You won't get far here, well maybe farside. The poetic licence is the general disdain for us neanderthals. One of the three on my IL.
Randi spent a couple of weeks at UCLA lecturing, thanks to the late George O. Abell securing an honorarium. I came in to work one day at about 3PM and he was demonstrating psychic surgery on a shirtless grad student on a table in the coffee room, using palmed chicken livers. A messy business!
Most scientist are busy studying phenomenon. On this thread it would be hard to tell that anything besides studying how to repress conflicts with one's own limited education, occurs.
A biologist is trying to explain why this animal's X and Y do B. JCBII participants are trying to explain why everything is impossible. It's just very negative, which is draining, and doesn't produce anything in particular.
You'd think with the knowledge here JCBII participants could for example co-design something interesting.
Hasn't stopped Witten getting a string of awards and honors.
That's what was so good about Newton and Einstein. Their Sh1t was practical - it worked.
Oh, goodness, I think a design-by-JCBII committee would make even the most toxic HOA council (or small town city council, same effect) seem tame. 
If you're philosophically interested in what's possible, then we're in agreement with our goal: I just really, really, REALLY like reproducibility. And that sobers and slows down the pace of things mightily. You can play fast and loose until you actually want to make something (outside of luxury products, e.g., high-end audio, where you're going for soft endpoints). Like, if the stuff I'm working on is to be useful, the FDA is going to have some stern words with me. And I'd better bring hard backup. That's where I'm coming from.
(Most research, including my own, is largely garbage with a few decent nuggets. I make absolutely no claims to anything further)
If you're philosophically interested in what's possible, then we're in agreement with our goal: I just really, really, REALLY like reproducibility. And that sobers and slows down the pace of things mightily. You can play fast and loose until you actually want to make something (outside of luxury products, e.g., high-end audio, where you're going for soft endpoints). Like, if the stuff I'm working on is to be useful, the FDA is going to have some stern words with me. And I'd better bring hard backup. That's where I'm coming from.
(Most research, including my own, is largely garbage with a few decent nuggets. I make absolutely no claims to anything further)
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This is why I tend to have a reluctance to read any NYT best seller (or similar) more recent than 25 years old (I'm sure I could relax this to 10 years, but I have enough books I want to read!), because most of them end up being carelessly thrown in the trashcan of history...
I see 2 people's names here that AREN'T in that trashcan.
Daniel Kahneman, the eminent psychologist and Nobel laureate had this to say:
“I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success: I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers.”
Hey, no one forces you to post or respond. Right?
What's bothering you then?
If you just want to debate technical minutia and do not care if it relates to what you hear (or do not hear) that's fine. Keep in your mind what the topic of the thread actually is, and what that unit consists of and why. Best read back to the Blowtorch preamp I??
Well Witten's recognition is unassailable as a mathematician, and quite justified as such. Newton and his contemporaries' mechanics were rapidly applicable to practical stuff. Einstein less so at the outset.
I have an old book, conference proceedings, with a paper by Witten in it. He was not quite famous at the time, and it is interesting to note the evolution of his thinking at that point. I'm glad he turned to maths and physics after starting out in political science---probably then a reaction to having a physicist father (Louis Witten iirc).
Horgan's book The End of Science has an amusing account of Witten, who chides the author for giving insufficient credit to string theory. Apparently Ed has a funny laugh too. It's not a bad book and the title is misleading---Horgan is not anti-science. I had the book for years before reading it.
However it is pretty cool that a not insignificant percentage of the worlds population carry around with them devices that require both forms of relativity to work (GPS). However jaded one becomes about progress I feel GPS is still not only a great success story of the last 30 years (even if originally for US military) but a great example of how electronics technology has evolved since the late 80s in areas other than the stagnation of audio.
Bill you're right, GPS is something else. However it did lead me to a dirt road dead end once instead of the Marriot...
And hence the fun. Maybe we'll need whisky at the meetings like they did in the old days!
Oh, goodness, I think a design-by-JCBII committee would make even the most toxic HOA council (or small town city council, same effect) seem tame.
And hence the fun. Maybe we'll need whisky at the meetings like they did in the old days!
Yeah, I guess it is silly... after all everyone knows precisely where and at what point "residual distortion" is inaudible, yes?
So why trouble yourself with things like a Blowtorch, after all, you can beat that performance with a bunch of opamps, right?
Why try to build amps with sub 0.001% distortion figures IF all amps below %0.1 sound the same?
Guess this has all been decided... someone send me the memo?
I mean white paper...
I mean JAES paper...
...etc.
Fact is that IF you've been doing actual audio & listening for any length of time - no matter how "scientific" your approach may be - and NEVER EVER even for a second been confounded by hearing something that you are sure ought not to happen, then frankly, I don't know what to say to that.
Do you see any difference between a "4K" video monitor and a 1080p?
Some people doubtless don't.
Silly, isn't it all??
Guess people are embarrassed to merely state their own experience(s)?
Sort of like having to be naked in a locker room, I guess.
Maybe.
Quite silly...
_-_-
Bear, perhaps it hasn't been clear: I have, by many people's standards, a wildly modest system. I enjoy it. I enjoy the music and (lately 100x more) podcasts that I listen to over it. I'd probably love your system because, in sharing it, I'd sit down and focus on listening and enjoying people's company. The hardware itself would be so secondary to that, that it bears (no pun intended...) barely a nod of attention.
I simply don't worry about special cables/etc beyond going, "well, is this going to do the job pretty dang well?" And then I'm free of that decision rather than needlessly worrying about whether it's better.
But if you want to know if something's *truly* better, bring rigor.
I simply don't worry about special cables/etc beyond going, "well, is this going to do the job pretty dang well?" And then I'm free of that decision rather than needlessly worrying about whether it's better.
But if you want to know if something's *truly* better, bring rigor.
then, in that case, why participate in this thread??
that's like discussing high performance engines (for example) not having one, and not really being interested in one, but liking hanging with people who do and have... which is fine, but don't try to stamp your standards on the conversations and issues - state your opinion, fine, but that's enough.
The Blowtorch was designed to optimize a particular design, in terms of sonics.
IF it did that, that would be a point of conversation that perhaps has been covered.
We're past that, but the issue remains what people hear and how the technical aspect relates back to that. Not "it's good enough".
that's like discussing high performance engines (for example) not having one, and not really being interested in one, but liking hanging with people who do and have... which is fine, but don't try to stamp your standards on the conversations and issues - state your opinion, fine, but that's enough.
The Blowtorch was designed to optimize a particular design, in terms of sonics.
IF it did that, that would be a point of conversation that perhaps has been covered.
We're past that, but the issue remains what people hear and how the technical aspect relates back to that. Not "it's good enough".
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