Too good a post to waste


On a thread that is a running example of the textual equivalent of nonstop cat videos. So here it is again.


I could understand the cables are snake-oil doubters and take them seriously- in 1980. Back then there was no internet, Stereo Review was pretty much it, and Julian Hirsch was the Oracle of all things audio. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch said if it measures the same it sounds the same. Wire is wire, and that was that. 

Even then though J. Gordon Holt had already started the movement that was to become Stereophile. JGH took the opposing view that our listening experience is what counts. Its nice if you can measure it but if you can’t that’s your problem not ours. 

Stereo Review and the measurers owned the market back then. The market gave us amplifier wars, as manufacturers competed for ever more power with ever lower distortion. For years this went on, until one day "measures great sounds bad" became a thing.

Could be some here besides me lived through and remember this. If you did, and if you were reading JGH back then, I tip my hat to you, sir! I fell prey to Hirsch and his siren song that you can have it all for cheap and don’t really have to learn to listen. Talk about snake-oil! A lot of us bought into it. Sorry to say.

But anyway like I was saying it was easy to believe the lie back then because it was so prevalent and also because what wire there was that sounded better didn’t really sound a whole lot better.

Now though even budget wire sounds so much better than what comes off a reel you’d have to be deaf not to notice. Really good wires sound so good you’d notice even if you ARE deaf! No kidding. My aunt Bessie was deaf as a stone but she could FEEL the sound at a high enough volume, knew it was music. The dynamic punch of my CTS cables is so much greater than ordinary 14 ga wire I would bet my deaf from birth aunt Bessie could "hear" the difference. Certain so-called audiophiles here, I'm not so sure.

Oh and not done beating the dead horse quite yet, according to my calendar its 2020, a solid 40 years past 1980. Stereo Review is dead and buried. Stereophile lives on. A whole multi-billion dollar industry built on wire not being wire thrives. Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 
128x128millercarbon
No data, very easily collected to support your hypothesis Mr. Pebbles.  Very much noted yet again. Your silence is louder than any hypothesis you may preach.
It is you, Mr. Pseudo Science, who persists on repeating the same jibber jabber. Everything is topsy turvy. Me topsy, you turvy. 🤗
Sorry Mr. Pebbles, but what you have stated is an out and out lie. That is right. You are lying.  This is a really easy test, as many PC based readers will give you the C1 and C2 and uncorrectable C2 error rate. If there are no uncorrected C2 errors, then all you blathering and rambling is meaningless. Typical manufactured CDs have only a couple uncorrectable C2 errors on the CD, and it takes larger scratches to create more.

All your mumblings about scattered light, wobble, is just meaningless deflection in the face of real data, i.e. uncorrectable C2 errors. You claim to be a scientist, or physicist or something. Show us your data.
Just to clarify, not all car CD players have buffers to prevent skipping. They still work just fine.
Just to clarify for those who or either slow or pretending to be slow buffering the data doesn’t prevent all errors any more than Reed Solomon error codes do. When the data is buffered it still contains the errors that occur right when the laser reads the data. Either the industry is unaware of these issues with CD players, or they chose to ignore them. Take your pick. If you don’t remember these conversations keep a log, eat more fish. 
The ESP (Extended Skip Protection) if I remember correctly was about a $8-10 solution at OEM quantities when it first came out. We spent about $25 but had a lot more budget to play with and did some other things in a low end DSP.
My experience is that you do not need a buffer in the car CD player, at least from late 1990s.

At the same time, that discussion is, in practice, a little outdated. SD cards, USB jump drives, etc, have made car CD players all but obsolete. And they sound just fine.

"... if they can build a CD player good enough to isolate a car, rather inexpensively,"
I suspect that whole "upgraded" mechanism/isolation cost pennies to produce. Maybe it was not even that complicated. I do not know either of those for a fact. However, whole 6-CD changer was $300. Not to mention that I bought it in the dealership so aftermarket would have been even less. Adjusting for inflation, it would be what? $500 today? Without taking into consideration that prices of such electronics did fall. It really makes you wonder about expensive slabs of wood sold as fancy isolation platforms.
They did implement buffers in expensive CD players a long time ago. Oh my did you not know this? All this time you were telling people about problems that didn’t exist at least in this community. Oh my my my ... egg on the face. Ouch. Before I got bored of electronics in the early 90's I even worked on one. It wasn't even by today's standards very high end. tsk tsk, so out of date with your information.

However, to Glupson's point, if they can build a CD player good enough to isolate a car, rather inexpensively, makes one wonder about all the claims sellers of tweaks make huh?
geoffkait,

You are not following. I am not commenting on sound quality of car CD players, which is very good indeed, but on your erroneous statement ridiculing me...

"Shock in cars is ameliorated by buffering the data, everybody and his brother knows that. "
It seems that everybody but your brother's brother knows it is far from always being true.
You’re not following, glubson. Not a wise move on your part, as usual. If buffering solved the sound quality issues with home audio I have been talking about lo these many months they would have implemented buffers in expensive CD players a long time ago. Sure it sounds OK to you, you don’t know the difference.
"Shock in cars is ameliorated by buffering the data, everybody and his brother knows that. "
Ok, guys. I do not know much about intricacies of CD reproduction, but have had a car and a CD player.

Some car CD players were advertised as having ESP or some sort of it. A buffer of sorts. When same brand had different models, those higher ones were advertised as having an advantage because of ESP.

Relatively early, I tried comparing such models and those without ESP did skip more over proper potholes.

At some point, I was looking for a CD player for a car and was to skip a certain model because it did not have ESP. Salesperson said I should have not been worried as isolation, or whatever, was improved enough in then-newer models that I would not notice the difference between ESP and non-ESP. He was right. I managed to make that particular CD player skip on purpose. One bump, a proper one, and not a series of them as would be needed for ESP. Without that deliberate insult, the thing skips once a decade, I think. Which is quite a feat.

No, geoffkait, you are not right and if you followed my advice and have known when to stop you would have not assumed I wished I had shut my mouth.
Are you on something? Your memory is shot. You’re also a big fat liar. Numerous industry papers out there? That is so funny. 😂 Are you high on something? 
Nope, I knew from reading exactly what you have said, and hence I knew, based on your ego, that if I posted the right thing, you would say exactly what I wanted you to say.

geoffkait 23,324 posts
07-07-2020 5:17pm

I never said any such thing, this is just another case of Robberrttddidd forgetting who said what and what thread he’s on.


Sorry Pebbles, but it does, because there are numerous industry papers out there that show that first and second level error correction will fix every single data error on almost every CD, and if you read the data well enough to fix the errors, and you can buffer the data (really inexpensively), to fix the jitter, then you have no argument left. Only those blinded by scattered light that does will try to ingore that fact. Call me all the names you want, ad-hom glupson to the cows come home, and kick and scream, but YOU, yes you just debunked yourself.

geoffkait23,325 posts07-07-2020 5:24pmYou still don’t get - better go back and find the original discussion. Buffering doesn’t eliminate the problems with scattered laser light or vibration, only shock. Stay in school!

You still don’t get - better go back and find the original discussion.youre putting words in my mouth I didn’t say.  Buffering doesn’t eliminate the problems with scattered laser light or vibration, only shock. Stay in school! Also eat more fish, your memory is shot.
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I never said any such thing, this is just another case of Robberrttddidd forgetting who said what and what thread he’s on. Shock in cars is ameliorated by buffering the data, everybody and his brother knows that. Now robberrttddidd is stumped, he’s trying to remember the conversation. I can see those little wheels spinning around. Glubson is thinking, gee, maybe I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth so fast. 
"I understand he is still in denial that CD players can work perfectly in a car, without any noticeable issue, on rough roads, and have been doing so, at low cost, since the early 90s. What quantum magic is this?"
That is a good question. I am still amazed how well CD players work in cars. Even without ESP, they barely ever skip. Close to never.
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Intro to main section of Zen and the Art of Debunkery (yes, I know what you’re thinking, gentle readers, OMG it sounds just like he’s describing robberrttddidd, robberrttccann, whatever his name is) 😀

What is “debunkery?” Essentially it is the attempt to debunk (invalidate) new fields of discovery by substituting scientistic rhetoric for scientific inquiry.

While informed skepticism is an integral part of the scientific method, professional debunkers — often called “kneejerk skeptics” — tend to be skeptics in name only, and to speak with little or no authority on the subject matter of which they are so passionately skeptical. At best, debunkers will occasionally expose other people’s errors; but for the most part they purvey their own brand of pseudoscience, fall prey to their own superstition and gullibility, and contribute little to the actual advancement of knowledge. As such, they well and truly represent the Right Wing of science.

To throw this reprobate behavior into bold — if somewhat comic — relief, I have composed a useful “how-to” guide for aspiring debunkers. This manual includes special sections devoted to debunking extraterrestrial intelligence, alternative healing methods, astrology and “free energy.” I spotlight these fields not because I necessarily support all related claims, but because they are among the most aggressively and thoughtlessly debunked subjects in the whole of modern history.

I’m glad you get off on Zen and the Art of Debunkery. I figured it would trigger you. After all, it’s about people like you, pseudo scientists. 🤗 More coming soon, get ready, robberrttddidd, robberrttccann, whoever...

You can’t debunk something that’s not bunk. - old audiophile axiom
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The best book on stupidity ever written is by an italian economist, Carlo Cipolla, and it is a free book in the web...

Nothing is more spot on....


WIKIPEDIA:

These are Cipolla’s five fundamental laws of stupidity:

  1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
  2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

I will add that the heart of the matter is Rule 3.... To meditate...With a mirror in hand.... :)
After that ,except of yourself, try to identify someone very well known or not, that is stupid most of the times and not only in passing like you and me...For so doing replace the mirror with a TV set....

Very interesting exercise, first with a mirror, and then with a TV set.... :)

For sure we can use any thread here instead of a TV set....


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millercarbon,

"Notice he doesn't deny any of it.
No system.
No degree.
No knowledge.
MachinaDynamica.
The one person who claims to have met him at a show said he enjoys making fun of audiophiles because.... they love audio.

If you can find one constructive comment in 23k posts, please provide a link.
And still can't find even one constructive comment in any of his 23k posts.

Interesting."



Yes, but it's still very early days. 

Magic pebbles and teleportation tweaks obviously need more careful testing and evaluation, don't they?

What about these glowing testimonials from the machinadynamica website? :


[I purchased a 6-bottle suite of Machina Dynamica's Brilliant Pebbles that gave quite audible improvements to my tubed amp & DAC and CD transport in a nearfield listening setup. More clarity, detail, texture, deep bass pitch definition and a lot less digital glare." Sept 2005]


[I cannot listen to my system any more without the pebbles." - Hans-Peter, Switzerland, 2004]


[NEW!! "Geoff, I have the better part of an hour determining the efficacy of the Teleportation Tweak, may I claim it has exceeded all my expectations? This from a violin instructor. My initial evaluation of the Teleportation Tweak is that any bass boom that had existed is totally gone. I must admit this is the best tweak I have ever attempted." - Singapore, June 2011 (distance 9660 miles or 15500 kilometers)]

[NEW!! "How in the world does this work, but I have clearer sound and better imaging. You have to try it to believe it!!!!!" - April 2010]

[NEW!! "The Machina Dynamica Teleportation Tweak works! All I can say is that it increased detail, definition and focus, and increased depth and imaging in the soundstage."]

["Another logic defying tweak from Geoff. In fact, he has outdone himself with this recent invention. The man is truly gifted...a genius who is also humble! I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Geoff. " - December 2007]

This all counts for something, doesn't it?
What does this all tell us?
"There's no-one left alive - must be draw."
So the Blackcap Barons toss a coin to settle the score.
Back to Stereo Review. I subscribed to it for a year or two, until I noticed that every review of a questionable component (including some serious lemons) ended with  (the sound/performance/etc).... 'was among the best we have heard in its class'. You had to stop and wonder what that meant.

After I stopped my subscription, I kept getting free copies for the next 6 months, showing they cared more about the size of their subscriber base than on the amount (20 cents or so) I was paying them per issue.
Geoffkait,

Johnny Cochran .. really? ’If the glove doesn’t fit...’
and you know Neil A misspoke and said ’a small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind’?


Who do I consult to clarify that? almarg? millercarbon? Choices, choices...
Try a crystal ball, as likely to get an answer you like.
Or the old standby, the 8 ball.
Three more notoriously bad sounding cables I cannot imagine. 😬 Well, the Polk Was pretty terrible, too. 
Thanks, Grant ( @tvad ). You are correct on all counts. And yes, I am delinquent in updating my system description thread. There have also been a few relatively minor changes in the past year or so (mainly due to problems which have arisen with the vintage tuner and cassette deck), but the major one is the amplifier change.

And thanks as well to some of the others who have posted recently. You know who you are.

Again, though, as I said earlier:

... this thread is not about me or my system. My initial lengthy post which precipitated much of the recent argument provided technical explanations supportive of the belief that cables can sound different depending on the application in which they are used. That belief being widely (and IMO correctly) held by many audiophiles.

Subsequent responses insulting my system constitute "argumentum ad hominem."

Best,
-- Al

i have some vampire, and Fulton and even the first Monster in my vintage system, which i would put up as sonically satisfying...

LONG live Al !!!!
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my super deluxe Crate and Barrel lamp came with 6’ of cord, and included the new four charm quark particle....

uberwaltz,


"First you have to define lamp cord.
Then what gauge, colour, blahblah"

Are you telling me that all the lamp cords are not the same, but as speaker cables they are equally bad?

Who do I consult to clarify that? almarg? millercarbon? Choices, choices...



Tomic.
Yes I had noticed his ego is writing checks his abilities cannot cash.
Glupson

First you have to define lamp cord.
Then what gauge, colour, blahblah.

Becomes nearly as tedious as Audiophool cables......
There's gotta be SOME value in my two cents worth...
Oh for sure... About 1 cents worth....
😂😂
Uber you know the answer, no bigger ego exists save that of his hero Dumpsterfire.
The only thing of value I’ve read on this thread so far came from.....drum roll....Almarg. 
Because people hang themselves with lamp cord ....

Never with an audio cable....
It does make sense. Audio cables are often not flexible enough.
Because people hang themselves with lamp cord ....

Never with an audio cable....

:)

Bad joke sorry......

:)

Does anyone know why lamp cord is universally considered bad?


Wouldn’t there be an application in which it may be better suited than some other cable? What makes it universally bad for every audio application? Are all lamp cords in the world exactly the same?

Miller
I know Al is more than capable of speaking up for and defending himself on here although my guess  is that he is probably done with your banality but.....
WTF is wrong with you?

This from a guy who has the arrogance to name system parts after himself, I mean seriously... Miller Solid Core Door???

I guess I have to post again as you willfully ignored these parts of Als system.

    • Vampire Wire Speaker Cable
    • Signal Cable Digital Reference Power Cords
Now yes he does also state stock power cords but you know I have some of those too, like on my Nak cassette deck where it is a captive power cord, did you ever think along those lines at all?
Actually did you ever think before you decided to deride a member who has been of great service on technical questions to MANY members here over the years?

Just sad........

millercarbon,

If you could read with comprehension, you would ask me to give you writing lessons. If I thought you could learn, I would even consider agreeing to it. However, two negatives would not make one positive so......no writing lessons for you.