I have been in a tech exchange with CH resulting from my review of an early Benchmark DAC for (at the time) Audio Amateur.
Let me tell you, CH is as tech savvy as they come, he knows fully well what he is talking about, down to the most sophisticated detail, tech wise.
The 'block-saga' surely must be tongue in cheek.
Unless he is a re-incarnation of Faust. Possible, unlikely.
Jan
Yellow card for this
Dr. Faustus sold his soul in return for The Knowledge.
Fame, professional & social status, wealth, didn't motive him (he already was in possession of all these).
George
Hmmmm... a question is at whom the comment was pointed?
Since he quoted my post and not the post that I was commenting on (regarding ABX), and there were only pronouns utilized, the object and subject of the post were ambiguous to some extent.
Certainly a person of SY's education and understanding, one may presume, knew what he was writing and how it would be taken. And, we've seen nothing from SY to modify or clarify since.
Regardless, even IF it was aimed at the person with whom I was raising an objection the post was not nice and not constructive - happy face emoticon or not.
I'm familiar with several of the Dr Fist type.
Very much into fame, status and wealth.
Rather vulgar characters, imho, so why not offer Mephisto a push.
In sighted comparisons, we/I might feel some differences. A few people will think that they DO hear differences, a few others will not be so sure. Of course, there are a few others who make assumption based on their vision...(Many objectivists are too focused on the third group imho).
I'm in the second group. How can I be so sure that I hear differences when it is just a single or a few experiences?? I need repeatability to be sure, and it is usually not possible in sighted comparison. ABX makes it possible. We can focus on small part of the music, repeat it many times in just seconds to find if there is any difference...
But for practical purposes (i.e. time), I usually trust my sighted comparison. The reason is because I know from experience that my judgement is quite accurate and usable.
I don't know if it is stressful (I don't feel stressful at all in blind testings). May be it is stressful if you THINK you can hear in a sighted test but now you have to hear it too in a blind test. I think the third group mentioned before will be most stressful.
If it takes long time to form an opinion in a sighted test, then the blind test must also be taken in a long time! (in an exact condition as the sighted experience).
This is actually true. Very true. It takes practices and experience, beside talent of course.
A music has long duration, and we have to find the segment where the difference exist. And then we have to listen for many kinds of differences. Timing or pitch is one hard example. FATIGUE is my favorite, and is probably the hardest. Why is it my favorite? Because usually it is easy to find differences, what hard is to know which one is better, especially when there is trade-off. I'm just sure that, however good a sound, if it is fatiguing then why bother to listen to it??
I think you need to understand something (a psychology thing):
When I'm given 2 sound-clips with SUBTLE audible difference, I might have difficulties to find the difference, and initially I will conclude that there is NO differences...
Convince me that there is differences, and give me more time to try harder, and when I find the difference the 2 sound-clips will change from "no differences" to "different like heaven and earth".
So, two 50 meter-squared white papers with one paper having 0.1 mm black dot are different like heaven and earth, IF you can see the dot...
It is not a matter of ratio between the dot and the total width (Math). It is psychological.
I can easily agree with you, but I can agree with JC as well... Let me explain at least one thing...
I am AGREE with you that nothing should be covered by ABX. We may be wrong at this, but more likely not.
But there is an issue where ABX result is IMO not well understood. It's about Statistics or probability theory.
Let's say that John listens to A and B 10 times. The first 9 he cannot hear any difference but at the 10th chance he can hear the difference (and then he tried again and he failed). How will you assess this 1/10 with Math?
In my experience, observation and analysis, John may HEAR differences, or the differences DO exist. But to explain with Math could be difficult (And I'm not going to try at this moment).
And with the analysis of an ABX result, I believe many people are wrong when they rely on "basic" Statistics. What seems to be just a "coincidence" is actually an "evidence" (Interesting?).
I have a special distaste 'sandman' and his ilk. Here's a guy who is perfectly capable of designing good electronics within his chosen philosophy (zero feedback) but consistently peddles bs (like the myrtle blocks, cable stories, 'feedback destroys the sound') and then goes about denigrating everyone else's efforts.
You are not alone in that perception. Statistics is much less intuitive than calculus in some ways. Certainly, it was developed long after calculus was, and it it took a lot of people about 20 years of work to figure out. Even today, professional statisticians usually fail to apply statistics properly in their own day to day lives, unless they are specifically told to approach it as a statistical problem. Nonetheless, statistics is the best thing we have for dealing with uncertainty and low signal to noise situations. And it does work correctly, if properly understood and used. But humans, as it turns out, do not naturally think in terms of statistics and tend to be wary of them. When specific information about something exists, people tend to completely disregard any applicable statistics and rely only on the specific information. This is incorrect and leads to many errors and bad judgements. Also, this happens to be one of several problem areas of brain function discussed in considerable detail in the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, among other places.
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"Unless he is a re-incarnation of Faust. Possible, unlikely."
Possibly a walk-in. I've hears of this before.
This story is identical, nearly verbatim, to the one I and others read a year or more ago. I am confident that it was not a leg-pull. And taken as a true account of his experience, in and of itself it doesn't mean he can't design electronics. Clearly he can. Other testimony to what is inside Ayre products indicates that he knows circuits and systems, although I would take issue with the set of beliefs that have been adopted, and appeals to which are posited as accounting for the distinctive performance.
There have also been cases in which some advance is described that I know is prior art, and I'm not suggesting that the description as something new and novel is disingenuous, just incorrect. Some authors and designers are better informed historically than others, and many times there is little information out there. Bibliography is hard work and some famous authors don't manage it very well. This is particularly true when they know that they have devised a circuit from scratch---the story of the control-electrode-recapture approach is a case in point, something going back to about 1956 but usually ascribed to Baxandall, or a related topology attributed to Hawksford that is almost as old.
It may be true that for some people in this business they say things that are motivated by marketing and the desire to give reviewers something to pad out their reviews. It may also be true that the goal is enhancing sales and making more money. But let's face it---if you are really motivated primarily by money, there are other occupations that will provide a more reliable and larger cash flow and higher profitability than manufacturing audio equipment.
Through the wonders of the world of the electron, it doesn't matter. That is, wrapping speaker or microphone cable around something metallic, as long as the metal thing stays out of the loop produced by the two conductors, there is no impact.
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Not sure.. if you can get a few hundred $ for a small block of wood, that's a pretty good GPM.........
But would you or I ever launch a business based on that?
There are some parallels with the world of modern art. To break in to the scene you have to look and act the part, court the critics and customers, live in the right part of town. It may be precisely what you want, but I suspect that is fairly rare. And you've got to have a gimmick.
This was the counsel of Bob Kraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kraft_(astronomer) ). He described to me how one gets a Nobel Prize, when I met him while using the UCLA spectrometer at Lick Observatory. He said First, you gotta have a gimmick, usually some piece of instrumentation. Then you take it and put it on the telescope, and you make a discovery. You write it up in a paper or two and publish. Then you get the Nobel. A few weeks later everyone forgets about it.
Good nobel story - especially as a keen amateur astronomer!
Art -- well, that's the ultimate of group deception; it has monetary value only because someone else says it does... loop repeatedly...
As for blocks of wood, if you have a business selling decent audio amps etc, then sell the blocks and other tinfoil hat devices too, your average GPM goes up noticeably...
Yes, the important thing is an existing business. One does not go directly into the wood block business I suspect.Good nobel story - especially as a keen amateur astronomer!
Art -- well, that's the ultimate of group deception; it has monetary value only because someone else says it does... loop repeatedly...
As for blocks of wood, if you have a business selling decent audio amps etc, then sell the blocks and other tinfoil hat devices too, your average GPM goes up noticeably...
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