Jim Lesurf wrote:
I got my latest copy of 'Stereophile' yesterday and started to read it. I
came across comments by Paul Messenger about some work that Russ
Andrews and Ben Duncan have recently put onto the web. This seems to be
taken by Paul Messenger as showing that Russ's claims re some of his
products are "now supported by proper scientific analysis".

But having looked at

http://www.russandrews.com/downloads...estPremRes.pdf

[above file size 700K]

I can't say I agree with that belief simply on the basis of what the above
contains. But that may in part be because I've examined a past set of
measurements by Ben Duncan and come to rather different conclusions to the
ones he and a co-author asserted about them at the time.[1] I would
therefore like to know all the measurement systems/proceedure details that
are sadly omitted from the above.

I thought others here might be interested to read the above pdf and
consider it for themself.


It's difficult for me to tell. Everything Ben Duncan claims on his web
site is not substantiated or qualified (international reputation,
unique, expanding, holistic, world class and so on) and his
qualifications appear worthless in the sense I think I could get them by
filling out a form and paying. Following the link to his publications
leads me to a shop. Searching the shop for his name brings up electronic
things to buy and a series of collections of articles.

He may well be a jolly good bloke but I simply wouldn't trust anything
he has to say from the impression I get from his web site. Maybe poor
self-publicity is a characteristic of scientific types, present company
excepted :-)

So, from a lay point of view, it means very little to me. I wouldn't buy
anything off the back of it, put it that way. Or at least I'd hope I
wouldn't . . .

Rob

"Rob" wrote in message
om...
Jim Lesurf wrote:
I got my latest copy of 'Stereophile' yesterday and started to read it. I
came across comments by Paul Messenger about some work that Russ
Andrews and Ben Duncan have recently put onto the web. This seems to be
taken by Paul Messenger as showing that Russ's claims re some of his
products are "now supported by proper scientific analysis". But having
looked at

http://www.russandrews.com/downloads...estPremRes.pdf

[above file size 700K]

I can't say I agree with that belief simply on the basis of what the
above
contains. But that may in part be because I've examined a past set of
measurements by Ben Duncan and come to rather different conclusions to
the
ones he and a co-author asserted about them at the time.[1] I would
therefore like to know all the measurement systems/proceedure details
that
are sadly omitted from the above. I thought others here might be
interested to read the above pdf and
consider it for themself.


It's difficult for me to tell. Everything Ben Duncan claims on his web
site is not substantiated or qualified (international reputation, unique,
expanding, holistic, world class and so on) and his qualifications appear
worthless in the sense I think I could get them by filling out a form and
paying. Following the link to his publications leads me to a shop.
Searching the shop for his name brings up electronic things to buy and a
series of collections of articles.

He may well be a jolly good bloke but I simply wouldn't trust anything he
has to say from the impression I get from his web site. Maybe poor
self-publicity is a characteristic of scientific types, present company
excepted :-)

So, from a lay point of view, it means very little to me. I wouldn't buy
anything off the back of it, put it that way. Or at least I'd hope I
wouldn't . . .


:-)

Also from the 'lay POV', I would like to say that the trouble with these
'snake oil bashing' sessions is that they are never cut and dried conclusive
and it always falls back to individual, subjective decisions about what
'works' and what doesn't, once you get past the obvious 'the light is on,
the light is off' stage when making comparisons. It was probably over 50
years ago now, I said here that the only two things that matter when it
comes to 'hifi tweaks' are a) you are positive you can hear an improvement
or, at least, think you are and b) you can afford to buy them without
starving the kids!

OK, that's power leads all nicely sorted and we all know where we stand on
them, don't we? As it's easier to make my point with them, let's do speaker
cables now....

Take a squint at this:

http://www.moirac.adsl24.co.uk/Strand.jpg

Right now I am listening to perfectly fine ('normal') sound from the radio
on a *single strand* of copper wire - all the way up to heap plenty loud and
down again! (Pucci's milkman isn't due here for ages so I asked Swim to
comment on the sound without telling her what I was up to and, like me, she
found nothing out of the ordinary!) In this situation, I wonder what
'science' would support the 'conventional wisdom' of using more than the one
strand of wire - provided of course it don't break!

Or 'oxygen free copper' wire....??

Or silver-plated copper wires....??

Hollow copper tubing?

Solid silver wire???

Gold wires...???

Wet string...???

??

Answers on a postcard....

:-)

In article ,
Keith G wrote:
http://www.moirac.adsl24.co.uk/Strand.jpg

Right now I am listening to perfectly fine ('normal') sound from the
radio on a *single strand* of copper wire - all the way up to heap
plenty loud and down again! (Pucci's milkman isn't due here for ages so
I asked Swim to comment on the sound without telling her what I was up
to and, like me, she found nothing out of the ordinary!) In this
situation, I wonder what 'science' would support the 'conventional
wisdom' of using more than the one strand of wire - provided of course
it don't break!

Thanks for proving yet again you don't understand things technical.
Obviously never noticed that a fuse wire is tiny compared to the cable it
protects. And that fuses use short bits of wire...

--
*Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me*

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

In article , Keith G
wrote:

Also from the 'lay POV', I would like to say that the trouble with these
'snake oil bashing' sessions is that they are never cut and dried
conclusive

Afraid you have missed the point of my posting(s). They are not what you
assert. They are to bring scientifically critical thinking to assessing a
document which is presented by its authors/publishers to provide a
'scientific' basis for their claims.

The point of objective measurements is that they are of assessable accuracy
or not, and are relevant to a given idea or not. The outcome results either
can be used to support (or falsify) a scientific view or not. These
can all be determined by the scientific method which the authors
say they are using to support their claims.

Done correctly, none of that is a matter of personal opinion. Hence such
measurement and conclusions can, indeed, be 'cut and dried and conclusive'
but only *if* done correctly and appropriately.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article , Keith G
wrote:


OK, that's power leads all nicely sorted and we all know where we stand
on them, don't we?

Nope, "we" don't - if your "we" includes me . That was the point of my
posting. Sorry if you don't understand that. The problem is that the pdf
makes assertions but gives what it presents to be 'evidence' without also
providing the details "we" would need to decide if the asserted conclusions
are really demonstrated by the pretty graphs, or not.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
http://www.moirac.adsl24.co.uk/Strand.jpg

Right now I am listening to perfectly fine ('normal') sound from the
radio on a *single strand* of copper wire - all the way up to heap
plenty loud and down again! (Pucci's milkman isn't due here for ages so
I asked Swim to comment on the sound without telling her what I was up
to and, like me, she found nothing out of the ordinary!) In this
situation, I wonder what 'science' would support the 'conventional
wisdom' of using more than the one strand of wire - provided of course
it don't break!

Thanks for proving yet again you don't understand things technical.
Obviously never noticed that a fuse wire is tiny compared to the cable it
protects. And that fuses use short bits of wire...


Somebody obviously more *technical* than I needs to tell this **** how fuses
actually work - he seems to think it's a 'size thing'...!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20...strialFuse.jpg

http://www.global-b2b-network.com/b2...se_cutout.html



--
*Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me*


Yeah, riiight.....



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

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

Also from the 'lay POV', I would like to say that the trouble with these
'snake oil bashing' sessions is that they are never cut and dried
conclusive

Afraid you have missed the point of my posting(s). They are not what you
assert. They are to bring scientifically critical thinking to assessing a
document which is presented by its authors/publishers to provide a
'scientific' basis for their claims.


Yep - allus ends up as a 'snake oil bashing' session however it starts! :-)



The point of objective measurements is that they are of assessable
accuracy
or not,


Yep. Often make the same point myself, but that's because I come from a
'place' where people traditionally add an eighth of an inch to the actual
measurement, anyway!!

;-)


and are relevant to a given idea or not. The outcome results either
can be used to support (or falsify) a scientific view or not. These
can all be determined by the scientific method which the authors
say they are using to support their claims.


Sure.



Done correctly, none of that is a matter of personal opinion. Hence such
measurement and conclusions can, indeed, be 'cut and dried and conclusive'
but only *if* done correctly and appropriately.


I would agree entirely but in reality it doesn't matter how the measurements
come out, it still comes down to the subjective in the end - people won't
believe what they don't want to hear or see, but are only too willing to
believe what they want to. Hence the Russ Andrews machine exists in the
first place!

Reminds me of the story of the filmshow of a *mock-up* of the
Monitor/Merrimac battle (Hampton Roads) that travelled America for years and
which employed obvious wooden models and dummy charges to such great effect
that people apparently cheered and generally behaved as though they were
witnessing the real thing!

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


OK, that's power leads all nicely sorted and we all know where we stand
on them, don't we?

Nope, "we" don't - if your "we" includes me . That was the point of my
posting. Sorry if you don't understand that.


Relax, it was only a 'device' to enable me to jump from mains leads to
speaker cables to better make the point that, with or without the 'science'
(ie measurements et al) to support or deny it, there exists an overriding,
*conventional wisdom* that will usually allow people to act independently of
any evidence provided by such science.

In the case of speaker wires, that is manifested in all sorts of tricky
stuff like various magic numbers of wire strands (79 is a popular one),
increasing wire cross-sections, extremely exotic and expensive materials
employed &c. My point with the single strand of wire (which has been going
strong all day and is still) is that whatever the measurements might show,
when the single strand is compared with a normal 'fullsize' speaker wire,
*nobody* is going to choose it as the preferable route to take even if, like
me, they couldn't detect any change in the sound whatsoever - deleterious or
otherwise!

IOW, 'conventional wisdom' will rule the outcome...

(Different, of course, if they do perceive a difference in the sound &c.
&c.)


The problem is that the pdf
makes assertions but gives what it presents to be 'evidence' without also
providing the details "we" would need to decide if the asserted
conclusions
are really demonstrated by the pretty graphs, or not.



Yep - no problem with any of that! Par for the course with this sort of
thing, really....

Keith G wrote:

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


OK, that's power leads all nicely sorted and we all know where we stand
on them, don't we?

Nope, "we" don't - if your "we" includes me . That was the point of my
posting. Sorry if you don't understand that.


Relax, it was only a 'device' to enable me to jump from mains leads to
speaker cables to better make the point that, with or without the
'science' (ie measurements et al) to support or deny it, there exists an
overriding, *conventional wisdom* that will usually allow people to act
independently of any evidence provided by such science.

In the case of speaker wires, that is manifested in all sorts of tricky
stuff like various magic numbers of wire strands (79 is a popular one),
increasing wire cross-sections, extremely exotic and expensive materials
employed &c. My point with the single strand of wire (which has been
going strong all day and is still) is that whatever the measurements
might show, when the single strand is compared with a normal 'fullsize'
speaker wire, *nobody* is going to choose it as the preferable route to
take even if, like me, they couldn't detect any change in the sound
whatsoever - deleterious or otherwise!

What's the length and thickness of your single strand of wire?

--
Eiron.

"Eiron" wrote in message
...
Keith G wrote:

In the case of speaker wires, that is manifested in all sorts of tricky
stuff like various magic numbers of wire strands (79 is a popular one),
increasing wire cross-sections, extremely exotic and expensive materials
employed &c. My point with the single strand of wire (which has been
going strong all day and is still) is that whatever the measurements
might show, when the single strand is compared with a normal 'fullsize'
speaker wire, *nobody* is going to choose it as the preferable route to
take even if, like me, they couldn't detect any change in the sound
whatsoever - deleterious or otherwise!

What's the length


'Bout an inch....


and thickness of your single strand of wire?


Real tiny - less than a mm?


**suspicion**


Why do you ask....??