As much as I disbelieve cheap cables sound the same as expensive ones, I would like to know the truth.
Is there a citation where somebody has hooked up a frequency analyzer to two cables, playing the same music (not a sine wave), and found the results are exactly the same? If so, someone please supply it? If not, then one can only assume the lack of this rather obvious test means that the two cables fail to produce equivalent results.
Ok, here are the criteria:
I suppose a decent definition of “rigid” is that the walls will not measurably deflect under pressures typically present in a flute. I’m not sure how to precisely define “smooth,” but I think that as long as you’re reasonable, we’ll be ok.
By the way, it is very unlikely that I’ll be able to reproduce your experiment. But I’ll read your description with an open mind.
I agree that a generalization that applies to only one material is useless. Two materials, however, is a different story, if people are paying a premium for one of the two.
DougC No, that’s bullshit. It works EXACTLY like that.
Nothing is proved by theory, alone. Not when there are empirical cases that cannot be disproved. I said I could tell the difference between speaker cables with my ears. Sam Stone, reasonably, from his perspective, said I couldn’t.
I’m calling your bluff. Show me the fucking frequency analysis that shows that all cables above a certain minimum price reproduce music identically.
Before I became disabled, I built pipe organs from scratch. I made everything in my shop except the metal pipes which I had made in Holland. I made my own wood pipes.
Instruments that rely on the material it’s made from to amplify and color the sound must be made of materials that have been found to work well for that purpose, e.g. stringed instruments, pianos, drums etc. The exception being solid body electric guitars.
Instruments that produce sound by vibrating a column of air, e.g. organ pipes, flutes etc. don’t need to be made of any special material so long as it is strong enough to maintain it’s shape. I could make a pipe out of crate lumber and one of walnut with no audible difference.
Reed instruments, e.g. oboe, bassoon, krummhorn are somwhat affected by what they are made of, as are reed activated organ pipes.
Dr. Strangemind
It seems to me the way to test it is to have you listen without knowing which cables are in place, and see if you can tell the difference. Maybe you’d be blindfolded, or in another room. I realize that’s impractical for our purposes here, but in any event would you agree to such a test?
I think the original experiment with the tubing would fit those criteria, with the exception of the balloon piece. I don’t think styrofoam, wood, rubber, lead, brass, et al. would deflect measureably.
What we hope to prove: Dissimilar materials in the same design will or will not effect to some degree the sound produced.
For the sake of simplicity, I would stick to easily available tubing: say 1/2" PVC and 1/2" copper tube, both easily had at your local hardware store, both easity cut with a common hacksaw.
Both tubes meet the rigidity requirement, and both have the same I.D. Both are reasonably smooth and can be polished, if nessesary.
To make the copper tube as thick as the PVC tube at the point where you blow across it (critical for comparison), you will have to solder an extra piece of copper on the tube. Cut a piece from scrap, brush a bit of flux on it, and hold it as best you can while you heat and apply solder. (if you don’t have a torch, a gas stove on low will do. MAKE SURE your hands are protected from HEAT! Copper has outstanding thermal conductivity!
You can smooth the edges of the tubes with a file, a sanding block, or even a clean sidewalk. A slight bevel is all that is needed.
Once you have the tubes, you can start with your thumb as an end plug. (I don’t think your thumb will be measurably deflected, either.) A 1/2" dowel piece, bushed with tape if nessesary, could be used for this as well. Other materials may prove difficult for you to work, so I would start with this and work from there.
The plug seal must be reasonably tight, or the pipe won’t sound properly. As long as the seal is tight, your thumb could hold the plug on the end of the tube, any material: cardboard, plywood, masonite, sheet metal, etc. The plug material will not have as great an impact as the tube material, though.
With this experiment, we have varied our pipe material and our plug material, while keeping our design as much the same as our skill can contrive. I think it reasonably fits the criteria, and as I have done a very similar experiment (I made a set of transverse flutes with blowholes from PVC, copper, and maple to the same dimensions), I have some idea of what to expect. I hope you’ll give it a try, and we’ll compare notes. This will raise the discussion above the level of the schizophrenic rant that much of this thread has become… violins, flutes, stereos, audio cables… arrgh!
By the way, Lucwarm, I did start another thread about flutes. Damn, for some reason I can’t get the link to work. The title is"Do wooden flutes sound the same as metal flutes?" Perhaps we should move our discussion there; we’d be a bit more on topic and have less fiddling about with audiophiles.
I think that styrofoam isn’t smooth. Not sure what to think about rubber.
Sounds ok.
**
I imagine it’s worthwhile to smooth the insides too.
**
Probably best to actually attach the plug.
**
I’d love to, but unfortunately I don’t really have the time or skills. In any event, I would suggest that you measure the inside of each tube to make sure the dimensions match. Also, I think it would help to have another person play each “flute” while you turn away. Anyway, please feel free to share what you find.
If you find that there’s a difference in sound, I won’t be totally convinced (since I don’t know you), but you will have undermined my faith in the Scientific American article I quoted earlier.
Just want to state that I played cello in school. We regularly relieved tension in the strings after playing and had to retune to play. Not remove the strings, just relax them.
I should clarify:
There would be an audible difference between a wood flute/organ pipe and a metal one. This is because of the thickness of the material more than anything else.
Most organ pipes are made of alloys of lead and tin, usually 50/50. Some front pipes are made of 70% tin or zinc and sometimes copper for visual effects. The type of metal has little audible difference.
I also happen to be an electronics engineer and designed audio equipment for awhile. There is a difference in sound quality concerning the guage of wire used for speakers when lengths of over 50’ or so are involved. A 20 guage wire of 50’ would present a resistance of about .5 ohm. At an 8 ohm load (typical for most speakers) this would represent a 6% loss. The same length of #12 wire would only lose .6%
Most sound systems that have speaker wires longer than 50’ use what is known as a “70 volt” line. This involves transforming the low impedance amplifier output to a higher impedance using a transformer. The reverse is done at the speaker. This allows long lengths of small wire to drive the speakers without heavy loss.
I have a good friend that is an audio engineer and has installed thousands of sound systems over the past 30 years. He maintains there is no audible difference between the “esoteric” speaker wires and a good quality stranded copper wire pair.
If wire material were to make much of a difference, it would be in the very sensitive areas of audio pickup such as microphone cable and the wiring in the analog to digital converters in the studio. Standard copper wire has always been used for this. They do use gold plated connectors for some very sensitive areas.
Dr. Strangemind
Yep, I’d agree. In fact, I’m going to try it. (Actually, I thought in my purchase exercises I had tried it.)
A problem remains, however, which means that even if I can hear a difference, as has been pointed out, the difference isn’t necessarily better fidelity. It could be something artificial that makes me think there’s more fidelity. For example, something that boosted highs, or contributed to the “attack” of a signal (meaning how quickly it went from inaudible to very audible).
A problem with evidence supplied by people with “many years of person listening experience” is that there are such people on both sides of the issue. Particularly with older people, or actually anyone over 30, their hearing loss may be so severe they can no longer hear subtle differences that would be obvious to a 15 year old. When I was younger, for example, the 20,000 cycle cutoff for CD was so obvious to me it seemed as though somebody had put a filter in the music. It’s less obvious to me, now.
What REALLY needs to be done is a side-by-side instrument comparison of: 1) original music signal, 2) original signal passed through $10 cable, 3) original signal passed through $100 cable. Monster Cable would suit, for these purposes.
Unless I miss my guess, though, audiophiles (such as the Monster Cable company) have already done just this, to some degree–back in the days when frequency response of phonograph needles, amplifiers, and speakers was a popular subject.
I’m not an electronics engineer, so I’m not quoting this as fact, but I note that the Monster Cable site has this to say about whether frequencies are all passed through the undistorting center of a cable: "Monster’s way of compensating for something called “Velocity Propagation” or better known as the skin effect. An analog audio signal passing through a copper cable succumbs to this law of physics in which bass frequencies tend to gravitate towards the center of the cable; higher frequencies are forced to the outer portion of the cable. "
To keep things somewhat on the OP, these same kinds of differences apply to the two sides of arguments that two instruments sound the same. I’m not sure why people don’t resort to frequency analyzers to compare flutes. With violins, of course, it’s a different problem, because they can’t be turned out to a fixed specification to the extent that one hand-tuned one would sound exactly the same as another.