of to keep the tests as accurate as possible, the results seem to still indicate that there's a huge placebo effect going on in the audio world. And most people are too stubborn to admit it. It sound better to them, so it's true by their definition.

There are several reasons why two USB different cables achieve the same thing (given short ranges) if both endpoints have proper USB protocol implementation (ie. error detection / checksum verification). Some expensive cables might have an inbuilt isolator, which is a whole another story, though.

Do yourself a favor - make another person (preferably someone, who does what he/she is told, without knowing what's going on) randomly switch the cables behind your back in a random pattern and try to identify which is which.
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Oh, and excuse my quick judgement - I haven't looked at the links. By the looks of it, the expensive cable has some (cheap) Ferrite beads in comparison with your cable. That alone might be noticeable.

However those beads are present on cables in sub-$10 range as well, no need for $100 cable, let alone 1m long one.

Also note that the distance becomes a problem due to the latency between two endpoints guaranteed by the USB specification - see ie. USB.org FAQ on more. Again - this is between ie. computer and a DAC, but also between computer and a hub. You can run long cables as long as you put an usb hub each 5 meters (well, as long as the hub tree allows, which is AFAIK 127 devices).
 
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merlin said:
My understanding of Psychoacoustics is that it is the study of the brain/ear interfaces response to measurable phenomenon.
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You are absolutely right. Psychoacoustics is an extremely interesting/unremittingly dry subject depending on your viewpoint, but it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with audio voodoo.

It's not short for 'psychotic acoustics' or 'psychological trickery in acoustic form'.
 
Agreed, but the two are intertwined when we go beyond the perceived human hearing range. Everything that is measurable isn’t audible, apparently. So what gives and when is the threshold blurred to suite the science and practical? Psychoacoustics goes beyond just the response of the ear, it measures brain reactions and interactions well beyond our 20Khz limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics
 
spacey said:
Are you implying USB cables can cause jitter and create voltage resistance?
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I'm saying a cable exhibits electrical properties and different cables (materials and lengths) exhibit different electrical properties.

A longer thicker cable may take fractionally longer to charge from 0 to 1 and back again. Perhaps it does one change faster than another. Perhaps it is easier to get to 1v from 0 than from 5v to 0.9v. So an introduction of timing variations in the signal seems plausible.
 
Warren Day said:
I'm saying a cable exhibits electrical properties and different cables (materials and lengths) exhibit different electrical properties.

A longer thicker cable may take fractionally longer to charge from 0 to 1 and back again. Perhaps it does one change faster than another. Perhaps it is easier to get to 1v from 0 than from 5v to 0.9v. So an introduction of timing variations in the signal seems plausible.
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But it's an Asynchronous signal and reclocked at the DAC
 
No but the data will be buffered and then clocked out in the DAC. Now we know that the 1s and 0s will be correct otherwise the whole principle of digital electronics will collapse. Therefore any so called timing issues on he cable will be removed in the first section of the DAC.

I would suggest that at some point tomorrow, you put the original cable back, and see if you hear an audible degradation?
 
Raj,

No pressure or anything but do realize if you still report a difference tomorrow we are fully authorized to burn you as a witch.

regards,

dave
 
Bradders said:
You have described the improvement, therefore an improvement has been measured and found to be real. Evidently this is more money well spent in the land of hifi.

I can't use silver cables either, I have found them to sound shrill and bright. Which of course they don't. I am just being a thundering buffoon.
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Have a cyber beer on me that man. I laughed into my tea and slopped onto the keyboard. :D:D
 
spacey said:
Just wonder how much of this game/hobby/neurosis is based on psychoacoustics...)
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Basically all of it.

Physiology can explain how the ear works up to the transmission of signal to the brain. To measure how we react to this signal, we're into the field of psychoacoustics (psychology applied to acoustics).

Don't know if that helps,

Jan
 
It’s interesting how we, our minds, still react to sounds well above our hearing thresholds. Yet the 'bits is bits' camp, along with the 'all similar spec kit sounds the same' brigade think and say that all and everything above and below 20Hz-20KHz is irrelevant. So is psychoacoustics also disappearing up its own black hole?

So what gives, and where does it stop?
 
janerik said:
Physiology can explain how the ear works up to the transmission of signal to the brain. To measure how we react to this signal, we're into the field of psychoacoustics (psychology applied to acoustics).

Don't know if that helps,

Jan
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It doesn't help, because it's incorrect.
 
spacey said:
Explaining clearly that not all USB cables perform exactly the same.
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Or possibly highlighting the flakiness of the connector and the differences between the various USB ports on a Mac Mini. Or showing that audiophile cable manufacturers don't understand how to make a proper USB cable?
 
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