Tech V&R Discussion

[PeterT]

But... How about those special mono crystal cables that sound better than anything else!

[nana77]

That sub-wooer cable uses

* Jacket Material: TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer)

Thermoplastic elastomers (TPE), sometimes referred to as thermoplastic rubbers (TPR), are a class of copolymers or a physical mix of polymers (usually a plastic and a rubber) that consist of materials with both thermoplastic and elastomeric properties.

While most elastomers are thermosets, thermoplastic elastomers are not, in contrast making them relatively easy to use in manufacturing, for example, by injection moulding. Thermoplastic elastomers show advantages typical of both rubbery materials and plastic materials. The benefit of using thermoplastic elastomers is the ability to stretch to moderate elongations and return to its near original shape creating a longer life and better physical range than other materials.[1]

The principal difference between thermoset elastomers and thermoplastic elastomers is the type of cross-linking bond in their structures. In fact, crosslinking is a critical structural factor which imparts high elastic properties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplastic_elastomer
There are others that uses silicon, and I guess there are tons of kinds of plastic, that are better than pvc for these purposes.

[Renate]

I like nice cables, but not overly bulky cables or fancy marketing or branding.
Audiophiles who go off the deep end for bulky cables don't seem to acknowledge that whatever they're listening to has probably come through Belden 8451 shielded 22 AWG pair in the studio.

[nana77]

What I specially don't like about, is that having cables that becomes stiff is the first cause, specially nearer the plug's connector or hearphone's ear pads connections, to damage them and hear noised sounds.

I'm also not too fanatic about, but I prefer buying a cable that I don't have to repleace ever.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Renate

I like nice cables, but not overly bulky cables or fancy marketing or branding.
Audiophiles who go off the deep end for bulky cables don't seem to acknowledge that whatever they're listening to has probably come through Belden 8451 shielded 22 AWG pair in the studio.

"Audiophiles" don't listen to music. They listen to the sounds the equipment makes, or doesn't make as the case may be.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nana77

That sub-wooer cable uses



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplastic_elastomer
There are others that uses silicon, and I guess there are tons of kinds of plastic, that are better than pvc for these purposes.

Silicone and other elastomers are only used instead of PVC where extreme flexibility is required or excessive heat. They are mechanically inferior to PVC because they are easily pierced or torn. They might be used on a soldering iron or in certain locations inside an electric oven or hob. They are pointless on audio equipment as an insulation. Teflon (PTFE) is used only on certain RF and high temperature applications. Coaxial RF cables may use various foamed plastics as the inner insulation. The outer will be PVC. I've never heard of actual TPE being used for cable insulation.

Almost all equipment, vehicles, house internal wiring etc is PVC insulated.

Another misleading claim is OFC (Oxygen Free Copper). All copper wiring is oxygen free or it would be brittle.

Finally, gold plating. This is actually a bad idea on ordinary domestic connectors. There are specialist applications that need gold or silver plated connectors. Gold isn't even a very good conductor compared to copper. Gold causes tin or solder to corrode. It also not heavily enough plated for multiple use. Gold plated plugs should only be mated with gold plated sockets.

Litz wire. It's only of value over a range of RF frequencies on coils, because of skin effects and winding capacitance (both only significant for RF). It's inferior for audio unless massively heavy as for audio all the matters is the resistance being a small fraction of the loudspeaker impedance.

There are a lot of scams.

[nana77]

Thanks:

What Is A Conductor?

Electricity is a necessary part of our lives today. It is essentially tiny charged particles called electrons hurtling through conductors from one point to another, carrying current. The current in the wire is dependent on the electrons moving through the conductor.

The speed of the electrons is dependent on whether it’s traveling through a good conductor of electricity or if it’s an insulator. A great conductor allows for electrons to pass through easily and quickly. An insulator blocks the passage of the electrons, limiting the current from flowing. Hence, a good conductor has “low electrical resistivity” and insulators have “high electrical resistivity”.

Gold is used in electronics because it is more inert than copper, meaning it does not corrode as easily. Gold is also ductile and malleable, so it can be easily drawn into wires and hammered into sheets. These properties make gold a reliable choice for electrical segments.

Copper is an excellent conductor of electricity; it is economical and easy to purchase, so it is the most common metal used in wiring. Plastic is an insulator and is often used to encase wires to prevent accidents. The best conductors are often metals like silver, gold, iron, etc.

Copper is a better conductor than gold.

Copper is comparatively not as malleable or ductile, and is, therefore, harder to work with. Another quality of the metal that makes its use favored over copper (or even silver) is its reactivity. Gold is known as a “chemically inactive” element, which means that it doesn’t react with other materials easily. Under normal conditions, it is inert, unlike copper or silver, both of which easily corrode and tarnish.

That being said, there are some scenarios where gold-plated RCA cables might make a tiny difference. For example, if you’re using extremely high-end audio equipment with very sensitive electronics, a high-quality gold-plated RCA cable might help reduce signal loss and degradation. However, for most people, the difference will be imperceptible, and the added cost of gold-plated cables will be a waste of money.

* Smaller signal loss: Gold’s high conductivity reduces signal attenuation, resulting in a more accurate and detailed sound reproduction.
* Better shielding: Gold plating can help to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio-frequency interference (RFI), which can degrade the audio signal.

Now, there are differencies and middle ways between being cheap and super high environments.
The massive plug for that Sub link has been made for the specific reason to prevent data losses or interferecies, the gold plated insulates it; that's sound/audio engineering.
If you want to point that I did spend 30$ for that cable, to provide a better, stable sound for a subwoofer on a car (I love her, btw - it's allowed, in english, to say "her" if someone has affection for a machine, a car, spaceships, sailships... etc ).... well.
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-scie...ectronics.html
https://smallusefultips.com/are-gold...cables-better/

Gold is a ductile and malleable metal, so it can easily be drawn into wires and hammered into sheets. About 28 grams of the metal can be beaten into thin sheets of around 17 square meters

Oxygen-free Copper (OFC), sold in several grades. The various grades are marketed as having better conductivity and durability, but they have no significant benefit in audio applications.

Edit II: pardon, but if

A layer of a suitable barrier metal, usually nickel, is often deposited on the copper substrate before the gold plating. The layer of nickel provides mechanical backing for the gold layer, improving its wear resistance. It also reduces the impact of pores present in the gold layer.

At higher frequencies, the skin effect may cause higher losses due to higher electrical resistance of nickel; a nickel-plated trace can have its useful length shortened three times in the 1 GHz band in comparison with the non-plated one. Selective plating is used, depositing the nickel and gold layers only on areas where it is required and does not cause the detrimental side effects.

If that's true, and if that process has been used on that subwoofer's cable, wouldn't that be an hell of egineering, too? (like, cutting higher frequencies before the amp's low pass filter? LOL!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating

Last edit:

The real problem with high capacitance exotic cables (such as ribbon cables, interwoven cables) is that they short the amplifier in a very wide frequency range around the quarter-wave resonance frequency (between 1 MHz and 10 MHz). There is no such problem with zip cords or twisted pairs...

https://www.tonestack.net/articles/c...ble-guide.html

For most low-power home or car speakers (not subwoofers) 18 gauge (18AWG) is fine. 18AWG wire is good for about 50 watts for 4 ohms and 100 watts for 8 ohm loudspeakers up to 50 feet (15 m) or 100 feet (30 m) respectively.

Please don't tell me that cable, which was the default from the car audio stereo, it's fine: https://imgur.com/a/ZAv5PfF
like... 20 AWG?

As long as speaker wire resistance is kept to less than 5 percent of the speaker's impedance, the conductor will be adequate for home use.
[...]
Depending on the hearing ability of the listener, this resistance begins to have an audible effect when the resistance exceeds 5 percent of the speaker's impedance.[4]

A speaker wire's impedance takes into account the wire's resistance, the wire's path, and the dielectric properties of local insulators. The latter two factors also determine the wire's frequency response. The lower the impedance of the speaker, the greater a significance the speaker wire's resistance will have.

Btw, a nice term: Audioholics

[Renate]

Speaker cables: Go to the dollar store and buy two 9 foot 18 AWG extension cords for $2 each and cut off the ends.
Ok, I'll admit that I like to put banana plugs or spade lugs on the ends.
Also heatshrink the cables where the "zipping" ends.

MHz? I don't worry. There should be losses at those frequencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boucherot_cell

[Quoth]

There is no value to gold in any audio application. In fact it often is worse than the alternatives, but now almost unavoidable.

Frequency response for speaker cable isn't an issue for domestic lengths, ever. The dielectric is irrelevant for domestic audio.

Frequency response is only an issue for things like telephone wires or similar long distance links like for analogue outside broadcast feeds. I've had to equalise cables for audio, but they were several kilometres long!

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Yes, I'm aware. I run both. uMatrix just gives me more granular control over uBO's advanced mode when I'm trying to selectively enable just enough third-party domain scripts, XHRs, etc to get the website to load without having to give it full access.

Maybe there's something esoteric I'm missing, but for the example romhacking.net with uBO in "I'm an advanced user" mode and all 3rd party scripts and frames blocked... the site works then grabbing something to download I get the cloudflare blocked notice. So I click the uBO icon, click the right "firewall" column entry for cloudflare.com to permit (the indicator turns grey) to permit scripts just from cloudflare.com and reload and it works. This tells the browser to load scripts from cloudflare.com (exact match) ONLY for www.romhacking.net (exact match), and is a temporary permit unless and until I click the lock icon in the uBO interface which saves the rule in my dynamic rules list.

And if I am missing something and this is not sufficient for your needs then maybe see about running NoScript next to uBlock Origin. Let NoScript handle scripts and let uBO handle everything else.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Loaded on another machine I have with just uBO installed and not uMatrix, I don't even get the CF challenge page.

Mostly it comes down to the fact that blocking all scripts makes you look like a web scraper of some sort (search engine, script kiddie, whatever). You may have a site unbreaker enabled in your Dashboard -> Filter Lists which is a default configuration for uBO. You'd have to watch your uBO logs in real time while you tweak various filter rules and lists to identify what rules are applicable to a given site and it's third party resources.

Personally I don't bother. I used to but it didn't take me long to figure out that I was wasting my time. Either I trust a third party script repository or I don't, yes or no, and this is exactly what the uBO advanced UI provides: yes or no.

[nana77]

At the supermarket there was an offer for a digital clock, which I'd always denied to buy, just not to have another device on, and the smartphone worked just well.... So decided to try it; it has a wireless charging feature (that too didn't meant, to me, anything since), just as a secondary feature I've searched for the phone's capability (just as curious): now I'll wondering why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_5

Battery 3.8 V 2300 mAh, 8 Wh
Qi wireless charging non-replaceable

Google released the Nexus 5X in September 2015 (alongside the higher-end Nexus 6P), with a similar design and price as the original Nexus 5.[15]

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_5X)

Battery 2,700 mAh Li-Po 100 min charge, 6 h 25 min use[3] non-replaceable

Mine is the 5X, off course (it was released even 2 years later, almost within the same specs lol).
*there are guides and videos (also on iFixit) explaining how to change the battery, and also as for to change it within the wireless charging ones, btw).

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Tangentially, this how audio sampling actually works and why 44.1KHz sampling can perfectly reproduce the original audio signal, with practical demonstrations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM

If you have an audio CD which sounds bad, it's not because it's a CD. It's because the master used to make it was rubbish.

The Redbook audio standard is 16-bit linear PCM (pulse code modulation) with a sample rate of 44.1KHz. You can read the Redbook documents if you want the particulars. In simple terms, bit depth determines dynamic range and sample rate determines frequency response. 16 bits provides a dynamic range of 96dB, and a 44.1KHz sample rate provides frequency response of 22.05KHz. Sustained exposure to sound levels above about 80dB can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss so 96dB is more than sufficient for most recordings. Human hearing frequency range is ~20Hz to ~20KHz; a 22.05Hz high end is well above any sound any human can hear.

Put even simpler: CD audio is crystal clear. What goes in is *exactly* what comes out, with no noise or distortion introduced by the AD/DA conversions (dithering aside but dither is similar to Dolby Noise Reduction on audio tapes, replacing one kind of noise in the signal with a different noise that should be below the noise floor).

Why do some CDs have horrible noise and distortion? The masters. Back when CD audio was presented to the world, the record labels though it was going to be a short-lived fad so they spared every expense they could. They pressed CDs from third and fourth generation analog masters. What happens when you dub analog tapes? You introduce noise and distortion. What happens when you feed this noise and distortion into the audio sampler used to make CDs? You get crystal clear, flawless reproduction of every flaw in that master.

Once the labels realized that CD audio was here to stay and that they could make money from CD sales, they had their recording studios shift to digital workflows to remove as much analog noise from the process as possible. And for a time CDs really did sound great.

Then the Loudness Wars happened and put paid to that. Everything sounded flat and lifeless because it was flat and lifeless. If you take a track with say 60dB of dynamic range and compress that down to 30dB? Flat and lifeless is what you get. And if you push the ceiling too high then you get all sorts of crackling and hissing and spitting and we're back to audio CDs that sound bad.

Once the labels wised up and discovered they could make even more money they started having vintage CDs remastered so that we can buy them again.

NB: there's a tangent about oversampling but I'm not going into that here and now. Maybe later.

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by ratinox

In simple terms, bit depth determines dynamic range and sample rate determines frequency response.

Bit depth also defines the signal to noise ratio (with regard to quantisation noise). The bit depth of CD means that the SNR of CD is much, much better than vinyl (hundreds of times better).

Bottom line is that in terms of accuracy of reproduction, CD massively wins over vinyl on every possible measure. The distortions and inaccuracies of vinyl do sound good to some, though, so it's a personal choice.

[Quoth]

Sampling at many times the final sample rate allows for a simpler analogue pre-filter as there must be no input above 1/2 the sample frequency. This also allows more content up to the sample frequency as an analogue filter can't be like a cliff. It's not a sharp cut off. Then the input can be digitally filtered to 1/2 the final sample rate.