There is something about having a host of resistors, capacitors and inductors (MIT's own words) in the speaker cable signal path that does not sit well with me.
Do you use cables to 'tune' the sonics of your system?
- Thread starter AudioExplorations
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-----Soooo, the cables contribute (also) in that overall quality of letting the music flow freely,
so that we can enjoy listening to it equally well at Low and High volume levels?
-----Me too, I've read some blah-blah-blah stuff about MIT and also Transparent speaker cables!!!
Is it all Froot-Loop marketing, or Hoopla new dancing style?
...Pizzaz money making? ...What the heck is it, truly? ...Please, be sure of what it is written.
...Because I'm going to dig real deep on this (much more than what I already read). Ty :b
* Fantastic thread by the way!
Bruce Brisson (MIT) has quite a few patents (listed on the web page) that are very interesting reading. I didn't notice any patent disclosures on Transparent's website. The most recent three patents listed for MIT describe approaches used for the 'articulation' points, which are basically phase shift correction points.
The inductive character of cables tends to cause the electrical phase of the signal to shift forward as electrons move down the cable. When the phase shift leads by 45 degrees, a C, RC or RLC network is employed to bring it back to zero degrees at that point. The places where that correction is performed is referred to as 'articulation points'. The net result is that by the time the waveform gets to the speakers the resulting phase shift is far less in error than would be the case in most cables, so the overall presentation is more time-frequency coherent and that goes along with their claims of recovered dimensionality and depth of the soundstage. Those are among the first things to go when phase alignment isn't maintained. Of course, if your speakers aren't phase coherent (time aligned) in the first place the effect won't be as dramatic.
What bothers me about MIT is that they don't reveal anything else about the cables -- conductor makeup, equivalent gauge, dielectric use, etc.
I've seen very few other cable manufacturers listing their patents for public consumption. That may tell you something.
Cardas in another that is pretty open about their technology, and so far I've found three patents for them.
Patents don't necessarily make any claim true, necessarily, but it shows the thought process behind each claim.
--Bill
I assume you are referring to this patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6658119.html - I've read this years ago, and what MIT is really missing in my book is that this extreme 45-degree shift occurs in extremely high frequencies, not the audio band, so I question any value or effect in what we hear. Moreover, if you combine this with "energy storage" claims as per http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5956410.html (the use of a capacitive network placed between the positive and negative conductors of audio signal transmission line and/or an inductive network placed in series or parallel with the positive and/or negative conductor of an audio signal transmission line, to significantly reduce or eliminate audible pre-emphasis created by non-uniform storage of energy within the line) the door is open to smearing (non-uniform storage in a cable??!?!?!). Finally, I am not convinced that even a "noise suppression" network as per http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4954787.html has non detrimental effects - cables can suppress external noise with advanced construction techniques, not networks.
What's worse, they give you the choice to switch between numbers of "articulation poles" for high def in some cables, as if you'd want anything but what you paid for; and the shear number of these "articulation poles" - or base frequencies of presumed phase corrections - indicates they are not only in the high frequencies where some very small phase shift may occur, but up and down the spectrum. I avoid MIT like the plague. I really hope MIT would jump in here and correct my views as misinformed.
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---See! That's what's interesting here. ... Science between written words and listened sounds. :b
"Whose truth, whose lies?" - Doug MacLeod
"Whose truth, whose lies?" - Doug MacLeod
-----Yeah but how's your hearing?
True again haha ! My hearing is typical for a 51 year-old man
Same ears listening to several brands and STILL choosing MIT And again: at least I HAVE heard the things
. Dissing something without knowing it first-hand is....eh....shall I say it ..... nah.. I won't
True again haha ! My hearing is typical for a 51 year-old man
And again: at least I HAVE heard the things
Please don't, 'cause the dealer carries them and I heard them numerous times.
True again haha ! My hearing is typical for a 51 year-old man
And again: at least I HAVE heard the things
-----Anything passed 40 I wouldn't put too much weight on.
Damn...I agree wuhaha. But then again...I don't take anyone serious, myself included LOL
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Seniors Rock
haha. But ... you are probably right NorthStar....AGAIN!But sometimes I wonder...I know have a lost quite a lot of high frequencies in my ears but when I listen to cds that have travelled along with my ageing proces, I have the impression that I have never heard better. And to cut you off Northstar: I am not hearing things that are not there...yet....haha.
As far as I can see, the only patents specifically dealing with articulation in my context are 5956410, 6658119 and 7242780.
The representation that you can have what, three to 30 or more articulation points is interesting in and of itself. One would think that as those points increase in number and get closer together, the correction for each would have to be a narrower slice of bandwidth. That may be why a C, RC or RLC network might be employed. Presumably the RLC would operate over a narrower bandwidth. As for articulation pole 'position' in the spectrum, there is a graph on the web page here
of an eight pole example, which includes center points (poles) from 4Hz to 35Khz. In another example, it is shown that one pole centered at 4.5Khz impacts the range of 20Hz to 40Khz. So obviously, one would need some very careful calculations dealing with overlapping poles to be able to correct one taking into account its neighbors from one end of the spectrum to the other.
By the way, Analysis Plus cables also make a similar claim about rising response (phase) at different points in different types of cables, how it affects the sound and what they do about it. So I don't doubt that something is going on with leading phase and all, but it *seems* like it would be extremely difficult to control it in very fine regions like MIT is claiming. I have used MIT 750 speaker cable before and at least at the time (early 90's) it was far more musical and detailed than any others I had tried then. For whatever little that's worth. Those would have been designed as described by a much earlier patent, though.
In the patents they list example frequencies which have been measured that are within the audio spectrum. Inductance is Inductance. There's no reason that I know of why it wouldn't affect all frequencies, depending on the degree and Q of the cables being tested.
So you believe that these patents are not based in reality?
--Bill
No, in the dealer's Spectral amp set. They demo with the HD90 and higher, and the equivalent interconnects.
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