Tetherd Cow Ahead

You may remember that, in the ‘wine horoscope’ post a few days back, I said that ‘hokum flourishes in places where there is a substantial amount of subjectivity and a stratosphere of opinionated ‘experts’’. Wine is not my field, so aside from pointing out the obvious ridiculous claims made by the wine sellers in that particular case, I’m not really qualified to comment on the mechanics of the business with any technical authority.

There is another field, though, that is rife with its own 101 Flavours of Claptrap that I am qualified to take on, and that is the mysterious club of ‘high end home audio’.

It’s hard to know where to start with ‘professional’ hi fi. There is so much misinformation and gobbledegook that pretty much wherever you turn there’s some implausible gadget or other for improving your sound, from gold-plated connectors, through pens that make CDs ‘clearer’ to (quite unbelievably) expensive wooden knobs* for your amplifier. And that’s not even tippy-toeing into the world of serious audio fruitcakes.

But today I’m going to examine the simplest, and perhaps the most exploited of all hi fi components: speaker cables. The hyperbole spouted by the vendors of these products is voluminous. Their ‘oxygen free, polarized di-electric, elevated-off-the-floor, cryogenically chilled’ cables will make your muddy cloth-filtered music sound like it’s been triple-washed in Persil! It’ll come out of the speakers at a fidelity beyond studio quality!

What’s going on here? Can some bits of wire really make that much difference? Well, yes and no. First of all there’s an important point to note about speaker cables – they carry a much higher level signal than anywhere else in the audio chain because it is amplified. In practical terms, what this means is that your actual modulated raw audio signal is at its most powerful going from your amp to your speakers. Why is that important? Because at this time the electrical signal is bumped up way beyond the noise level of all the other components in the system – most of the stuff that can be done to affect the fidelity of the signal itself has already been done.†

That being said, what becomes significant is the best way to get the electrical signal from out of your amp into your speakers with the least impediment possible, and this essentially comes down to one thing: providing the happiest and least reactive conduit for your excitable electrons to travel along. Now there are some mitigating factors involved: no matter how good your path is there is some wear and tear on how well the electrons fare. They are effected by the quality of the conductor, the distance they have to travel and other electrical phenomena such as capacitance and inductance. But here is the critical point: none of these are really much of a problem in ten feet of speaker cable. In addition, even if you were able to demonstrate some non-optimal electrical artifacts over such a short distance, it is unclear what effect, if any, these have in relation to audio fidelity.‡

So. What is the most important factor to consider in getting your electrical signal to your speaker? Just one thing: lots of copper. Copper is a terrific conductor of electricity. It’s very kind to the electrons as they pass though, giving them the easiest path to travel that they could ever want. And when we’re talking about ten feet, all being said, that’s really not that much copper.

I’m now going to give you a tip that will save you hundreds of dollars and make your hi fi system sound as good as the very nerdiest of your audio-buff friends: for your speaker connections, forget all about the oxygen free, diode rectified, dipped-in-chocolate, used-only-by angels $1000-per-foot Pear cables** and instead just use a good quality twin core electrical cable.

That’s it! Use some wire like this and no-one on the planet will be able to tell the difference between it and the most expensive cable you can buy! I found the stuff above for less than $2 a metre and you can do even better than that. Sum total for speaker cable for my studio: $45. And that’s for a full 5.1 sound set up, with 6 speaker sources.

Audio buffs like to pontificate ad nauseum about the how much difference the supposed ‘high end’ speaker cables make but to those of us who work in the business they just look like idiots – we don’t use those kinds of cables! So what these people are claiming is that they can hear better sound in the reproduction of the material than we heard when we made it! That, of course, is an absurdity of the highest order.

I’d like to end with a true story. Many years ago, a hi fi aficionado acquaintance of mine invited me around to hear his new system. He had spent many thousands of dollars on components, and waxed lyrically about his new speaker cables, which, he said, had improved the fidelity of his music by an impressive order of magnitude. Knowing about my skepticality of such claims, he swore that even I would notice! He sat me down and pressed play on one of his favourite jazz recordings. Could I perceive a superior sound quality? Was I astonished at the clarity of his sound? Well, not so much – I spent a more than a few minutes coming to grips with the fact that his speakers had been wired out of phase, a much more egregious degradation of the listening experience than even speaker leads made of string would have inflicted. And something that he had not even noticed.

I’m not suggesting that all hi fi buffs would make such an obvious mistake, but the thing is, my friend had invested so much money and faith in his audio gear that he had little choice but to believe that he was witnessing superior sound reproduction. And I do suggest that this phenomenon, like that which we saw at work in the ‘wine horoscope’ hoodwink, has more than a little part to play in influencing the subjective experience of listening to recorded music…

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*It seems pretty clear to me that the most significant knobs in this equation are the ones forking out the money. Seriously – read the blurb on the link to the ‘Silver Rock ‘Signature’ knobs and tell me that the manufacturers aren’t having a very good laugh at the silly hi fi twits’ expense. You’d be forgiven for thinking it really was a joke, if this very same company wasn’t selling speaker cables for over a thousand dollars…

†Excluding, of course, what is done by probably the most important component of all – the speakers themselves. But we’re not talking about speakers for the moment – that’s a whole other ballgame.

‡Another sign of the magical thinking involved in high end audio comes in the form of the following dichotomy: hi fi buffs will argue till they’re blue in the face that analogue sound is superior to digital sound. They insist that there is something called ‘warmth’ that comes from analogue that doesn’t make it into the digital world. Why, then, are they so happy to eschew the old, simple twin core speaker cable used on nearly every analogue hi fi system ever made up until about the late 1970s (when the hi fi craze really started to take off)? What if the old cables contributed to that warmth…? Paradoxes such as these are another flag for spotting pseudoscience.

**James Randi put forward his famous Million Dollar Challenge to the makers of Pear cables, to demonstrate in a double blind test that their product would outperform a cheap good quality cable of the same length. Predictably, after first calling the Challenge a hoax, and then (as is so often the way) resorting to ad hominem attacks against Randi, Pear’s CEO Adam Blake refused to participate. This is an unequivocal admission of flim flam. If your product performs as claimed, you can only come out of the Randi Challenge looking absolutely golden (with the added advantage of $1000,000 cash in your pocket). If you back out, then this surely indicates that you are afraid that the results will not bear out the hyperbole in your marketing. This, in turn, indicates that you are deluded or a swindler.

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I did end up mowing the lawn yesterday (well, you have to fill in your time somehow until the world ends…) About halfway through, in the midst of the hideous racket that is the sound of a petrol-driven set of rotating blades shearing through vegetation, a magpie turned up and settled down on the clothesline, apparently oblivious to all the noise. I was amazed that it didn’t seem at all fearful of what I would have assumed was a pretty confronting spectacle for a bird.

But birds are smart.* This little guy† has evidently learned that the sound of a lawnmower means the opportunity for an easy meal. Sure enough, after I’d finished, he hopped down off his perch and helped himself to the bugs and snails that had been disturbed by the mowing.

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*Some people don’t think so. We can only assume it’s because they feel their intelligence is threatened by superior bird brains.

†Or gal. Bit hard to tell with magpies.

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For reasons I’m not at liberty to disclose just yet, I ventured today into the depths of my storage unit to retrieve my beautiful Big Briar Model 91C Theremin. I thought you’d all like to see it.

You can read about how I came by this beautiful instrument here.

And for Atlas, a sample of my less-than-perfect technique:

From time to time I get to musing on all manner of things here on The Cow, and today I bring you some thoughts about nature and self-similarity.

This morning at dawn I was lying half-awake listening to the song of a chirpy early-rising Turdus merula, better known as the Common Blackbird. The Blackbird was introduced to Australia, in Melbourne where I am now living, in the 1850s as part of the regrettable We-Wish-It-Was-More-Like-England makeover that the colonists were hell-bent on giving this completely un-Englandlike continent.

The Blackbird’s song is very pretty and very recognizable – listen to the end part of this sample:*

What I realized as I was listening though, was that the little guy† wasn’t just doing the same exact phrase over and over – there were little variations each and every time – just like he was improvising on his little blackbirdy theme. No two riffs were exactly alike.

This got me to speculating about another well-known natural phenomenon in which no two elements are exactly alike, but are very similar in structure and beauty and precision: the snowflake.

And so I began to wonder if the song of the Common Blackbird might in fact be the aural equivalent of the crystalline structure of the snowflake.‡

I don’t really know why I should have made that connection, but there you go. Put it down to my hypnopompic state if you like. But I leave you with this thought: self-similarity is rife in nature. It is embedded everywhere from the mathematics of fractals to the formation of snow crystals and the songs of birds. Its presence is felt in almost every natural process somehow or other. Think about it: it really does not need to be this way. All things considered, the natural world could be completely random. And yet order arises spontaneously everywhere it can.

The reasons for this remain a beautiful mystery.

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*This recording by Fred Van Gessel. I pinched it, so for my atonement I urge you to go buy his recording Bird Calls of the Greater Sydney Region from the Australian Museum Shop.

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Every now and then on The Cow, we are pleased to introduce you to new technical wonders that will revolutionize some aspect of your undoubtedly humdrum and dreary lives.

Now, following in the footsteps of marvels such as the Cowlexâ„¢ Vibrator, The Unusual Thing, The Non-Electric Machine, X-Fi, The Vegetarian Chicken Modeling Machine and The Cellular Squirrel, The Tetherd Cow Ahead Bureau of Innovation is pleased to present: PWB Special One Drop Liquid.

Here, let the inventors of this astonishing product tell you about it in their own words (directly from the press release, no editing, in the order it is printed):

Special One Drop Liquid possesses a most extraordinary property. The human senses, in common with the requirements of all living material including trees and all other green plants, have evolved the requirements for forward facing light energy.

Got that? Forward facing light energy. Well I’ll be damned. I’ve evolved it, and I don’t even know what it means.

Light, in common with most energies within Nature, readily forms an inverse pattern of itself when encountering an obstacle.

Like this: LIGHT -> OBSTACLE -> THGIL

Couldn’t be plainer. Go on…

Light is particularly modified when encountering a transparent obstacle. The human senses will not function correctly when confronted with an energy pattern which faces away from the senses.

I find that myself, certainly. It explains exactly why they put those little coloured stickers on fresh fruit and, at last, why the swallows always return to Capistrano.

The daily dietary requirement of salt and sugar is the chemical requirement that the body requires to manipulate the energy patterns absorbed by our bodies. To demonstrate the inverse pattern formation on objects which fill the modern environment, simply place salt on one face and sugar on another face of the object. Stimulate your sense of hearing by listening to music, then remove the salt and sugar. The effect on the senses is usually quite profound.

The effect of trying to comprehend the preceding paragraph is profound every time I read it. I get little pinging noises in my brain. It’s like being confronted with an energy pattern that faces away from the senses.

The effect is particularly noticeable if the faces of a NON playing Compact Disc or vinyl record is manipulated by placing salt (in a small bag) on one face and sugar (in a small bag) on the other face.

Ping. Pingpingpingpingping. Ping.

All green plant material has it’s own variation of salt and sugar in order for it to correctly manipulate sunlight. If a small bag containing sugar is attached to the upper surface of a leaf within your listening territory, including the garden, a noticeable beneficial effect will take place with your sense of hearing. A small bag containing salt can be attached to the underside of the leaf with the same beneficial effect.

Little bags of sugar? Leaves? Hearing? Wha? Wha? Ping. So the trees can hear better? Ping. Listening territory? Little bags of salt attached to leaves? Ping. Pingpingping.

Special One Drop Liquid can replace, with an increased effect, salt and sugar applied to the faces of an object, including to the faces of green plant life. The Special One Drop Liquid admits only forward facing light energy.

Righty-ho! The Special One Drop Liquid is for replacing little bags of salt and sugar that I have tied to the top and bottoms of leaves in my listening territory! Now we’re getting somewhere. P-i-i-n-n-n-g.

All Compact Discs should have a drop of the Special One Drop Liquid applied to both sides and spread across the surface using a finger tip.

Obviously! Wow, that’s totally brilliant! No longer will I have to put up with the mess from all that salt and sugar and dead leaf material that bursts out of the little bags tied to my CDs that clog up my CD player every time I try and play something. It’s a MIRACLE!

The surface can be dried with a cloth or a paper tissue. Vinyl records should have a drop of the Liquid applied to the particular area on the record which has the run off groove on both sides of the disc. The outside faces of the disc sleeve or disc housing should also be treated.

Well duh. Anyone with half a brain can see that if you’re going to treat the run off groove on a vinyl record, you need to treat the sleeve as well. Think of the savings on sugar and salt for a start!

To ascertain the effect of the One Drop Liquid on any object, it is only necessary to initially stand the small bottle containing the Liquid on the face of the object.

P-I-N-G!

ALL transparent material within a listening room, including glass windows, clock faces, wrist watch faces, TV screens, the lenses of eye glasses etc. and display windows on equipment should all be treated. It is only necessary to apply one drop of the Liquid to the corner of a glass window for the beneficial effect to be heard.

Anyone still with me? Guys? Gals?

The One Drop Liquid is particularly effective if applied to the rear of a photograph and to the glass face of a photographic frame. Artificial light, in the form of electrical light bulbs, has a particularly detrimental effect upon the sense of hearing and the glass of an electric light bulb should be treated.

Oh heck. Just smear the damn stuff on everything! In no time your hearing acuity will approach that of bats. I don’t know why the guys at PWB are selling this in those teeny little bottles. At the rate of application that they’re suggesting you’d go through a gallon just in your lounge room.

And if you’re skeptical at forking out for Special One Drop Liquid, have no fear! On the PWB Electronics site I found a whole swag of other tips for improving the sound quality of your music too (it isn’t clear whether these necessarily apply only to CDs either – as far as I can tell, any/all of these methods are effective in improving music just generally. Amazing!). For superior musical reproduction, merely:

•Place a piece of paper under one of the feet of any piece of furniture in the room!

•Pin back any one corner of a curtain in the room!

•Place a blue piece of paper under a vase of flowers in the room!

•Tie a reef knot in the power cables of your equipment!

•Freeze your CD in the freezer!

•Align all the screw heads in the room to be parallel to the Earth’s surface!

You think I’m making all this up, don’t you?

Ping.

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Thanks (I think) to Stewart via Kirke for bringing this to the attention of The Cow.

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Regular Cow visitors will remember some of the weird messages I’ve managed to attract to my answering machine. Today I arrived home to find another one. I can only think that the universe is trying to tell me something. I really wish I understood Universalese.

Chicken machine?

(I totally swear that these are real messages).

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Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the reason that the nice English lady always says ‘Monday, 12am’ is that every time the power fails the answering machine clock defaults. I used to reset it but I just gave up…

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