Wow thats dangerous, one finger in the wrong place at the back and you're seeing pearly gates, that or really big jolly fat men that run away with our money.
Yeah there are too many cults in our world already.
Yeah sure why not. Unless someone else says something stupid like "I belieeeve! I belieeeve!"
Exactly. Predatory behavior is what makes me sick most of all.
How easily you forget, we are all poor little girls at heart. So our "mock rage" is well founded. In my case at least, cannot say for anyone elses.
If I were to buy one of these devices, and through some miracle of an overload of quantum noise (or just shoddy workmanship) this device is then now my responsibility and therefore I cannot send it back.
So is anyone willing to guarantee to me that this device can be returned for a full refund if its broken? Who is going to decide if that device is broken or not? Its questionable to me, yet another question in a sea of them, weather or not this 100% money back guarantee has any catches.
I think its time now to turn this thread back around and take it away from off-topic and back on topic.
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Me actually, cos I tend to work in this field a lot so know what a pain it can be. This is why having a COTS product is a better option if that avenue is open for a design, not always though.
Luck at the data available, why should we not comment on such scams, if you want to blindly believe that is your choice, but a bit of reading regarding the claims, and the various testing that has been done on here and other forums would point you in the right direction.
Marce, that is a good idea. As things stand, calling believers idiots is not going to make anybody any friends. Remember, vainty is full force ON in such matters, the one thing people hate is when the are shown that they have wasted thousands of dollars/pounds/euros in vain, they never forget and never forgive that. So, if you want to pass on such a message, and want it to get through, you need to walk lightly and very carefully so as not to alienate the target audience.
And yes, over time, as new and better still materials appear, older ones are slowly taken off the forbidden list and passed on to the industry at large. Quite usual and actually expected to happen.
The question here is has Bybee used something still on the forbidden list, in which case he would face a stiff jail sentence from being sued by the military; I think this is probably NOT the case, more likely these materials originated from military research, but have by now been surpassed by better yet amterials and have been taken off the forbidden list. I don't see him challenging the whole miltary complex, that's a bite with which everybody chokes. They can simply outspend you to death.
The question here is has Bybee used something still on the forbidden list, in which case he would face a stiff jail sentence from being sued by the military; I think this is probably NOT the case, more likely these materials originated from military research, but have by now been surpassed by better yet amterials and have been taken off the forbidden list. I don't see him challenging the whole miltary complex, that's a bite with which everybody chokes. They can simply outspend you to death.
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On another topic, do you think that in line with the idea that less is more, classic two transistor RIAA eq amps can sound as good as modern, significantly more complicated models?
Way back in 1970, my old Dual 1019 (idler driving a 3 kg platter) had such an add-on installed by the factory. In those days, people like Dual, Thorens and Lenco used to offer that option as many receivers and integrated amps of the days were still stuck with crystal cartriges. And actually, they make some fair music, though you might not have thought it by looking at their single +15V power supplies, and even as such rather rudimentary. While they certainly could not compete with the very best designs of the day, they did a fair day's work.
Way back in 1970, my old Dual 1019 (idler driving a 3 kg platter) had such an add-on installed by the factory. In those days, people like Dual, Thorens and Lenco used to offer that option as many receivers and integrated amps of the days were still stuck with crystal cartriges. And actually, they make some fair music, though you might not have thought it by looking at their single +15V power supplies, and even as such rather rudimentary. While they certainly could not compete with the very best designs of the day, they did a fair day's work.
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Thanks Scott, that's a good heads up.
Carbon composition resistor is the best (worst) for this application ?.
Can you give me reference to your design please ?.
Dan.
With reference to simple RIAA : Allow me to somewhat aberrant thinking. Some vintage two way speakers used to have single capacitor as high pass filter and woofer used to be mechanically low passed. Can a speaker driver be mechanically designed to make it attenuate high frequencies and boost low frequencies ? Would be great for casual listening. 
Regards.
Regards.
More likely marketing blurb to be quite honest, if this product did what it says on the can then I know of many industries where it would be welcome, one of them being phase array sonars... Such a device would find a large market in mainstream electronics if it was real and not just smoke and mirrors.....
I detest mob justice. It's been used for many atrocity throughout human history. Even if it's snake oil (that I can hear), grow up and lose the victim card. Business can fail or succeed without vigilante justice and people should have free will to buy harmless and useless products.
Petty rage on not-your-business isn't of value to the forum. Those that tested the Bybees and came to the conclusion that if it does anything, there's no easily discernable indicator, provided something useful; stop trying to absorb their contribution as part of your own as some moral justice for little black resistor things only a few thousand people on the planet are even aware of and less care about.
Petty rage on not-your-business isn't of value to the forum. Those that tested the Bybees and came to the conclusion that if it does anything, there's no easily discernable indicator, provided something useful; stop trying to absorb their contribution as part of your own as some moral justice for little black resistor things only a few thousand people on the planet are even aware of and less care about.
The article was IIRC EDN circa 1982, the introduction of the AD524. I used NOS Allen Bradley carbon comps and +-10V on a 10k bridge was enough to do it. The article is not archived on our site like the one Walt and I did later, I might have a copy though. Simple enough idea make a bridge of four with +-10V excitation, with a small trim on one leg you can get a low enough DC that you can put an in-amp at gain of 100 or so across the sense points and get just the noise.
EDIT - found it, very slightly different as I remember but same point.
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This is curiously true. All the resentment that is rightfully the due of the fraudster is frequently visited on the debunker, and what the debunker is fighting against is frequently the anger and pain that encyst learning difficulties. Problems are only problems when they're an emotional issue. It's when you don't care about what the answer is that the insight occurs.
It's behaviours like that which have led to the idea of 'engrams', which in Scientology and Dianetics mean "recordings" of past painful events not normally accessible to the conscious mind, said to result in the repetition of life (and other) errors.
This model of evolution of ideas is not entirely out-of-tune with De Bono's and is historically related to the theories underlying psychotherapy.
And of course has an offshoot technology, the lie detector.
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Thanks ticknpop, finally something that I can answer. The Constellation Orion has been put on hold and we went to complete a less expensive unit ($27,500) that has been released and even 'reviewed' by TAS. A somewhat less expensive version is in the works, and someday, the original Orion will be made. So far all of these designs are 100% FET, but that might change for the less expensive units.
This project has been expensive and slow, but it has been rewarding. It is a totally balanced design that makes it much more expensive to execute, compared to the original Vendetta Research SCP-2.
This project has been expensive and slow, but it has been rewarding. It is a totally balanced design that makes it much more expensive to execute, compared to the original Vendetta Research SCP-2.
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Why would I want to take time out to do that? Just start with the material's numbers and plug them into the relevant formulas. Etc
As to the Graphene material characteristics... look here and Google has a lot more: It is turning out to be a very important material and could replace silicon as the semiconductor material of choice once they can make it fast and cheap.
Graphenea
THx-RNMarsh
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What do you think about graphite as a resistor? I've been shown a way to do it with pencil "lead".
Audibility
I'm glad the Bybee furor has died down, it is senseless to argue an issue which always comes down to a claim of audibility, and people hear things for different reasons.
I was a participant (and part of the organization) of a rather large study in the early 1990's at a New York AES show to determine the audibility of differences between CDs and Cassettes. Recognizing that differences would depend on environmental factors as well as true differences between samples we performed multiple test cycles of the same sequences under different lighting. We performed two kinds of testing: ABX and long-term listener-switched. The people being tested were a cross-section of audio engineers and musicians (many whom you would recognize), and they had no idea environment factors were part of the test. Our results showed the brightness of lighting to be a major factor in one's preference for a particular sample.
In general only two people out of several hundred identified the cassette with any accuracy over 70%, and one of them was a Dolby engineer. The long-term test results were identical. We could, on the other hand bias the results in either direction by 10% or more by changing the room brightness and not the sample. And if you think the fact that a cassette and a CD could sound identical invalidates the testing, you are missing the point I want to make here: that is a separate issue.
In retrospect the results should have been predictable: only a small part of our hearing is the electro-mechanical cochlear nerve cell response. The knitting together and processing of the individual cochlear cell outputs is done by the auditory cortex. Research has shown that auditory processing partly occurs in regions of the cortex shared with other senses, most notably vision.
It is my contention based on my years in professional audio that people can actually hear what they want to...within limits of course. Much as taking a drink of water when one thinks it is orange juice and the actual taste is wrong and neither water nor orange, we can adjust what we think we hear based on preconceptions, expectations and I'm sure a lot more.
If one has the resources to purchase a device and they think they hear a difference, I will surely not tell them they do not, even if the device in question is in fact an intentional fraud. It does not make me like the fraud purveyor, but I have no interest in telling someone what they do and do not hear. I'm not in their head so I cannot know.
By the same token, I find it misguided for people who do not understand why they hear something to insist it actually exists outside of their own heads. Until they actually discover a way to quantify the difference, they need to be happy to just know they like the sound. To insist the difference exists without any attempt to quantify always ends up in a lot of hot air being exchanged with no progress.
I hear a lot of people doing just that: insisting they hear differences, yet inevitably they also poo-pooh ABX testing, so I must ask: what method are they using to determine the difference, and how does it escape the pitfalls of ABX? I for one think ABX has it's limitations, but it is good for some revealing tests. However, if you listen to one sample, then turn a system off and make a change, then audition another sample, your reference is lost, and unless the difference from the next sample is vast, it doesn't matter how good your memory is. If you are smiling one minute and not the next, the facial muscles distort the shape of your pinna and canal and change the perceived sound; heck smiling even induces an upwards pitch shift. Do you adopt a frozen reference expression between samples? Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny nor accusatory here, I am just tired of discussion without any direction towards quantification.
I suggest we refrain from insisting an audible effect exists outside of one's own head without at least a plan on how to quantify them. So many of the contributors here are responsible for major advances in audio equipment this should be natural.
Just my <$0.02 worth, YMMV...
Howie
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill, NC
www.wxyc.org
p.s. RM: although there is no love lost between Noel Lee and I, I have one of your Monster AC line filters on my system and it cleans the noise floor up well! thank you!
I'm glad the Bybee furor has died down, it is senseless to argue an issue which always comes down to a claim of audibility, and people hear things for different reasons.
I was a participant (and part of the organization) of a rather large study in the early 1990's at a New York AES show to determine the audibility of differences between CDs and Cassettes. Recognizing that differences would depend on environmental factors as well as true differences between samples we performed multiple test cycles of the same sequences under different lighting. We performed two kinds of testing: ABX and long-term listener-switched. The people being tested were a cross-section of audio engineers and musicians (many whom you would recognize), and they had no idea environment factors were part of the test. Our results showed the brightness of lighting to be a major factor in one's preference for a particular sample.
In general only two people out of several hundred identified the cassette with any accuracy over 70%, and one of them was a Dolby engineer. The long-term test results were identical. We could, on the other hand bias the results in either direction by 10% or more by changing the room brightness and not the sample. And if you think the fact that a cassette and a CD could sound identical invalidates the testing, you are missing the point I want to make here: that is a separate issue.
In retrospect the results should have been predictable: only a small part of our hearing is the electro-mechanical cochlear nerve cell response. The knitting together and processing of the individual cochlear cell outputs is done by the auditory cortex. Research has shown that auditory processing partly occurs in regions of the cortex shared with other senses, most notably vision.
It is my contention based on my years in professional audio that people can actually hear what they want to...within limits of course. Much as taking a drink of water when one thinks it is orange juice and the actual taste is wrong and neither water nor orange, we can adjust what we think we hear based on preconceptions, expectations and I'm sure a lot more.
If one has the resources to purchase a device and they think they hear a difference, I will surely not tell them they do not, even if the device in question is in fact an intentional fraud. It does not make me like the fraud purveyor, but I have no interest in telling someone what they do and do not hear. I'm not in their head so I cannot know.
By the same token, I find it misguided for people who do not understand why they hear something to insist it actually exists outside of their own heads. Until they actually discover a way to quantify the difference, they need to be happy to just know they like the sound. To insist the difference exists without any attempt to quantify always ends up in a lot of hot air being exchanged with no progress.
I hear a lot of people doing just that: insisting they hear differences, yet inevitably they also poo-pooh ABX testing, so I must ask: what method are they using to determine the difference, and how does it escape the pitfalls of ABX? I for one think ABX has it's limitations, but it is good for some revealing tests. However, if you listen to one sample, then turn a system off and make a change, then audition another sample, your reference is lost, and unless the difference from the next sample is vast, it doesn't matter how good your memory is. If you are smiling one minute and not the next, the facial muscles distort the shape of your pinna and canal and change the perceived sound; heck smiling even induces an upwards pitch shift. Do you adopt a frozen reference expression between samples? Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny nor accusatory here, I am just tired of discussion without any direction towards quantification.
I suggest we refrain from insisting an audible effect exists outside of one's own head without at least a plan on how to quantify them. So many of the contributors here are responsible for major advances in audio equipment this should be natural.
Just my <$0.02 worth, YMMV...
Howie
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill, NC
www.wxyc.org
p.s. RM: although there is no love lost between Noel Lee and I, I have one of your Monster AC line filters on my system and it cleans the noise floor up well! thank you!
On what is often called "subtle differences" I would agree; however, on more "physical" and masurebale differences, I would not. How can one hear linearity where there is measureably none? I very much doubt anyone can by hearing "iron out" peaks or dips of say +/-3 dB at say 7 kHz and say 10 kHz? They may come to expect that to be normal, and actually miss it when listening to a truly linear speaker, that I understand, but I doubt they can actually filter out nonlinearities.
In all of my audio life, dating back to 1970, all I ever hear from such people is about "subtle" differences. I agree not all differenes have to in yer face, but experience also teaches me that more often than not no trace of such "subtle" differences can be found by measureing, and generally somehow they are the only ones hearing it.
As you say, we are not in their heads and cannot KNOW what they are hearing, but sometimes we cn find out what they say they are hearing when in fact they are not. Classic example - tell them you have just changed the speaker behind the curtain and play the same piece of music again, and watch them hop: "Aha, there, you see, I told you the other one was better, not as dead as this one". In short, help them make fools of themselves if they really got on your wick ba that time.
Which is, of course, what any decent filter should do, but unfortunately too many still don't.
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