"Andy Evans" wrote in message


completely @#$ked-up post quoting and formatting corrected. It's the high
price one pays for trying to make sense of the blatherings of incompetents

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message


This is the snag with making obervations without reliable
measurements. You end up having to try things 'at random' in the hope
some might seem better, but not then be sure if or why... (JL)

This is true, but it doesn't rule out trial and error as a legitimate
way of getting results.

The word legitimate seems poorly applied here. I don't question the
legitimacy of any positive results that are obtained by *any* means (in my
way of thinking, results speak for themselves) but it is well known that
random trial and error is almost always a highly inefficient means for
investigation.

When you think how many times Beethoven
re-wrote the 5th symphony (a process typical to composition), you can
see that the final result was in fact a process of trial and error.

I submit that Beethoven, being an experienced and excellent composer did not
use trial and error to write symphonies. Music theory had progressed well
beyond trying random sequences of notes long before he was born.

I think it's quite fair to think of creating a sound system as an act
of creativity, and as we know from the initial stages of the creative
process multiple choices are combined with feedback of the effects of
these choices to gradually narrow down the practical possibilities.

Right, but there's a lot that can be said for informed choices. There are
very few people who will stand up and say: "I'm going to forget everything I
know and proceed along the least well-informed lines that I can, with this
investigation." That's simply dumb.

This process of "divergent thinking" is the crucial part of
creativity, since without trying out original and novel solutions
there would effectively be no new solutions and therefore no
continuance of creativity.

Creativity is almost always a process that includes synthesis of existing
knowlege. For example Edison relied on considerable existing technical
knowlege when his team invented the light bulb. He hired an experienced
glass blower to make the bulb, and the vacuum pump (an existing design) that
he used to evacuate it. The idea of evacuating the bulb did not come from
nowhere - it was based on what was already known about why things burn. In
fact operating light bulbs existed before he built his first prototype -
they just didn't last very long and/or weren't economical to build.

In fact Humphery Davy had built a carbon-filament light bulb in 1809, some
70 years before Edison announced his. Edison based his design on a patent
he had purchased from someone else. About 25 later the carbon-filament
light bulb was obsoleted by the Tungsten filament light bulb. Sic transit
gloria.

It is only when the divergent thinking
merges into "convergent thinking" as the solution is approached that
testing begins in earnest.

The process of testing is itself almost always based on a good knowlege of
existing technology. In this CD transport fiasco at hand there was
essentially no technical testing, and the subjective testing was highly
flawed. In fact, good reliable means for both technical and subjective
testing were readily available at almost no out-of-pocket cost.

The two processes are essential - without
divergent thinking (and by implication trial and error) there would
be no original creations, and without convergent thinking there would
be no worthwhile products.

I'm not sure there was a heck of a lot of thought given to either the CD
player construction project itself, or how it was tested. Regrettably, some
try to deify this kind of anti-intellectual wheel-spinning.

remaining self-aggrandizing twaddle snipped