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Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

stereophile.com

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Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#31

Post by i_am_proteus »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #14
janekm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can measure all the differences in TV picture you described (and you didn't even mention colour gamut & dynamic range). You can measure the differences in optical glass. You can't measure the difference between a $10/m speaker cable and $10000/m speaker cable (usually... some of the expensive speaker cable is so crazy it may mess up the sound), or an amplifier sitting on a $5000 stand. And $1000 power cables, plu…

We can measure the difference in cables though! I can put them through a scope or analyzer and I can even show you real hard differences between them. What we can't do is prove that makes a difference to your ear vs mine and that's the real problem. So there are two difference classes of scam here. The one where it's true there is a difference in this $10 and $10000 cable, but they're effective identical. And the sca…

Especially because measurements like Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) use sine waves for their measurements. People pay thousands of dollars for marginally lower THD (say, .02 % instead of 0.5%) but they listen to music, not sine waves.

Well, I assume this. Perhaps people buy high end audio equipment so they can listen to sine waves.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#32

Post by W-Stool »

There is literally no limit to the insanity of the audiophile universe. You can spend a thousand dollars on a three foot "reference quality" ethernet cable. I've seen "audiophile" SATA cables, USB cables, and USB signal conditioners. There's a whole sub-culture around removing the stock fuses in equipment and replacing them with "audiophile" fuses. I actually once saw two guys comparing a song ripped by two different CD rippers and discussing which one sounded better - despite the fact that the MD5 checksum on both files was the same.

After a while it starts to look like an extremely dysfunctional religious cult.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#33

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

xhroot wrote: post #3
mbell wrote: post #2

Stereophile routinely recommends $20,000 'power conditioners' and multi-thousand dollar cables. FFS they've claimed CD players 'sound better' sitting on 'special' racks. ( https://www.stereophile.com/standsracks/206finite/index.html ) This is the history of a successful charlatan.

And my favorite: Coloring CD edges with a green marker to improve sound https://www.stereophile.com/reference/590jitter/index.html

The trick is to make sure the green markers are the super smelly sort, and to do it in a confined space. For some reason without the fumes you can't hear a difference.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#34

Post by criddell »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #9
mbell wrote: post #2

Stereophile routinely recommends $20,000 'power conditioners' and multi-thousand dollar cables. FFS they've claimed CD players 'sound better' sitting on 'special' racks. ( https://www.stereophile.com/standsracks/206finite/index.html ) This is the history of a successful charlatan.

>This is the history of a successful charlatan. Agreed. Its tough though... I know of a couple times in my life I've thought something was OK until I saw something else. Examples, Glass. Binoculars, camera lenses, rifle scopes, telescopes. Glass differences are very real. You might be A-OK with some Bushnell Binos, but USE Swarovski or Vortex Razor or something lower-highend and you'll get it. Now, I didn't write LOO…

Being able to enjoy something even though you know something better is out there is something that I've managed to achieve in many areas of my life.

For example, I love a great beer. I'll go out of my way to try something new. But when I'm sitting in the sun watching baseball with my wife, I'll get a Budweiser with my hot dog and it will be glorious.

There was a time in my life where I would complain about the lack of craft beers at the ballpark. I was an idiot and enjoyed life less.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#35

Post by massaman_yams »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #31
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can measure the difference in cables though! I can put them through a scope or analyzer and I can even show you real hard differences between them. What we can't do is prove that makes a difference to your ear vs mine and that's the real problem. So there are two difference classes of scam here. The one where it's true there is a difference in this $10 and $10000 cable, but they're effective identical. And the sca…

Especially because measurements like Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) use sine waves for their measurements. People pay thousands of dollars for marginally lower THD (say, .02 % instead of 0.5%) but they listen to music, not sine waves. Well, I assume this. Perhaps people buy high end audio equipment so they can listen to sine waves.

This is the reason for measurements of intermodulation distortion and THD+N by frequency. A proper evaluation of, say, a power amplifier will look at a dozen, maybe a couple dozen different measurements; taken all together, these provide a reasonably complete picture of how the amp performs.

But - from an engineering perspective, music can in fact be decomposed into a series of sine waves - and effectively all digitally recorded music goes through this process as part of a/d conversion (sort of; it's complicated) or FFT-based digital equalization. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#36

Post by wl »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #31
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can measure the difference in cables though! I can put them through a scope or analyzer and I can even show you real hard differences between them. What we can't do is prove that makes a difference to your ear vs mine and that's the real problem. So there are two difference classes of scam here. The one where it's true there is a difference in this $10 and $10000 cable, but they're effective identical. And the sca…

Especially because measurements like Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) use sine waves for their measurements. People pay thousands of dollars for marginally lower THD (say, .02 % instead of 0.5%) but they listen to music, not sine waves. Well, I assume this. Perhaps people buy high end audio equipment so they can listen to sine waves.

THD is a measure of non-linearity, which adds harmonics not present in the original signal. Yes, the standard tests use sine waves, but the results are applicable to other signals. Just because most people don't listen to sine waves for fun doesn't mean it's a valid measurement.

On the other hand, the highest THD in a sound reproduction system comes from the physical transducers. Worrying about the THD of an amplifier makes little sense when the speakers provide an order of magnitude more distortion.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#37

Post by JudgeWapner »

smhinsey wrote: post #8
dsr_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shakti Stones. http://www.shakti-innovations.com/product/shakti-stone/

"The SHAKTI Electromagnetic Stabilizer (aka “the Stone”) has three internal trap circuits (Microwave, RF and Electric Field) to absorb the broadest spectrum of EMI. Placement on automotive CPUs has measurably increased engine horsepower." Sheesh.

The output on my Free Energy Device (shhhh, don't ask me about it, the government is actively trying to stop the spread of these to protect the interests of Big Energy) doubled when I set a Shakti Stone on top.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#38

Post by at-fates-hands »

mbell wrote: post #2

Stereophile routinely recommends $20,000 'power conditioners' and multi-thousand dollar cables. FFS they've claimed CD players 'sound better' sitting on 'special' racks. ( https://www.stereophile.com/standsracks/206finite/index.html ) This is the history of a successful charlatan.

> This is the history of a successful charlatan.

For two summers in college, I worked at a Home Theater company. They did custom home theaters, distributed audio, and a ton of mixed AV stuff. Needless to say, the majority of our clients were very rich and most of the theaters we installed were in the 300K-500K range.

The funny part was the owner constantly talking about how much better a $25K pair of speakers sounded than a $15K pair of speakers. I've heard a lot of great speakers, but was never good enough to tell the difference at that level. I finally asked the owner's son why he would push something that didn't seem to be a big upgrade from 15-25K for these speakers.

The answer was simple. His margins on the more expensive ones were better. His rich clients never questioned his expertise, it was pretty eye opening. The next summer, I finally realized everything he pitched his clients on were always about maximizing his own profit, not necessarily designing the perfect bespoke theater for his clients.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#39

Post by at-fates-hands »

sertsa wrote: post #11
xhroot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my favorite: Coloring CD edges with a green marker to improve sound https://www.stereophile.com/reference/590jitter/index.html

Was a subscriber for a few years until they started talking about green highlighter on CD edges. There was even a specific model from a certain store that was supposedly the best. A basic understanding of how a CD works tells you this is nonsense.

In high school I was working at the local used CD store and when this broke I saw tons of CD's came in with green marker on them. Not to mention the hundreds of people I had to explain (in some detail) how a CD actually works and how this was total rubbish.

For some of these people, it was if they just discovered Santa Claus wasn't real.

Re: Stereophile: A Personal Odyssey

#40

Post by smacktoward »

mbell wrote: post #2

Stereophile routinely recommends $20,000 'power conditioners' and multi-thousand dollar cables. FFS they've claimed CD players 'sound better' sitting on 'special' racks. ( https://www.stereophile.com/standsracks/206finite/index.html ) This is the history of a successful charlatan.

I know we all love to marvel at the idiocy of audiophiles, but the actual article we're discussing here says next to nothing about audio gear. It's a reflection by a copy editor on the craft of copy editing, and (IMO) a well-written one. I liked this bit, for instance:

> We like to think, or at least we like to say, that each writer's voice is unique, but it isn't. Too often, what a writer most fondly feels is his unique voice is actually a combination of bad habits and received language and tones shared with all too many other not-very-good writers. The inspired copyeditor's task is to bend an ear finely tuned to hearing the least hint of unique music in a writer's voice, strip away the accretions of junk language and tone picked up in a life drenched in TV and marketing and promotional copy and political obfuscation and bureaucratese, and then revise, even rewrite the piece in whatever authentic voice remains. The job is to produce a final edited article written in the writer's own voice, but in language and tone more consistently and authentically the writer's very own than that writer can produce herself or himself.

As someone who's done a little writing myself, I can relate to this. A good editor is someone who can cut the thing you're actually trying to say out of the tangle of spaghetti you carry around inside your head. And this passage would apply just as well to an editor working at any other magazine, it has nothing to do with Stereophile's particular editorial bent or the relative merits of green Sharpies.

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