2. misc-audio
  3. 157471-121242

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 Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial.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

Showing 7 responses by mahgister

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 
Because people hang themselves with lamp cord ....

Never with an audio cable....

:)

Bad joke sorry......

:)
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 
It is very easy to mock someone’s system.... In this thread anybody who will look mine will consider me nut.... Feel free to do it....

But it is better if we go on with arguments and discussion tough...

Just my grain of salt....

«Paradise for one is hell for another, my dear...»-Groucho Marx


mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 

If something sounds markedly different when I change an interconnect, then it was always because something was wrong.


I am not sure to understand.... When i change my cheaper interconnect between my amplifier and my dac for a Morrow m3 and i immediately hear a better sound, this is because the first interconnect was wrong or something else wrong, not because the Morrow was a better interconnect? is this your saying?

  
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 
You go looking for better sound with wires the swamp creatures come after you.
The same brain primitive creatures instead of listening experiments will kill you if you speak not of wires but of some crystals or stones effects on sound quality.... :)


I use more than 20 kind of stones like an equalizer or like the changing of tubes in an amplifier and with the greatest of success, the only prerequisite was using your discriminative ears... This subject is so touchy than re-reading now my own post I judge it near trolling and provocative.... Truth is sometimes.... …..I am not a sheep and never been one....
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 
All difference perceived one by one can be illusory, but after my 2 years of home made systematic experiments in listening sessions, the negative or positive changes reveal themselves very swiftly and in an obvious way... At the end the increase S.Q. is staggering with the exact SAME E.C. (electronic components).

For the memory of sound, my first helper is my subconscious emotion analysis, I dont listen only to sound that I consciously recorded (this kind of memory is very short lived), I listen to myself where something in me, gives to me through the emotions the sensation for the recognized right sounding direction....This is the basis for my very good sound memory but this memory is not direct experience recorded, it is the affective memory of the sound impact in my body, not the sound itself....This memory is not foolproof and must be trained...


In the beginning I had no words for many subtle dimensional vatiations in sounds, but between the direct sound experience and the names there is the emotional body, ans this emotional-body linked to the ears-body is the sherpa for the journey toward the apex of the mountain and this emotional body gives his living content to the abstract name or concept.... In linguistic there is 2 polarities: the idea and the body dimension of the living speech, none of them is reducible to the others; music and emotions are their complex playground interpenetrations...And the cosmos-world and the body are also a polarity....Goethe after Humboldt in linguistic is the great thinker in these matters and the true and most profound phenomenologist....A Newton of the living world so to speak....


«Emotions dont need proofs» - Groucho Marx
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 
No concrete wire is only a designed abstract wire, particular audio environment exist coupled to different ears...

A wire exist only "connected" to a particular audio system for some peculiar ears...


But why so much thread about wire and nothing about the more fundamental question linked to the basic multidimensional problem :HOW to embed an audio system?


Half of the thread are about cables, and their directionality.... It is like a thread about cars speaking half the time about plugs..... :)


I apologize to millercarbon for my post.....And to all others.... My best to all....
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,690 posts
 
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....


More to discover