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131.107.0.89
In Reply to: Oh no…someone promoting that magic $500 wood knob again! posted by Caymus on June 19, 2006 at 13:01:51:
But the idea of different laqueurs on a violin is anything but silly.Anisotropic wood plus various kinds of laqueur that absorbs differentially into different parts of wood make for very interesting and complicated mechanisms.
Follow Ups:
Real JJ I didn't mean to imply you bought Dieter's interview hook, line & sinker. I believe I was clear when I said Real JJ saw SOME postive things with the interview.I agree with you about the wooden knob. It is very questionable as a tweak. I would need to listen to the Silver Rock potentiometer with it ON and with it OFF, before I outright dismissed the idea of it working.
However, unlike Machina dynamica's Clever LiL Clock I can understand & possibly accept the reasoning behind why Audio Consulting says it will improve the sound of the Silver Rock potentiometer, but I highly suspect I might not hear any differences at all.
This is very "gray-area" tweak to me, it might work, it might not.
Thetubeguy1954
The proposed mechanisms for the laqueur on the knob look, well, very, suspect.Yes, they have to be tested. For the mechanism proposed to work, we'd have to revisit an awful lot of very basic physics.
So, I have, well, let's call them extremely serious doubts, and that's speaking politely, about the mechanism, and similar doubts about any kind of efficacy.
But the way to find out is to run a proper test, DBT, etc. No fun, really, that.
Real JJ, I amazed that so many people here find the idea of a wooden knob effecting the sound differently than bakelite would a debatable topic.As technically limited as my knowledge is I can see quite easily how wood & bakelite could have different resonant frequencies. That one feature all by itself WOULD effect the sound differently. Adding layers of C37 or any other laquer I assume, would at the very least increase the weight of the wooden knob and once again change it's resonant frequency and therefore by doing so, change how it effects the sound. This seems like a topic almost anyone here should understand and accept quite easily! This is a given, not something that's debatable. I must admit I'm quite surprised you haven't said this very same thing yourself!
What is debatable about this topic is... How much does the different resonant frequencies of: 1) bakelite vs wood & 2) plain wood & wood treated with C37, effect the sound of the component due to controlling vibration & how much would they have to weigh BEFORE the change was noticable? I'm sure it's very easy to test and verify the different resonant frequencies of: 1) bakelite vs wood & 2) plain wood & wood treated with C37. What needs to be tested and verified is, is this change noticeable? Can others actually hear how the different resonant frequencies effect the sound of the component. I personally don't think I would hear the difference, but I cannot say for certain without listening.
What I do find laughable with all that is known about vibrations, resonant frequency of materials and how they effect sound, is that ANYONE here would question whether or not 1) bakelite vs wood & 2) plain wood & wood treated with C37 or other laquers would effect a components sound. With 100% certainty it would! Once again what's debatable about this topic is...
How much does the different resonant frequencies of: 1) bakelite vs wood & 2) plain wood & wood treated with C37, effect the sound of the component due to controlling vibration & how much would they have to weigh BEFORE the change was noticable?
Thetubeguy1954
It would take a collection of rather odd designs to make this kind of thing audible in general...Of course, we can't rule that out in every case, certainly.
The question of weight is only part of the equation, the surface area, shape, etc, are all important and there is no overall rule of what might make a good capture transducer, except that bigger and lighter will most likely capture more.
So a large, flat knob made out of a very light material would be more likely to capture acoustic energy than a small, heavy material.
But the likelihood of either of them picking up enough energy to actually excite microphonic components SHOULD be miniscule. SHOULD be.
Some people think one is crazy to blow ten grand on a Rolex watch.... "My ten-dollar Timex keeps just as good time"....A lot of us might think one is crazy to buy a seemingly-outlandish tweak like these knobs....
But in either case, whoever buys it, it's his money, not yours or mine.
Many of these audiophile tweak vendors never offer proof for their incredible (but expensive!)claims and never will.Believe me nobody cares how you squander your money - that’s your foolishness. But we do care when your naive support of these phony products ends up supporting the sly con-artists at the unfortunate expense of all those *honest* vendors.
"But we do care when your naive support of these phony products ends up supporting the sly con-artists at the unfortunate expense of all those *honest* vendors."Aside from seemingly-obvious scams like Meshuggah Dynamica, the companies that are suspected "con-artists" are subject to debate. (Especially the cable manufacturers.) And while there might be legit companies hurt by snake-oil sales, I personally don't think such impact is significant.
...the many happy users? I mean, without calling them names?clark
Have you heard them? These knobs use lacquer specially selected to have the best musical properties. It's used on the finest violins made today. It imparts a rich warm tone to everything it comes near. These knobs reduce distortion from the wrong harmonics (don't remember whether it's odd or even which are the villians but what the hell, does it really matter, it sounds good to say it) and they increase dynamic range while improving clarity and accuracy. I hear a difference like day and night, why can't you? Maybe your sound system doesn't have high enough resolution or maybe your hearing is just bad. How much time and effort have you devoted to really listening to them. Have you given them even half a fair chance to prove themselves?
It is of course the same arguement as with those stupid wires people make so much of. Same arguement, same idea, but while there are a lot of wire guys out there paying for a lot of ad space there's hardly any money to be made from advertising lacquered wooden knobs, maybe none at all so it's Okay to ridicule it. Of course it could just as easily have developed over time as the other way around! Would you then be ridiculing exotic wires? We'll never know. ;> )
It *seems* obvious.... It does not mean it's absolutely the case.
c
I guess it didn't work....
z
I'm with Todd on this one, frankly, at least as far as their explaination of "how the independent chip works". Goodness me. :o
technical comment...only jokes in poor taste from the anti-racist himself.Oh, and please identify the Intelligent Chip by its proper name when you get around to technical challenges, Herr Ubermeister.
Imagine that. No evidence, just empty words. Not even very elegant ones.
LA Times, June 19:Can "super-oxygenated" water make people run faster? Yes — if they think it can.
The water, marketed under different brands, is touted as having more oxygen content than regular tap water and, thus, the ability to enhance athletic performance — claims that have been debunked by scientists who consider it no more than nicely packaged snake oil.
AIn a new study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse showed a video about the water's purported benefits to 32 male and female test subjects, all competitive or recreational runners. Then, half the runners drank commercial bottled water, while the other half got tap water that they believed was the "super-oxygenated" water. Afterward, all ran 5 kilometers on an indoor track. The groups switched test conditions and ran again.
During the trials, men and women ran an average of 83 seconds faster, about 3.3 seconds faster per lap. Slower runners who ran the 5K in more than 20 minutes in the control run shaved their time by an average of 2 minutes, 22 seconds during their tap-water run. "This is huge," says John Porcari, one of the researchers and a professor in exercise and sports science at the university. "The results were more dramatic than we'd hoped."
Also surprising was the fact that despite the faster times, the runners' heart rates, rates of perceived exertion and blood lactate levels remained almost the same between the two groups. The reason, Porcari speculates, may be because "they were feeling better and not as physically stressed."
The overall results, he adds, points out the mind's power to push the body: "There's no physiology for this [water] to work unless humans grow gills. But this ergogenic aid market is exploding, and if people think something works and is beneficial to them, then they swear by it."
While such a placebo effect could be used by coaches to motivate athletes, Porcari says that the unknown factor is how long it will last. "We don't know how long we can continue to fool people, if there's a chronic placebo effect," he says. "That's something that needs to be studied."
This post is not unlike many posts here by Objectivists who being so firmly entrenched in the belief that todays accepted measurements are sufficient, they have to resort to claiming Subjectivists are fooling themselves or Subjectivists are allowing the others around them to influence what they hear or as you tunenut are now trying to say, it's just a placebo effect.Whats become increasingly apparent is that what I thought were a group of people (Objectivists) who wanted to know the truth and prove the truth via verification, are in all actuality a group of people who are more interested in believing they already have the truth, thus anything that challenges this "truth" is either unwanted or ignored. For examples of this behavior look at Dan Banquer who said "I'm not going near your "Gestalt" with a 10 ft pole." or tomservo who believes "... if there were anything “hiding” one form of measurement or another would have shown "something".
Why not look into "these sounds" or musicality? It's equally possible that these audiophiles are not just fooling themselves, or allowing other audiophiles to influence them or that it's not a placebo effect.
Remember Newton was believed to be correct UNTIL Einstein came along. So unless todays scientists or audio designers are willing to explore further in new directions, the possibilty of there being something hidden that once discovered will revolutionise how audio components are measured, will remain only a pipe dream.
Just think for a moment. What is the THING the ear uses to determine almost instantly the music is live and not recorded? Perhaps audio systems that have more of that THING, whatever it is, is why some sound more musical than others! Musicality is often just another way of saying realistic and what's more realistic than live music? Perhaps this is the "these sounds" Dieter was refering to. Why would anyone who loves audio/music not want to know the answer to this question?
I am amazed at the responses I'm getting, I truely am. These responses don't seem like they are coming from music lovers...
Thetubeguy1954
Thetubeguy1954
One must wonder what makes them so angry.clark
Lopping 2 minutes from a 20 minute run is a real physical effect.Placebos have real physical effects. You cannot reject out of hand the possibility that hearing is affected by the expectaion of the hearer.
Until a scientific controlled test is done, there is not even a demonstrated effect at all.
It's a hobby anyway, and if you want to stick to these dumb labels, I am more of a subjectivist than objectivist. But in the case of a claimed effect where nobody has presented any attempt to control for bias (and everybody has bias), the likely explanation is bias.
tunenut I agree that lopping 2 minutes from a 20 minute run is a real physical effect.I agree that placebos have real physical effects. You cannot reject out of hand the possibility that hearing is affected by the expectaion of the hearer, but nor can you reject out of hand the possibility that the person may actually hearing what they claim.
I agree until a scientific controlled test is done, there is not even a demonstrated effect at all and that's exactly what I'm calling for scientists and/or audio designers to investigate "these sounds" or musicality if you prefer.
It's a hobby anyway, and if you want to stick to these dumb labels, I am more of a subjectivist than objectivist. Me too!
I disagree that in the case of a claimed effect where nobody has presented any attempt to control for bias (and everybody has bias), the likely explanation is bias. Real JJ and I discussed this quite a bit and according to Real JJ bias plays less of a part than most believe. I believe that in the case of a claimed effect where nobody has presented any attempt to control for bias (and everybody has bias), the likely explanation is unknown, period! To just out of hand say the likely explanation is bias is ludicrous, IMHO.
Thetubeguy1954
I do disagree on the last point. I try my best to control for bias when I try different audio things- I don't mean DBT, I just mean having a friend randomly change polarity and I try to see if I can reliably identify it, things like that. If someone would just do simple tests like that and present results, I would then consider there is something to explain. Not a single person has ever presented these kind of results for the IC.
tunenut, I'm not some whacko that just believes hook, line & sinker everything that's written in an AD, article or interview. The Objectivists here have tried to turn my discussion in a direction I NEVER intended for it to go i.e. C37 & Wooden knobs!I stated in my original post the purpose of this post was done:
In my continuing effort to:
1)Find some common ground between Objectivists & Subjectivists, because I believe we are both partially right & wrong in our beliefs.
2)Appease the Objectivists here by doing my own research and/or homework.If anyone goes back to my original post they'll see I focused on "these sounds", "musicality" and how it MIGHT apply to SET's. I made 2 comments directly about SETs 1)Soon Dieter realized that physics, the way it was taught and understood, was not enough to cope with the acoustical tasks of a good violin (or perhaps SET amp and/or other audio components that measure poorly yet sound great -thetubeguy1954) & 2) I personally find it refreshing that others are trying to discover reasons why components be they SET amps or instruments without 2nd order harmonics can nevertheless sound musical!
I believed it was very clear from original post and from the many others after it that the main focus of the point I was trying to discuss was this...
Unfortunately using todays standard method for measuring performance in audio components is NOT what we should be using! We should be searching for a way the measure "these sounds!" Now we need to do what Soundmind challenged other audio designers to do! I'm paraphrasing Soundmind, My challenge to anyone who claims they can't correlate measurements they make with what they hear isn't to abandon measurements but to come up with better ones that do! So todays audio designers need to open their minds and look for the means to measure "these sounds" that are associated with what we refer to as musicality. When scientists and/or audio designers finally discover how to measure "these sounds" we will, or so I believe, have a much more accurate measurement of an audio components actual performance.
Until that day arrives and we finally discover how to measure "these sounds" we'll continue to have Subjectivists claiming how good their tubed amps replicate the musicality of a performance, while Objectivists point to today's standard measurements as "proof" that this cannot possibly be so!
No matter how many others try to distort it, THAT IS the focus of my debate. In any event good listening to you...
Thetubeguy1954
These guys are on a warpath. And they keep lifting the bar. Nearly every day you can find one of them demanding a DBT for "proof", yet when a topic like Absolute Polarity, which has been proved over and over again by DBTs, is introduced they still fight you.There will be no common ground until they drop the anger, recognize that "these sounds" exist, and admit that live music is clearly differentiable from even a hi-fi that breezes through their current measurements.
clark
We didn't set the rule this fight is fought by.Objectivists by and large are truthful and factual.
On the "other" side (of which there appear to be several) we see egregious misbehaviors of all sorts.
Certianly some objectivists have gone over the top, but in the bad-karma department, objectivists only own about 1% of the bad karma, and less than 1% of the dishonesty and outright cheating. I think that speaks for itself.
Certianly MANY objectivists have gone over the top. Your belief Real JJ that in the bad-karma department, objectivists only own about 1% of the bad karma, and less than 1% of the dishonesty and outright cheating. Is ONLY because you are an Objectivist.I personally feel MOST Objectivists here would rather appear to be technically superior than have an honest discussion with the less technically inclined like myself!
I don't know how many times I've attempted to 'bridge-the-gap" only to be ridiculed for the attempt. I'd say Objectivists own 50% of the bad karma, dishonesty and outright cheating IMHO.
Thetubeguy1954
Things like "fraud", "jj is no scientist", etc, are very serious accusations worth a minus-million on the karma scale when they are false.I do see over the top "objectivist" behaviors, but I see really nothing like the lynch mob of mkuller, bjh, krieger, now Tham, the occasional Curl'ism, Clark J, E-Stat, norm, etc, who leap in with the most atrocious claims, misconstructions, negligence and/or deceptions in support of their unsupported claims.
It is patently clear to me that getting to the bottom of the problem is not the primary motivation of discussions here in regard to most of what the mentioned say and do.
"Things like "fraud", "jj is no scientist", etc, are very serious accusations worth a minus-million on the karma scale when they are false."I would say that such allegations are very serious if they come from someone with credibility. If they come from someone lacking in credibility, ignoring such statements may be the most productive approach. Let the readers of the group decide who is credible and who is not, based on the support each person provides for their position.
"I do see over the top objectivist behaviors"
Yes. And I do not claim to be innocent in this area.
"...but I see really nothing like the lynch mob of [deleted]"
Well, I think "lynch mob" is way too strong a term. Some of the people you mention I find humorous and enjoyable even though I strongly disagree with their views.
"...who leap in with the most atrocious claims, misconstructions, negligence and/or deceptions in support of their unsupported claims."
In cases such as "The sampling theorem doesn't work" or "The sampling theorem assumes...", I must say this kind of stuff pisses me off. And this is not because it challenges established knowledge (which can be verified by anyone who is not too lazy to do so), but because the arguments which attempt to support such views inevitably contain logical fallacies and/or misunderstandings of the mathematics involved. Such things as "what does it mean for a signal to be bandlimited" and how that relates to known Fourier transform relationships seems to be a huge source of misunderstanding and misinformation. Some of the posters in the "audio resolution" thread over in General were in my view typical examples of this. I see a combination of ignorance, together with a proactive and aggressive campaign of misinformation in that thread. It's a very sad state of affairs.
"It is patently clear to me that getting to the bottom of the problem is not the primary motivation of discussions here..."
Yeah. With the exception of purely technical discussions between one engineer and another, I find many of the threads take this form:
1) Poster starts with an assertion having no basis in fact.
2) Poster assumes that assertion is true. Poster does not change that assumption regardless of how much evidence to the contrary is provided.
3) Poster assumes the existing theory is inadequate to describe the "phenomenon" (which has no basis in fact in the first place).
4) Poster characterizes those who dismiss non-fact-based "observation" as closed-minded and dogmatic....and then it goes downhill from there. As individuals, I think there is only a limited amount that can really be done. I think it's a more global problem that will only go away when the boomer generation that sustains this position retires to the great beyond.
The power of suggestion to put it politely. In reality it's just delusional thinking.
Johnsen; you don't belong on this forum.
d.b.
"Johnsen; you don't belong on this forum."Nobody doesn't belong on this forum....
Neither do double negatives.
d.b.
" Some people think one is crazy to blow ten grand on a Rolex watch.... "My ten-dollar Timex keeps just as good time"...."Let's state the facts as they are. It's really simple:
The Timex (Casio or whatever) keeps much BETTER time.
It's just not a fine piece of craftsmanship and everything that goes along with that.
I prefer Patek anyway... ;-)
If I'm out on a speedskating workout or race, I wear my Casio. If I'm dining at a fine resturant, I'd wear a Patek. But I would really rather spend such bucks (and do) on instruments, sheet music and study trips.
Is there a cost when the money goes to somebody who is just wrong (we'll assume confusion, delusion, etc, rather than malice) rather than when it goes to something based in reality?You notice I asked a question.
"Is there a cost when the money goes to somebody who is just wrong (we'll assume confusion, delusion, etc, rather than malice) rather than when it goes to something based in reality?"It's up to the person spending the $$$ to decide.... All we can do is kindly provide information and bring up the slogan "Caveat Emptor"....
I don't believe in most of the stuff either.... But I don't think it should be your or my business regarding those who do believe in such products.
BTW this $500 wood knob with magicC37 lacquer did quite a lot of damage to audiophile reputation when the link was widely circulated around the internet last year. It only reinforced that gullible and desperate audiophile stereotype. Even my co-workers got a good laugh out of it.Dieter Ennemoser and his wild C37 lacquer claims have very little credibility with most people.
demonstrations would certainly help to sell the tweak.The IC was demonstrated and sold many chips. The Ultra-tweeters were not and have sold few.
s
Hard to tell.
x
Reading your mind is sorta tough, among all the hostility and chaos. :D
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