Do you believe in Magic?

Hi Learsfool - The yawn was most certainly not for your boy, H.

:-)

bc

Bryon C - since most of your angst seems to be directed at the Intelligent Chip, I will respond to your request for underlying Laws involved in how the chip works, which can be found in my definitive explanation at:

Www.machinadynamica.com/machina64.htm

Cheers

As you pointed out, there is no explanation provided for some (many) of my products - that's because I don't know the mechanism of operation, or I haven't sat down to write one up, or because I do not wish to divulge the specifics of how the product works.

You failed to mention there ARE detailed explanations for my vibration isolation stands, Brilliant Pebbles, Mr. clock and Codename Turquoise.

i think all of the points and counterpoints about certain products is totally unnecessary.

let the consumer decide if a product has any value. expressing opinions about them which are not based upon knowledge, as in mathematics and logic, do not accomplish anything, except to create heat and not light.

if a product sounds like it won't do any good, don't buy it. if demand heads towards zero, the product will cease to exist.

if someone is curious and buys the product with a trial period the only thing lost is time.

the manufacturer is under no obligation to explain the rationale for his product, as negative feedback will eventually cause its demise. there have been many failures and successful products over the years. let capitalism work.

Bryon, I agree with one of your earlier comments: they should just say “we don’t know why it works, but it does.” And then offer a money back guarantee.

If you don’t take them seriously, the explanations for these “tweaks” are comic:

The time signals that are captured on the recording back when it was made are out of synch with the time signals when the recording is played. [Etc.]

As someone with more than a passing familiarity with physics, I can assure you that the entire premise of this gizmo is utter nonsense. If someone could demonstrate, let alone actually interact with, “time signals that are captured on the recording back when it was made” that person would not only win the Nobel Prize, they’d utterly revolutionize physics, technology, and our understanding of the universe.

… The emitted photons from chip commingle with the CD laser light that is everywhere in the room and inside the player; the commingled light resonates with the CD's polycarbonate material, improving its optical performance. […]

Funny, since the data on a CD can be reliably extracted and reproduced – without error – as many times as you want to run it through your computer’s CD drive. So what does the gizmo do? Make the data better?

The other explanations, when provided, are equally absurd. I think it’s worth considering that the entire Machina Dynamica web site is an elaborate hoax, perpetrated by a prankster at the expense of the audiophile community. Maybe Geoff is just yanking your chain.

Geoffkat writes:

Mrtennis, while nobody would say there is no such thing as the placebo effect, the placebo effect does not explain away all tweaks, or even all outlandish tweaks. The problem is that some of these tweaks are so preposterous, so devilish, nobody would ever expect them to work. I.e., you "know" you've been given a placebo. Especially a dyed in the wool skeptic. So, when the ridiculous thing appears to work, there must be some other explanation.

This is simply untrue. The placebo effect can work even when the “patient” knows they are receiving a placebo. In addition, there are other cognitive effects that continue to work even when you are aware of them. The McGurk effect is particularly interesting: your ears tell you something based upon what your eyes are seeing. Our senses are not completely independent of one another. And we haven’t even touched on the emotional aspect of the equation.

Sabai writes:

The empirical method and the scientific method are not the same at all. In the realm of medicine, science includes clinical evidence in the form of "double blind testing" but it is based on "studies". The latter open the door for cooking the books to serve those with "special agendas". Empirical truth is based exclusively on clinical evidence. Science rejects empirical evidence as "proof" because science states this form of evidence is merely "anecdotal".

Sabai, I think you have a fundamental misperception of what science is. Science provides structure for investigation. Cooking the books is an act of fraud. People may commit fraud in many areas of human endeavor (as this thread perhaps demonstrates), but that doesn’t mean all of those endeavors are corrupt. The reproducibility of results is a cornerstone of science. If someone commits fraud (or is simply mistaken), the PROCESS of science (because science is a process, not a result) will eventually rectify the situation.

Activities that don’t leave “books” behind that are far more susceptible to fraud, or simple misattribution of results, than those that do. Magic herbs or gizmos that have never been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny can claim they do anything, and there is no effective way to evaluate those claims. The “empirical method” used without scientific rigor is simply witchcraft. Or maybe magic…