Why do you visit audio forums?

All we need to do is expose bullshit for what it is, it had nothing to do with subjectivism, that was brainwashing, it worked because over half the industry was duped by it. I was mouthing off against it in the 1980's let alone 2010, but then I was a lone voice looked on as a crank, BUT when I got people just to listen without the whining bullshit in the background then they heard, but the Linn / Naim dealers deliberately didn't stock product that did that or if they did then they rigged the dems, so the poor punter stood no chance. No amount of blind testing or showing specs would have solved that particular problem, because you were given no choice or a rigged choice.

If REAL subjectivism had been applied with a decent selection of product in the comparison process then it would have worked, as it does now in Bake-Offs and Bake-Off Shows.

 

And remember all that was based on the blatant rip-off of a mans work who drunk himself to death because of it. A cheap turntable that aquired massive profit margins to feed the slurp of the retailers, the magazines, the reviewers, and the victims were thousands of willing sheep who knew no different, and you still find some of them populating the likes of PFM with their daft brainwashed bullshit. And you even get people still trying to feed off it by producing kite shaped bits of metal for £1200

And the rest of the world, especially Japan, looked on and laughed at us.

 

Simon,

Forget the football bit and where do I place my order?;-)

Please elaborate on the matter of ground potential. I've just discovered my old preference of wall outlet>amp, preamp, source reversed itself after fifteen years due to tightening some loose outlet screws like never before.

regards,

dave

 

Chris, all well and good but the differences I hear are consistent and repeatable over decades (I change hifi equipment at the speed of continental drift. )

As I've said before, whether my audio observations are real or a delusion, they are my reality which I must live with. I cannot nor do I wish to make them go away. They bring me pleasure and cost no money. In the case of interconnects for example, I've always found the free ones that come with kit sound better than multi-kilo buck aftermarket cables. Regardless, even if all the differences I've heard disappeared in blind tests, all that matters to me as a music listener is what happens when you connect the kit normally and play music.

It's not the end of the world that I'm not a scientist. I lead a very happy life despite the handicap.

regards,

dave

 

JC,

It does tie the room together. The horny speakers look nice, too.

Are they a homebrew effort or a commercial offering?

Joe

P.S. I've not heard many horn-loaded speakers  a few heritage Klipsch here and there, some Altecs and GRFs (obviously)  and all have been coloured, but what has always impressed me is the sense of scale and unsquashed dynamics.

Colouration I can get used to. Squished dynamics? Not so much.

 

Uh-oh.



Can I keep the small child? Well behaved, usually quiet, likes Star Trek. Pretty much the perfect kid to be honest.

Joe

 

Dave, there could be some mileage in considering the placement of power cables in a multiway strip the same way that you might look at the relative positions of components that return to ground in a circuit. Typically, though Richard may disagree with his vast experience, you would have the component that handles the smallest signal closest to point of lowest ground potential.

As an example there are audible benefits to connecting the ground legs of the signal decoupling cap in the naim 321 cards right back to the ground point at the far end of the power supply boards, rather than the ground plane on the 321 pcb. It's probably the single component that most effects the sound of this circuit and tying it to the very lowest point of ground potential pays dividends. The difference in noise on the ground plane at these two points is tiny, beyond the ability of my old scope to measure, but I've seen the scope shots for it and believe what they shows corresponds to what i hear.

So with that in mind, and thinking that some components sink more crap to ground than others, it might be worth trying to shuffle them in the strip based on the size of the signal they deal with. In reality it isn't the low signal that counts per-se, rather the fact that it is likely to be that it will follow that the difference between signal and ground potential is also smallest in the low signal components.

The idea is that the component closest to the wall socket has the cleanest path.

Now this might be an extrapolation too far in reality, i'm prepared to accept that entirely...

 

Hi Joe

Those are the prototype speakers that eventually developed into this -

the living voice olympian

http://www.6moons.com/industryfeatures/livingvoice2/olympian.html

these (and kevins other prototypes) set the bar exceptionally high for what can be achieved with horn speakers, and I feel I am ''chipping away at the ice'' rather than achieving it myself yet.

Part of this is due to not having a victorian mill sized room (and no neighbours) to build six foot square horn loaded subwoofers... but I digress...


yes a lovely rug

 

Richard,

Can't you see the blatant hypocrisy of your argument?

The Linn "no digital watch in the dem room" crap is absolutely no different from your "no metal fasteners in the case" crap. Both make absolutely zero audible difference.

Yet both you and Linn stoutly maintain that they do, maybe for different reasons, but both of you are advancing claims that can easily be demonstrated to be arrant nonsense.

And you have utterly and totally misread my views if you say I want to take us back to the days when the only arbiter of choice was the numbers. I have never, ever put forward that view. Read my posts.

Use the numbers to weed out the crap. Then listen, preferably over an extended period. That is and has always been my position.

I only ever post on the subject when people with vested intersts like you start posting audiophool BS & foo based flim flam as if it was hard and fast data. It is not. It is your opinion only. You cannot prove in any way that your claims are valid.

Whichever way you cut it, Richard, you are selling the emperor's new clothes.

Chris

 

So where am I selling the screw thing as a concept, nowhere. I did an interview with a local Hi-Fi mag in 1992 (I think) while I was visiting my Taiwanese distributor, it was translated and sent to me by them. If the whole interview is read it will put it in context, with lots of other things in case design to do with electrical connections and earths between case panels, so you are using it out of context, but it suites your dissing needs to do so.

The interview wouldn't even have been public apart from I gave a copy to one of my customers who moved to NZ and tried to set up hi-fi distribution there but there wasn't the business. By this time it was 2000 and I had decided to shelf the company until I could deal direct, so he asked if he could create an archive website for nva to which I agreed. Five years later he had moved to Perth in Australia and died of cancer so I got the website copied and put it up on the same server as my Tai-Chi website so that the thing wasn't lost, as much as for a tribute to him. It is not a selling website, it isn't even current information, it is archive information about the company pre 2000. There is not a current website, but at some stage there must be one and I doubt the interview will be in it.

I went through a whole process of case design and listening back in the late 80's about the same time DNM were doing it and we came to similar conclusions, though he got around it by using some sort of polymer screws, I went for gluing.

Anyway this post is not for you as you have a closed mind, you seem incapable of lateral thought so nothing will be accepted and you will just continue to look for things to satisfy your predudices and excuses to continue your dissing.

 

So I will ask the same question you ducked a few posts ago. If a customer prefers the sound of one of the products you think are crap because the numbers are not good enough should he buy the product he prefers or buy the one with your better numbers?

 

Oh yes. And there's more:

Have I got my tt drive belt on inside-out or upside-down?

Does the lettering on my speaker cables read from the amp to the speakers? Cables are directional you know. It's all in the crystalline structure.

I need to remove my Ittok arm rest from the arm board as that's cocking up the tunefulness too.

And any cartridge that doesn't have flying leads out the back won't sound as good as one that does.

Anti-skate. That needs to be set by a spring mechanism due to the dynamic forces involved. Any arm that relies on a weight hanging by a thread has got to be crude and unworthy of consideration.

And those turntables used by DJ's and radio stations. They're crap because they're designed for fast start-up times which compromises the sound. A nice slow start up time is what you want.

 

How you expose the bullshit is what matters.

Shouting a contrary position doesn't really cut it IMO.
Ok you are putting an alternative view to the listener in doing so but you are not actually demonstrating that bull is bull.

Go back to the Linn example.
You enter the demo room and there to the side are the decks to be auditioned, including the Linn. You spend the next hour listening to music on the two decks but all the usual biases of the day are in evidence. You get the body language changes, the running commentary on what the decks are doing, you've got a preamble telling you what to listen for (PRaT) and in all probability you've got their choice of music, so Ben Sidran of George Benson most likely.
Oh and of course you can see both decks, so all that glowing praise about the Linn being the greatest TT in the world that you've read in the press, well that fine machine in sitting right there in front of you.

Many of us have been there and will recognise the above situation.
It was clever and it worked - worked brilliantly.

There were many voices of dissent as you rightly say but it was essentially a battle of the arguments.

The power to influence the result in my example could be swept away with two extremely basic and simple steps.

- The person conducting the dem stays shtum, other than speaking to facilitate the dem at a basic level.

- The TTs are kept out of sight of the listener.

That's it - simple and I cannot possibly see how any can argue that this wouldn't produce a more valid outcome.
What held true for for those days holds true for today.

 

No Richard still doesn't get it. His eyes have to be looking at the gear for his subjective opinion to work. Why because only by looking at it can his customers know to choose his gear.

it's that simple.

To be honest Rob i think you and I might be more pure subjectivist than Richard, as we'd prefer to let our ears, unencumbered by the baggage that sight of the product will bring into play.

 

I agree to the first one but the second one is an unnecessary complication. I am not against blind tests per se, but for some people (IMO most) it messes up their ability to choose it takes down some of your perception, now I know you don't agree, but for beginners blind tests just lead to no differences or only gross difference, only when you get used to the process, the environment, does your full perception come back on line. That is why the no difference crowd push them so hard.

 

Double blind test

Those opposed to double blind testing. Wouldn't be because you'd already bought some expensive power cable/whatever and are now embarrassed you can't tell when it's in or out when testing blind?

 

How can removing irrelevant stimuli militate against someone deciding what musical presentation they prefer? How does seeing what equipment is producing the music improve appreciation?

Perhaps "beginners" are so ignorant of hi-fi politics that their discernment is the purest?

 

I've got a closed mind! Jesus, that is rich coming from you!


Nowhere in my post did I say that you used the "no metal screws" bit as a selling point. I stated that the "no screws thing" and the no digital watches in the listening room made differences in sound quality of equal magnitude, ie zilch.

You were having a go at Linn for making ludicrous claims. I was merely pointing out that, in that respect, you and they are tarred with the same brush.

But that is hardly suprising, you are both flogging hi fi kit, & with very few exceptions, hyperbole & bullshit go with that particular territory.

Chris


Chris

 

I think it's possible that some people are better than others when it comes to hearing the relative merits of different pieces of hi-fi in sighted bake-offs than others.

For example, I've attended 2 sighted bake-offs where RobHolt or Richard Dunn were present.

Their comments on the relative merits of the equipment being compared were remarkably similar to my own.

I would have no problem in trusting their judgement and integrity when it came to sighted bake-offs.


On the basis of my bake-off experiences I disagree 100% with this statement from sq225917.

 

I have said this here and at so many other forums it is daft, this argument has been re-run and re-run. I have 30 years experience of blind testing, I even blind tested the blind test with a customer back in the early 80's. I also spent nearly 10 years (well it seemed like it) in the 90's as a member of Paul Messenger blind speaker thingy for Hi-Fi Choice + attending DAC and amplifier ones. I watched the newbies to the process flounder around confused and not having a clue, even if it was their own designs they were listening to, and the more it happened the more they shut down. Where as Guy Sargeant and myself and others who were old hands at them could pick it very easily, especially when you got used to the room and the system as I did with Pauls.

I watched KEF, B&W and many other speaker designers and marketing men make absolute twots of themselves not even recognising their own creations or products, BECAUSE they didn't know the system, they didn't know the music, they didn't know the acoustic, they were worried they were going to make twots of themselves, so they did. So their perception shut down.

I have studied this from both of my businesses, from a Hi-Fi point of view I want people to aclimatise relax be comfortable 'cos everything is new, even then they will be no where near as perceptive as they are in their own environment with their own music. From my Tai-Chi Chuan point of view I train to create these situations to be able to use them for martial purposes, from that training I *KNOW* that if I shut down or deflect one sense the other lose perception and control, so then I have them - I can control them.

The answer to this problem is not blind testing, or dealer dems at all, it is customers listening and comparing product in their own home, in their own acoustic, with their own system and their own music, then even cable and mains and plug changes will show up, because they have a stable point of reference. No one can play games with you, you have time and no pressure to make judgements. BUT if one of you lot turn up and tell him now he can't look at his system and see what is playing, then until he adjusts and becomes comfortable again some of his perception will shut down, which from what I can see in this thread is what you want to happen so you can seemingly prove your daft, "nothing sound different" argument. So if nothing sound different then we buy on spec again like the 60's and 70's, we create another spec war between the manufacturers, until customers realise they are being duped and what a load of bollocks it all is - so another Ivor T arrives because the timing is right for the opposite bullshit and around the circle we go again