How come there is no thread on the RealityCheck?

With all due respect to his distractors, Stanhifi's skepticsm is not unjustified. Tbg has started a number of threads stating that quite a few products have made "major" improvements to his system and now he's touting "one the greatest improvements in audio in 40 years". It could all be true, but that's an awfully bold statement!

Tbg claims this product is "one (of) the greatest improvements in audio in 40 years". He's being disingenuous to think an over the top claims such as that won't be met with skepticism.

Does anybody know if this process works on computer files (WAV or AIFF) or does it only work on a physical CD?

Regarding RealityCheck's applicability to hard drive files, here's a quote from George Louis:

I can add a hard drive (for an extra charge) to the duplicator for those who want to store many tracks and make many different compilations without re-duplicating the tracks by re-inserting the original discs each time. I feel that this degrades the sound a bit but it's still better than the original. It's just not as good as the direct digital-to-digital duplicating of an original disc to a CD-R.

He doesn't explain why storing the data on a hard drive degrades the sound which leads to question along the line of whether just storing the data in a memory buffer also degrades the sound? It's not clear whether his proprietary processing is occurring as the data is read from the source disc or as it is written to the target disc, so it may or may not be possible to perform batch processing upon existing hard drive based files.

If the product performs as he and other claim, then his marketing plan puzzles me. If it's really that big an advance in digital sound reproduction, then why is he marketing it directly to audiophiles, a vanishingly small population of the CD buying public. Wouldn't he be better off approaching the CD manufacturers and licensing his process? I imagine that there's more money to be made getting a fraction of a penny on every CD manufactured then there would be from selling his duplicator and CDRs to every know audiophile on the planet.

The more I read the more I suspect there is nothing special being done with the Reality Check CD burner per se and what people are hearing is simply the result of the improvements inherent with very carefully copying massed produced CDs with better quality burners and using obsessive media cleaning techniques. People reported improved sound quality from burned CDs back when Meridian offered the first dedicated audio burners.

I don't have the link, but I saw on Audio Asylum the George Louis was involved in the manufacture/sale of Finyl CD cleaning solution. Is that similar to his current cleaning solution?

Wellfed, in my case a suspicion is a step below an opinion in the hierarchy of belief statements. After reading multiple websites and threads on the issue I still haven't gotten enough detailed information to say what is really going on with the RealtyCheck process, but I've still gleamed enough information to make a conjecture. I am not saying RealtyCheck doesn't give the results people have reported, but that the sonic improvements claimed can be equaled by other CD-R burning procedures. I could very well be wrong, but RealtyCheck seems to be a very refined application of a phenomena that was reported more than a decade ago. As a turnkey system (and depending upon the pricing of the proprietary cleaner and CD-Rs) I suspect it could even be a good value for someone interested in taking the time and effort to correctly apply it.

Miklorsmith, please report back your findings on the comparisons. In my opinion your opinion on the subject would be most valuable.

Tbg, why does it have to be far superior? Why can't it just equal the performance of the machine Mr. Louis sells?

Clearly someone need a reality check.

This thread is a fascinating example of the psychology of audiophile marketing. As audiophiles we're always looking for ways to improve the performance of our systems and our enjoyment of listening to music. I have no doubt that carefully cleaning combined with using top flight media and high quality burners will improve the sound of regular stamped CDs. Unfortunately, there are people out there who are all too willing to cloak the process in mumbo-jumbo and charge high prices for what are effectively off the shelf products. As a group we need to be vigilant and ask tough questions from any manufacturer who makes bold performance claims without detailed technical, mainstream science explanations.

Tbg, now that you've had your unit for a while, is the RealityCheck still one of the greatest advances in the past 40 years of music reproduction.