I hate to judge before all the facts are in but it appears it was a drive by.
|
For anyone having trouble hearing the difference between cables or fuses or anyone growing weary of all the quantum mechanics based tweaks and metaphysical gegaws flooding the market, etc. who might be contemplating a change of hobby, can I offer the following hobbies for your consideration?
Model railroading
Trainspotting
Book collecting
Cigarrette boat racing
Free climbing, buildings, etc.
Wingsuit gliding
Body tattooing
Hurricane hunting
Macrame
|
Yet more good stuff from Zen and the Art of Debunkery
• Since the public tends to be unclear about the distinction between evidence and proof, do your best to help maintain this murkiness. If absolute proof is lacking, state categorically that “there is no evidence!”
• When presented with mountains of data supporting the existence of an anomaly, declare that “since the probability of its being true is zero, it would take an infinite amount of data to prove it!”
• If sufficient evidence has been presented to warrant further investigation of an unusual phenomenon, argue that “evidence alone proves nothing!” Ignore the fact that preliminary evidence is not supposed to prove ANYthing.
• Publicly praise the debunkers who invented the “absolute proof” criterion — i.e., that ironclad proof must be attained before an unorthodox claim can gain sufficient respectability to be discussed seriously. (And a brilliant move it was, because, in practice, “proof” is a matter of mainstream scientific consensus. So a marginalized phenomenon can never actually be “proven!”)
• If presented with copious documentary evidence supporting an unorthodox claim, wave it off and declare “It’s only words on paper; no reason to take any of it seriously!”
• Imply that proof precedes evidence. This will eliminate the possibility of initiating any meaningful process of investigation — particularly if no criteria of proof have yet been established for the phenomenon in question.
• Insist that criteria of proof cannot possibly be established for phenomena that do not exist!
|
auxinput
It is interesting that the historical significant scientists and inventors that we have documented were seen at their time to be total crackpots.
>>>>>What's perhaps even more interesting, and more to the point of this thread, is that many are seen as total crackpots TODAY. Hel-loo!
|
Taken from Zen and the Art of Debunkery
HOW TO DEBUNK JUST ABOUT ANYTHING
I. SETTING THE STAGE
• Before commencing to debunk, prepare your equipment. Equipment needed: one armchair.
• Put on the right face. Cultivate a condescending air certifying that your personal opinions are backed by the full faith and credit of God. Adopting a disdainful, upper-class manner is optional but highly recommended.
• Employ vague, subjective, dismissive terms such as “ridiculous,” “trivial,” “crackpot,” or “bunk,” in a manner that purports to carry the full force of scientific authority.
• Keep your arguments as abstract and theoretical as possible. This will send the message that accepted theory overrides any actual evidence that might challenge it — and that therefore no such evidence is worth examining.
• By every indirect means at your disposal imply that science is powerless to police itself against fraud and misperception, and that only self-appointed vigilantism can save it from itself.
• Project your subjective opinions from beneath a cloak of ostensible objectivity. Always characterize unorthodox statements as “claims,” which are “touted,” and your own assertions as “facts,” which are “stated.”
geoff kait
machina dramatica |
kosst_amojan
Can somebody explain how taping rocks to your cables makes you enjoy music more? Or how about gluing spots to your wall? Or placing bottles or bowls around the room? I’m the screwed up one because I don’t buy any lie some fool sells me? I don’t give myself to delusional thinking? I’m the troll because I don’t give audio Scientology credit? I don’t think so! The kind of thinking that drives this snake oil industry is the same thinking that led people to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that it was flat. If it was up to these clowns we’d be bleeding people to cure them, drinking radium, and be using a medical system based on the concept of humors. That’s how stupid their snake oil is. If these folks bought into these nutty ideas in any other field society would have them committed or call them cult members.
Why hold back? Tell us what you really think. By the way, I’m afraid you’ve got it backwards. It’s the naysayers who thought the world is flat and clung to their archaic beliefs no matter what.
|
One wonders if, generally speaking, naysayers and pseudo skeptics are the same folks who are convinced they cannot be hypnotized and they can pass lie detector tests if they practice. They cannot be tricked. They’re too smart and too clever to be bamboozled. Mind-over-matter and mind-matter interaction are simply too preposterous to take seriously, you know, because they’re too smart. Next up, The Mind Lamp from Psyleron. 😳
|
One can't help wondering, hmmmm, are most naysayers, tweakaphobes, skeptics and science lovers/protectors of the realm actually engineers and scientists? Or are they primarily English and History majors, or perhaps audio engineers?
|
I wish now I had studied more metaphysics than physics. - Albert Einstein
Folks would generally be much better off if they believed in too much rather than too little. - PT Barnum |
|
What! Whoa!! Hey, what did you do with the Kostco-emoji with the sense of humor. Oh, I forgot. There isn't one. Oh, well, rant on, sweet pea. 😡 |
Uh, it hasn't deterred you. 😳
|
teo_audio wrote,
"Engineers and the vast majority of scientists are almost never (99.95% +) trained in the psychological and physiological aspects of mind, nor are they multi-disciplinarians, for the most part. The engineer is the most behind the eight ball in this scenario at hand. Realization, or discipline of mind - is key, here."
>>>>>Not sure what you’re getting at. First of all, when I went to school engineers were required to take at least one course in psychology. Also, we all know by now there can be some "psychological issues" involved with audio, like expectation bias and placebo effect but these psychological issues can be *controlled* with careful testing so I think their influence might be overblown. But everything is not as it seems in this great hobby. Not by a long shot. Queue scary music.
There is a whole undiscovered universe of what is more properly called "mind-matter interaction" involved in the hobby that was the realm of Peter Belt (RIP) and PWB Electonics for many years, at least 30. Silver Rainbow Foil and the Red X Pen being excellent examples of this category of audiophile product. As well as my Clever Little Clock. There are quite a few of these audiophile products that go BUMP in the night. But iit might be a mistake to say mind-matter interaction is "psychological" as that word is frequently used in the pejorative sense. I’d opine that the fields of human evolution, biology and sensory perception are probably more appropriate to this phenomenon. It is not a trick of the mind, some sort of subliminal marketing ploy or a cheap parlor trick. It’s an automatic involuntary (subconscious) response to external stimuli. We don’t need ALL engineers and scientists to be trained in psychological aspects of audio, we only need one or two. I’m not trying to set the world on fire. I’m just trying to start a flame in a few hearts.
|
Picture quality is a whole different thing from sound quality IMHO. For TVs folks march down to their local Best Buy or Target or whatever, check out a few TVs in their price range and figure out right away which one they like. They know what colors look like and constrast and saturation, without any doubt. Any yahoo in town can easily see differences among TVs. But audio is a completely different animal. Audiophiles stress over everything. One problem I suspect is that audiophiles for all their bluster aren’t very sure of what their listening to and uncertain as to how to proceed to improve whatever it is they've got. it's a sticky wicket.
|
Just to point out there are not very many Standards for audio, unlike say the Military or the FAA and other Government agencies that have Standards for practically everything, including toilet seats on Air Force One. Also, business is not conducted like it is in Government or the Military as there are no proposals, no evaluations, no third party testing, etc. There aren’t even any requirements! So, aside from a UL sticker here and there and Redbook standard for CD, everything in audio seems to be catch as catch can. There is no standard for polarity, no standard for dynamic range, or for SNR, for that matter. No standard for resolution, even for Sound Quality. As always we are at the mercy of the industry wonks and marketeers. 😳 |
teo_audio
Thus the scientists are invariably... incredibly excited ----to know more.
>>>>>Apparently they aren’t THAT excited. 😁 Cables made of lead are more controversial. For audiophiles.
|
Cables made from lead are more controversial. Besides liquid is almost a solid. It’s only a phase away. You can’t get in too much trouble that way. Mercury is a liquid at room temperature. Glass is a almost a liquid at room temperature. Now, does that mean fiber optic cables are almost liquids? You decide. 🙄 |
This seems appropriate, an excerpt from the Intro of Zen and the Art of Debunkery,
As the millennium turns, science seems in many ways to be treading the weary path of the religions it presumed to replace. Where free, dispassionate inquiry once reigned, emotions now run high in the defense of a fundamentalized "scientific truth." As anomalies mount up beneath a sea of denial, defenders of the Faith and the Kingdom cling with increasing self-righteousness to the hull of a sinking paradigm. Faced with provocative evidence of things undreamt of in their philosophy, many otherwise mature scientists revert to a kind of skeptical infantilism characterized by blind faith in the absoluteness of the familiar. Small wonder, then, that so many promising fields of inquiry remain shrouded in superstition, ignorance, denial, disinformation, taboo . . . and debunkery.
• Put on the right face. Cultivate a condescending air certifying that your personal opinions are backed by the full faith and credit of God. Adopting a disdainful, upper-class manner is optional but highly recommended.
• Employ vague, subjective, dismissive terms such as "ridiculous," "trivial," "crackpot," or "bunk," in a manner that purports to carry the full force of scientific authority.
• Keep your arguments as abstract and theoretical as possible. This will send the message that accepted theory overrides any actual evidence that might challenge it -- and that therefore no such evidence is worth examining.
|
There are quite a few Fourier Analysis apps. Why don’t you give one a test drive and report back?
|
|
You have to respect Mr. Russell for having the foresight and cleverness to link to the Amazing Randi Million Dollar Challenge for blind testing super expensive cables. If any pseudo skeptics were sitting on the fence before reading all the gory details about the whole $1M Challenge and how Randi was the NOT one who blinked first, they won’t be for long. Well played, Roger!
|
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! 🐥
|
Laws are meant to be broken. I broke two today just messing around. Science can’t keep up with audiophiles. Science - and to a certain extent audiophiles - mostly still think quantum mechanics is just a theory. Einstein didn’t think it was even a theory. You gotta admit, that’s funny. 😀
|
I hate to judge before all the facts are in, but there is no known way to measure some things in terms of the EFFECT ON THE SOUND. You know what I’m talking about, Mpingo discs, CD treatments, magnetization of CDs and cables, isolation platforms, Clever Clock, Silver Rainbow Foil, Cream Electret, Red X Pen, directionality of interconnects. We’re not even sure we’re measuring the right thing when it comes to fuses, you know, since the differences in resistance are sooo small. And nobody can fully explain in measurments why one cone is superior to another cone in terms of sound. I know what you’re thinking, it looks good on paper.
Sure, some of those things MIGHT be measurable under certain circumstances by someone somewhere. But of course noone ever does. 😀
Note to previous poster: yes, it actually does matter HOW we get there. Because if you don't understand where you ARE and how you got there you cannot proceed to where you eventually want to be. No matter how MUCH you have in the end you could have had even MORE if you had started out with MORE. |
Once the expression, "There are only three parameters that affect cable performance -capacitance, resistance and inductance" makes its first appearance, I'm out.
|
I'm aware. But it's so overused. 😀
|
dynaquest4
OP’s referenced article by Mr. Russel is, in my opinion, a well written, well researched, fairly scientific based article. It is all about why basic cable, that meets appropriate impedance, length and connection requirements, is all you need and you can’t expect real improvements in audio quality regardless of how much you spend on "wire-bling."
>>>>No one said it wasn’t well written. So what? Lots of folks can write well. It would be a, you know, Strawman argument, to say that because an article is well written it's correct. Hel-loo! And "fairly scientific" is how it was written to appear to the casual reader. No offense intended. However, I suspect the intended audience is far from scientific OR sophisticated. Again, no offense.
But, like many of these anti-audiophile diatribes that are popping up all over the Internet, it’s not really a "scientific based article" insomuch as it wasn’t peer reviewed or publish per anywhere of any scientific importance other than the fellow’s blog. Hel-loo! But apparently it suffices to appease the insatiable appetite of the roiling natterers and naysayers and audiophile bashers.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dramatica
|
dynaquest4 wrote,
"I’d like to see an opposing article (not written by someone "in the business" or a reviewer paid to do it) that lays out the science of how exotic cable works and why. Bet it doesn’t exist. And for good reason...there is no science....just perception."
Here’s an idea. Why don’t you contact NASA or AES or the Journal of Acoustics or MIT or whatever and see if they'd be interested in performing an evaluation of various cables and providing a peer reviewed article with their conclusions?
Just curious, why are you so sure an opposing view doesn’t exist. Have you looked? No need to to answer, it’s a rhetorical question.
|
Whoa! Daddy! This is a fine How do you do. I see this thread has gotten to the I'll show you mine if you show me yours stage. Taking a page from 12 Angry Men, "You can't prove it!" 😬
|
|
Many of Einstein’s quotes he never actually said. In fact I'd opine many of the quotes ascribed to him are rather dull witted. That being said, PT Barnum said a bunch of things relevant to audiophiles.
"Generally speaking people would be much better off if they believed in too much rather than too little.
“The noblest art is that of making others happy.”
“Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, - it largely increases the product.”
“The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.”
“The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes—or pretends to believe—that everything and everybody are humbugs.”
|
Oh, no, don't tell me! Not another he said she said thread. |
Oh, great! Another anti-audiophile blog for and about anti-audiophiles. Shazam! |
