It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.” And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything? For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think.
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is.
Yes, it is hard to believe that seeking the straw in our eyes you never seek the beam in your own eyes...
As Feynman really means , FOR you ,is you fool ourself by believing that all biases are equal...
What are Rodman and me our common biases : we confide and trust our ears experience and history, it is the straw in our eyes...
This straw sometimes must be takes off by blind test or the ears must be better trained yes anybody can contest common place evidence...Because not only blind test, but training can replace past erroneous biases with better useful new acquired biases...For sure...
What are the beam in your eyes, the biases you dont see and fool you completely ?
It is from the psycho-acoustic history, and from the Oppenheim and Magnasco experiment which confirmed it, the non linear working of the ears/brain and his working in his OWN TIME DOMAIN , not in a symmetrical independant time domain as ALL linear Fourier tools..
The Oppenheim and Magnasco demonstrated, as many others psycho-acousticians demonstrated and thought it before , that the ears/brain PERCEIVE aspects of sounds in his own acquired evolutive way... it is in this way that we created speech in the same gesture than music in a rythmic, melodic unidirectionality of time ...ears/brain work in this time breaking symmetry and caused it... The ears brain dont perceive sounds linearly what does it means:
it means that higher harmonics are not evaluated by the ears in the same way with the same tonality nor with the same perceived value, it means that " Like vision, hearing — which is to say, the ear–brain system — has a nonlinear response to stimuli. This means that increasing the stimulus by, say, 10%, does not necessarily increase the response by 10%. Instead, it depends on the power and bandwidth of the signal, and on the response of the system itself." it means even more , it means that in an ecological theory of hearing :
"under some circumstances, most importantly in the presence of a detection threshold, adding noise increases the signal-to-noise ratio.
I’ll just let you read that last sentence again.
Add noise to increase S:N? It might seem bizarre, and downright wrong, but it’s actually a fairly simple idea. If a signal is below the detection threshold, then adding a small Goldilocks amount of noise can make the signal ’peep’ above the threshold, allowing it to be detected."
Then All the Fourier linear and TIME INDEPENDANT tools and methods applied so well to the good predictive beahaviour of the designed electronic components so efficient they are, cannot alone by themselves be able to EXPLAIN the ears/brain way of processing sounds as evolution tuned up for natural sounds perception and emission or production in some recursive loop oriented in his own time domain and making us sensible MORE to the burst of a sound and to his decay than to the inverse direction :decay and burst... It is the time symmetry breaking and the creation of his own time domain by the ears/brain...
But for a set of Fourier linear maps, in a time independant way, the direction not only does not matter, but the basic abstract factors as frequencies, amplitude, and phase and duration, must be linearly ordered and interlinked , and are linearly related under the Gabor limits...But Oppenheim And Magnasco demonstrated with SELECTED MUSICIANS WITH TRAINED AND ACQUIRED MUSICAL BIASES, that the ears/brain can beat the Gabor limits or the Fourier uncertainty limits even thirteen times in some case...
Then what is the BEAM in the eyes of the Amir sect: it is the erroneous equation determining with very small set of linear tools , the Fourier tools used to design gear and electronic components which must well behave linearly in a time independant way, which are now dogmatically used to characterise all audible qualities as pertaining to gear "transparency" or to be illusions or artefacts of the deluded brain biases... This dogma is the BEAM in your eyes...It induce a BIAS which you are not conscious of and this bias reduce all Musical qualities perceived by audiophiles or the average people as REAL MUSICAL QUALITIES, to be mere illusions of the brain, or mere artefacts, or the biase we must eliminate...
It is this bias acuired by trained musicians which biases you want to eliminate that what SELECTED and used by Oppenheimer and Magnasco, selecting trained musicians to demonstrate how the ears/brain beat the Fourier uncertainty limit by working non linearly and in his own time domain,with this ACQUIRED BIAS as a DETECTING TOOL for a privileged or biased or favored direction in time , which is the BASIS OF THE ECOLOGICAl theory of hearing, A THEORY BADLY NEEDED IN PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC SCIENCE TO COMPLEMENT THE FOURIER FREQUENCIES BASED THEORY...
Do you understand now why Feynman say that the easiest person to fool is ourself ?
It is because we dont know at what MOMENT in our life, the biases we express would be positive for the results of an experiment or negative for this experiment, or positive for hypothesis or negative for the hypothesis, as Salomon did with his judgement with the two mothers, or as Christ expressed it with the beam and the straw, we must chose the right set of biases or became conscious of them...Sometimes we must listen to ourself not to Amir and sometimes Amir is right... We must learn this timing in our life , if not, we will fool oursself each time...
Then Feynman was not speaking about ELIMINATING all biases indistinctly , which act is impossible generally, and a trivial Barnum like saying, he ask us to choose the right set of biases...
Biases are inevitable as you know... Think about it then...We must select the right one at the right time...
In his dogmatic marketing for his site and to sell his methods of DEBUNKING, Amir is not interested to replace his biases about the way the ears/brain works, this Fourier based tools and frequency based theory of hearing, the way he used it, is wrong...The ears/brain perceiving musical qualities dont work as a Fourier computer linearly and in the independant time domain ...These musical qualities are real for a trained ears of an acoustician and a musician or for any self trained person able to tune his room they are not biases we must eliminate IN ALL CASES... But it is not the way Amir see it as a propagandist of his tools/toys...
No, you wrote in utterly vague circles, never landing on his actual point.
His point clearly had to do with what separates the scientific endeavour from everyday level inferences.
When Fynman says "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
That is clearly a warning about the influence of human BIAS in distorting and guidling our conclusions. "You are the easist person to fool" is a reference to how easy it is for us to filter explanations and evidence to fit our desires or biases. In fact, we are easy to fool through various pitfalls in thought, even when we are trying to not be biased. When YOU are the one doing the testing YOUR actions and interpretations will have a blind spot of your own bias.
He admonishes us therefore The first principle is that you must not fool yourself," which means we have to incorporate guardrails against fooling ourslef in to our methods of inquiry.
This is so obvious it’s just hard to believe folks like you and rodman can’t just state what he meant.
Since our biases form such an obvious, first problem in interpreting results, this is why there are various methods of mitigating the influence of bias in scientific testing. It’s why for instance many therapeutic trials are done blind, double and even triple blinded.
It’s why you want to have a hypothesis that is testable by other parties, looking to prove your hypothesis wrong, themselves using safeguards against their own bias effects.
This has OBVIOUS implications for testing audio claims. If for instance sighted bias is a known confounding variable - a prime way of FOOLING YOURSELF - then Feynman’s admonishment clearly indicates you should find a way to rule out that way of FOOLING YOURSELF. Job ONE of the approach he is advocating!
This is why most of the scientific level of research on human perception in general, and much that is available on the perception of audio gear (e.g. the research often cited by Floyd Toole) is done with controls for those variables so the FOOLING YOURSELF part is mitigated as much as possible.
Of course neither you nor anyone else no this forum needs to do scientific-level rigorous research in order to enjoy the hobby or buy whatever you want. But if someone is invoking Feynman in a thread that clearly entails the relevance of science to audio, then at least get what he was saying. You can ignore it...but at least understand it.
People in that thread call magico speakers snake oil.
No they didn't. The thread title is: "What is the difference between snake oil and rip off, or both are the same?" So comments are made on both fronts. This is the magico reference and response
Refer to Magico speakers >$600,000 made with expensive materials like exotic woods and Titanium.
Magico/DCS are the contemporary ‘high-end’ they measure well and have super smart casework. Commensurate performance is available at many multiples of expense less of course.
Reasonable back and forth completely inconsistent with your claim. Really, this dog don't hunt. You are just showing that you are not familiar with ASR.
@profHere is an entire discussion about snake oil and how it’s based on fraud in a lot of peoples minds. Something that essentially doesnt work at all. Not just dubious claims. People in that thread call magico speakers snake oil. I wouldnt say that’s fair. Overpriced maybe. To use Amirs analogy, then an Icon Bronco is snake oil I guess.
This is from that thread and is probably more accurate "Snake-oil: Does none of the things being claimed other than through the powers of suggestion.
Rip-off: Highly expensive but identical in any meaningful way to products with a vanishingly smaller price tag."
@prof Okay your call. I was responding to what you said. My point remains that people on ASR call products snake oil based on their expensive price. All day long.
You are simply wrong. You are part of the problem in spreading misinformation like that.
I have over 5,000 posts on ASR. How many do you have in terms of actual familiarity with day to day content?
I know how the term "snake oil" is is typically used there - it is usually used to denote bogus or dubious claims made for a product. And yes there is much disparagement there about audiophile companies charging high prices FOR BOGUS or unsupported claims. That's the point - with snake oil you aren't getting the performance you are led to believe you were getting in paying all that extra money over cheaper alternatives.
Anyone can see you are wrong by going to ASR, search "snake oil."
You will see it normally used just as I've described.
Stop spreading misinformation, and then maybe Amir won't have to spend his time showing up to correct it.
@prof Okay your call. I was responding to what you said. My point remains that people on ASR call products snake oil based on their expensive price. All day long.
I give up on playing whack-a-mole as you jump around to different points.
(And btw, the Tact came out when there were very few alternatives to that powerful room correction device. You just don't seem to know what you are talking about).
@prof Wait I never called the tact eq box snake oil. The other member of Audiogon did. Then I tried to explain why that argument was somewhat valid but I agree it's not snake oil in the strictest sense.
TacT processor was not snake oil in any sense, strict or otherwise. It was a pioneering system with multi channel Room EQ and digital in and out. It was what led to Room EQ eventually becoming standard in every AV processor or Receiver you buy today. It was and has been transformative.
The processor was expensive to build. Each channel had a dedicated board with its own high performance, dedicated DSP. It was a marvel of audio engineering:
You are completely out of line with this line of questioning and discussion.
@amir_asr Seriously why are you still here? Don't you have some donations to pole dance for?
I am here because additional points are being raised about who or what ASR is so I am answering. What on earth have you been doing here from start? Did you read OP?
@profWait I never called the tact eq box snake oil. The other member of Audiogon did. Then I tried to explain why that argument was somewhat valid but I agree it's not snake oil in the strictest sense. However the jacked up price and added benefit is in fact snake oil. Which you stated. You said this
Great. So it's not a snake oil product. And yet you'd quoted Amir saying it wasn't a snake oil product and implied it may as well have been. That's the sneaky part I was getting at.
Then you said this
It's not "snake oil just because it's expensive." It's snake oil "because they are charging people huge prices on the basis of claiming audibly superior performance" over cheaper cable, and many at ASR are technically proficient enough to explain why the claims are nonsense (and point out how they are virtually never actually demonstrated in any rigorous manner, either by measurements or controlled listening tests...it's all about the usual audiophile anecdotes).
We are saying the same thing. How is the tact $15,000 unit that many times better than any other eq product out there? So amir is touting its greatness which is what was called out as snake oil. He bought into the very products he doesnt recommend.
@prof They absolutely do dismiss expensive stuff. Here is one. Amir shows it does the same thing as the less expensive versions, and therefore doesnt recommend it. Explain to me how that is not exactly what youre saying???
These are the marketing claims for that $1000 USB cable:
New micro insulated quad Alumiloy conductors in a very flexible noise rejecting shielded design offers all resolutions of digital audio beyond DSD sampling rates with excellent clarity. As with analog interconnects, excellent low level details and a highly refined sound.Not dull and boring nor thin and bright, this USB cable lets you hear your music through your front end electronics with true clarity and life.
The clear implication is that standard USB cable lacks clarity and sounds dull, boring and thin. If that was the case, $1000 would be money well spent. Of course the company provides no proof points for any of this. No listening tests. No measurements. Nothing. So we roll up our sleeves and check:
32 tones are thrown at the DAC using this and dirt cheap USB cable. There is absolutely no difference in frequency response, distortion or noise floor measured down to -140 dB (25 dB below threshold of hearing).
Listening tests were provided:
JPS Superconductor V USB Cable Listening Tests
I connected the output of the Topping D70s to Topping A90 which in turn drove my Dan Clark Stealth headphones ($4000). I used the high gain on the A90 to make sure I could hear any difference in background noise. I started with the JPS cable and the sound was as wonderful as I remembered on my standard reference tracks (which I have listened to hundreds of times). I then switched to the generic USB cable. Surprising (not), it sounded louder and more dynamic! I switched back to the JDS USB cable and difference vanished, leaving me with less perceived fidelity. Of course, this not a valid test as the switching time is way too long to allow proper comparison for small differences. But if folks want to run by "what I heard," I heard the generic USB cable sounding "better."
Those of you who ask "just listen" would have to believe that the generic cable far outperformed this "superconductor."
Conclusions are thus obvious:
"Conclusions
USB cables in short length deliver all the bits correctly. The ground connection though from the PC to DAC is an analog affair so in theory, some difference in noise can be there. If there is, and you can audibly hear something the solution is not another USB cable but to use better isolation (Toslink, XLR cables for interconnects, etc.). Measurements here show that there is no difference even in that department when with a "noisy" source like my desktop workstation PC.
Ad-hoc listening tests as usual produce unreliable results which if taken at face value, put the generic USB cable ahead of the JPS cable! So if you want to go by that, we still don't have anything of value here.
As you can predict by now, I can't recommend the JPS Labs Superconductor V USB. It is just a waste of money compared to any half-decent generic cable."
Company claims were not shown to be true so they charged $995 more than they should have. They misled customers and took their money. Nothing at all like a high performance DAC which produces stated of the art performance matching company's claims.
@profread the review. Amir doesnt recommend it because of the price...
You are all over the place. First you said someone was calling "it all" snake oil, when that person had only said he wanted to see good evidence for a dubious claim, to distinguish it from snake oil. It wasn’t "everything expensive is snake oil"
Now you’ve pirouetted to complain that Amir didn’t recommend a $1,000 USB cable due to it’s high price??? Well of course not! He’d just finished showing it’s performance was indistinguishable from a cheap generic USB cable! Why WOULD he turn around and recommend people pay $1,000 for a cable that promises better fidelity, but doesn’t deliver it???
Fwiw I recently applied a packaged convolution filter in Roon DSP for my Sennheiser Momentum headphones and the results are staggering. Modern DSP processing done right is a very powerful tool indeed.
The results push me closer to carving out time to try and create my own convolution filters for my various rooms at home. It’s more work and just a little cost to create your own. You just need a decent mike that costs ~130 dollars and free software to create the filter. I’m very confident that could be one of the best $130 I could spend currently for better sound.
I use some minimal room treatments on some rooms currently and none in others where not conducive.
To thoroughly treat most rooms with commercial treatment could cost thousands of dollars to do right. Like Amir I do furnish and set up my rooms wherever possible for better acoustics. Much more cost effective and practical in many cases where one might not have a totally dedicated “listening room”.
I listen in many rooms many different ways all the time. That’s not even including 5 pair of decent quality headphones. I want to hear it all. Variety is the spice of life. That’s just me.
Show me the science where it states that room treatment is bogus, and people dont need it to help with the eq in their room?
Room treatments are not bogus. Telling people to go and slap them on their walls in their living room as otherwise their sound is crap, is bogus.
It is beyond the scope of this conversation to provide you more education on that. I have put a ton of research data in this thread as I have post. Bottom line is, if you have not spent considerable amount of time getting educated here, or at least read Dr. Toole’s book cover to cover a couple of times, you have no business opining on this topic.
That poster, Triliza, was responding to a technically dubious claim made for USB cables. He rightly pointed out there is lots of nonsense in regard to expensive cables, for instance as an example for digital transmission, there will be no visible difference between a properly spec'd cheap HDMI cable or a $1,000 HDMI cable.
He is correct.
He simply asked for some more reliable, rigorous evidence for a company's claim than had been provided, since that would help distinguish truthful claims from snake oil claims.
That's all perfectly reasonable. And it was not, btw, an instance of calling anything snake oil JUST because it was expensive. It has to do with the CLAIMS FOR THE PRODUCT, whether the claims are B.S. or not. If they are not, as Amir said, then of course anyone can spend whatever he wants, but it's good to at least know what you are actually getting.
Show me the science where it states that room treatment is bogus, and people dont need it to help with the eq in their room? All they need is a box that does it for them. That does indeed work, but so does acoustic treatment. I agree with Amir that eq software can do wonders. 100% in agreement. I am in complete disagreement that treatment is crap.
And in a previous post @profhere is Amir calling treatment "crap"
Does this look like it has a bunch of crap acoustic products all over as you claimed people should put in their living spaces? It doesn’t right?It even has a TV in the middle!
Just like my room, standard furnishing is used to provide adequate overall absorption so that the room is not too live. That’s all. He uses multiple subs with advanced DSP (soundfield management) to get excellent bass across multiple seats. This is science. This is science in practice. This is science that doesn’t uglify your room to create great satisfaction.
I’m keeping score on the thread. You get a point if you offer up information that helps people.
Hate to say it but Amir is slaughtering all at this point. Not liking someone’s style is a swing and miss. No style points either. Just telling it like I see it using my own measures for things that add value and things that do not. No doubt many will disagree and that’s all alright.
I work in pro audio. Post production sound. I work out of purpose built mixing studios that cost millions of dollars, some of which goes to the acoustic design/treatments in the room.
I had a professional acoustician help design my own room, and so it contains various room treatments, as I indicated.
So when you write this:
What youre saying is based on one guy, who has no experience in any of those fields knows better and they are misinformed?
I don’t know what you mean. I’m not basing everything I believe on Amir or "saying" room treatments don’t work. I have a general idea of the concepts involved, but I’m not an engineer, or scientist or acoustician, therefore I stay in my lane and watch the technical claims go back and forth. Like I said, Amir provides references to back up his arguments, says he is simply pointing to what the best information we have seems to indicate, and why. If someone wants to challenge it...bring an A game, with robust evidence. There are numerous challenges to Amir’s argument over on ASR. (So no, it’s very far from a hive-minded cult leader thing).
@profThey absolutely do dismiss expensive stuff. Here is one. Amir shows it does the same thing as the less expensive versions, and therefore doesnt recommend it. Explain to me how that is not exactly what youre saying???
ASR routinely labels anything "expensive" as snake oil when there is a cheap ASR endorsed option, regardless of real or perceived performance difference.
That's not true. Sure many at ASR roll their eyes at the extreme high end gear prices. But generally the term "snake oil" is used on ASR to refer to products that don't do what they claim to do, not "just because it's expensive." I think you are mixing up the fact someone may occasionally use the term "snake oil" while talking about very expensive gear. But it's not "because it's an expensive system." It's when people are paying lots of money on the belief that is getting them the "better sound" promised by a product. For instance someone referenced the million dollar Estelon based system at Axpona and used the term "snake oil" but that was in pointing out things like the $330,000 cost of the cabling! It's not "snake oil just because it's expensive." It's snake oil "because they are charging people huge prices on the basis of claiming audibly superior performance" over cheaper cable, and many at ASR are technically proficient enough to explain why the claims are nonsense (and point out how they are virtually never actually demonstrated in any rigorous manner, either by measurements or controlled listening tests...it's all about the usual audiophile anecdotes).
@prof I am not referencing all sorts of places. I am referencing pretty much any recording studio, mastering desk, mixing rooms. They all use treatment. These are the people who edit, produce and fine tune all the audio, vocals and sound effects you’re playing through your system. They arent prone to the same flash of high end stuff. Running commercial cable snakes and generic power cords. They do use room eq in addition to treatment. What youre saying is based on one guy, who has no experience in any of those fields knows better and they are misinformed?
I am trying to find a link but The Disney Concert Hall is a great example of this. They designed the seats to mimic the human body's density so that when the seats are empty it still sounds consistent with a full house. A lot of effort went into the project with materials and wood so that it was acoustically great. I guess you better go tell them with Amir that they made a big mistake.
Sure, I'm aware there are all sorts of places where room treatment will be touted. Amir is going against the grain of what many people think, including likely some at gearspace. I don't know if he's right. But he does reference technical arguments and studies in support of his argument, so if someone wants to argue the other point, hopefully they can marshal stronger evidence. Rather than just "Amir is a meanie" type stuff.
Your confusion of what is snake oil and what we are at ASR are your problem. You seem to think anything expensive must be snake oil. Do you go around saying that about a BMW?
ASR routinely labels anything "expensive" as snake oil when there is a cheap ASR endorsed option, regardless of real or perceived performance difference. Individuals that opt to spend hundreds or thousands on an item they find pleasing for whatever reason, ASR also routinely ridicules as audio-fools.
Interesting you bring up a car analogy, ridiculed many times on ASR. Again the irony and hypocrisy is staggering.
I hope you will take this to heart what I am going to write here, and why your approach is too dogmatic and hence stuck with no potential to move forward.
Last night you argued vehemently that reflections in a room MUST be better, that it MUST essentially be more pleasant, but, using the research that allowed you to reach that conclusion, you must also accept there is reduced clarity of the image (as the research indicates) and that at least for first lateral reflections there is no right answer for all rooms and all people.
Stated another way, you vehemently argued that a less accurate approach would absolutely result in a better listening experience, to the point of claiming that anyone who suggested doing otherwise was incompetent. Your words, not mine. Paraphrased but still your words.
Today, you posted this:
The Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC shows again that just because a DAC is designed from ground up, it need not perform poorly. It is actually the opposite with it performing at the top of the class with respect to distortion and noise.
Effectively you are stating that the only correct way to design a DAC (or any piece of electronics really) is for it to perfectly reproduce / amplify a signal. Do you not see the issue? On one issue you are advocating, literally insisting on a provably inferior technical solution, while on another issue, you are insisting the only correct way is a perfect technical solution, and you leave absolutely no room, except at best cursory, that a non-perfect solution could be more pleasant. It is a irreconcilable position.
I understand what has likely lead to this point in time. Both scurrilous marketing coupled with a group of audiophiles insisting that equipment has properties beyond the understanding of science. You know that is not the case. I know that is not the case. Many know that is not the case. So what is the possible benefit of measuring yet another DAC, or now yet another amplifier that performs well beyond any ability of humans to detect the faults? There is not. It does nothing to advance the science or art beyond identifying new price points. That is at best consumer protection, not science. Ditto for exercises in debunking product claims. While valid it is not science, it is consumer protection.
So I will challenge you. Turn the ship. Stop proving 1+1 = 2. Use your reach and platform to do something useful for the industry, both for your followers and detractors, and put effort into understanding or debunking as the case may be, the audibility, and audible impact, negative or positive of less than perfect signal construction and amplification. Just like that those less than technically perfect reflections can create a superior experience, it is possible that less than perfect on the electrical side can do the same. It is already done on the music creation side for improved preference so the evidence is there to support it conceptually (even if not on all music).
Amir, what of the fact that all along, you have only been measuring just the electrical half of electromagnetism. Can you explain the loss of logic in basing your entire belief system on that?
@profGo on gearspace.com and ask if they use room treatment and to what effect. There are loads of examples of bass traps and treatments flattening out room modes introduced by the room. Same as any eq software. one is physical one is digital. Why is this so hard to prove? Ive see room correction work with my own two eyes with a D&D system and with room treatments
@amir_asrNo it’s not about audio. I will tell, if you do tell why you closed Erin’s thread and allow others to remain up, and why you spam this forum with your ASR forum posts which lead to your "donation" requests. Do tell.
It's truly astonishing you are still here. Since you want to sell ASR and not deal with this, why are you wasting your time on this, unless you want to cross promote. This thread will keep getting longer an longer and people will see more and more of who you truly are. A dbag.
Saying "anyone" on this forum needs to do scientific research is baseless and overstated. I do scientific research. I don't do things without research and some sort of basis in reality
Ah, what are examples of that scientific research? Hopefully it is about audio since you brought it up here but do tell.
So lets agree that his $15K device worked at one time and he verified improved FR with measurements and listening.
Great. So it's not a snake oil product. And yet you'd quoted Amir saying it wasn't a snake oil product and implied it may as well have been. That's the sneaky part I was getting at.
As to Amir's views on crossover parts - he's either right or wrong. You don't decide this by continually calling him arrogant. He walks the walk - puts up objective evidence for his claims. Anyone is welcome to do likewise in debating any of his claims. As for room treatment, again...you can take his claims to task...or not. But all the stuff about "ego" is a sideshow, and one only concentrates on that if they don't have a substantive argument against the claims.
I believe Amir linked to an ASR thread in which his arguments about room treatment are being critiqued in various ways, by people adducing technical claims, measured evidence etc. So, maybe read on it, make up your own mind.
My own room has forms of room treatment, and I enjoy experimenting with it to achieve various goals.
Alas, the story did not end well. After spending $10K on the processor, I spent another $5K to upgrade it.
The snake in snakeoil bit you in the butt. Wonder what kind of reception the above statements would receive over at ASR?
Your confusion of what is snake oil and what we are at ASR are your problem. You seem to think anything expensive must be snake oil. Do you go around saying that about a BMW?
Our mission at ASR Forum is to see if a product is well engineered or not. If it is, then you as a consumer get to decide if you want to buy it. Many times these products low cost but often, they are very expensive. That cost cannot and must not be held against them because it does cost money to produce some products that are pretty, produced locally, have great support & reputation, resell price, etc. For that reason, except in rare cases, price is not a consider for me.
In case you are not familiar with my "panther coding," it got the highest award I could give it. Why did I do that, because it is superbly engineered to reduce noise and distortion:
At the time, it shattered all records, landing on top (left) of the SINAD chart:
Here is how I finish the review:
Conclusions
The Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC shows again that just because a DAC is designed from ground up, it need not perform poorly. It is actually the opposite with it performing at the top of the class with respect to distortion and noise.
Since I am not the one paying for it for you to purchase it, it is not my issue to worry about the cost. As such, I am happy to recommend the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC based on its measured performance and functionality.
While I never use the term "snake oil," members use it to refer to products that a) are expensive and b) don’t meet any of their claims of superiority or effectiveness. Someone mentioned Audioquest USB Cable. This is how that rated:
Panther coding says someone is after your pocketbook than delivering better sound. Here are the manufacturer claims:
See all those mentions of reduced distortion. We can measure that. We do it day in and day out:
Now with AQ cable:
No distortion is reduced whatsoever. Even when measuring to 20X human bandwidth of hearing, nothing is changed as far as noise and distortion:
Here are my listening test results:
Audioquest Pearl Listening Test
I plugged my Dan Clark Stealth Headphone into the Hugo 2 DAC and started to listen. The Stealth is a sealed back headphone with the lowest distortion I have measured in a headphone. So if there is a difference, this is the most ideal way to hear it.
I queued up a track with lots of ambiance and delicate sounds and started to play with AudioQuest USB Cable. The sound was as wonderful as I remembered it. I then switched to Generic cable and instantly the sound was louder and there was better clarity all around! This effect quickly faded though in a few seconds indicating typical faulty sighted listening test effect. From then on, I could not detect any difference between the two cables.
Hence my summary of the review:
Conclusions
I know many of us consider these results "as expected" but it is always good to verify how time after time, very accurate measurements show no difference between generic/cheap and premium cables. That premium is not a lot in the case of AudioQuest Pearl USB cable. So if you want to get it, there is no major harm done. Just don’t expect any audible improvements from it.
I can’t recommend the Audioquest Pearl Cable if you are buying it for audio performance.
The TACT processor was expensive because such home theater processors have always been expensive. You can’t get them with balanced output for less than a few thousand dollars. High-end ones comparable to Tact today cost even more. Here is Trinnov Altitude 16 Review. It got a "good" rating from me even though it cost $17,000:
See? Not hard to understand what we do. Go and spend proper time on ASR and you would know. If you don’t, ask me questions.
We have too much time on our hands in our society! What a waste of time, I can’t believe I wasted a half hour reading all this crap. I can’t believe that a bunch of other people did too… yikes! What are we doing to ourselves? If I wasn’t stuck in my wheelchair I’d be up doing something productive.
That is an utterly disingenuous spin on Amir's situation with the Tact. It wasn't snake oil, it worked for it's purpose.
Get a grip on reality. Amir was called out in exactly the same way He and the ASR crowd would attack anyone else doing exactly the same thing.
So lets agree that his $15K device worked at one time and he verified improved FR with measurements and listening. Somebody else uses room treatment and verifies improved FR with measurements and listening. Or somebody modifies speaker crossovers and verifies improved FR with measurements and listening. Amir already stated room treatment does not work. Also on record numerous times crossover component cost or quality make not difference. Once again, Amir's own words and actions arrive at the same destination - Amir is right, everyone else is wrong. An WOW, his comment about rubbing elbows with luminaries is arrogance on full display. Love to hear your defense of that statement.
@profPretty sure when they said snake oil they were referring to the price tag and how it probably doesn’t do anything better and the fact that it bricked on a firmware upgrade.
No, when Amir pointed out the Tact was not snake oil, textbychoice implied it was as Amir spent "$15K on an audio toy that ended up being useless.'"
That is an utterly disingenuous spin on Amir's situation with the Tact. It wasn't snake oil, it worked for it's purpose. Years after owning it, it became bricked by new firmware (hardly unheard of with computer devices). Something that actually did what it technically claimed to do, worked, but then got broken in a mishap, then simply isn't what "snake oil" means. It's just cheap attempts at "you do it too, nyah, nyah" stuff..
Let me ask you, do you think everything he says is gospel? It seems you are up his butt for different reasons.
Hardly. Amir and I have clashed occasionally on his forum, I'm sometimes seen as a "subjectivist in sheep's clothing" on the ASR forum :-)
And did you miss my critique of one of Amir's statements in this very thread?
I'm not on sides per se - on ASR I will both critique Agon forums and defend them. I'll critique subjective reviews and also defend them. I'll critique claims on ASR but also defend those I find defensible. I'm not on a team. I'm just trying to call 'em as I see 'em.
The reason I jump in to a thread like this isn't because I think Amir and ASR is above criticism. As Amir keeps pointing out, he gets criticism all the time on ASR.
It's just that sound criticism in threads like these are mixed in with SO much b.s., strawmen, ad hominem. It really is a bad show for Audiogon forums unfortunately. And it's not "just because of Amir showing up with an ego!"
I agree with Amir: all the varieties of "but you have a big ego" are ad hominem: address his arguments, his evidence. Is he correct, and therefor giving helpful information to audiophiles, or not? The replies to him have been generally terribly weak on rebutting substance. (Which is why I find myself often on ASR these days over Agon. I come to Agon to engage in subjective talk, which I really enjoy).
@prof do you run an alt Amir account because you sound rude just like him LOL
Saying "anyone" on this forum needs to do scientific research is baseless and overstated. I do scientific research. I don't do things without research and some sort of basis in reality.
He means that we fool ourselves any time if we dont LEARN if it is the time to trust only ourselves or the time trust an other...
We are the easiest person to fool because we dont know why it is time to go alone or to listen others... Simple...
No, you wrote in utterly vague circles, never landing on his actual point.
His point clearly had to do with what separates the scientific endeavour from everyday level inferences.
When Fynman says "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
That is clearly a warning about the influence of human BIAS in distorting and guidling our conclusions. "You are the easist person to fool" is a reference to how easy it is for us to filter explanations and evidence to fit our desires or biases. In fact, we are easy to fool through various pitfalls in thought, even when we are trying to not be biased. When YOU are the one doing the testing YOUR actions and interpretations will have a blind spot of your own bias.
He admonishes us therefore The first principle is that you must not fool yourself," which means we have to incorporate guardrails against fooling ourslef in to our methods of inquiry.
This is so obvious it's just hard to believe folks like you and rodman can't just state what he meant.
Since our biases form such an obvious, first problem in interpreting results, this is why there are various methods of mitigating the influence of bias in scientific testing. It's why for instance many therapeutic trials are done blind, double and even triple blinded.
It's why you want to have a hypothesis that is testable by other parties, looking to prove your hypothesis wrong, themselves using safeguards against their own bias effects.
This has OBVIOUS implications for testing audio claims. If for instance sighted bias is a known confounding variable - a prime way of FOOLING YOURSELF - then Feynman's admonishment clearly indicates you should find a way to rule out that way of FOOLING YOURSELF. Job ONE of the approach he is advocating!
This is why most of the scientific level of research on human perception in general, and much that is available on the perception of audio gear (e.g. the research often cited by Floyd Toole) is done with controls for those variables so the FOOLING YOURSELF part is mitigated as much as possible.
Of course neither you nor anyone else no this forum needs to do scientific-level rigorous research in order to enjoy the hobby or buy whatever you want. But if someone is invoking Feynman in a thread that clearly entails the relevance of science to audio, then at least get what he was saying. You can ignore it...but at least understand it.
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