John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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Debates don't work for people who have already firmly made up their minds, like you for example.

Why would you say so? The same might be told about the opposite camp. At least, syn08 and many others are trying to bring some evidence, facts, measurements, step by step improvements that may be documented. The opposite camp is bringing only unsupported claims ("I heard it.....") and is reluctant to pass a DBT test with some statistically relevant result. Instead, challenges like "trust your ears" are posted, but if there is a DBT, the result is null. So the test method is accused wrong then.
Yes these debates are boring, I completely agree, but the choice of approach is yours.
 
Why would you say so? The same might be told about the opposite camp.

Oh, it is true about both sides in a debate. When people are in debating mode they are not in truth finding mode, just human nature. At first if we haven't realized we are in a debate, we will start by trying to 'educate' the other party. Later it gets more adversarial and the best arguments and techniques are honed. syn08 knows very well what has worked best for him in prior debates and at some level he does know it is a debate, because debating is what he is doing, not trying to understand what the other side is saying. He is long past that. He just deflects everything back as 'peeking,' whether it is or not. Eventually, he knows the repetition will leave some people with a memory that some peeking was always somehow involved. Debating 101, nothing more.
 
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Jealous ?
Do-you spend your saliva commenting the flyers of the Professeur Marabou guru Bambo m'bala (spell removal, return of love, master of African ancestral magic) ?
Réseau des marabouts voyants africains et médiums à Paris

I prefer antibiotic, but, if snake oil help somebody else to feel better, I don't give a damn.
Don't quite know what point you are making. I have a serious problem with people making claims that fly directly in the face of physics and engineering. Its plain dishonest but I guess the people that buy this stuff don't know any better.
 
Oh, it is true about both sides in a debate. When people are in debating mode they are not in truth finding mode, just human nature. At first if we haven't realized we are in a debate, we will start by trying to 'educate' the other party. Later it gets more adversarial and the best arguments and techniques are honed. syn08 knows very well what has worked best for him in prior debates and at some level he does know it is a debate, because debating is what he is doing, not trying to understand what the other side is saying. He is long past that. He just deflects everything back as 'peeking,' whether it is or not. Eventually, he knows the repetition will leave some people with a memory that some peeking was always somehow involved. Debating 101, nothing more.

Please stop putting words in my mouth. I skipped this forum for 8 years, 5 years before you joined, so I dare to say you have no idea what I do, think, deflect, what works for me, etc...
 
How much attenuation?

The cleverest snake oil claims are those which are true, but only trivially so. Two ways to do this:
1. make a claim which is likely to be true for all products of that type anyway - so no different from any reasonable competitors
2. make a claim which is true, but only to a very limited extent (e.g. our mains cable attenuates RF more than the others (ours -0.3dB, others average -0.1dB - but omit the figures from the advert))

Sure there are always clever ways to find some wording leading to internal exaggeration by the reader´s brain, mplying something that in reality isn´there or not of relevance.
(The rules for advertising are trying to keep up and to some degree successfully)

But that misses the point of that said approach by the commission, as they doubted the very basic mechanism.......
 
... and is reluctant to pass a DBT test with some statistically relevant result. ...

Actually, I like blind tests, since they serve a very useful purpose. You may know I have been working on high performance dacs and use a very low distortion power amp for listening. You want proof? You could come here and see for yourself. You could hire someone like Jakob2 to come here and blind 'test' me on equipment I know is good enough. Or, you could pay to rent or buy similar equipment for use in the test. But, you want me to pay for everything or shut up, and not mention any truth in conflict with your beliefs? Or, you want me to use Foobar ABX when you know very well I could 'peek' if I wanted? Sorry. There is apparently no good solution for either of us.
 
In my opinion, your opinion is incorrect.

Simple blind is good enough for prevent from peaking. This endless controversy is BORING. Dare I write stupid?
<snip>

There must be some sort of misunderstanding as from the listener/particpant point of view there is no difference between "single blind" and "double blind" wrt the memory efforts.

"single blind" means, the listener/participant does not know which is which,while the experimenter does know.

"double blind" means neither listener/participant nor experimenter does know which is which.

Might be the misunderstanding arises from time to time as the terms "single blind" and "double blind" are used differently in wine tasting "blind tests" .
 
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In my opinion, your opinion is incorrect.

Simple blind is good enough for prevent from peaking. This endless controversy is BORING. Dare I write stupid?
It is a natural process to immediately look at what we hear. I need to discriminate between two 'visually' recognizable sources A and B and to can refine my conclusions knowing which one I am dealing with in order to correlate my successive perceptions.
Making impossible to know witch brand is A and witch is B is large enough to prevent-me from any partiality if any. Especially since partiality or subjectivism is something I fear of.
It is quite amusing to note that "objectivism" becomes a fundamentalist religion for so many people, nowadays, in audio.
And please, could you stop for a moment these references almost insulting to supposed "golden ears ?

Regrettable position to adopt IMV.

This whole subjectivism thing took off under the tutelage of MC who started the slide in the 1980's in the UK. Prior to that, things were reasonably technical and both measurements and sound played an important role in equipment evaluations. It reached its zenith and then plateaued after his infamous feedback article in Stereophile A Future Without Feedback? | Stereophile.com

The result is we have $595 2 metre USB cables, $5000 2 meter speaker cables and power cables for $1000 that look like Tesla charging cables.


I think its quite ok to describe equipment sound in subjective terms (you're hardly going to write 'I really dug the 0,023% distortion of the XYZ amp' are you?) but to completely misrepresent the technical stuff is criminal IMV.

A lot of folks take issue with Stereophile and JA's reviews. But, I think the approach is spot on: let Micky or Herb subjectively evaluate the gear and then contextualize their review with the hard facts. Makes for excellent reading.
 
Maybe we can expect Scott Wurcer to tell us all of AD's proprietary findings? I don't think so.


You would most likely be disappointed, they are pretty much related to nothing but hardcore technical stuff. I know of no instance where listening to design options led to any engineering change. Our listening room soon degenerated into a makeshift studio to film employees for Youtube adverts.
 
Any proof to support such conclusion?
What is this story of "proof"?
(Can you prove to me that James Brown was grooving?
A proof that Einstein theory is right ?
You can only say: "For the moment and as far we can experiment, it seems like working"
.)

Proof ? A simple and logical reflection is not enough for you ?
of course, if you want to make sure to not be under some influence, you need to ignore the brands or model of what you are comparing.

If you never know what (anonymous) source is playing , you cannot correlate successive feelings. So you need to ensure that, when you are noticed the A or B is playing, you need to ensure A and B are always the same device. And we need this, because we need both time, repetitive listening and various imperfect (they all are) sources to refine our jugements.
Too, comparing more than two sources at once is to complicated and confusing for our memory.
Adding that those blind tests are both boring and tiring, from which the interest of making them as short and simple as possible.

And this is my opinion, and the reason for my preference in simple blind. Not the same as a "conclusion". i'm not hunting for some absolute truth in this "make believe" game we call "hifi". Truth that i never met in my long professional life.
 
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This whole subjectivism thing took off under the tutelage of MC who started the slide in the 1980's in the UK.

IMO, I would be incorrect to credit MC for being at the origin of subjectivist movement. MC was only the voice of an industry which lost it's direction several years before the (in)famous article and was at that point in deep defense mode, trying to find and keep a market niche, essentially to survive. MC's don't appear out of nowhere, but as a result of a (here, economic) need.
 
T, now you know what I have been told over the last decade or two. These guys usually have no real experience in designing audio, or recording music, but they are quick to criticize any who do. It does get boring after awhile and that is why I have not added anything until now. Again, T, YBA 'might' be a useful reference for you. Perhaps he is too far out for you as well, but he taught at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris when I first met him, and I have heard his personal audio system. You could learn from him, but no matter if he exceeds your comfort zone.
 
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