Anyone else build a pair of Shakti Hallographs?

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Magura

Magura

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Joined 2003
class-a-labs.com
Well, to make a long story short.

The photo I posted earlier is just one example of many occasions Ive seen/-heard, where somebody have made/-bought some sort of voodoo. Forgive my lack of interest in trying if the Shakti's should be the first product to actually have an effect on anybody besides the guy who bought/-made the ithem.

ALL the products Ive seen till now from that part of the game (remember the accoustic correction plugs to mount in the walls in the listening room? remember those little wooden thingies you had to carry in your pocket? remember the wooden volume knobs? demagnetising CD's? ETC.) have been with no effect in real life.....and I wasnt the only one to say so, the wast majority thought so too.

If the Shakti's actually happened to have any effect what so ever, I guess we would have seen a whole lot more of them around. As it is not the case.....I guess Ill stick to sending my wife out shopping. That leaves me with an audiable difference, as it lowers the noise floor by a magnitude.

Magura:)
 
SY

SY

Ex-Moderator
Joined 2002
SYclotron.com
I have some friends, who are into alternative medicine, and they can easily sense through the photograph if the person is alive or not. So there might be more to the photographs than we actually think.
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Peter, if someone can demonstrate this, there's a $1M prize; if these are friends, you could probably talk them inot giving you 10% for putting them on to this. There have been lots of claimants who have asserted the same thing (alternative medicine is full of fools, the self-deluded, and charlatans, almost as much so as high-end audio), and every last one of them has failed any real test. I do commend them for the creativity evinced in their excuses about why they failed (or in most cases, their excuses about why their fabulous abilities can't be tested).

Shakti over the years has shown that there's no shortage of gullible people who want to believe in magic so badly that they'll throw money and time at amazingly ridiculous stuff. Excuse me, gotta go now- someone's got a perpetual motion machine he wants to show me. Hey, it could work, you nasty closed-minded people!
 
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setmenu

Member
Joined 2002
I cannot comment on any audible effects , but the wooden objects
in question do at least have some artistic merit.
They can simply be viewed as pieces of sculpture that [if they are to ones taste] can enhance ones listening space.

Some may even feel that a representation of their chosen deity may in fact be more uplifting [if such idolatry is of course permitted].;)

It does seem to be the week for threads about 'audio ephemera',
over at head-Fi there is an interesting one about 'rainbow foil', a
Peter Belt 'product'.



Setmenu
 
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tom1356

Member
Joined 2002
How funny is it that the people who admittedly know nothing about the subject are so outspoken. They throw the kitchen sink at you for arguments while avoiding the central issue.
How many superfluous arguments have been introduced into this thread?
Six pages of "some guy I know doesn't use them so they don't work"
What do any of them have to do with these diffusers?
You know you are in over your head in a disscusion when you post photos of something totaly irrelevant as proof of your position.
In that photo how would the sound change if two fingers were placed firmly into their ears?
Fingers are much smaller than the diffusers so they should have no effect.
Thats your logic.
 
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tom1356

Member
Joined 2002
SY said:

Shakti over the years has shown that there's no shortage of gullible people who want to believe in magic so badly that they'll throw money and time at amazingly ridiculous stuff. Excuse me, gotta go now- someone's got a perpetual motion machine he wants to show me. Hey, it could work, you nasty closed-minded people!
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This is not a good argument because I am not selling anything. I did not buy anything.
You and your ilk need to separate the value of something and its function. A product can work perfectly and be a bad value to you. It could also be a good value to someone else. This has no impact on its funtion.
There are some dubious products on the market I'm sure.
Everything else Shakti makes could be junk (I don't know because I have no idea if they make anything else).
These are worth the effort it takes to make them.
I will be making others to see if the effect is compounded.
 
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RHosch

Member
Joined 2003
fdegrove said:
Do you think that if we'd build a gainclone with the values specified as per the design, they'd sound the same?
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Absolutely.
What if I tell you that in the right system I can make Peter Daniel's gainclone sound completely different just by tightening or untightening a few screws that have nothing to do whatsoever with the electronics proper but are used to hold the case together?
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I'd say you are full of it... and I'd be right unless something was so loose as to be audibly resonating before tightening a screw. Microphonics...? please.
 
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RHosch

Member
Joined 2003
tom1356 said:
How funny is it that the people who admittedly know nothing about the subject are so outspoken.
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Becaues some of those people do know something... they know enough about the placebo effect and psychoacoustics in general to know that there is a much more believable and tested explanation for why you perceived a difference than the one you offered (that they actually affect the sound waves in your room).

To be perfectly honest, with something six feet tall sitting between the speakers, there is a real possibility that in some small way they do affect the sound waves reaching your ears. Probably a small effect, and obviously not operating through the mechanism described on their site, but possibly measurable with sensitive enough equipment.

Here's a question tom... do you belive placing photographs of yourself in the freezer physically affects the performance of your speakers? Do you believe the position of Pluto in the sky affects the performance of your speakers? Do you beleive placing a green 'X' on all of your CD's jewel cases improves the performance of your speakers? Why or why not? Just how "open" is your mind?
 
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phase_accurate

Member
Joined 2002
Almost any object standing around in your listening environment have an impact on sound. Also these ones I assume. But I suspect that they have only as much impact that it is just barely recognizeable. This way even if it would sound worse it wouldn't sound much worse and noone will notice the change to the worse. It would just be SOME change so one is fooled into thinking that it sounds better. But this is just my opinion.

I by myself would rather rely on the well known types of absorbers and diffusors (like Schroeder diffusors, which look quite decorative as well).

Regards

Charles
 
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tom1356

Member
Joined 2002
RHosch said:

Becaues some of those people do know something...
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There is no evidence for this.

RHosch said:

they know enough about the placebo effect and psychoacoustics in general to know that there is a much more believable and tested explanation for why you perceived a difference than the one you offered (that they actually affect the sound waves in your room).
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Perception is reality. Hence the placibo efect is well undestood as a curative device.
RHosch said:

To be perfectly honest, with something six feet tall sitting between the speakers, there is a real possibility that in some small way they do affect the sound waves reaching your ears. Probably a small effect, and obviously not operating through the mechanism described on their site, but possibly measurable with sensitive enough equipment.
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So they do something, I just can't hear it because you don't think I should be able to.
I have news for you. I posses the most sensitive measuring equipment known to man. My ears. Maybe if you listened with ears and not scopes you would hear differences.
RHosch said:

Here's a question tom... do you belive placing photographs of yourself in the freezer physically affects the performance of your speakers? Do you believe the position of Pluto in the sky affects the performance of your speakers? Do you beleive placing a green 'X' on all of your CD's jewel cases improves the performance of your speakers? Why or why not? Just how "open" is your mind?
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I can't imagine how these things would effect the sound of a system, but I don't know that they don't work and neither do you.

I am constantly amazed by what does improve the sound of my system. When your system is high resolution small changes sometimes have a very big impact.
My particular illusion engine benifits from these. You can't say yours doesn't.
 
SY

SY

Ex-Moderator
Joined 2002
SYclotron.com
Almost any object standing around in your listening environment have an impact on sound. Also these ones I assume. But I suspect that they have only as much impact that it is just barely recognizeable.
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I tried the experiment with a couple of hat-racks, since they're about the same mass and cross section as the magical, mystical devices. No real difference that I could hear unless they were placed very close to my listening seat or directly in front of the speakers (which are dipoles, FWIW).
 
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RHosch

Member
Joined 2003
tom1356 said:
Perception is reality.
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Are you a solopsist? Or do you believe that there is indeed an objective reality apart from your perception of it?

Hence the placibo efect is well undestood as a curative device.
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Then you admit that many of the changes that "amaze" you by improving your system may in fact be based on the placebo effect?

So they do something, I just can't hear it because you don't think I should be able to.
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To be precise, I think it is unlikely that these objects alter the soundwaves hitting your ears sufficiently to produce the effect you describe, but I explicitly allowed for that possibility. They are six feet tall, after all.

I have news for you. I posses the most sensitive measuring equipment known to man. My ears. Maybe if you listened with ears and not scopes you would hear differences.
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I have news for you as well... electronic instruments are orders of magnitude more sensitive than our ears. That your ears are the "most sensitive measuring equipment known to man" is just a myth. A myth just like that we only use 10% of our brains, or a dozen other similar ones.

I can't imagine how these things would effect the sound of a system, but I don't know that they don't work and neither do you.
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No, I don't know how they work because I have neither conducted nor reviewed a properly controlled test to determine that. I can surmise, however, based on the body of knowledge gathered thus far and applying the tenet of Occam's Razor, that the effect you perceive is due to psychological mechanisms, not physical ones.
 
fdegrove

fdegrove

diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

I just went through the Shakti homepage. I have never seen so much fraud concentrated in one place....we are talking 100% BS, please Frank, go have a look......im sure you will agree.
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I had a quick glance this morning...

Whether or not people consider it as fraudulous or not is besides the point here IMO.

Tom copied one for his own use and seems convinced that it works.

Don't think for a minute that I'm on a mission sending people out to buy whatever contraption is offered...

It's just that when you can experiment at your own leasure and find yourself in occurence with what is claimed about something I feel it's worth mentioning it to others.

Conversely, when people try something out and notice that it just doesn't work as advertised it would be nice to be informed about it as well as it would save others the waste of time and materials...

Cheers,;)
 
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RHosch

Member
Joined 2003
fdegrove said:
Hi,



It seems to me someone's working hard to prove a myth...

Cheers,;)
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Is it just me, or do others notice that I seem to be a favorite target these days for tactless insults and mudslinging? You know, it's one thing to express your belief that someone is incorrect... and I would encourage that as long as some reasoning is given as to why. I can appreciate tom's certainty that he has heard something different but see no need for copping an attitude because of it. And frank, I have no problem with you believing in all sorts of bizarre things (though I also have no problem telling others I think they are bizarre... ;)), but there really is no point in questioning someone's intellect just because they share a different viewpoint. It's one thing to be ignorant, it's quite another to be stupid, and I don't appreciate the inferrance of the latter in this case.

I suppose if you can't argue with someone's logic just throw a little dirt their way to cloud the issue.
 
Magura

Magura

Member
Joined 2003
class-a-labs.com
RHosch:

This thread have been mud slinging most of the time, Tom started out being rather rude sometime yesterday, PD went personal and so forth...its not just you whos getting personal attacks. PD pretty much called me a narrowminded moron yesterday for not swallowing this stuff raw.

Take this thread for what it is.


Magura:)
 
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