Einstein did not hang around fools.
glupson you are so.....discriminating:-)
cal3713, you are quite correct. Well put.
audio2design, cal has a point. You are coming across a bit harsh here and you know I am on your side. The mat is a silly concept that does nothing but massage the brains of the people that waste money on it. But hey, is their prerogative to do silly things. They should be saving their money for better equipment. |
I missed millercarbon's last comment. We need to get you a soap box millercarbon. Better yet a TV show! You would make a great preacher. That says a lot coming from a atheist:-) |
@ audio2design , birds of a feather and all. They do not like people throwing water on their fire. I'm not entirely sure why this clannish behavior develops around audio products that can not possibly have any real benefit. Seems odd but hey, it is their money. I just pop in once in a while to justify my reputation. |
I love that airplane. It is the best looking aircraft ever made. The DC 6 was so bland in comparison. The 1st Air Force 1 was a Connie. Eisenhower's Columbine II.
It is harder to be a pioneer now. Advancing technology has become so much more complicated than it was at the end of the 19th century. But they still exist. I believe most of us would call Elon Musk a pioneer. Perhaps visionary is a better term.
Anyway, getting this emotional over the Perfect Path Technologies eMat is pretty silly. The only effect it has is on the minds of the people who were foolish enough to spend money on it. Such is the mythology of audiophilia nervosa. I understand Pfizer is researching a drug for this rather common condition. I gave them Audiogons web address as a source for study subjects. |
Who's fighting? I'm having fun:-)))) Some people are so defensive.
Here are some real audio pioneers; Edgar Villchur, Saul Marantz, Joe Grado, Paul Klipsch, Bob Carver, Rudy Bozak, John Curl, Nelson Pass and many more. We still celebrate their inventions today.
Well designed turntables and electronic gear to not need any voodoo witchcraft to operate correctly. This stuff is designed and marketed to take advantage of the gullibility of human hearing particularly those who do not understand it. If people want to be taken advantage of that is their business. But, don't B---h at us because we point out the truth. I'm not quite sure what Glupson point out but I think his heart is in the right place:-)
In the old days manufacturers would go out of their way to prove their products performance. Edgar Villchur set up his speakers on a stage with musicians and compared them to the real thing in public. He also designed and built the most successful turntable of all time the AR XA which has been copied by numerous manufacturers. The Linn LP 12 is nothing but a fancy AR XA.
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@glupson, Hey, it is time for you to make a comment! |
Golly, that is an awful room, awful loudspeakers too. It seems that Dr Toole has a lot of knowledge but terrible ears or maybe he does not earn enough in his profession to be able to afford the good stuff and I am not saying that in a bad way, it is true for a lot of us. We do the best that we can.
We should all be proud of our systems but I do not understand this constantly "tweaking" business. I will go years, sometimes a decade before doing anything and When I make a change it is always a big one like new speakers or amps. I kept the same turntable for 40 years although I had some others over the past decade. My version of a tweak is a new cartridge. I've had the same room for 28 years and it was treated acoustically from the start and has not needed any additions. Now with new speakers coming and new more dense carpet things will change a little so I will have to take new measurements and maybe adjust crossovers. I suppose making digital changes is a sort of tweak but I can see exactly what is going on. There are no illusions here. I am programming the system to do exactly what I want.
I hate to say this but, I think people with less elaborate systems are constantly looking for inexpensive ways to improve their systems and fall pray to marketing hype. That does not explain the Hallograms at $1600. I suppose that is cheap relative to an $85,000 amplifier.
@audio2design, now you are not only harsh but politically inappropriate.
You don't need to beat people up because the have no idea what they are doing. Just notice the group of comedians lined up against you.
It is the old science vs religion conundrum. So, keep up the good fight. It is a lot of fun watching them squiggle around the facts. They can not get their heads around the fact that some of us do not have to hear an item personally to know it does not work. Guys, it is just knowledge and experience. It is very easy to take advantage of those that have neither. |
@mahgister. Just a question. How many system's have you set up? Just yours. Maybe a friend or two? Experience is always the best teacher especially when you make a mistake. Some of us have enough experience that we can tell how difficult a room is going to be. Its not that we can't make it better but there are some problems you just can not solve. Some rooms are better than others and when I walk into a room I know right away if I can turn it into a SOTA sound experience. I have told people not to waste a lot of money in a specific room because no matter what we do it will never be SOTA. The best thing to do in a terrible room is a near field system if the person will go with it. I actually refused jobs because I did not like the situation and did not want to be associated with it.
How a system is set up is very important but so isn't the equipment particularly the speakers. It is all important but some things are horribly over estimated in importance and overpriced. A lot of the stuff like the Hallograms are based on totally false assumptions. Mahgister you are totally right that you do not have to spend a fortune to have a brilliant system and you can certainly improve the experience with proper acoustic management. But it is not rocket science and you do not have to spend a fortune doing it either.
I've got to get back to work a patient almost succeeded in cutting his thumb off. |
I had a Nak deck in my yellow Honda Civic. Fed it with a Dragon. The little sucker maxed out at 90 mph on the flat. Good thing. My brain had only two speeds, on and off. |
The problem many people do not or refuse to understand is that just because they hear a difference does not mean that there actually is one.
What you think you hear is subject to the way you are thinking and feeling at the time which is subject to a plethora of influences and how you feel about them. It is pitifully easy to influence human minds. Ask any ventriloquist or magician. As I have said before If a tweak makes you feel your system sounds better is that just as good as an actual improvement in sound after all, sounding better is sounding better. My personal feeling on that is no because in my case at least the sounding better part does not last and in some instances has made thongs worse. I also hate people/companies purposely taking advantage of this frailty of the human mind.
@cal3713 , There is no accounting for the way the human mind works.
But there is one feature of power cords that might under the right circumstances affect sound and that is shielding. Not on the unit itself but on surrounding units, transferring noise to line level cables very near by.
Because of that potential I make my cables out of shielded three conductor 12 gauge wire only using Marinco plugs. Do I know for a fact they improve my system? Absolutely not. But they have a good reason for being there, it makes me feel better and I save a lot of money over buying what may actually be inferior cables. Problem is you don't know what you have until you cut them open and if you don't think a company will run junk wire through a fancy casing you need to answer all your emails. You know anyone who is going to cut open an $3000 power cord? |
Audio2design, Like Clint said," A man's got to know his limits." a very important trait for a physician if he does not want to get his a-s sued off and yes, I know some very dumb intelligent people. Physiologically, we all have remarkably similar characteristics and limits within a range. We all have noses and everyone knows what a human nose looks like and will identify it as such even though there can be pretty extreme variations in form, say Taylor Swift as compared to Jimmy Durante. Both of them do exactly the same thing. Noses very predictably smell unless they are diseased. We humans are predictable in many ways, millions of ways.
The major variation in ability to adapt to and function in the environment we have created for ourselves is do to intelligence and training or learning if you will. One a matter of luck and the other parenting. There are exceptions such as personality disorders particularly of the antisocial type of which there are several examples in this forum. They confuse intelligence with arrogance. You are a perfect example of this confusion.
Yes, it was harsh. It was meant to be. |
Very nice. Can we get back to fighting now? It's a lot more fun:-)
Purple Haze again Tom?
Mahgister, my best to you also. I will take all the money you have. My PayPal account is........
Oregonpapa, I am speechless.
Audio2design,you are a lucky guy. I had an upper middle class Jewish upbringing and my mother use to beat us with the cord to the electric coffee pot. She had more children than she could possibly manage. She was a classic bipolar. Two of her four children also developed bipolar illness and the third married an African American alcoholic at the age 18
and moved to Denver. All of this made me an enuretic until the age of 13.
The rate of childhood enuresis is very high in physicians. I hid in my basement bedroom an learned to deal with people by avoiding them altogether. Humility? Is perhaps fear by another name. |
