Dave, I assume you’re headed back to the bathroom to read some more of my articles. Ta ta
Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?
What do you guys think?
If transistors came first, and then decades later tubes were invented, would we have any tube amps we would call high end?
Wouldn’t they all fail to reach the height of performance and transparency set by transistor amps?
Best,
E
P.S. I love Conrad Johnson. I'm just wondering how much of our arguments have to do with timing.
If transistors came first, and then decades later tubes were invented, would we have any tube amps we would call high end?
Wouldn’t they all fail to reach the height of performance and transparency set by transistor amps?
Best,
E
P.S. I love Conrad Johnson. I'm just wondering how much of our arguments have to do with timing.
559 responses Add your response
Dave, Thanks for posting one of the more bizarre, snarky and uninformed (notice I didn’t use the word ignorant) articles I have observed lo all these years. Matt obviously has some axe to grind. Who know’s why? Where do all these lonesome people come from? What gets overlooked sometimes, The Intelligent Chip was the most talked about audio tweak in audio history the year it appeared at CES in 2005. |
Anyone else see this? Thought it was interesting and well written: See randi.org/joom/content/view/121/#i7 to refresh your memory of a major silly scam being used to extract cash from na've audio fans. As I've told readers before, I often get involved in trying to establish a correspondence with the scammers, and that sometimes results in protracted exchanges. With that in mind, read the following emails between reader Matt Schaffner and Geoff Kait, the genius behind this whole Machina Dynamica farce. Matt wrote me: I teach music technology at an accredited university in Louisville, Kentucky. When I read your blurb on the inventions at Machina Dynamica, I was stunned at their awesome claims. Knowing full well that they are a total fraud, I've been baiting the company's creator with emails. All of the classic signs of woo'woo are here: no reputable references, no outside testing, devices work by mysteriously harnessing the laws of quantum mechanics, etc. I thought you might be interested in our ongoing email exchange. This man is stealing people's money. Please let me know if I can donate to your cause by helping to expose this man. The email exchange follows. First, Matt approached the Machina Dynamica CEO: Geoff, I teach classes on music technology at an accredited university. I would like to test some of your products and publish materials on them. I am very excited about the possibility of seeing and hearing some of your devices. Is there any way we might discuss this further? A prompt response followed from Geoff Kait: Hello, Matt, thanks for your interest in Machina Dynamica. I respectfully decline to submit any of our products for testing. Persisting, Matt wrote back: Do you have any published materials on the testing and performance of your products? Geoff countered with a desperate alibi: Matt All testing information is proprietary. Performance data is also proprietary. All information that we deem relevant is published on Machina Dynamicas web site. Translated: No. Matt, ever patient, asked: Ok, I understand. I wanted to perform an in-class comparison of your goods with other well known audio products. Additionally, I was going to publish some materials concerning comparisons between highend sound technologies. How can I get information on your data? Have there been any reviews of your products in magazines or online? In a somewhat ominous tone, Machina Dynamica answered: I don't think you realize what you're getting yourself into. There is so much information available on-line you won't have enough time in a year or two to thoroughly examine it all, much less come to conclusions on the effectiveness of these products or how they compare to other products. There was a review of Intelligent Chip by 2 PhDs at 6 Moons in Jan 07: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/photoncannons/photoncannons.html. There was a review of Clever Little Clock in Positive Feedback last year: positive feedback.com/Issue23/clock_nespa.htm. I have a white paper on Brilliant Pebbles at: machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm. I have a paper on Intelligent Chip at: machinadynamica.com/machina64.htm. Review of Intelligent Box by 2 PhDs at 6moons.com/audioreviews/machinadynamica2/ib.html. Despite the mass of data contained in these references, our only interest at the JREF is: does the thing work? Similarly, Matt assured Geoff that he was undeterred: I have students that can filter through much of this information. Also, reading things like this is what I do for a living. I have plenty of time to read, and if I only spend a single year doing research then I'm happy. Any additional material you have would be helpful. Do you have any other websites? Geoff fired back: Matt, my website has many pages; there is navigation at the top of the main page. www.machinadynamica.com Ever gracious, Matt wrote: Thanks, the pages on your site helped. None of the writing seems to describe the mechanisms of your inventions. Do you have the patent number for these devices so that I might see how exactly they work? I am very interested in the Intelligent Box and Card. I'm not seeing exactly what these do, and especially how they might work. I'm curious as to what exactly is changed on a CD to enhance its sound, as a CD contains data in the form of a dye. Do you change the dye somehow? Thanks for all your help! Then this salvo was fired off by Geoff: Patents too expensive, furthermore I dont wish to reveal certain information so I don't go that route. Ironically, much safer not to have patent in these cases. The Intelligent Box/Intelligent Card is the evolution of the Intelligent Chip, which does the same thing as the Box. The box replicates the CD player laser and gets the active material very close to the CD, one thing the Intelligent Chip did not do the Chip was placed on top of the player chassis while the CD played for 2 seconds. But the effects of the Chip and the Box are the same. The explanation of the Box is the same as for the Chip quantum mechanics photon interaction with the CD material. It's all explained in excruciating detail in my paper on the Intelligent Chip. This is just blather, with no science factor at all, only buzz-words and fakery. And, obviously, a patent on such devices would not be too expensive, at all if they worked.. The USPTO [United States Patent and Trademark Office] tends to award patents to just about any devices mentioned to them, whether they actually exist or not, and whether they work at all. However, I find two things here with which I and Matt Schaffner can enthusiastically agree. First, I'm sure, as Geoff Kait wrote, that the effects of the Chip and the Box are the same. The Intelligent Chip does exactly the same thing that the Intelligent Box does exactly nothing. Second, yes, I'm sure that there is excruciating detail in that learned paper. Ah, but as we go to press, Matt reports: Here's the latest from Geoff Kait at Machina Dynamics. Apparently he has now created a CD cleaner using "fake" atoms name brand atoms are so expensive. This is his response to my email: Begin response: And The Box has a dedicated laser in it (so the box simulates the CD player "box" and laser). The advantage of the Intelligent Box is that the active material in the card is inserted into the interior of the Box so the active ingredient is very close to the laser and the CD, which is placed on top of the Intelligent Box when treating it. The top of the Box is clear so the CD is exposed to the photons of the laser and the photons emitted by the card when the laser strikes it. The active ingredient is contained in a thin layer spread out in the card's interior, like a sandwich. The simultaneous interaction of the laser photons and the Card photons with the polycarbonate layer of the CD improves the transparency of the layer so that when the CD is played the CD player laser "reads" the embedded data more accurately. Comments Matt: The active ingredient in the Card as for the Chip is actually artificial atoms! Pretty innovative for an audio product, wouldn't you say? Oh, very Paul Bozeman, Montana U.S.A. |
With the history in time of the two types of amplifiers, there is not only a psychological explanation of how we see it, due to that we may at first think that newer inventions are necessarily better, just because it's newer and built from the previous knowledge up. But there is also a generation gap and conflict, and then there is the power of marketing, which is same as brainwashing actually. The tubes got put aside after a few years of transistor commercialization and marketing, and were going to be forgotten if it weren't for our most fanatical and extremely perfectionist audiophile friends from Japan. They thought there was something with the sound of tubes that SS couldn't achieve, and they started reviving it. And they were the main producers of transistor amps at the time!! I am a user of both types of these beloved tools. I tend to favor transistors because tubes tend to lack power generally speaking, and are inconvenient to use. I am a science guy, but I am sound enough to know that science and measurements are not ultimate in explaining why I prefer this thing over this other one. So ultimately, the truth of the pudding is in the eating, isn't it always so? Your mouth and taste buds tell you so, period. Why can't this be the same for amps? It's not the distortion or any other measurements that will tell you that you prefer this one or the other, it's your ears, very simply and very truly. Just listen to proper transistor and then proper tube, and don't let your self conditioning work for your ears. Music is supposed to talk to your emotions if not higher to your soul!! I have more transistor amps than tube ones, and one transistor I have is really very expensive stuff, which I use daily. But, to date, I still have to hear a transistor amp that beats a well built and implemented GM70 or 300B or 211 or 845 or... SET amp. It touches your heart with lifelike vibrations which a good transistor can do as well, but to a lesser extent. A musician plays a partition perfectly as per the writing, another one plays the same one... and you get touched differently. Now you may like both too!! Our ears are the final, ultimate and only judge. Who cares which amplifier type is doing it?? unless you are an adept of something else that's guiding your mind.. |
I have enough scientific background and knowledge regarding most of what Geoffkait uses to base his theories on, and I can say most assuredly, that GK has either flipped his lid, or....he has gone full in on capitalizing off of the paranoia and OCD commonly found in many audiophiles! WOW....just WOW 😮 |
He may just be playing a fool. It would be hard to make it past high school with behavior, logic, knowledge, and data processing ability that he presents to us. I think his references point towards him being way over teenage years. I used to show some of the posts on these threads to my friends and acquaintances. Not this thread, though. This one does not have as much technology and physics involved. It has been more to show what is out there than to make them laugh. I would say that most of the time they just shook their heads in disbelief. AT the same time, on one thread another poster showed my post to someone he implied was an expert in given field (something about respiratory mechanics and physiology, if I remember it well) and they supposedly had a good laugh. Well, it did puzzle me but what the heck. It is only fair that they found me ridiculous although I am still awaiting the answer where I was incorrect. Who knows, maybe geoffkait is on the path to something with his teleportation tweak. Last time I was really thinking about it was during a Buggs Bunny movie. Diseintegrator A1 and then Integrator A1, or something like that. You disappear and then reappear elsewhere. Convenient idea. Except that convenience is, at least on this particular thread, not a welcome trait. |
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kosst_amojan, "God only knows what Kaity is capable of."I will be brave. So far, he has not shown much he is capable of. Although, if teleportation tweak works, I can see a potential for a lucrative career. Unless Air France finds out about it first. Even magic pebbles. Who has not tried to sell that story to some unsuspecting listener at the desperate evening moment? So, I will give him benefit of the doubt that he is trying. |
I’m kind of late in the convo here, but ... the original “experiment” by Mr Walker was more of a sham, not a true experiment that controls for all/most variables as we do it in the real world. He found 2 different amps, ONE SS and ONE tube, but ran them through the SAME speakers. The speakers are the last units in the sonic chain to impart sonic influence on the final sound. 1. Change the speakers and I will not get the same sound from the 2 different amps most of the time. Do this test with 100 different speakers, and IMO over 50 of the tests will reveal different sounds even with the same SS/tube amps. Synergy, remember? Because different speakers have different properties and sonic signatures. e.g., # of cones and drivers, size and type of drivers, 4 Ohm vs 8 ohm , vs 16 ohm, etc |
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Scientists wonder why we haven’t detected any other intelligent civilization in the universe...based on how we communicate on this site, perhaps all emerging intelligent beings wind up spiraling down and destroying themselves before they can make contact with another civilization. Just seems to be a side effect of overly large brains 🧠. Except for a few that have undersized craniums, 🤡whom I won’t mention 🤡, that should do just fine! |
glupson "...a dyed in the wool naysayer slash pseudo skeptic." It is not nice that wool-clad naysayers slash pseudo skeptics. This is just a non-sense hobby. No need for violence of that magnitude. I was fairly certain you’d get the wool reference since you’ve obviously been following the wrong, you know... 🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑 |