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 Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 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
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? 
"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.
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.
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.
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?