(Note - directed at no particular person) It’s ironic that folks who accept the 10 Biggest Lies In Audio as being real lies accuse those who believe they are actually true of being gullible. If they accept all ten Lies lock stock and barrel they must have some pretty strong beliefs in Peter Aczel or something, who the heck knows? Surely at least one or two must be a little bit debatable, no? I say they are ALL TRUE. Any takers? 🤠
“But you can’t PROVE it!” - Juror number 3, the obstreperous last holdout, 12 Angry Men
addendum: I’ll give Peter Aczel one thing. That boy sure had a way with words. To whit,
“1. The Cable Lie
Logically this is not the lie to start with because cables are accessories, not primary components. But it is the hugest, dirtiest, most cynical, most intelligence-insulting and, above all, most fraudulently profitable lie in audio, and therefore must go to the head of the list.”
Wow 😳
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Whoa! What?! Hey, you call that a debate? Break me a give! Don’t you have an actual, you know, argument? This is your chance to show how smart you are, not how snarky and repetitive you are. Nothin’ new in there? Oh, well....
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I haven’t seen the YouTube video of Paul McGowan answering the dodgy question, “Why is there so much snake oil in audio?” but have a good feeling about it. 😳 OK, having just watched the video, I get have the distinct impression, that’s he is referring to me personally at the very end, you know, when he looks very uncomfortable talking about certain tweaks that his “engineering mind” cannot handle. 😁 https://youtu.be/EqABlCRbH8w |
I was paraphrasing, Mr. Smarty Pants. His actual quote is,
“It requires a much higher degree of imagination to understand the electromagnetic field than to understand invisible angels. … I speak of the E and B fields and wave my arms and you may imagine that I can see them … [but] I cannot really make a picture that is even nearly like the true waves.”
Besides, Feynman said a lot of things. Perhaps more relevant to the current case is this zinger,
“They wouldn’t have given me the Nobel Prize if I could explain it to the average person.”
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rodman99999 @geoffkait - "Whatever"? I haven’t heard that retort to the truth, since my little girl’s mind matured. Thanks for the memories! You asked, " So what’s not to know?" No one KNOWS for certain, what part in the conduction of electricity electrons and photons actually play. As I said, " Electrical Theory is called such for a reason. There are a few, "Laws" regarding electricity, but- still much that is theorized." I’m trying to understand your rejection of that fact. ie(for inquiring minds): https://www.quora.com/Are-photons-involved-in-all-forms-of-electricity-for-example-when-it-flows-thr.... As Richard Feynman was fond of saying, anyone who says he understands how electricity works probably doesn’t. Only quote facts. - old audiophile axiom |
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I suspect you’re confusing phase information with Absolute Polarity. The absolute polarity of the recording and of the playback system should BOTH be correct. If only one is correct the sound will be relatively diffuse, bass shy and non coherent. OR if the system is in REVERSE Polarity then recordings that are also in reverse Polarity then the sound will be CORRECT. The trouble is that there are no standards for Absolute Polarity so everything is topsy turvy. Of course phase is an issue too, and time alignment of speakers.
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You get what you pay for. This conversation can serve no purpose any longer.
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I guess the new $400 Bussman Fuse is just a relabeled $2 fuse, eh, costco? Give me a break!
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ieales OP
I’ve heard it said a mother can recognize the cry of her infant
Not sure about humans, but definitely true in many animals.
Changing wire is no mystery. Differences can be predicted with math. Audibility, not.
Jury is still out on fuses other than acting as non-linear resistors until shown mathematically and all other possible causes are adequately controlled.
>>>Good Godfrey! Please tell me he didn’t just say that! Non-linear resistors? Can you hear me crying?
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rodman99999 @geoffkait - There’s a lot that is known, but- like I said, " Thus far, there’s no known metric, for most of the subtleties that wires and fuses can out...". No one has actually observed photons, in a conductor, either. And- like you said, " Nobody has stepped up to the plate and answered the burning question, “Do photons have mass?” Electrical Theory is called such for a reason. There are a few, "Laws" regarding electricity, but- still much that is theorized. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/162993/flow-of-electrons-in-electric-current and http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/info/quantum.html Often, the more you learn, the more you learn you were wrong: https://www.mi.mun.ca/users/cchaulk/eltk1100/ivse/ivse.htm>>>I’m afraid this should be filed under Whatever. |
Ahem...it’s not really the observation of electrons that’s the issue. It’s the observation of photons. We already know electrons are the charge carriers and are virtually at a standstill. We also know the mass of electrons. And we know the diameter. We also know the speed of photons in a conductor. So what’s not to know? Nobody has stepped up to the plate and answered the burning question, “Do photons have mass?”
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In the interest of balanced reporting, legendary Abbey Road Studio Two just upgraded their cables with Van Damme Professional Blue Series Studio Grade cables, obtainable on Amazon for $43 for 6 meters plus shipping.
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Wow! All I can say is WOW. Someone here actually thinks couscous is a real skeptic, someone who is one bit curious, who wishes to be convinced, someone who would risk becoming the laughing stock of the entire pseudo skeptic community. 😛 😬 😀 😛 😂
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Snake oil is a two for one. It’s a lubricant for the wheels of audiophile progress and a banana peel for naysayers and others stuck in the mud. 💩
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Directionality of wire, cryogenics, burn in, demagnetization, ionization, elevation of cables, care and feeding of electrical contacts, all of these things are important to the performance. Ignore them at your peril.
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The good studios use expensive cables. You know, like high end studios. Mid Fi studios use Mogami or whatever. Case solved. Now I’m laughing. 😀
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Actually good microphones and their associated cables are very expensive.
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seidman
People believe what they want to believe based on all kinds of factors. Take religion, lots of intelligent people take comfort in faith even though most scientists consider religion complete nonsense. We are emotionally persuaded by products in every aspect of our lives, adding accessories like tweaks/cables for the audio enthusiast makes sense to me.
>>>I am positive your statements are false. If you are speaking for yourself that’s a horse of a different color. 🦓 Snake oil is an excellent lubricant and greases the tracks for wheels of audiophile progress. 🚂 Toot, toot!
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The last time I was wrong was back in 1985. The last time you were wrong was the last time your lips moved. 🗣
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Never try to prove a math major wrong with math. Rule number one. I abondonded the Perfect Sound Forever bandwagon when you were still wearing bell bottoms. If we listened to mathematicians there would be no high end audio, just a big nothing burger. 🍔
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🐑
phomchick
Geoffkait: “Uh, but the two states are not (rpt not) accurately decoded. Not completely accurately, anyway. That’s why the Green Pen, painting CD tray and CD Treatments and vibration isolation and vibration control improve the sound.”
Sorry, not true. CDs include error correction encoding and decoding to ensure that the 1s and 0s are accurately read. Green pens and anti vibration tweaks on CDs and players are a complete waste of time and money.
>>>>>Hey, don’t be sorry. You’re welcome to your opinion. Even though it happens to be completely wrong. No offense intended. I’m come to accept the inevitable newbie backlash. No biggie.
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shadorne
@geoffkait
It doesn’t matter how a 1 or a 0 is represented on a CD. Only that two states can be accurately decoded and that some built in error correction (extra info like a parity bit or checksum) further ensures accuracy of decoding.
>>>>Uh, but the two states are not (rpt not) accurately decoded. Not completely accurately, anyway. That’s why the Green Pen, painting CD tray and CD Treatments and vibration isolation and vibration control improve the sound. Obviously if simeone wishes to keep the Perfect Sound Forever dream alive, by all means go for it! The error correct is better at some types of errors than others or so it would appear. Oddly, The industry (whoever that is) is completely oblivious to the issue of background scattered light.
This might be a stretch for you but the concept of digital audio does not actually require a CD to come inscribed with arabic numerals on it. Your personal computer hard drive or SSD also doesn’t have Arabic numerals inscribed on the memory storage.
>>>>Uh, don’t know what that is even supposed to mean. But I assume it’s an atttempt at humor. In any case, you obviously slept through my lecture on how the CD laser reads the data.
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Yeah, right. It’s all a scam. 🙄 And you’re correct. It is trolling.
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Aczel figured out what Uber Skeptics wanted to hear and gave them an earful. 👂🏻He almost certainly purloined the 10 Biggest Lies in Audio from any number of audio forum discussions, kind of like ones right here on these pages. Take your pick. If there was a Troll hierarchy Aczel would be the Supreme Grand Wizard.
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Lie no. 9 has to do with CD treatments. Aczel’s argument is that you cannot change the 1s and 0s on the CD therefore CD treatments must be a scam. But as we learned (?) the other day, the data on the CD is not 1s and 0s. The data are physical “pits” and “lands” that are vulnerable to being misread by the CD player for a variety of reasons. The creating of 1s and 0s occurs AFTER the physical data is read by the CD laser. So, now we’re down to only 9 Lies. One small step for audiophile. One giant step for audiophiledom. Whatever.
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I don’t get it. He calls them the 10 Biggest Lies in Audio but they’re ALL actually TRUE. Is he pulling our leg? Was Peter Aczel a troll?
The more things change the more they stay the same. - old audiophile axiom
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Assuming that’s supposed to be a joke you might consider adding a smiley face after jokes in the future so we get that it’s a joke. 😛
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@shadorne As long as you only quote facts we’re good. 🤡
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Actually shadorne might be on to something with his DNA science. At least his theory appears to agree with what was presented in the movie Prometheus.
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From what I gather, it’s a damn good thing the Universe is expanding at a good clip because if it were to slow down due to the gravitational forces of dark matter at its center to the point where it actually began to contract time would reverse direction and all of our clocks and watches would be useless. If time did not exist man would have to invent it.
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shadorne wrote,
”science is science.”
Excellent, Excellent.... 🤡
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“As for aalenik, there are very good reasons not to put your faith totally in the subjective camp or objective camp. Principal among them would be that the person inclined to do either is likely clueless. An open mind and intelligence requires that we respect both our direct audible senses and all the evidence our other senses can bring to bear to help us learn about that which we do not know. We measure. We listen. And we never stop trying to draw correlations between the two. When we do - we have disavowed the pursuit of "truth" in favor of "belief" and all scientific progress comes to a grinding halt.”
Thanks for the excellent (though a teeny bit snarky) manifesto we see from several corners expressing the notion that Science today, failing to be open minded itself, is hell bent on eclipsing Religion as the Uber Truth Purpeyor extant. Heaven help us!
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The breeze feels good! When you swing for the bleachers the first thing you have to do is connect with the ball. Somebody hasn’t been paying very good attention. God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.
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A clever fellow can find a decent discussion of Cable directionality over on Audioquest’s web site and perhaps others. Controlling directionality of all their cables AND power cords seems to something Audioquest excels at.
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bdp24
One man’s technical jargon is another’s facts about the magnetic behavior of wire, as explained by an electrical engineer. No harm in that knowing the basics, unless one harbors an irrational fear of commonly-agreed-upon facts, or a distrust of anything coming from any member of the professionally-recognized electrical engineering fraternity.
>>>>Geez, calm down. Commonly agreed on facts? Professionally recognized electrical engineering fraternity? Oh, please! The description of the magnetic behavior of wire and even the complete mathematical explanation of Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism do not necessarily help the curious audiophile decide which cable will sound best or which cable has the optimum geometry, gauge, dielectric or necessarily explain why one cable sounds better than another in a blind test.
Besides, even though practically everybody and his brother knows that current traveling through a wire induces a magnetic field nobody does anything about it. Well, almost nobody. There is only one person I know of who has addressed the induced magnetic field in cables. Let’s see if you can guess who that person is. 😛 All this technical fireworks does not advance the Great Cable Debate. I’m afraid the mystery remains. Oh, well. Anyone who wishes to get smart on electricity or electromagnetism or anything can Google it up on Wikipedia, for crying out loud.
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I wasn’t suggesting Mr. McGowan was pushing Belden Cables. I was suggesting that it was published on PS Audio because it supposedly makes everybody look smart, including Paul McGowan. As I said, anyone could have cut and pasted the articles from Wikipedia. Everything is on the internet. No biggie. And my point is that all that technical jargon doesn’t really settle the Great Cable Debate. It’s like saying the sky is blue. I assume it impresses people who aren’t technical.
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Decades of experience? Well, geez, nobody said Belden don’t work or aren’t very good cables. Not me anyway. Try to keep up with the discussion. I’m simply contending the articles are a marketing ploy, you know, making it appear Belden is super smart technically so Belden must the choice of champions or whatever. Kind of like why Harmon Kardon advertises blind testing of their products, it’s a marketing ploy. Anybody at all can cut and paste the entire article I saw from Wikipedia. So give me a break.
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The articles, from what I can tell, are nothing more than a Belden Cable marketing ploy. And PS Audio is part of the uh, ploy. From what I can tell just scanning one of the articles, it doesn’t address ANY of the really debatable cable issues. One can’t help wondering why the articles were written. I mean, except that they’re supposed to prop up the idea that since there are no technical advantages to expensive high end cables you’d be better off buying Belden Cables.
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with horse feathers. - WC Fields.
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Geniuses like the guy at Audioquest are frequently not very good salesmen or may not wish to perform in that capacity. Audioquest must be doing something right as they are very very successful. Nothing succeeds like successs. My hat’s off to anyone who controls directionality for all of their cables as well as power cords. Bravo!
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Yes, that’s about it. I’m here to shoot fish in a barrel whenever they roll into town. 🤡
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@cj1965 Wow! For someone who accuses me of yammering, that’s a lot of yammering. A whole lot. Must be tough being so uh, technical.
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So, what is it specifically you object to? Be specific and brief, if possible. Be advised I would tend - as an objective observer - to believe what an established, well-known and respected cable manufacturer has to say.
pop quiz - If a pseudo skeptic says a manufacturer claims are pseudo science do they cancel each other out? |
“It would be unfair to single out some manufacturers as their cables could be very good in some systems in spite of their pseudo-science double-speak.“
Listen Mr. Smarty Pants, you don’t have to mention any names. Just cut and paste this pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo you’re referring to. If you can’t post any examples I will certainly understand. 🙄
If you couldn’t measure differences maybe you didn’t look hard enough. Differences in resistance according to direction of ANY cable or wire are there, though small. But I wouldn’t say the differences are insignificant. I’d say that’s the smoking gun, the clue that all wire and cables are directional. Of course one can also reverse the fuse or the cable and listen. In addition, we already know that capacitors that measure the same can sound quite different, or resistors, or connectors, what have you. |
Whoa! What?! Double Blind Testing! I did not see that coming! 👀 Run away! Run away!
🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑 |
The conclusion of the article on Cable Snake Oil that the OP linked is fatally flawed.
to whit,
”Conclusion
Some claim all cables sound the same. Some claim two cables with the same R will sound the same. Cable manufacturers make all kinds of wild claims, provide no engineering insight as to problems solved and charge ever increasing prices for something that may not be any better than, or even different from, what the customer is currently using as cables interact with the system! Caveat emptor.”
>>>>>It’s strictly an old pseudo skeptic argument to claim “cable manufacturers make all kinds of wild claims.” Especially when no examples of such wild claims are presented by thecpseudo skeptic. And it’s that same case to claim cable manufacturers provide no engineering insight. That’s patently absurd. Obviously they do. Besides there are no (rpt no) laws against making ANY claims, wild or not. The World’s Best Coffee is an example. One man’s wild claim is another man’s reasonable claim. In a hobby such as audio it’s not at all unusual to run into REALLY WILD CLAIMS. Haven’t you been paying attention? I mean the fuses, the graphene, the Quantum Chips, the tiny little singing bowls, the Rainbow Foil. Hel-loo!
Lastly, the conclusion actually offers no conclusions. Just a lot of huffing and puffing.
Well, that pretty much sums up the 40 year old cable debate in a nutshell. Here’s some advice for anyone with such extreme angst and heartburn - get Better Business Bureau or Consumer Report on the case and see how far you get.
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shadorne
Yup. Poorly designed and poorly matched gear will be affected audibly by the slight impedance of a cable. High fidelity gear will not.
Yup. Poorly designed like Lamm, Tenor, McIntosh, Parasound, DartZeel, Marantz, Classe, Pass Labs, Atmasphere, Berning. That’s why you always see them with very expensive high end cables. They have to be propped up with super expensive audiophile jewelry. A real shame. 😥
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