"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Keith G
wrote:


But I do hafta larf when I read the usual reactions from 'Snake Oil
Squealers' - if someone *perceives* an improvement to his kit when he
applies some 'odd' remedy *that he can afford* where's the harm in it?

The "harm" arises in three ways:

1) The person may - if better informed or had a better understanding -
might have avoided spending the cash on that item, and might have put it
to
*better* use - e.g. by buying an item that produced a genuine improvement,
or by using it to buy more music of the kind they like.


I'm sure you mean well, but that does seem a little like an edict from the
Spending Police...



2) It gives unreliably-based 'evidence' which the sellers can use to flog
their nostrums to yet other unsuspecting punters. The seller can tell
ignorant potential customers "It must work, I've sold loads of them". Thus
supporting a scam that takes the cash from others.


Hmm, you can't take the 'caveat' out of Caveat Emptor....



3) It may lead people into forming incorrect or even absurb ideas about
the
physics and engineering of the real world. Thus making it harder for them
to understand other issues which may matter to them. Many such products
are
accompanied by technobabble.


Next up - 'Harry Potter And The Phlogiston Theory'..?? :-)


For the above reasons "harm" may well arise if people think such devices
have any effect in physical reality as distinct from in wishful thinking
or
imagination. If we can establish that a device is simply "making the user
feel good because they own it", then knowing that would better inform
others before they decided if they wished to purchase.


I think we should take "making the user feel good because they own it" as
read when we are told of various 'voodoo products.

As I mentioned the other day, I have a friend who is very prone to dubious
(IMO) 'tweakery':

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/show/voodo01.JPG

http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/show/voodo02.JPG

(note the pipe lagging on the speaker cables) and I smile when I hear his
stories about the problems he has braiding his Litz wire etc. He is a
*Doctor* (Engineering), no mug and so who am I to argue? But we can discuss
such things without falling out over it - I'm as far along the opposite end
of the same spectrum and he knows it - the difference is I detect no real
harm in what he does, but if he told me he was going to sell a kidney to buy
some Fairy Dust I would stop him, no matter what....

I have noted the arguments and still say so long as no-one gets *hurt* I can
see no real harm in it. Who knows - in the future, a 'Snake Oil Seller' who
has had a good day fleecing the gullible might relent and give an
important/pivotal lift in his Rolls Royce to the (unknown) future Saviour Of
All Mankind...???

I don't want to mess with that....

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
It's more the desire to stop others being conned by snake oil products.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that with a lot of 'squealers' but
what I would say is that irrespective of the physical changes (or total
lack thereof) there may be from using a 'snake oil' product, the
psychological changes are not to be entirely discounted....

If they are psychological changes - which they are - then they will by
nature vary from person to person. So cannot logically be recommended as a
solution for everyone. Be fair enough if the makers were clear about this,
though.



I thought at least *some* of the snake oil providers offered a '30 day money
back return, if not totally freaked out by the product' guarantee??

After discussing cartridges at *vastly* different prices and being told in
turn each one was 'very good' by A**** at Mantra Audio a year or two ago, I
asked 'OK, where does the science stop and the BS just keep galloping on?'

She said 'Good question!...!!

;-)

In article , Mark R Penn
wrote:
So to boil all that down then, my suspicion that you have to reach a
certain minimum standard of cable in order to get the best out of your
system, but that beyond that you'll make no difference at all, no
matter how much you spend, would be right?

What you can say is the following:

That *above* a given level of cable resistance, etc, people have shown that
the - quite measurable - effects on frequency response, etc, are audible,
and people can hear the differences when they are simply tested on that
basis. But below a given level, no-one (so far as I know) has been able to
show that they can reliably tell one cable from another simply by listeing
to the resulting sounds. (The relevant level will vary with the
circumstances of use, hence the value will depend on other factors.)

The implication is that although the levels of resistance may still give
measurable changes, they aren't audible once the changes in response are
below a given amount. Or at least, no-one is able to show they can hear the
differences.

TBH given the quite audible changes for other reasons - e.g. moving your
head whilst listening - my reaction is to regard changes which become so
'elusive' as being irrelevant in practice. Spock's Law.

And would it be at all true to say that the better the system, the more
information (wider frequency spread?) is extracted from the source, and
therefore the higher that minimum standard needs to be?

Not necessarily. It would depend on the ability of the listener to be able
to *hear* the 'extra information'. Again, beyond a given level, people make
claims about this, but may not demonstrate they can in a test that depends
solely on hearing the results. First catch your rabbit. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article , Keith G
wrote:

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...



For the above reasons "harm" may well arise if people think such
devices have any effect in physical reality as distinct from in
wishful thinking or imagination. If we can establish that a device is
simply "making the user feel good because they own it", then knowing
that would better inform others before they decided if they wished to
purchase.


I think we should take "making the user feel good because they own it"
as read when we are told of various 'voodoo products.

That is fine - provided the sellers state this and do not try to mislead
the innocent by claiming or implying a real-physical-world effect of
audible signficance.

I have noted the arguments and still say so long as no-one gets *hurt* I
can see no real harm in it.

The problem being that people *are* 'hurt' for the reasons I explained.

Who knows - in the future, a 'Snake Oil Seller' who has had a good day
fleecing the gullible might relent and give an important/pivotal lift in
his Rolls Royce to the (unknown) future Saviour Of All Mankind...???

I'd prefer people to keep their money and make their own well-informed
decisions on how to spend it, not to hope that some crooks occasionally
give something to a good cause after it has been taken from them on the
basis of falsehoods...

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article , Mark R Penn wrote:
Interconnects are slightly different, in that there is a logical explanation
that can be put forward (even if unproven), and when you combine that with
some peoples firm belief that they can hear a difference, it gets difficult
to brand it a con a such. I'm not trying to justify claims made for cables,
so don't need to put any figures forward.

You can easily brand it a con if you do apply some realistic figures, because
then it becomes clear that although cables do have real electrical
characteristics that can be objectively measured, the differences between
supercalifragilistic oxygen-free loudspeaker cables with fancy names and even
fancier prices, and any bog-standard cable from B&Q with a decent amount of
copper are in practice absolutely negligible.

Rod.

In article ,
Keith G wrote:
After discussing cartridges at *vastly* different prices and being told
in turn each one was 'very good' by A**** at Mantra Audio a year or two
ago, I asked 'OK, where does the science stop and the BS just keep
galloping on?'

Pretty well all the parameters of a cartridge may be measured. And at one
time were published in every test.

--
*Reality is the illusion that occurs due to the lack of alcohol *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Glenn Richards" wrote in message
...
Mark R Penn wrote:


I then sent the digital output of the Technics player into an Arcam Black
Box 50 offboard DAC, and repeated the experiment.

This time there WAS a quite dramatic improvement in the sound each time
you went up the scale. Tighter and deeper bass, better projection and
soundstaging, more detail.

Now this I DO take issue with. The data that goes between player and DAC is
EXACTLY the same regardless of cable. In fact, I have done an experiment
where I used literally a short bit if wet salty string between CD player and
DAC, and the decoded audio was identical to using a correctly matched 75 ohm
cable. S-PDIF and AES/EBU is extremely rugged and will withstand a lot of
abuse. Cable-induced jitter could be an issue with an inferior DAC that
doesn't reclock the data adequately, and this may be the case with the Arcam
unit, I don't know the details of their receivers, but even with a poor DAC
receiver, whilst there may be a difference between a good 75 ohm cable and
something very inferior (very poor impedance match) there would be
negligible difference between two 75 ohm cables of normal domestic lengths.

S.

Yes, that's what I thought - there is a minimum below which degradation will
begin, but above which no amount of tweaking will be audible. Makes complete
sense to me.

Mark

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
om...
In article , Mark R Penn wrote:
Interconnects are slightly different, in that there is a logical
explanation
that can be put forward (even if unproven), and when you combine that
with
some peoples firm belief that they can hear a difference, it gets
difficult
to brand it a con a such. I'm not trying to justify claims made for
cables,
so don't need to put any figures forward.

You can easily brand it a con if you do apply some realistic figures,
because
then it becomes clear that although cables do have real electrical
characteristics that can be objectively measured, the differences between
supercalifragilistic oxygen-free loudspeaker cables with fancy names and
even
fancier prices, and any bog-standard cable from B&Q with a decent amount
of
copper are in practice absolutely negligible.

Rod.

I don't think anyone said anything about that cable - isn't it the speaker
cables which are being compared? The relevance of the DAC is the quality of
the source isn't it?

Mark

"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...

"Glenn Richards" wrote in message
...
Mark R Penn wrote:


I then sent the digital output of the Technics player into an Arcam Black
Box 50 offboard DAC, and repeated the experiment.

This time there WAS a quite dramatic improvement in the sound each time
you went up the scale. Tighter and deeper bass, better projection and
soundstaging, more detail.

Now this I DO take issue with. The data that goes between player and DAC
is EXACTLY the same regardless of cable. In fact, I have done an
experiment where I used literally a short bit if wet salty string between
CD player and DAC, and the decoded audio was identical to using a
correctly matched 75 ohm cable. S-PDIF and AES/EBU is extremely rugged and
will withstand a lot of abuse. Cable-induced jitter could be an issue with
an inferior DAC that doesn't reclock the data adequately, and this may be
the case with the Arcam unit, I don't know the details of their receivers,
but even with a poor DAC receiver, whilst there may be a difference
between a good 75 ohm cable and something very inferior (very poor
impedance match) there would be negligible difference between two 75 ohm
cables of normal domestic lengths.

S.

In article , Serge Auckland
writes

"Glenn Richards" wrote in message
...
Mark R Penn wrote:


I then sent the digital output of the Technics player into an Arcam Black
Box 50 offboard DAC, and repeated the experiment.

This time there WAS a quite dramatic improvement in the sound each time
you went up the scale. Tighter and deeper bass, better projection and
soundstaging, more detail.

Now this I DO take issue with. The data that goes between player and DAC is
EXACTLY the same regardless of cable. In fact, I have done an experiment
where I used literally a short bit if wet salty string between CD player and
DAC, and the decoded audio was identical to using a correctly matched 75 ohm
cable. S-PDIF and AES/EBU is extremely rugged and will withstand a lot of
abuse.

Yes so it does.. we throw it over a video microwave link for a few miles
for a local radio station and its fine)


--
Tony Sayer