Audioquest HDMI cables

[WELquest]

So Bill if you would like to describe what you did for PaulMcGowan @7:32 of this video.

Thanks for noticing.

At 3:32 in Paul's video, he mentions AudioQuest analog interconnect cable:

Paul requested some cable, and despite the cost of the very long cables Paul needed in order to run them through the walls rather than across the floor, I gave Paul some cable -- the excellent but then about to be discontinued Sky cable, terminated with the higher quality XLR plugs used on Wild Blue Yonder. That's pretty close to as good as it gets.

 

[Gregadd]

Thanks Bill.

With respect to the video, I think the term is "fraudulent inducement." Plausible deniability is there. I was looking for the term refund. I did not see it. It's not a lot of money, but a principal is involved.

 

[WELquest]

Thanks Bill.

With respect to the video (the HDMI video, not the PS Audio video), I think the term is "fraudulent inducement." Plausible deniability is there. I was looking for the term refund. I did not see it. It's not a lot of money, but a principal is involved.

You think that the dealer should be offering to allow their customers to return their purchase and get a refund? You believe that the dealer should contact every customer they sold a cable to over the year or so, and make this offer?

In addition to being an unrealistic expectation for a dealer who appears to have had the video manipulated, presumably each customer had a one-to-one relationship with a store salesperson, and bought whatever they bought because they either trusted the salesperson or had listened for themselves. I think it very doubtful that were every customer contacted and told that a video that they almost certainly hadn't seen was faked, that they would ask to return the cable.

 

[Don Hills]

...

Thank you, Bill. Polite and professional as always.
Do I understand you correctly?

- Audioquest cables are made and tested to the same standards as "certified" cables.

- You refuse to pay for the actual certification / labelling, though by all appearances you could well afford to do so with your pricing structure. This is because you are philosophically opposed to the "money grab" by the HDMI consortium.

I can see how this could be interpreted as a "money grab" on your part instead. I do see a counter-argument, that not having the certification could be costing you more in sales than the cost of the certification, especially as you say that most of your sales are at the "reasonably" priced end of the market where you face competition from certified products.

(If anyone who knows me thinks I'm becoming a high-end apologist, rest easy, I'm not. In the case of Audioquest, I still remain sceptical about many of Bill's claims.)

 

[Jinjuku]

You think that the dealer should be offering to allow their customers to return their purchase and get a refund? You believe that the dealer should contact every customer they sold a cable to over the year or so, and make this offer?

In addition to being an unrealistic expectation for a dealer who appears to have had the video manipulated, presumably each customer had a one-to-one relationship with a store salesperson, and bought whatever they bought because they either trusted the salesperson or had listened for themselves. I think it very doubtful that were every customer contacted and told that a video that they almost certainly hadn't seen was faked, that they would ask to return the cable.

I think he's making a simple point. If any customers wanted to return they should be able to do so if the inducement to purchase was contributed to the video.

As a point of technical interest I (or any person that writes SQL) could write a report that would pull all receipts / sales that have a specified cable as part of the transaction. UPC's are great for this.

If the transaction was paid for with CC or Check then it's traceable.

 

[Gregadd]

You think that the dealer should be offering to allow their customers to return their purchase and get a refund? You believe that the dealer should contact every customer they sold a cable to over the year or so, and make this offer?

In addition to being an unrealistic expectation for a dealer who appears to have had the video manipulated, presumably each customer had a one-to-one relationship with a store salesperson, and bought whatever they bought because they either trusted the salesperson or had listened for themselves. I think it very doubtful that were every customer contacted and told that a video that they almost certainly hadn't seen was faked, that they would ask to return the cable.

Relax Bill. Refunds of course should be on demand

 

[WELquest]

Thanks Bill for driving this to a conclusion!

Any chance that AQ can recreate the demo in house and post on the web? I would be more than happy to contribute $$$ for this type of demonstration.

Regards TJC

Hi timc166293,

I'm not sure what video you are proposing -- maybe a not-manipulated version of something like the D-Tronics video?

Michael Fremer of Stereophile has successfully been posting audio clips which allow people to hear similar scale audio differences, in order to learn whether the reader agrees with Michael's concern for a given parameter -- something which in that context is useful to Michael's readers. As a product supplier hoping to impress the public at large, I would not use such a device -- which is why we never have, and why the D-Tronics video received almost no attention at AudioQuest and was never linked to or referred to.

I had a most enjoyable few hours a couple of days ago with the neuroscientist who with her mathematician husband created Dragon: Naturally Speaking, the most significant voice recognition software ever developed, though now essentially the key modules within other brands' software. She's now managing director of a new hearing aid project, which through app control, can focus within a chosen narrow angle in order to be able to listen to a particular speaker or conversation in (for example) a noisy restaurant -- very cool device! We were in a restaurant when I tried the device.

During our conversation we discussed perception and auditory processing. We talked about the critical aspects of sound that the brain vs. computer needs in order to be able to "understand." One of the details we discussed was the type of phase smearing caused by an amplifier's output transformer, or due to skin-effect in a larger than 0.8mm conductor. I thought that maybe in her 45 years specializing in this area, she knew of some instruments which can measure this form of data-compromise. With a tone of frustration, she said that there is currently no way to measure such obviously information obscuring distortion.

BTW, the new hearing aid uses significant analog processing in order to avoid some of the flaws of digital. It's not "golden-ears" who are most critical of audio distortion, it is those who live at the edge of not being able to hear and understand who are most aware and care the most.

Civilization is a frontier.

 

[Whatmore]

If no instrument known to mankind can measure it, how do we know it is phase smearing?

 

[Jinjuku]

If no instrument known to mankind can measure it, how do we know it is phase smearing?

Blind trust? Better than blind testing.

 

[timc166293]

Agreed.

In quantum physics we can measure many things but don't fully understand how they work, I.e gravity, etc.

In the audio world it is trust my ears. And if you don't trust some peoples ears then your rational opinions don't matter and gets attacked.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

During our conversation we discussed perception and auditory processing. We talked about the critical aspects of sound that the brain vs. computer needs in order to be able to "understand." One of the details we discussed was the type of phase smearing caused by an amplifier's output transformer, or due to skin-effect in a larger than 0.8mm conductor. I thought that maybe in her 35 years specializing in this area, she knew of some instruments which can measure this form of data-compromise. With a tone of frustration, she said that there is currently no way to measure such obviously information obscuring distortion.

Bill - just to be clear, does skin effect in signal wires generate "such obviously information obscuring distortion" according to her words or yours?

Let's leave amp output transformers aside, because that is something generally only tube amp guys need to worry about. But, in signal wires, it is not obvious to me. Sounds to me like a hypothesis with no objective proof, one which has been stretched from known physics at ultra high, way, way beyond audible frequencies into the realm of audiophile paranoia with no objective basis. But, hey, as you well know, there is no end to audio phenomena which we "obviously" can hear that are far beyond anyone's ability to measure.

 

[Whatmore]

Agreed.

In quantum physics we can measure many things but don't fully understand how they work, I.e gravity, etc.

In the audio world it is trust my ears. And if you don't trust some peoples ears then your rational opinions don't matter and gets attacked.

Let's assume people are actually hearing something, my question was how do you know it is phase smearing that is being heard

 

[esldude]

So you were talking to Dr. Janet Baker? I too would like to know why phase smearing can't be measured. Or more precisely what she was referring to in this case. You can certainly measure phase and could measure a signal where phase varied for part of the signal, but not the signal following a different path as in skin vs central conductors.

 

[opus112]

So you were talking to Dr. Janet Baker? I too would like to know why phase smearing can't be measured. Or more precisely what she was referring to in this case.

+1.

You can certainly measure phase and could measure a signal where phase varied for part of the signal, but not the signal following a different path as in skin vs central conductors.

Sounds to me that 'phase smearing' is just the usual 'lossy' effects caused by skinning i.e. 3dB/octave roll-off. Which is easily measured and also compensated for by equalization.

 

[timc166293]

Agree with the folks on measurements.

If a speaker sounds different with two different signals (A/B), then the voltage / current has to be different, which can be measured. What am I missing?

ps great forum to exchange ideas!

 

[opus112]

If a speaker sounds different with two different signals (A/B), then the voltage / current has to be different, which can be measured. What am I missing?

On speakers (not the topic of this thread) what you're missing is the nature of the stimulus signal. In general, sinewaves aren't listened to so the stimulus would need to be music. Then how to find the particular measurement of current/voltage which corresponds to what's heard? That's the tricky bit.

 

[WELquest]

I think he's making a simple point. If any customers wanted to return they should be able to do so if the inducement to purchase was contributed to the video.

As a point of technical interest I (or any person that writes SQL) could write a report that would pull all receipts / sales that have a specified cable as part of the transaction. UPC's are great for this.

If the transaction was paid for with CC or Check then it's traceable.

I absolutely agree that D-Tronics should give a refund to any customer who complains and asks.

What I doubt that is that D-Tronics will, or even should contact every customer they sold an HDMI cable to -- because the net effect would be harassment, not beneficial customer service.

 

[WELquest]

So you were talking to Dr. Janet Baker? I too would like to know why phase smearing can't be measured. Or more precisely what she was referring to in this case. You can certainly measure phase and could measure a signal where phase varied for part of the signal, but not the signal following a different path as in skin vs central conductors.

Yes, I've known Janet for several years. "Why phase smearing can't be measured" is a peculiar negative ... Of course the answer is simple, because it hasn't been figured out yet. The real question is "How can phase smearing be measured?" Or, "How will it be measured when the necessary test equipment is built?" .. though as with most things, there won't be a solution until the right question is asked.

Group delay or phase rotation or other versions of phase corruption are easy in comparison, but mechanisms such as skin-effect, which spread the same information across time, are more challenging. A mechanism such as skin-effect might be especially difficult because the majority of the energy has either no conductor-induced phase delay, or so little that it's trivial. I find a certain irony in the fact that it is the less and less signal (current density) away from the surface, which is more and more delayed, which can ruin the ability to interpret the whole picture.

In many other aspects of audio, I use the analogy of a child's coloring book ... no matter how badly the colors are filled in, the hard black outline makes the picture 100% discernible. Almost the inverse of this analogy applies to the type of phase smearing caused by skin-effect, as the human brain works to interpret the data ... only a tiny percentage of the energy has to be in the wrong places in order to take away intelligibility. We didn't dwell on the subject as long as I would have liked, but Janet clearly followed my question and my analogy about the result of such smearing being akin to putting a piece of Teflon against a still-wet oil painting, moving the Teflon a fraction of a mm, and then lifting it off, not taking any oil (amplitude) away, but having killed the painting's detail despite how little oil was moved. In another life, with 48 hour days, I would love to learn more about the similarities between electronic circuit brains and biological ones ... which are highly biased and preprogrammed in ways we are just barely discovering. That is the frontier of AI and so much more!

 

[WELquest]

+1.



Sounds to me that 'phase smearing' is just the usual 'lossy' effects caused by skinning i.e. 3dB/octave roll-off. Which is easily measured and also compensated for by equalization.

I respect your view, but -- This is an example of the bête noire of audio -- the misapplication of facts and practices from a different domain.

For the transmission of relatively narrow band high frequency energy, as to an FM transmitter or the 6" diameter Litz cable I have a sample of, which is used by NORAD on the DEW line, impedance is THE problem ... or even for cross country 60Hz power lines which are either hollow or aluminum over steel, because at that scale, the inside of the conductor barely conducts even at 60Hz.

However, the audio problem is that as impedance rises at distances away from the surface, so to, 1:1, does inductance, and hence the smearing across time.

This can not be equalized out, which is itself another major source of phase corruption. There was no reduction in amplitude at audio frequencies -- the perceived loss of treble is real, but due to signal integrity having been compromised, not due to diminished amplitude.

The silliness of cable companies that claim that the bass goes down the straight-path big strands, and midrange down the somewhat longer-path medium size strands, and the treble down the longest-path thin strands, doesn't mean that we are all that silly (though I am glossing over the other electrical values in play as those different strands have different geometry, etc.). The path of least resistance at high frequencies in such a cable is the surface of the bass conductor!

Skin-effect, as with so many of the mechanisms which compromise an audio signal cannot be undone -- they can only be averted to the degree that they are visible and understood, both of which are very much unconquered frontiers. Do no harm.

 

[WELquest]

Let's assume people are actually hearing something, my question was how do you know it is phase smearing that is being heard

Excellent point -- how did we know we were looking for gravitational waves before we ever measured them?

Audio is simpler and more observable -- well, depending on whether one's philosophy does or does not facilitate observation.

Given the clearly understood textbook phenomenon of increased inductance at distances away from the surface of a conductor, phase smearing really doesn't count as a reach at all. As with science in general, the theory that the perception of the treble being rolled-off (reduced aural acuity) is due to a loss of signal integrity, because amplitude is constant, is just a theory that hasn't been proved wrong, yet -- and likely never will be proved wrong. Much more likely, the means for externally testing will be developed, and the phenomenon will transition from science to engineering.