Cable Snake Oil Antidote

Never try to prove a math major wrong with math. Rule number one. I abondonded the Perfect Sound Forever bandwagon when you were still wearing bell bottoms. If we listened to mathematicians there would be no high end audio, just a big nothing burger. 🍔

There is some math in this article, it may be over your head:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_error_correction

The result is a CIRC that can completely correct error bursts up to 4000 bits, or about 2.5 mm on the disc surface. This code is so strong that most CD playback errors are almost certainly caused by tracking errors that cause the laser to jump track, not by uncorrectable error bursts.

🐑
phomchick
Geoffkait: “Uh, but the two states are not (rpt not) accurately decoded. Not completely accurately, anyway. That’s why the Green Pen, painting CD tray and CD Treatments and vibration isolation and vibration control improve the sound.”

Sorry, not true. CDs include error correction encoding and decoding to ensure that the 1s and 0s are accurately read. Green pens and anti vibration tweaks on CDs and players are a complete waste of time and money.

>>>>>Hey, don’t be sorry. You’re welcome to your opinion. Even though it happens to be completely wrong. No offense intended. I’m come to accept the inevitable newbie backlash. No biggie.

teo_audio

Everyone here prostitutes themselves to something.

This statement probably reveals more about you than you intended to share. And it's rather presumptuous of you to speak for anyone but yourself.

Uh, but the two states are not (rpt not) accurately decoded. Not completely accurately, anyway. That’s why the Green Pen, painting CD tray and CD Treatments and vibration isolation and vibration control improve the sound.

Sorry, not true. CDs include error correction encoding and decoding to ensure that the 1s and 0s are accurately read. Green pens and anti vibration tweaks on CDs and players are a complete waste of time and money.

shadorne
@geoffkait

It doesn’t matter how a 1 or a 0 is represented on a CD. Only that two states can be accurately decoded and that some built in error correction (extra info like a parity bit or checksum) further ensures accuracy of decoding.

>>>>Uh, but the two states are not (rpt not) accurately decoded. Not completely accurately, anyway. That’s why the Green Pen, painting CD tray and CD Treatments and vibration isolation and vibration control improve the sound. Obviously if simeone wishes to keep the Perfect Sound Forever dream alive, by all means go for it! The error correct is better at some types of errors than others or so it would appear. Oddly, The industry (whoever that is) is completely oblivious to the issue of background scattered light.

This might be a stretch for you but the concept of digital audio does not actually require a CD to come inscribed with arabic numerals on it. Your personal computer hard drive or SSD also doesn’t have Arabic numerals inscribed on the memory storage.

>>>>Uh, don’t know what that is even supposed to mean. But I assume it’s an atttempt at humor. In any case, you obviously slept through my lecture on how the CD laser reads the data. 

Yeah, right. It’s all a scam. 🙄 And you’re correct. It is trolling.

simply starting with a quality power cord, next an Audience power conditioner, next interconnects, finally speaker wires how each step most certainly made a difference-for the good.

I've been to similar presentations where they were playing music I'd recorded and mixed and thought "This guy's nuts! It's different but definitely not better."

Almost assuredly, the source material and the substituted components were not picked at random. By careful cable and component selection it is possible to replace the same parts and have it make absolutely no difference or make it consistently worse.

Such demos lack any standard for rigor and should be viewed with extreme caution.

Cables and components interact. A cable may make a system better for some and not for others. The only way to tell is to listen in your system on a wide range of program over an extended period. Discount store demos and marketing hype before expending great sums. If stating same is trolling, so be it.

@geoffkait 

It doesn’t matter how a 1 or a 0 is represented on a CD. Only that two states can be accurately decoded and that some built in error correction (extra info like a parity bit or checksum) further ensures accuracy of decoding.

This might be a stretch for you but the concept of digital audio does not actually require a CD to come inscribed with arabic numerals on it. Your personal computer hard drive or SSD also doesn’t have Arabic numerals inscribed on the memory storage.

Everyone here prostitutes themselves to something.

Innocence and any associated righteousness is a projected dream, not a reality.

Somehow... degrees, desires and personal aspects of shading and indignation, as in: emotions (making decisions about logic models in the mind)....somehow come to the forefront and paint pictures in our minds. And those pictures somehow go from logic, understanding, and shading, into black and white ’facts’.

Generally it is so bad, that someone will probably find fault in what I post, here, and find a way to label it... so they can paint it in a black and white fashion -and then rankle and rail at it in print. This is the essence of every second or third post on most of these forums, across the world.. in just about any given subject area.

Human flaws, and the recognition of the human flaw. But the flaw does not want to be seen, so it rides in the mind, silently, coloring everything that might enter conscious musing, even one’s own beating heart and breathing. In the bones, even. Scary mortality, and the mind’s reality of dealing with itself. The voice in your head isn’t you, it’s your mind collating the muse and presenting, in a body shaped/originated echo chamber loop feedback verbalization 'externalization/communication' system. (ego function is tied to this) Hypnosis works as it interrupts the loop.

Essentially, very few people stay in the world of science and theory (as that would be uncomfortable) and they never stay in the world of science and theory when they get into things they have little data on, and are emotionally invested in. Like science and music. Humans ’factualize’, as it is how we get ourselves around, in our mental constructs and other core mental function.

Not logic, but human minds dealing with logic. The two are not the same. There is a huge difference between the two, in any form of logical analysis of the ideals and realities of science.

For example, we can say one thing out of hundreds, that can set your mind off, into blocking logic. In this case, we will take Elon Musk’s contention that this place is not a base reality and is a simulacrum, on some fundamental level. What he says is true and the odds of him being wrong, are a few billion to one. Can you negotiate that? Millions of people have negotiated this to some degree. But it is.. difficult. Since it is at logic limits for pretty well everyone here, negotiation of it...involves the recreation of the calculating device to a higher level. It requires reformation of the mind. Thus, to tear down emotional fundamentals about reality and rebuild into the new. Negotiating one’s own mental death and rebuilding...is part of the process.

You won’t go there.... your mind will reject it, and you’ll forget it by the time you rise and step away from reading this forum today. Even though it is true and if you ruminated on it deeply and all the time, you would find a way out of this mess humanity is in. The same monkey that is in humans will block it and move you way from thinking about it. The same monkey that has a person making poor and illogical posts about some other person who is in the same boat.

Thus, (a minimum of) two pathetics --screeching about nothing? Beating each other with sticks built entirely out of ridiculousness?

Careful, don’t have an ’emotional’ response, as that will kill logic before it even begins to form.

roberjerman

Peter Aczel (The Audio Critic) did not prostitute himself to the manufacturers as the reviewers then and NOW do!

Do you have any specific examples of this, or do you think all audio reviewers prostitute themselves?

Peter Aczel (The Audio Critic) did not prostitute himself to the manufacturers as the reviewers then and NOW do! The other reviewer that deserves respect from that era is Peter Moncrieff (International Audio Review). Both TAC and IAR should be required reading for posters on this thread!

Aczel figured out what Uber Skeptics wanted to hear and gave them an earful. 👂🏻He almost certainly purloined the 10 Biggest Lies in Audio from any number of audio forum discussions, kind of like ones right here on these pages. Take your pick. If there was a Troll hierarchy Aczel would be the Supreme Grand Wizard.

Aczel took himself WAY too seriously. He was also a little too fond of attacking other critics personally, in what I found to be an obnoxious, self-righteous manner. He seemed to a stranger to joy, happiness, and humility. A very bitter, negative person, it seemed to me. Upon reading that, he would ask to see my psychology degree.

phomchick"If you are making unusual or extraordinary claims, the burden of proof rests with you."

Actually there is no burden of proof on me at all however if you want to discuss this I can only point out that many the many contributors to this forum who have consistently reported they’re own first-hand observations that obviously conflict with those of the "AudioCritic" so I would state simply that his are the "extraordinary claims" and not anyone elses!

" prove that you and others can reliably tell the difference with an A/B/X test."

Again I do not not need to proof anything to you at all this is a hobby group but since you bring up abx it is not a definitive test for audio as has been revealed hear by others on many occassions. AudioCritic states that he is an objectivist so he must have proofs of what he claims or perhaps he is just trying to sell magazines!

phomchick"Peter’s article seems correct to me, though it is a bit excessively emphatic in some of its points."

And yet their is no proofs that is the problem with the naysayers and self-proclaimed objectivists the burden of "proofs" always fall to a party other than themselves and that is what is so strange about they're claims!

I'm not sure I follow this exactly, but if you are saying that the naysayers never have proof for their doubts, then:

1. You can never prove a negative
2. If you are making unusual or extraordinary claims, the burden of proof rests with you. That should be obvious.
   
3. If you want to prove to me that $1,000 AC power cords sound better, you have to do two things: a) come up with a believable explanation of why it should sound better, and b) prove that you and others can reliably tell the difference with an A/B/X test.

If this was not what you were saying, I apologize.

Lie no. 9 has to do with CD treatments. Aczel’s argument is that you cannot change the 1s and 0s on the CD therefore CD treatments must be a scam. But as we learned (?) the other day, the data on the CD is not 1s and 0s. The data are physical “pits” and “lands” that are vulnerable to being misread by the CD player for a variety of reasons. The creating of 1s and 0s occurs AFTER the physical data is read by the CD laser. So, now we’re down to only 9 Lies. One small step for audiophile. One giant step for audiophiledom. Whatever.

phomchick"Peter’s article seems correct to me, though it is a bit excessively emphatic in some of its points."

And yet their is no proofs that is the problem with the naysayers and self-proclaimed objectivists the burden of "proofs" always fall to a party other than themselves and that is what is so strange about they're claims!

In fact, Peter was right all ten times. Guess who is the troll.

Peter’s article seems correct to me, though it is a bit excessively emphatic in some of its points. 

I myself have been involved with high end audio for well over 45 years now am in complete agreement with Michael Fremer that wires most certainly make a difference.  No doubt about it.  Actually Roy Gregory did an overall comparison over 10 years ago at the Denver Audio Show how, simply starting with a quality power cord, next an Audience power conditioner, next interconnects, finally speaker wires how each step most certainly made a difference-for the good.  I have found the same today.  Living in Boulder, I have found that simply adding a top of the line MG Audio Design interconnect between my McIntosh MR74 tuner to my Audio Research LS27 preamplifier can create an audio experience that still totally amazes me today.  The overall audio quality actually depends upon what, Say KGNU happens to be playing at the time.  With an overall quality audio system with the right wire loom, as the English say, even a 45 year old FM tuner can create a sound that can compete with other audio systems using records, SACD's, high resolution bases systems.  That is what power conditioning and the "right" wires can achieve by themself-make an ancient, generally overlooked audio delivery system to come into their own.  I would bet that way back in the late 1960's-early 70's that many purchasers of Quat electrostatic speakers in fact used them to listen to the BBC on FM radio as their principal audio source.

geoffkait

I’ll give Peter Aczel one thing. That boy sure has a way with words.

Agreed! His writing style was refined and focused, and I often enjoyed reading his renderings. (Of course, I never paid for a subscription - that would support his Crusade.) He cultivated controversy, then used his magazine as a firehose in an attempt to extinguish it. After all, angry voices get attention. But like Julian Hirsch before him, I suspect his work often produced unintended consequences: After listeners realized how very wrong he was, they left him behind forever. Hence, his magazine was never profitable and its publishing schedule was unreliable.

I bumped into Aczel once - quite by accident and not in an audio venue - and found him quite charming. His in-person style was very different from what his writings might lead you to expect. I suspect the same would be true of many of this forum’s members.

Aczel was not just a writer; he was a showman. And he knew it. Unfortunately, uncritical readers often didn’t recognize that.

(Note - directed at no particular person) It’s ironic that folks who accept the 10 Biggest Lies In Audio as being real lies accuse those who believe they are actually true of being gullible. If they accept all ten Lies lock stock and barrel they must have some pretty strong beliefs in Peter Aczel or something, who the heck knows? Surely at least one or two must be a little bit debatable, no? I say they are ALL TRUE. Any takers? 🤠

“But you can’t PROVE it!” - Juror number 3, the obstreperous last holdout, 12 Angry Men

addendum: I’ll give Peter Aczel one thing. That boy sure had a way with words. To whit,

“1. The Cable Lie
Logically this is not the lie to start with because cables are accessories, not primary components. But it is the hugest, dirtiest, most cynical, most intelligence-insulting and, above all, most fraudulently profitable lie in audio, and therefore must go to the head of the list.”

Wow 😳

willemj

Do you have data to falsify his conclusions?

He expected the reader to accept his arguments on faith, rather than by considering any actual data or studies. Yet he considered himself an "objectivist." Do you dispute those facts?

Do you have data to falsify his conclusions?

willemj

In fact, Peter was right all ten times.

Aczel proclaimed that science was on his side but like many measurementalists, he expected the reader to accept his arguments on faith, rather than by considering any actual data or studies. His goal was to sell magazines and this was his style. That is all.

In fact, Peter was right all ten times. Guess who is the troll.

I don’t get it. He calls them the 10 Biggest Lies in Audio but they’re ALL actually TRUE. Is he pulling our leg? Was Peter Aczel a troll?

The more things change the more they stay the same. - old audiophile axiom

Let's wind the clock back 20 years:
https://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/mags/The_Audio_Critic_26_r.pdf

It is far better to post your experience of what in your experience works to give a good audio result than lauching general attacks on entire fields. But  I think we already know that we are dealing with a troll here.

Hey where can I get more snake oil.
The stuff sounds great !!
I’d buy it by the gallon If it makes me happy...
Sorry I Digress.
my point - live and let live..

@geoffkait By your command :)

All components in a sound reproduction system "degrade" the signal in some manner. Absent reference tapes of a live recording one has attended (or a long-term echoic memory of musical passages that I doubt exists for anyone) from which one may compare against a sound reproduction system of a recording, much of this discussion is about our biases with respect to the manner in which sound reproduction pertains to sonic preferences. Having said that, to each his/her own in assembling the audio system that satisfies his/her sonic preferences.

Assuming that’s supposed to be a joke you might consider adding a smiley face after jokes in the future so we get that it’s a joke. 😛

I build my own interconnects. Which way should I point the Ptouch directional arrow?

@shadorne As long as you only quote facts we’re good. 🤡

@geoffkait

No theory. Just facts. DNA is in all living things. This is what all plants and animals share in common. Pretty obvious really. DNA is what fundamentally replicates.  As obvious as the earth goes round the sun. Just not as exciting as a guy with a beard as it suggests humans are rather irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. 

Actually shadorne might be on to something with his DNA science. At least his theory appears to agree with what was presented in the movie Prometheus.

Shadorne, your DNA "science" is outdated and off base. Best to pull back from that. :(  You may want to stick with audio discussion. 

From what I gather, it’s a damn good thing the Universe is expanding at a good clip because if it were to slow down due to the gravitational forces of dark matter at its center to the point where it actually began to contract time would reverse direction and all of our clocks and watches would be useless. If time did not exist man would have to invent it.

I am waiting for someone to make the first "dark energy" amplifier and "dark matter" cables! And yes, the Universe is expanding faster than the Standard Model predicts!

shadorne wrote,

”science is science.”

Excellent, Excellent.... 🤡

" I just had a banana for breakfast. Does that mean I'll get mad bananas disease? 😄 "

Lol...nah, you'll be fine. It's just the eggs from chickens that eat other chickens you have to worry about....

I just had a banana for breakfast. Does that mean I'll get mad bananas disease? 😄

@cj1965 

I don’t understand you. 

James Brown said it correctly, “It is what it is”

There are no answers to silly questions that have no place in mathematics and physics. 

As as it stands DNA seems the most likely candidate for what we think of as “life giving creation”. Certainly not as exciting as a guy with a beard up in heaven but science is science and it does not purport to answer deeper meanings as to why things are the way they are but simply how everything behaves or behaved - offering a glimpse about the future or what happened in the past or as mundane as what happens if you drive your truck at 100 MPH into a brick wall. 

Propagating strands of DNA or RNA seems to be what life is about - why else do you carry around 99% of useless turned off genes - why else does 51% of your genes match a banana. Humans are irrelevant to DNA and RNA, we are just one small subset of hundreds billions of various critters that all cary it.

it's simpler for cables.
if home audio cable worth over $4 per foot than it is.

cj1965"Science re enforces religion on a daily basis..They all (probably most) inevitably wind up talking about the "Creator"...I think the clueless ones who just accept or believe what they are told have less "religion" than those who constantly push themselves to discover. 

I think it is wonderful that you hold such deeply held matter of belief and faith and that you feel an urgent need to convert those hear who do not share your faith with you that is exactly my point! As long as the Moderators allow I encourage you to continue your diligent efforts to convert the "gullible" here and remember that you do need to proof anything because it is a matter of belief and faith you live in a free country and no one can tell you who or how to worship that is your right!