As stated before, why should the high end industry be an exception among all other luxury product industries (or at least most of them)?
Serious (and blind) testing is normally only part of scientific means or in general industry quality ensuring processes.
Even in the world of expensive mechanical watches the earlier quite important chronometer feature doesn´t seem of interest any longer.
Maybe i´ve overseen some, but i can´t remind of any campaign that does focus in advertising or marketing on double blind testing results, when it comes to luxury items.
And even the not so luxury products, there was something like the pepsi vs. coke campaign, but i think it´s justified to say that test results don´t sell products in most fields.
Wishes
Everyone knows a $100 watch tells the same time as a $10K watch and there is no time keeping advantage for those who own the $10K watch. The ONLY reason luxury watches are sold is because they are exclusive, they have precious metals or rocks in them and they have name recognition. Same reason my wife buys "Coach" bags, etc.
Yeah, there are specific watches for diving and are waterproof down to 200 feet,etc but lets just be clear that expensive watch manufacturers do not push unproven subjectivity to sell their watches. They push exclusivity and luxury period.
Luxury audio companies push the same crap daily, they keep saying their products IMPROVE SQ.
Heck that isnt even arguing if they alter SQ but they say IMPROVES!!! That is the biggest lie out there....DIET PILL industry stuff here!
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Two words: fraudulent advertising. Worse than astrology, ghost busting, ouija boards, etc... because it creates false expectations by using pseudo science.
You'll never hear an astrology parlor mentioning "our method is supported by the Hubble scientists at NASA".
You´re describing the most important part of this- you know what kind of em interference will occur and you´re able to change the environment according to the requirements _and_ to incorporate the countermeasures needed in your custom build instruments and that even includes the grounding scheme.
Is that in any way comparable to the situation a normal consumer faces at home?
The best way normally would be to use dedicated line filtering, but if that is an external box, what kind of power cord would be best to connect filter box and the equipment?
It is virtually impossible to build consumer equipment with filtering for the best solution in every place over the world.
That power cords by construction do change something wrt to rfi is based on maxwell equations, but that doesn´t depend on the price tag.
BTW, if you are manufacturing a _real_ product and try to sell it than it raises of course the price. That is the reason why a quite normal power cord turns into an expensive piece of gear if sold to you by agilent. 🙂
Fortunately in the diy world there are a lot of ways to do things better as it must only be accomodated to personal requirements and can be very specialized in this respect.
That doesn´t mean that a price tag of several thousand dollars for a cable can be justified by technology or material or manufacturing effort.
But for example, is there any justification for a price tag of several thousand dollars for a bottle of red wine a couple of years old other than that obviously some people are able and willing to pay for it?
Wishes
Of course i don´t look at any advertisment but most i´ve seen are (at least i´d think) sufficient unspecific, so that in most case you can´t pinpoint any direct promise.
At least i would have thought especially in the usa it would be much to dangerous due to the high penalties from civil courts.
Wishes
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Nice terminology
What a great term! "Golden Ears with BIAS control"... that should be engraved in gold and provided with all the high end cables purchased. I would only add .."and humility" to complete the phrase😀
John L.
BTW: Amazon.com: Modern Electrochemistry 2A: Fundamentals of Electrodics eBook: John O'M. Bockris, Amulya K.N. Reddy, Maria E. Gamboa-Aldeco: Kindle Store is a comprehensive text on a different perspective on electron transport and processes... if anyone has an interest
What a great term! "Golden Ears with BIAS control"... that should be engraved in gold and provided with all the high end cables purchased. I would only add .."and humility" to complete the phrase😀
John L.
BTW: Amazon.com: Modern Electrochemistry 2A: Fundamentals of Electrodics eBook: John O'M. Bockris, Amulya K.N. Reddy, Maria E. Gamboa-Aldeco: Kindle Store is a comprehensive text on a different perspective on electron transport and processes... if anyone has an interest
That IS mean! Still, even if things change, will the effect of the ground dongle still be seen? With/without?
Good grounds can make such a difference. Having grown up in electrically noisy environments (the stage) it's been a big part of my life. On a gig the sound crew are forever casing down hums and buzzes. So much cable, so much noise...
At home my house had no real grounds. Built in the mid 50s it still has the 2 prong plugs. Neutral is tied to ground at the pole and to a water pipe at the house. So I installed a grounding rod about 6 feet from my audio power point. Huge improvement! Even the digital signal stopped dropping out. Mysteriously, the bass improved. Some of my signal is run balanced, but not all of it.
But still one problem. The neutral and my new ground are tied together in the local panel in the shop. So lots of the noise from the house is trying to drain out thru my new ground. 😡 I'll have to break the connection in the local sub panel to see if that helps. Let the house have its ground and me have mine.
Ground cables DO make a difference.
Yes, Curly, you are right. I was hoping that we could discuss plating techniques here, since we have some plating experts here on line. I do have in front of me: 'Modern Electrochemistry' parts 1 and 2. Now where should I look in these texts for a meaningful understanding of what we were talking about?
Forget contacts, when the 'for the children' contingent arrives reason has flown out the window. Considering themselves the sole harbingers of reality does make for some comical moments based on 'facts' they make up out of whole cloth. The disservice they do to the spirit of science in the process isn't so funny.
Just kick back and enjoy the tales of spirit home delivery of the homeopathic remedies we all enjoy. We iz such idjits.
Just kick back and enjoy the tales of spirit home delivery of the homeopathic remedies we all enjoy. We iz such idjits.
The auto industry is full of this sort of "better by implication" marketing. However. at one point Ford (I think) actually had blindfolded folks ride in a full size Ford and then in a Rolls Royce, to reinforce the notion that Ford was quieter than a Rolls. I cannot imagine how this was any kind of a blind test, but it does show what a marketing department will do to any sort of scientific testing, pseudo or otherwise.
Bud
What do you mean: "forget contacts"? You don't believe in them, or that they have any importance? And I would presume, with contacts: Connectors, cable, solder, and even whole circuits should be forgotten, according to you. Where is the dividing line?
Curly,
I still would like to know if you believe that seeing the cables swapped, seeing the brand names, price tags has an important influence on the listeners conclusions.
Not your conclusions just anyone walking into a HiFi store?
I still would like to know if you believe that seeing the cables swapped, seeing the brand names, price tags has an important influence on the listeners conclusions.
Not your conclusions just anyone walking into a HiFi store?
I did a test once with a 100K Mercedes and a 40K Acura. I was a blind folded passenger.....its EXTREMELY hard to tell the difference once the influences are removed.
We are extremely subjective people period. Those who ignore that are just fooling themselves and possibly wasting money for the wrong reasons.
The first line of "defense" at the 400 Iraqi police checkpoints in Baghdad are small wands with antennas that supposedly detect explosives, but which U.S. officials say are about as useful as Ouija boards. The Iraqi official in charge, Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, is so enamored of the devices, according to a November New York Times dispatch, that when American experts repeatedly showed the rods' failures in test after test, he blamed the results on testers' lack of "training." The Iraqi government has purchased 1,500 of the ADE 651s from its manufacturer, ATSC Ltd. of the UK, at prices ranging from $16,000 to $60,000 each. The suicide bombers who killed 155 in downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25 passed two tons of explosives through at least one ADE-651-equipped checkpoint. [New York Times, 11-4-09]
Forget trying to maintain a fruitful discussion of contact effects in this atmosphere.
Key: Classic red herring, but it touches on so many other logical fallacies it's hard to pick just one.
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that when American experts repeatedly showed the rods' failures in test after test, he blamed the results on testers' lack of "training."
Hmmmmm.....sounds familar..
first allow themselves an opportunity to learn to listen, or else nothing will ever become evident, except that they have closed minds and are the real idiots.
So I guess I can conclude that those American experts are the closed minded idiots and the Iraq police would never let price and branding influence their conclusions 😱
Hmmmmm.....sounds familar..
first allow themselves an opportunity to learn to listen, or else nothing will ever become evident, except that they have closed minds and are the real idiots.
So I guess I can conclude that those American experts are the closed minded idiots and the Iraq police would never let price and branding influence their conclusions 😱
I happen to own a $20K Acura, and my associate has a $100,000 Mercedes. Sitting for hours in the Mercedes, was VERY DIFFERENT that sitting in the Acura for the same length of time. I am told that even the $40,000 Acuras are very uncomfortable on the road, much like my Acura. Of course, if you just make a 'milk run' to the store, who cares?
RDF, I would actually like to learn something about contacts, from experts, if I can. Here is just as good a place as any.
More often than not we never discussed cost. It was about trying to hear the differences, as most people had been brainwashed into believeing that cabling made no differences at all. So i might swap and budget cable with a good cable ($200/pr of interconnects) vs the cheaper $50.00 Monster cable. If anything people would have been drawn to the Monster Cable as it was without question, the most marketed cable in history. They just knew that we were swapping cables. I tried not to discuss names or prices as you are right, it would bias the situation for some, but in my opinion, in a negative light. More expensive is a "rip-off" was almost always heard prior to a listening session with someone that "knew that cables made no differences".
I never laughed, but it was a great feeling to see the people select the lesser known cabling over the Monster, more often than not. But they were more expensive so they should have been better. Not always true, but in these budget type of cables, it is more often true than not.
Im just saying I did the test in the blind....the ride was highway and city with acceleration requests.
Its just another proof that subjectivity and how we make conclusions is full off preconceived decisions as much as the experience itself.
I have owned both but today is a minivan with kids 😉
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