What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 11:18:22 -0800, Andy Evans wrote:

For that reason it's much more important to have academic qualifications
and memberships of professional bodies. You can't argue with those.

Yeah, right. I suppose there are no charlatans with qualifications or
memberships of professional bodies, hmm?

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:53:08 +0000, Nick Gorham wrote:

Andy Evans wrote:

Apart from in Medicine, "consultant" is pretty meaningless since it has
been hijacked by anyone with any qualifications who sets up in business
as a person people should ask advice from. There's no guarantee of
status or even competence - strictly caveat emptor.

For that reason it's much more important to have academic
qualifications and memberships of professional bodies. You can't argue
with those.


Again, you clearly don't work in IT Andy :-)

By the time someone has obtained an IT qualification, it's already out of
date. IT, especially the fault finding end, is all about aptitude and
experience, and being more than slightly mad. ;-)

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

On 20 Dec, 16:21, "Serge Auckland"
wrote:
"borosteve" wrote in message

...

Why is it that most of the contributors to this group seem to be some
sort of anti- hifi sound quality brigade who seem to think that all cd
players sound the same and that measurements and specs of components
are king? Have we reverted back to the 1970's when all you had to
worry about was how many watts your speakers could handle? Come on
guy's if you really don't like quality sound *give it a rest and talk
about something else on another group! Maybe there's a group about
saddo's who just post controvertial stuff to annoy everyone? Maybe
their's a group about nerds who just like to see their own posts on a
screen!!

Borosteve.

Speaking only for myself, I am most definitely *not* anti hifi sound, but
anti the non-scientific and engineering based opinions which, when analysed
objectively, i.e. using measurements, do not prove what is being alleged.

For many years (even before the '70s) audio engineering professionals were
aware of the limits of perception of human hearing, and that, provided the
equipment measured below that threshold, then any reduction in distortions,
noise, frequency response errors etc. would not be perceived. For amplifiers
we reached those figures many many years ago, consequently, until we started
seeing designs which deliberately introduce audible distortions, the only
difference between amplifiers was one of loudness, subject of course to the
amplifier being used within it's design parameters for level and load
impedance. So, what's the point of discussing amplifier sound?

When CD was launched, it *was* *"pure, perfect sound forever", compared with
the limitations of vinyl, cassettes and FM radio. There was certainly a
question about the quality of the first CDs, some of which were made from
equalised and compressed disk-cutting masters out of ignorance of the new
medium, but that is a separate issue. *D-A conversion did improve from the
first 14bit x 4 oversampling, but we have had 24 bit 96k or better
converters for years now, so CD playback quality would be pretty much a dead
issue, if it wasn't for CD production now having gone silly with
over-levels, clipping etc. It seems that CD players can sound different in
their handling of these over-levels, and *that is an interesting area for
study, but it needs instrumentation and measurements, not subjective
opinions if we're ever to characterise and understand fully the processes
involved.

In my view, the valid subjects for discussions of sound quality are
loudspeakers, which are still far behind complete transparancy, vinyl
reproduction, which will never be transparent, and data-reduced digital
formats which *can* be transparent, but seldom are.

Measurements give a repeatable, verifiable indication of performance.
Double-blind controlled listening tests can highlight differences which may
have escaped measurement, but note that *everything* can be measured. If
something is audible, then it is measurable. It may be difficult to measure,
and perhaps new instruments have to be invented. As a case in point,
measurements of data-reduced formats could not be done with the conventional
analogue-based equipments, so new analysers had to be invented. The
converse, that everything measurable is audible is *not* true as there are
clearly understood thresholds of hearing.

So, when someone posts a purely subjective view of what something sound
like, you can expect those of us with a more engineering-based view of audio
to comment. Otherwise, people might go on believing that cables sound
different.....

S.

--http://audiopages.googlepages.com

but cables do sound different..

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

On 21 Dec, 03:32, Eeyore
wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
borosteve wrote:

Why is it that most of the contributors to this group seem to be some
sort of anti- hifi sound quality brigade who seem to think that all cd
players sound the same and that measurements and specs of components
are king? Have we reverted back to the 1970's when all you had to
worry about was how many watts your speakers could handle? Come on
guy's if you really don't like quality sound *give it a rest and talk
about something else on another group! Maybe there's a group about
saddo's who just post controvertial stuff to annoy everyone? Maybe
their's a group about nerds who just like to see their own posts on a
screen!!

Well, we could talk about the misuse of the apostrophe, for a start.

Pluralisation by apostrophe ! Often called the greengrocer's apostrophe.

Seen recently in a pub *(honestly) .... " Fish and Chip's ".

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian....ostGrocers.htm

Graham

If I want a lesson in ****ing gramma and spelling I'll ask for one ok
**** head!!

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

On 21 Dec, 09:23, "David Looser" wrote:
"Eeyore" wrote in message

...

Reviewers who talk of differences in pace, rhythym, speed, darkness and
the like are simply blowing nonsense out of their backsides. If the they
found no differences, they'd be out of a job, so they make them up and
call them non-scientific names and claim they can't be measured so as to
ensure their next pay check. Charlatans, the lot of them.

Agreed 100%. I remember the first time I met this sort of thing in a review,
it was for the original Linn Sondeck turntable. After describing the "sound"
of this turntable in the sort of overblown language previously only seen
from wine reviewers, the reviewer went on to claim that *any* system using
this turntable would sound better than any other system that didn't. So all
the deficiencies of a cheap arm, cartridge, amp or speakers apparently
mattered less than the supposed inferiority of all other turntables.

That was the day I stopped buying Hi-Fi magazines.

David.

Oh dear someone's spelt Sondek wrong, ooohh!!!

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

"borosteve" wrote in message
...
On 20 Dec, 16:21, "Serge Auckland"
wrote:
"borosteve" wrote in message

...

Why is it that most of the contributors to this group seem to be some
sort of anti- hifi sound quality brigade who seem to think that all cd
players sound the same and that measurements and specs of components
are king? Have we reverted back to the 1970's when all you had to
worry about was how many watts your speakers could handle? Come on
guy's if you really don't like quality sound give it a rest and talk
about something else on another group! Maybe there's a group about
saddo's who just post controvertial stuff to annoy everyone? Maybe
their's a group about nerds who just like to see their own posts on a
screen!!

Borosteve.

Speaking only for myself, I am most definitely *not* anti hifi sound, but
anti the non-scientific and engineering based opinions which, when
analysed
objectively, i.e. using measurements, do not prove what is being alleged.

For many years (even before the '70s) audio engineering professionals were
aware of the limits of perception of human hearing, and that, provided the
equipment measured below that threshold, then any reduction in
distortions,
noise, frequency response errors etc. would not be perceived. For
amplifiers
we reached those figures many many years ago, consequently, until we
started
seeing designs which deliberately introduce audible distortions, the only
difference between amplifiers was one of loudness, subject of course to
the
amplifier being used within it's design parameters for level and load
impedance. So, what's the point of discussing amplifier sound?

When CD was launched, it *was* "pure, perfect sound forever", compared
with
the limitations of vinyl, cassettes and FM radio. There was certainly a
question about the quality of the first CDs, some of which were made from
equalised and compressed disk-cutting masters out of ignorance of the new
medium, but that is a separate issue. D-A conversion did improve from the
first 14bit x 4 oversampling, but we have had 24 bit 96k or better
converters for years now, so CD playback quality would be pretty much a
dead
issue, if it wasn't for CD production now having gone silly with
over-levels, clipping etc. It seems that CD players can sound different in
their handling of these over-levels, and that is an interesting area for
study, but it needs instrumentation and measurements, not subjective
opinions if we're ever to characterise and understand fully the processes
involved.

In my view, the valid subjects for discussions of sound quality are
loudspeakers, which are still far behind complete transparancy, vinyl
reproduction, which will never be transparent, and data-reduced digital
formats which *can* be transparent, but seldom are.

Measurements give a repeatable, verifiable indication of performance.
Double-blind controlled listening tests can highlight differences which
may
have escaped measurement, but note that *everything* can be measured. If
something is audible, then it is measurable. It may be difficult to
measure,
and perhaps new instruments have to be invented. As a case in point,
measurements of data-reduced formats could not be done with the
conventional
analogue-based equipments, so new analysers had to be invented. The
converse, that everything measurable is audible is *not* true as there are
clearly understood thresholds of hearing.

So, when someone posts a purely subjective view of what something sound
like, you can expect those of us with a more engineering-based view of
audio
to comment. Otherwise, people might go on believing that cables sound
different.....

S.

--http://audiopages.googlepages.com

but cables do sound different..

Don't be silly.....
S.


--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

On Dec 23, 7:53�pm, Nick Gorham wrote:
Andy Evans wrote:
Apart from in Medicine, "consultant" is pretty meaningless since it
has been hijacked by anyone with any qualifications who sets up in
business as a person people should ask advice from. There's no
guarantee of status or even competence - strictly caveat emptor.

For that reason it's much more important to have academic
qualifications and memberships of professional bodies. You can't argue
with those.

Again, you clearly don't work in IT Andy :-)

--
Nick

Well, I used to be a jazz musician - so IT is just like that!

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

Silk wrote:

Andy Evans wrote:

For that reason it's much more important to have academic qualifications
and memberships of professional bodies. You can't argue with those.

Yeah, right. I suppose there are no charlatans with qualifications or
memberships of professional bodies, hmm?

Muses and thinks of recent examples of a certain doctor causing innocent
people to get jailed.

Graham

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

borosteve wrote:

"Serge Auckland" wrote:

So, when someone posts a purely subjective view of what something sound
like, you can expect those of us with a more engineering-based view of audio
to comment. Otherwise, people might go on believing that cables sound
different.....

S.

--http://audiopages.googlepages.com

but cables do sound different..

Speaker cable DC resistance can certainly result in subtle frequency response
anomalies.

Simple interconnects should never sound different unless the equipment in question
has a very high output impedance (e.g some tube/valve kit) and the cable has very
high capacitance, in which case there may be some treble loss.

Graham

What a sad excuse for a group this is...
 

borosteve wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
borosteve wrote:

Why is it that most of the contributors to this group seem to be some
sort of anti- hifi sound quality brigade who seem to think that all cd
players sound the same and that measurements and specs of components
are king? Have we reverted back to the 1970's when all you had to
worry about was how many watts your speakers could handle? Come on
guy's if you really don't like quality sound give it a rest and talk
about something else on another group! Maybe there's a group about
saddo's who just post controvertial stuff to annoy everyone? Maybe
their's a group about nerds who just like to see their own posts on a
screen!!

Well, we could talk about the misuse of the apostrophe, for a start.

Pluralisation by apostrophe ! Often called the greengrocer's apostrophe.

Seen recently in a pub (honestly) .... " Fish and Chip's ".

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian....ostGrocers.htm

Graham

If I want a lesson in ****ing gramma and spelling I'll ask for one ok
**** head!!

How about a lesson in being civil ?

Graham