Neither of those. The $800 would likely be a total waste of $$. I'd investigate, determine the true cause (eg -- faulty reading light, perhaps) then fix the problem. For a lot less than $800 I'd expect.
Option C. Turn off the light, turn off the stereo, get two glasses of a nice wine, and start the software to hardware conversion procedure...
You obviously haven't read the current revision of the alien abduction handbook.
The lights go out, and everything goes quiet.
Then you plaster the left side of your body with SPF 2000. And wait.
then...buy lots of mashed potatoes and a big fork.
John
ps. Yah, I'm that old.
About the same here, although I did get recently another cassette recorder for playback of spoken-word tapes 🙂
The measurement versus reviewer response crisis is really a crisis. But we must remember what is fairly well established: Louder is better. Different is better unless it is just awful. When the subjective reviewer says something along the lines of "I heard details in the music I'd never heard before" that does not entail better performance, merely different performance, most likely a difference of frequency response. If you read the review of the Rossi modular thing it follows a familiar pattern.
To divine what in the Rossi unit reviewed by SP caused the subjective reviewer to react the way he did is a complex problem, but when phono overload margins are poor and gain structures are interactive and complicated, and when there is an abundance of distortion under some circumstances, one can speculate.
The Rossi product smacks of something that was brought to market rather hastily. There can be many reasons for this, and no reason to suspect that all the attributes of what was reviewed were completely intentional. I've fought schedule-driven managers and had to defy them at times, and had enough traction and street cred to get away with it, but sometimes it was a close call.
When I did scientific instrumentation I was excoriated for things taking years. In one case it was four years before the whole system was turned on. It had been variously predicted that (1) it will never be finished (2) if it is finished it will never work (3) if it is finished it will take another year of debug. In fact it took about two weeks of debug, and the performance was as anticipated except for vagaries of the particular detector, which required some minor changes. Mine enemies (of which I had several by then) then switched to saying that it wouldn't work for long 🙂 I was even teased by one grad student when a capacitor in a subsystem had failed and forced the cancellation of an observing run. The professors went on about how the system ought to have had various diagnostic tools built in, with 20-20 academic hindsight.
Since those days I learned to adhere pretty closely to schedules, but when developing potential audio products in the absence of a schedule, things can drag on. I think the last finished preamp reflects the work on and off of about 15 years, and it was thrilling to actually hear music through it. It both measures and sounds great to me, but this assessment is necessarily unreliable. I wish I could talk about it more.
I don't think anyone is Bill. We agree he's not on their level yet. But we were just naming designers we've heard of, not that have some admirable reputations. (Not that you'd know it about JC if you read this thread; for the record I only dislike when he ignores people)
Or built? You do know what website you're on Bill?.... or are you that old? 😀
And please can you drop us a snippet/URL or something for the guy's views with power conditioning you adopted? We don't know about it.
The other possibility is, of course, that the chimp reviewer really couldn't hear the problems (maybe I couldn't either, I don't know), but liked the look, the feel, the concept, the story enough to convince himself that there was something magic going on. I suspect that this is far more common than many would like to believe.
And, of course, given that SP's business model (as with much of the fashion audio market) relies on not doing real listening tests, that possibility/probability will hang there like a big matzoh ball forever.
Yes. The marketing story is power supply oriented, with the two banks of ultracaps and the notion that the thing is at any moment completely disconnected from the mains. So that has to translate into something audible, right? Meanwhile there was the embarrassment that JA kept getting a lot of mains-related residuals. In addition he heard the switching events, which as well occurred far more frequently than the designer said they would. The latter explained the switching artifacts as acoustic noise from the relay.
The review has lots of "I can't believe this" stuff, and appeals to the other person auditioning the system. I don't think there's the wife hearing the difference from the kitchen at least.
The review has lots of "I can't believe this" stuff, and appeals to the other person auditioning the system. I don't think there's the wife hearing the difference from the kitchen at least.
Sorry OS, if I have ignored you or others. Sometimes I just don't have the energy to answer some questions. I don't ignore on purpose. Some people, however, think that I should prove everything that I do or say. I am just not up to doing that. I am just giving out free advice based on my experience in audio design, not proving everything that seems to work for me.
You have the charisma to write in a way that makes the difficult thinks seem as easy
😀 (or not)
George
I have built stuff in the last few years. I had a 10 year hiatus from audio when I was building cars but when I no longer had a garage got the soldering iron back out. If I wasn't building stuff (albeit slowly) I wouldn't be here.
I understand how annoying it must be to get the "prove it" demands. I read them more as "do a bunch of work for me, or give me a reason to keep bitching." Around here is tough. No one believes anything unless it has a graph.
Three actually. The idea is the one charging is never the one that gets switched on or too. Makes perfect sense. I'm not sure I believe the "chimp" (Sy's word) reviewer could hear it anymore than he imagined it or heard something in a recording. Waiting to hear that would be like watching grass grow. And Vinnie did admit two jumpers were incorrect when JA had the unit. So he isn't infallible. And BTW no one anywhere else I've seen has reported hearing the noise; including many owners. So maybe the "chimp" is more Superman than even our own Sy?
For that matter, Sy, I'm really curious how much you think a person can hear that is measured; barring chimps that do it for a living. It doesn't appear to have any real any real correlation with numbers unless they're absurdly big. How many times have you found an error on a piece of equipment that wasn't because you were looking for it? I think it's easy to speak for the whole forum... it happens a lot and correcting it doesn't always change the sound enough that we notice.
I think, based on data, that there's a lot of things we can measure that we can't hear. Contrariwise, there is no instance of a verified audible difference that wasn't reflected in simple measurements.
We're very sensitive to some things (e.g., frequency response) but not at all to others (e.g., small amounts of distortion).
Is that what you're asking?
We're very sensitive to some things (e.g., frequency response) but not at all to others (e.g., small amounts of distortion).
Is that what you're asking?
No. However, some of us tend to discount things that are based solely on sighted tests.
My own point of view is that DBT can make fine discriminations more difficult. Except for very-well-trained and generally-dispassionate listeners, there is frequently a lot of performance anxiety. DBT is hard work, and very boring except for the stress. I had to be tricked into such a test once, by someone who has a vested interest in belittling people---and I had not made any claims about my own faculties, other than that I suspected I had fairly normal hearing for my age at the time. I passed the test, but I found it enervating and was irritated that I was tricked.
If however someone insists that he or she hears huge effects, yet cannot reliably identify these alleged effects when she or he is no longer certain as to what is being presented, then I become skeptical of the huge effects.
BTW I see no mention of three capacitor banks, only two. Perhaps later information was provided and printed somewhere else. Quoting from the original SP review:
"While one bank of ultracaps is delivering pure DC to the LIO's audio circuits, the other bank is charging. The LIO's audio circuitry is never connected to the charging capacitor bank, and is therefore always 100% isolated from the AC mains and its sometimes devilish discontents. Meanwhile, all the control circuitry is powered directly and exclusively from the 24V charger—which also feeds a dedicated 5V regulator for all logic circuits in all of the modules (see later). Rossi says, 'LIO owners do not need expensive power filters, power cords, or conditioners to achieve ultimate quiet and musical resolution.' "
It sounds as if, despite powering electromechanical relays, the likely injection path for the mains spurs is the 24V charger/adapter and some details of the control circuitry.
There is simple "blowing up" marginaly details. Very often, simple invisible..
I am waiting for the claims that we need hiperbaric room for listening, full with, for example helium, specialy for superfine music details, timbre..etc..🙂
(Helium have two protons, two neutrons and two electrons, and low mass, and very low mechanical energy is needed to create atoms density in space 🙂)
But, this array is far away from simple "schematics of bussines"..a lot of specific words, a little cable(or gear, part or crystal🙂), and a lot of money from specific "followers of magic"..🙂
I am waiting for the claims that we need hiperbaric room for listening, full with, for example helium, specialy for superfine music details, timbre..etc..🙂
(Helium have two protons, two neutrons and two electrons, and low mass, and very low mechanical energy is needed to create atoms density in space 🙂)
But, this array is far away from simple "schematics of bussines"..a lot of specific words, a little cable(or gear, part or crystal🙂), and a lot of money from specific "followers of magic"..🙂
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