More names huh, but still no guts. Hmmm...I thought so. |
You know guys, everything you've said - and its all very good (thank you...) - sounds very familiar to my reactions to Kondo's AudioNote cables. They are also bare wire connected and use thin strand conductors. Sound? Also "vibrant", extremely "dynamic" without "smearing", pressurize a room with sound that is not necessarily from the lowest octaves, etc etc. Hmmmm... After many years of audio psycho-pathology, I too am past the need for "substantial connectors". Any comments on Kondo/Sakura comparison? Do you think its simply a coincidence that both designs emanate from minds that see their designs in terms of Zen-like simplicity? Most professional, knowledgable, well thought out thread I've seen here, by the way. |
Sead, don't be a horse's ass. If you think my views are overly biased by rigid assumptions, then please, have the guts and cognitive fortitude to cite them specifically.
Second, you seemed to have missed the point between Slawney and I: we are having FUN! I was joking with him about selling the NBS. I enjoy and respect his opinions and writing. Get it?
As I said, objective parameters are not relative (or did your proffered, alleged disclaimer of a lack of language agility, selectively, get in the way on that one?). But that is another subject - we were specifically discussing subjective criteria. I am a writer and do not have all the bucks in the world, but that does not mean that I make arguments that any opinion other than mine on subjective grounds is impliedly invalid because the means of capitalism dictates a certain value in objective terms. That is a disingenuous argument, and I would proffer, symptomatic of your intent.If you want to discuss whether price is a relative issue, then fine, do so, but don't gratuitously mix it in with some unspecified politically-correct morality. Get it?
If you want to have a cogent dialogue, absent vague, melodramatic references, then go ahead. Otherwise, well, you know... |
Only when they ask for it, Subaruguru...as you know. How genuine of you to find this discussion and comment.
But, I have a question that I'm really interested in. What is it with these guys who fall onto a discussion from nowhere with holier-than-thou posturing, without anything substantive to add, throwing the emotive-loaded language around in a judgemental manner, and then end it with some type of statement that just (must) reaffirm to us all what a great and compassionate person they are?
Happy Thanksgiving and happy Hannukah and happy Christmas and happy News Years to you too, Subaruguru (the extent of my poetic ability...).
You are right about one thing, though: enough. What you failed to note, however, was that the discussion had ended before you showed up. Which, of course, makes your statements the ones that were unneeded.
I'm going back to the music now...(fade out: cheers from the politically correct crowd). |
Thanks, Slawney, I laughed out loud! This thread is a hoot! We should have the scientifically-attached (like the medieval, mythologically-attached before them)dashing out from the woodwork any moment now on some crusade to purge the world of all minds that, heavens forbid, see beyond the rubic, the matrix, of their own ideas (but, does heaven forbid such possiblities? Is objectivism bounded by a closed skeptism towards possibilities, or by an unbounded open-ness towards them, and those in ourselves?).
I'm happy for you, really, but let's see if you sell your Statement to Bwhite. Hmmm, now that would produce a real empiric experiment: trial and error is not only discovered by the discovery, but, also, through the discovery of absense... |
Slawney, if you're going to do a little cable survey, I would suggest throwing the AudioNote Kondo KSL spkr wires in the mix. I would be interested in your reactions as they, like the OTC, are thin conductor, bare wire approaches. Steve Klein, the US Distributor, is a stand up guy.
Hmmm, do you all think these guys are cryogenically freezing their cables?
Slawney, I would like to add one thing. I get the feeling that you are only using the OTC between the Phono/headphones (headphone amp, assumably) and/or between CD and headphone amp (w/headphones). Its been my experience that the use of cables in these applications is highly variant. For instance, from my TNT/Graham I run a Hovland phono cable and would never use NBS in a phono application, and especially with a head amp and the limited nature of headphones, or at least reach a conclusion in that context. Many times IC's that are stellar performers between source-to-pre-to-amp (the application I have been referring to)simply do not "carry" source signals well. Also, are you listening to the cables through your regular speakers? I am assuming so, because headphones just don't cut it in spatial qualities, the same spatial qialities that the NBS excels at.
Just curious; bounding the parameters, so to speak... |
14. Commit all of the errors you ascribe to others as you are listing them.
15. Still don't add anything substantive as you commit error no. 14.
16. Hope that no one ever calls you on your lack of substantive contribution, and, if exposed, that you can blame others by listing a list. |
What is C37 lacquer, as opposed to other lacquer? AudioNote Kondo also uses a similar lacquering process on their similarly thin conductor, bare wire term'd speaker cables -a procedure they call "tinning", applied in seven coats - and many of the observations here of the Sakura wire are very similar to my own reactions to the AudioNote stuff. My understanding from AudioNote is that this lacquering process is critical to the sound of the wire relative to issues of wire composition or configuration. Connection? |
Wow, Trelja, that's great stuff. For future reference, gentlemen, THAT'S substantitive. Thank you, I learned something I didn't know. |
Nice post, Slawney. I use a Shun Mook cable jacket on my Hovland phono cable and like it. |
Bwhite: ahh, you've ended up where we started. I have been watching to see if you liked the OTA better than the hideously expensive NBS/KSL I pushed you towards - and had been feeling bad that you could have been just as happy with the OTA (which I haven't heard). Glad you still like the KSL/NBS combo. If you remember, I've also have the Audionote IC from CD to pre, and NBS Pro from pre to amp in this second system and found combo complementary. What happened to your feelings on the KSL spkr wire vs. OTA?
A lot of times a cable will do something that at first sounds great - usually appealing to that part of our minds that listens more analytically when we first sit down. Its much harder, and takes some real time listening, to discern those cables that also help us fall into the music, so to speak. Since we aren't thinking in those deeper listening spaces, its harder to then go back later and think about what was best; trying to think about a time when you weren't thinking is tough! And, takes time for the answer to come to you. That's why you should always live with a product for some time, why its dangerous to buy from a dealer based on short-term exposure, and why these threads are helpful in contacting others who have put in that time and reflection/contemplation on the products they have listened to.
Thank you, bwhite, and all of the others, for putting in the time with the OTA and letting us know about your experiences. |
Ok, Slawney, let us see...
1. I dealt with you in the same way I dealt with BWhite. Given your prior experience with me in personal, one-on-one detailed discusions on the very same cable, namely, NBS Statement, what did you think I meant by "push" in the CONTEXT of the rather playful post directed at BWhite? In other words, given the context of your quite specific personal experience of no "pushing" from me on the very same issue, the context of comeraderie of the post to Bwhite, much as I've had previously with you, the context of BWhite's evident stereo experience, comparable to your own in general terms (leading one to assume, with due credit to BWhite, that he is hardly "push-able"), what misguided probability analysis led you to the conclusion that "push" should be excised from its context for your suddenly literal purposes? If anything, one would tentatively conclude the opposite - especially a writer. Tell me, how did I treat you? And, Bwhite, did I push you in the sense of the negative that Slawney now implies was his justifiable assumption? Hmmm...
2. Tell me, after you have fully read the above discussion between myself and sead last year, what positions do I take which you feel are unsubstantiated or irrational vis-a-vis sead? Specifically, tell me which ones and I will explain them more fully. My position was/is that sead refused to answer my inquiry regarding what was the basis of his negative blanket characterizations of my fully laid out arguments. I can not have a dialogue with someone who answers such an inquiry by name calling or tangential list-making. That you would say I didn't treat sead with the same cognitive rigor and fairness as you claim for yourself in your "scientific reports" is itself, in my opinion, symptomatic of your continued bias vis-a-vis sead. Tell me what you think is unclear in those arguments. If you determine they are not unclear, then what do you think would lead you to say so in the context of sead and myself?
3. On your purported defense of sead, I stand by my statement. I believe the sum of your original post, in its context, is illustrative of my perception.
4. On "Er, cheers", of course I was being cynical. I guess I wonder how you didn't have too much trouble with that context but difficulty with the original one discussed in #1 herein. That said, my cynicism was consequent to your post - which deserved it for the reasons stated and did not, at least, hide its humor-tinged wryness (the "er")behind feigned offers of "diplomacy" - and, evidently, for you, was instructive (YES!!, for the selectively literal, that's a touch, not hateful, of condescension, brushed with an air of wry hope of finality :)).
Really, Slawney, you always seemed like a bright guy with good ears - which is why I approached my Editor at the time numerous times for a job for you writing after you asked if I would - so this could go on ad infinitum with you as sead's foil.
If you want to take up sead's banner in the "discussion" he and I had last year, then I'm game. It would be fun and I know - based on the CONTEXT of our prior relationship - that it would be fair and absent the name-calling, list-making that sead resorted to.
So, I'll let you serve first. ("non-provocatively", so we'll all be sure)...You pick the topic that relates to sound, musical experience and wire et al in those contexts. Otherwise, I think we should let this discussion return to observations on OTA and subjects rel;ated thereto (like my inquiry on the possible relationship of thin gauge wires and similar performance). |
Yes, Slawney, I'll correct you.
1. Where do you get off insinuating that I "personally" got someone to buy cable and now have some kind of vested "personal" interest that they keep them? You'd better read this stuff again because you are thinking too much. I like you so I'll chalk it up to quick fingers on keys and not enough self-reflection. The next time you insinuate that someone "influenced" someone else, the insinuation being that there was something subtlely nefarious in the motivation, you'd better think twice. Frankly, its an off-handed swipe at Bwhite that somehow he can't make his own decisions - which he can.
2. Sead (all the way back in November...) wouldn't honestly engage on a dialogue - failing to offer arguments for his positions while criticizing others' positions and finally resorting to the childishness of calling me names - and I called him out on it. He chose, evidently, to quiet-up and I let it go. What I don't get is your riding to his defense, mistakenly and months later (because, if you look, I haven't said anything to him since then, even ignoring his 4-29-02 swipe).
To wit: anyone who reads Sead's 4-29-02 comment above can readily discern his flippancy and to claim differently is, well...You know what really gets me about this? Inauthentic chimers-in who start off a post with a bunch of statements about how nice everyone is - establishing how nice they are - and then proceed to deride (Sead insinuating that Bwhite is trying to posture himself as an audio "God") and mischaracterize (saying that I "disqualified automatically" OTA - a complete lie) to others detriment and then end it all with a "cheers" (Sead's MO), or some other self-serving smarm thats supposed to make it all sweet again. And now a further mischaracterization from you, Slawney, that Sead did not commit these, um, "errors", and that he's just so-so misunderstood. Maybe Sead is alright in a deal, or over the phone, or shooting the audio bull one-on-one, but so far, he has a penchant of popping into discussions with an inauthentic sweet tone masking an actual derision.
3. No one is stating "conclusions", just opinions, and the thread is just fine. Where you've perceived the circumstance that's its getting out of hand - as in, insinuating that an opinion becomes a "conclusion" when, allegedly, offered to shut someone else up - perhaps has more to do with your desire to defend Sead, assumably, than the tone of this dialogue presently.
4. As much as we would all like to maintain out egalitarian self-delusions, ears are not equal and opinion is not radically subjective; in context, some opinion is more true than others. But dialogue works fine when everyone offers theirs' authentically, as an adult, and is willing to state why and how they arrived at that opinion. I'm soooo tired of hearing on these threads people who evidentally have a strong sense of opinion on the gear they like - which, Slawney, I know you do - to then at some juncture say that all opinions are equal, as if, by offering this observation, they are settling down a class of schoolchildren (and they the lone adult seeing from on high the foibles of others). There is a difference between the democratic notion that all have equal access to voice opinion and the fact that some opinion is better than another - all displines of knowledge depend on it. Yes, I know that opinion in audio is system-dependant, but that does not reduce all opinion into an undifferentiated morase of, er, "equality". Why people who obviously have a strong opinion feel compelled to at some point trot out a position that then claims all opinion is equal is beyond me. It does always seem to happen though when someone is being "diplomatic".
Slawney, in the future, let Sead defend his own "errors"; you get caught up in them when you try. Oh, and the next time you are wondering if, in fact, I "influenced" someone, you have my personal e-mail address. Just ask me.
Er, cheers,
Mark (Asa) |
Slawney, some guy calls me (Bwhite), who I don't even know, and asks me what I'd do if I were him and had his system. I tell him and give hime some options. THIS IS THE SAME THING I DID FOR YOU. I'm guessing you ended up not liking my advice down the road - which is fine - and felt a need to dig me when you saw me talking to Bwhite about the same recommendation. Does this require a less-than-concise diatribe on determinism and freedom, or on the relative differences in cultural worldview, or a dig at me, or a dig at me five months late on behalf of your new hobby-buddy sead? You need to get a life, really. |
Point taken. Petty it is, mea culpa, regardless of the merits. I don't like to appease anonymous pot-shotters -they only do it again later - but at some point, perhaps any point, one should just take the high road. Thank you for reminding me. Who cares anyway, right? Just tougher when it was someone you were nice to. |
Slawney, Slawney, my little grasshopper, you have strayed from the fold, failing to perceive "vision" in default to you reptilian brain stem that wants excitement. Hi Slawney, how you doin'? Seriously though, and without commenting on the price differentials (which are not relative, as some would argue), nor to the sound of the Sakura (which I haven't heard)... What I think is being missed here in a NBS Statement (your series 1, right Slawney?)and Sakura comparison (assumably IC's)is the synergy issue between IC's and spkr cable. NBS IC's are superior IMHO to their spkr cable - and many other speaker cables match well to their IC's sans their spkr cables. I look at NBS as an interjector of a certain nuance in harmonic complexity (deep into the harmonic fabric) and spatial realism (at the shallower levels of listening, in how sound waves move in space; symmetrical and continuous and with proper projection qualities) and at the deepest levels existentially (the deep intuitive grasp that the "event" of musical connection between mind and music is not cut by a soundfield that lacks a intuition of dimension). In the most advanced systems, these are the qualities that one is still after and a component that accomplishes it should not be relegated based on an immediate reaction to "speed', "detail", and the thrill of dynamic swing and contrast that are predomonantly appreciated at less deep levels of listening (which doesn't mean that they aren't important, just that they can get in the way if over-emphasized in relative value). What I have recommended to many people is a subtle mix: NBS Statement IC, usually between a tube pre and tube amp and a "faster" spkr cable that is capable of also translating the essense of the NBS IC attributes. Interestingly, in this application I have also ended at a thin conductor for speaker cables: AudioNote Kondo KSL. If I had all-Sakura electronics, then, of course, all Sakura cabling makes sense. But I dont know many audiophiles, including Slawney, who are at that place, or would stay there.
Slawney, from deep below, the "vision" is calling you through the sensitizing veil of the Matrix (its Halloween, you know)... |
Sead: you didn't "scar me emotionally" thats just your histrionics taking over again. You called me a hipocrite, a psuedo-intellectual, and a bunch of other things I'm not going to bother going back to see, when I just asked you to say why you said what you did. That's a horse's ass to me. Now you say I am/was a "dilletant" in psychology (by the way, its spelled "dilettante"). Well, I've got two master's degrees from the London School of Economics, where I wrote on the psychology of military thinking and the philosophy of war, even being invited to do a Ph.D., in addition to a law degree, and have published on the mind's perception of music, so I think you might be a little off on your assumptions. If you are interested in reading some of my articles on aesthetic theory, let me know. I'm not going to address anything more with you, which before Slawney took it upon himself to pull up something five months over, was where we left it.
Slawney: my post shouldn't have lead you to the position that I was underhandedly "influencing" people, especially given your personal experience with me - regardless of what type of semantical spin you want to stay with as your lone justification. I've been upfront with you, complementary of you, honest with you, tried to get you a position with my magazine at your request, even staying with it months after our sale was over, and you took an underhanded dig at me for some reason I don't yet get. Basically, I didn't let you get away with it and rather than admit you might have gone too far and apologizing you would rather keep arguing about why the word "push" - devoid of all context - allows you to assume something you now know isn't true. You should have never made the insinuation and you were wrong, then and now. As for sead, why are you dragging something up five months old? Just being "diplomatic", right? If you want to now stay out of what is/was between sead and myself, if anything, then you should have thought about that before becoming a five-month-too-late "diplomat".
I'm glad you ended with cable talk. Stick to that.
BWhite: your welcome and thank you. I learn from you too, as I have from Slawney.
On OTA: I was so intrigued because of the design and the fact that, just at that time, I was floored by the bare-wire connected KSL spkr wire. With all of the people here with good ears praising the OTA and it being "only" $600, I thought there might be a way to get away from the hideously expensive with the same or better performance. That was my motivation and when some people started to shy away from the OTA in comparison to the cables I have, I wanted to know why. I also felt better because I don't like leading people (and, "leading" is not a word that lets you accuse me of underhanded-ness..) to waste $ when less would do, wasting the money that I have along the way. Its really quite simple. I have no vested interest in NBS - quite the contrary - as I believe the manufacturer inflates prices and I do not wish to support such action, regardless of the rules of capitalism, such as they are. The problem is they do something that I have not heard elsewhere, something about "magic" in the right system (tubed). With that said, at $600 the OTA represents a wonderful value, notwithstanding that they are designed as an integral 47 labs' system product. The comparative investigation should continue and contrary opinions, validly given, should not be taken personally, as if someone believing that cable X is superior somehow diminishes your idea of yourself. |
