Demagnetising LP's & cd's

Richard,

I have an abiding hatred of pseudo-science. Furthermore, I think anyone who just blindly accepts products based upon pseudo-science or associated charlatanry is intellectually lazy if not intellectually bankrupt. So, yes, I sneer.

It is for this reason I always ask for EVIDENCE. Not opinion, especially not opinions based upon sighted evaluations, and double especially not from opinions based upon sighted evaluations from people who have either spent a lot of money on the thing being evaluated (punters), or from people who have invested a lot of emotional and intellectual capital in the thing being evaluated (designers).

That is why valid investigations are subject to objective peer review.

Basically, what I am saying is that anyone making a claim which cannot be backed up with rational argument and physical evidence is merely expressing an opinion. And opinions are not and never will be data.

Now you take the exact opposite stance, & that's fine.

But don't ever expect me or others like me to give you or others like you a free ride when what you are espousing, at an intellectual level, eats at the very heart of rational thought.

Chris

 

Richard

I'm thinking about offering a group of members the possibility to come here listen to what happens here, test me with a blind test and to have other hopefully nice hours of listening to music.

I must admit, that I'm more into listening to music when I have guests. Rarely we talk about Hifi and when so, only for a few minutes (sometimes more, not longer than 10% of the time).
Nevertheless I would invite people for the purpose of this blind test and also sponser half of your flight to Zurich, hoping you get a reasonably cheap one. All expenses in Switzerland are on my charge (B&B, food, transfer airport).
More than 4 guests would be quite crowdy in my listening room.

If this offer is interesting for a group of ZG members, I would start practising more BT so the trip and test wouldn't be "a waist of time".

 

Perhaps we are both too far up our own backsides for our own good

But please just give a little benefit for doubt, as every idea and concept that ever existed was "imagined" before it was proved. But there again I think all proof is a form of imagination as it just keeps getting rewritten, or surpassed.

 

Well Chris

persons who react so emotionally like you (and get so personal) cannot be rational / objective on that subject. Point.
You're fooling not only yourself but everybody else on the boards.

 

What a generous offer, have you got any good beaches near you though there are the lakes and La Scala is not that far away by train.

Can I bring my wife

Anyway it would be a bloody site cheaper to post me the demag thingy for a week.

 

Titian, this is a very generous offer and as someone (one of many) who has heard your system I sincerely hope that it's taken up quickly. I can honestly say that I've not heard a more enjoyable system. Some day I hope to pay another visit.

 

Richard, I must take my hat off to you.. You've single-handedly resurrected this place, into a highly vibrant fora..
Not sure it's got anything to do with hifi anymore...

 

Hi, Titian,

The power of my approach is that it essentially takes emotion out of the evaluation process.

Once a piece of kit is evaluated in a rational way (for me this always involves blind testing), I can crawl out from under my scientist tent & just get on down & boogie to the music.

And in the final analysis, it is music, not hi fi that is my true passion. Like you, I have a largeish collection (10000+CDs & 1100 LPs). That lot is worth considerably more than my hi fi, and IMHO, that is the way it should be.

Chris

 

And I hope that one day the force of this passion for music will make us good friends even if in some points we certainly disagree.

 

I understand the desire to evaluate things in a rational manner, but designing a test that removes emotion out of something that is created to help better elicit an emotional response in the listener seems fundamentally wrong to me.

A large part of my evaluation process is existentialist in approach. If two products perform tolerably and similarly well from a rational basis - which most products pass muster - and both are suitably capable at differentiating between the mastering of three randomly-selected albums - which thins the pack somewhat - the rest of the listening test must determine your emotional response to the music playing. This is not a short-term evaluation, because your emotional response to the music playing is tempered by your emotional response to life events around you at any given moment. Nevertheless, if I play Beethoven on one system and it sounds like Beethoven, and on the other it consistently reminds me why I should strive to be a better human being (as well as sounding like Beethoven), then the second device is ultimately a better at reproducing more of the recording.

Of course, such things are impossible to scale accurately ("this product averaged out at 4.5 Beethovens per cubic minute") because such qualia are internal, but that only demonstrates the limitations of a reductionist approach to a subjective topic.

 

Blind tests in audio say something scientifically only when they are passed.
A failled blind test tells you only that the listener didn't hear a difference. The blind test doesn't give any scientific explanation why the listener didn't hear any differences.
So any explanation is a speculation based very often on personal believe.

 

What a bloody good post

 

Just a shot in the dark here, but perhaps it's because there was no difference to hear?

 

I agree Titian, a blind test cannot explain a perceived difference. It can only establish if, using only your ears, and with no other sensory cues, a percievable difference exists.

I use a blind test purely to ascertain if, using my kit, I can tell A from B with a certain amount of reliability. I then decide which of A or B I prefer.

Pure & simple. If I can tell a difference, I will then go on to try & account for it.

And, although I have not been the subject of a vast number of blind tests, when I have perceived a difference, there has always been a reason for the difference.

Chris

 

Of course. I might subjectly add "most probably".

I don't really agree with this. It is only a supposition that no other sensory cues are involved.
Fact is that the mind continues to work during a test and that has impact on how a person percepts sounds and takes the decision A, B or X.
You cannot exclude that during the test the tester's mind for one reason or the other ignores eventual differences which he wouldn't in another situation.

But yes blind tests will certainly tell someone that "huge differences" are not that huge and many times become very small...

One point I notice in doing blind tests is the fact of "converting" the emotional feeling of hearing a difference into the rational fact of detecting exactly where the difference is (which sound characteristic is changed, when and where). So often during this process I think it is here but actually when analysing it much longer (after x tests), I realize the difference is somewhere else. Sometimes the intensive search exactly where the difference is just makes the mind to ignore things and make you hear other things that aren't there.

 

I can pretty much guarantee that asked to listen to 2 identical samples of the same song off the same equipment in the same room at the same volume, I would hear differences between them. In a blind test this would be Partly due to my mind at work , but mostly because I was focussing on different aspects within the music. The best that would happen is I would classify them as a close call.

Happens all the time when I play a record

 

I could not agree more, fnuckle.

I don't often replace my kit. When I do, I will first check out the specs, just to make sure there are no gross incompatibilites with my existing kit. I then audition the candidates. Basically, the kit which makes me forget about the hifi & get into the music quickest is usually the one I go for.

I reserve the full objectivist thing for things I suspect might be contaminated by the foo fairy, to be honest.

Chris

 

UKdp, yup i'm with you there.

I guess we just don't have those magic ears that allow us to listen to the same track over and over again and hear only the exact same parts as the previous time. It's like watching a film for the second time, you always notice new stuff. That's how the brain works, zooming in on one area to the detriment of others.

We have limited processing power and we have to spread it around to build up a picture, be that visual or aural.

If a new bit of kit or tweak isn't recognisable almost instantly then the difference, for me, is frankly to small to be arsed about.