FUD, intellectual honesty, digital facts, and the TAS articles...

Collapse
X
 
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • item_audio
    Member
    • Nov 2011
    • 37

    Originally posted by darrell
    Indeed! Rereading item_audio's posts in the light of the above is instructive. He is casting doubt on the Touch's abilities as a digital audio streamer, compared to alternatives which can cost upwards of 10 times more than the Touch, and which he happens to sell.

    Fair enough, if item_audio (or anyone else) wants to point to concrete ways in which the Touch is deficient. But instead, we get pure FUD: "it's all very complicated, no-one really understands it, perhaps no-one ever will understand it, so the best we can do is spend a fortune on engineering solutions to problems which may or may not exist." This seems to be the line. Mil-spec power supply connectors indeed!

    Item_audio may say here that he agrees that the TAS articles rely too much on subjective evaluation, but this doesn't stop him quoting completely subjective twaddle on his web site, from a rave review of one of his products in Hifi World. Apparently his streamer makes the Spice Girls listenable!

    Who/what is this SBGK?

    Carbon Fibre brakes are good. They're expensive, which irritates people - but they are an inherently better component. If you make things with components that are better, it will be more expensive. This is axiomatic, and inevitable. They will not be 10x better although 10x more expensive.

    Only a fool would say we understand everything there is to know about digital audio now and forever. There will be a new Squeezebox along in a minute that washes 'whiter than white'....

    But making a computer sound better is a very simple matter of applying better components: there's no FUD about that. Sometimes 'better' is free. Sometimes - particularly with power supplies - TANSTAAFL.

    You can't ignore subjective viewpoints, though you can of course subjectively choose not to agree with them! With regard to audio being engineering, that's true up to a point: it's also an art: its most experienced practitioners will tell you that measurements have to be combined with subjective, trained listening.

    Comment

    • item_audio
      Member
      • Nov 2011
      • 37

      'Audiophiles'

      Aaah! Now making more sense: I've frequented so many dimly-lit, hostile audio forums I've become too thick-skinned and sluggish myself to notice before today that this is a special place you've set up to mock off-brand & expensive things! Got it.

      Here we are trying to have a grown-up discussion about computer audio, while rubbing shoulders with topics about James Randi and ghosts (in the machine or otherwise).

      Enough said. If the idea of a cheaper Squeezebox that plays all file formats and radio stations at 32/384, with on-board storage, a nice display, wireless, headphone output, remote apps, and universal DAC compatibility ever appeals, they now do these great things called 'netbooks' you might want to check out!

      Comment

      • Soulkeeper
        Senior Member
        • Dec 2009
        • 1226

        Comment

        • darrell
          Senior Member
          • Oct 2007
          • 1056

          Originally posted by item_audio
          Who/what is this SBGK?

          Carbon Fibre brakes are good. They're expensive, which irritates people - but they are an inherently better component. If you make things with components that are better, it will be more expensive. This is axiomatic, and inevitable. They will not be 10x better although 10x more expensive.

          Only a fool would say we understand everything there is to know about digital audio now and forever. There will be a new Squeezebox along in a minute that washes 'whiter than white'....

          But making a computer sound better is a very simple matter of applying better components: there's no FUD about that. Sometimes 'better' is free. Sometimes - particularly with power supplies - TANSTAAFL.

          You can't ignore subjective viewpoints, though you can of course subjectively choose not to agree with them! With regard to audio being engineering, that's true up to a point: it's also an art: its most experienced practitioners will tell you that measurements have to be combined with subjective, trained listening.
          (Ignoring the puzzling reference to SBGK)

          There is such a thing as pointless over-engineering. And the hifi industry is full of it. Are you really suggesting that if I wanted to spend £2000 on an upgrade to my system I would be better off improving my "transport" than looking at my speakers, my room, digital correction systems? I should worry about pico-second jitter, or tiny power supply fluctuations while ignoring the gross distortions in the conversion of electrical energy back into sound waves, and the further distortion of those sound waves between my speakers and my ears?

          Seriously, this knee jerk "source first" stuff has to stop.

          Comment

          • totoro
            Senior Member
            • Jun 2006
            • 499

            Originally posted by item_audio
            Your point is well made: shock! - logical, even!

            A number of people are effectively claiming that there is a systematic, characteristic 'signature' that can be attached to a file by different 'rippers' - in which hardware and software variations are included. Listing factors that cannot be influential here is like shooting fish in a barrel.

            Investigating why this result persists in occurring is a job for grown-ups, perhaps. Obviously, it may just be a delusion - that's one possibility. But snatching at the answer that suits our prejudice and running with it is either lazy, arrogant or plain incurious. Certainly not scientific. It only takes one new variable to change the picture considerably.

            Fragmentation obviously cannot account for a given application consistently producing 'good' and 'bad' rips, but it illustrates another variable: that there's more to CD conversion than the data itself: it's a useful reminder that data depends on mechanical means in the real world, which is more complex than the idealised flowcharts of the software designer. As we keep saying, it's not just about the data.
            What a complete load of shit. When you can show a properly blinded and controlled test that shows such effects exist, and/or can come up with any kind of reasonable hypothesis as to what might cause these effects, other than placebo, it might be worth having a discussion. As to adults vs children: some of us here work with this technology everyday in a non audio context, and probably have bit more of an adult perspective on how these things work than you do.

            I'd be willing to be that none of the "experts" involved in this testing have tried to control any of this by, for example, moving the files a couple of times, putting them onto partitions with different filesystems, checking before and after defragging, etc. All of this would be necessary for the pseudo-empiricism on display here to be anything more than the sad cargo-cult imitation of the real thing that it so plainly is.

            You are essentially demanding that someone _proves_ a negative here, which you are just about smart enough to know isn't possible. But you do seem dim enough to think that is a clever polemical move.

            Sigh. You are a troll and pretty clearly a shill as well.
            Last edited by totoro; 2012-02-28, 02:29.
            sb touch -> classdaudio sds-450 -> audio physic tempo 4 + rel storm 3 & rythmik f12se

            Comment

            • totoro
              Senior Member
              • Jun 2006
              • 499

              Originally posted by item_audio
              Aaah! Now making more sense: I've frequented so many dimly-lit, hostile audio forums I've become too thick-skinned and sluggish myself to notice before today that this is a special place you've set up to mock off-brand & expensive things! Got it.

              Here we are trying to have a grown-up discussion about computer audio, while rubbing shoulders with topics about James Randi and ghosts (in the machine or otherwise).

              Enough said. If the idea of a cheaper Squeezebox that plays all file formats and radio stations at 32/384, with on-board storage, a nice display, wireless, headphone output, remote apps, and universal DAC compatibility ever appeals, they now do these great things called 'netbooks' you might want to check out!
              No you are not trying to have an adult discussion about audio. You are trying to sell a line of bullshit and snake oil, and using a rather superciliously faux-adult concern-troll persona to do so.

              In all seriousness, James Randi has never gotten involved with real engineering disciplines, only fields full of snake oil. Rather than complaining that he has been involved, you might want to reflect on why this is so. I've never seen him offer a prize for people who can test the speeds of two different cpus, or differentiate between the strength of two bridges.
              Last edited by totoro; 2012-02-28, 04:14.
              sb touch -> classdaudio sds-450 -> audio physic tempo 4 + rel storm 3 & rythmik f12se

              Comment

              • chill
                Senior Member
                • Mar 2007
                • 2233

                Originally posted by item_audio
                ...there's more to CD conversion than the data itself...
                No, there isn't. All that's on the CD is the data. Getting a perfect rip and storing the bits is trivial these days. This is the crux of the issue.

                You seem to be giving credence to the daft TAS claims, and the fact that you're a hifi retailer, particularly one who is apparently an evangelist for computer-based audio, illustrates perfectly what's so annoying about those claims.

                Comment

                • item_audio
                  Member
                  • Nov 2011
                  • 37

                  Originally posted by darrell
                  (Ignoring the puzzling reference to SBGK)
                  I'm puzzled too: apparently someone/thing called SBGK sang the same tune recently.

                  Originally posted by darrell
                  There is such a thing as pointless over-engineering. And the hifi industry is full of it. Are you really suggesting that if I wanted to spend £2000 on an upgrade to my system I would be better off improving my "transport" than looking at my speakers, my room, digital correction systems? I should worry about pico-second jitter, or tiny power supply fluctuations while ignoring the gross distortions in the conversion of electrical energy back into sound waves, and the further distortion of those sound waves between my speakers and my ears?

                  Seriously, this knee jerk "source first" stuff has to stop.
                  No dispute: if we say that (very roughly) 50% of what you're listening to is the speaker+room, perhaps 20% is the source. If digital, less than half of that is the transport. So, best case, we're talking about finessing 10% of the performance of a system. So, no, you'd be pretty dumb to spend £2K on a transport in a system with a £300 amplifier and £500 speakers in a badly designed room. That's Squeezebox or netbook territory.

                  It's plain to see when economic and technical arguments are naively mixed up or deliberately obfuscated - as if every expensive thing is a con.

                  I'm in the business of sound-per-pound: on a budget, netbook + DAC + small active speakers is the only way to fly. If you've more to spend, Squeezebox + NAS + DAC + what-have-you works too. If you're serious about getting a digital front end to sound really good, in a costly system - like a good turntable or old-school high-end CD player - you inevitably have to deal with the issues I've outlined. Horses for courses.

                  Comment

                  • andynormancx
                    Senior Member
                    • May 2008
                    • 1470

                    No one here has claimed everything expensive is a con. What has been claimed is that asking for lots of money to polish your ones and zeros so they are more shiny is a con.

                    Comment

                    • item_audio
                      Member
                      • Nov 2011
                      • 37

                      Originally posted by chill
                      No, there isn't. All that's on the CD is the data. Getting a perfect rip and storing the bits is trivial these days. This is the crux of the issue.

                      You seem to be giving credence to the daft TAS claims, and the fact that you're a hifi retailer, particularly one who is apparently an evangelist for computer-based audio, illustrates perfectly what's so annoying about those claims.
                      I'm refusing to scorn an idea that - granted - initially seems unlikely. I'm not leaping to the knee-jerk conclusion that everyone who says similar things is delusional. I am questioning the credibility of those throwing stones in ignorance. And, yes, we are a bit evangelical about computer audio in the geekiest possible way.

                      However, given that no-one stands to make a penny from the idea that rips or file formats differ, we can't even impute a commercial motive to the OP, who isn't even getting the right to reply. So that shouldn't annoy you.

                      Again, separating the technical from the economic, what's annoying is the price, not the claim. If we plug into the Randi debate for a moment, no-one would object to a £2000 interconnect if it costed £50 and sounded the same: in fact, we'd congratulate it on being so accomplished - and a bargain, too!

                      Yes: high end cables cost too much. I've elsewhere argued that it's ethically indefensible for almost any interconnect to cost more than £500. Yes - some rich people are being overcharged for their toys: heck, there are worse things to complain about. What really rubs on us, I think, is knowing that the highest levels of sound reproduction are only available to the privileged few who can afford them.
                      Last edited by item_audio; 2012-02-28, 10:44.

                      Comment

                      • item_audio
                        Member
                        • Nov 2011
                        • 37

                        Originally posted by andynormancx
                        No one here has claimed everything expensive is a con. What has been claimed is that asking for lots of money to polish your ones and zeros so they are more shiny is a con.
                        The cost is the issue that vexes people, though. Obviously transports vary: the Transporter sounded different to any other Logitech device, and the new models will probably sound better than the old ones.

                        Transports and bitstreams are evidently highly polishable: but the aim is not to polish 'up' the data, additively, but to polish out noise and jitter imperfections.

                        Comment

                        • item_audio
                          Member
                          • Nov 2011
                          • 37

                          Originally posted by totoro
                          faux-adult concern-troll persona.
                          Aren't they a Swedish avant-rock folktronic band? I think they formed from members of Psuedo-Trite Plastic Shill Experience and the Ethos-Lite Flame-Warrior Avatars in the late 90s. Happy days.
                          Last edited by item_audio; 2012-02-28, 10:51.

                          Comment

                          • item_audio
                            Member
                            • Nov 2011
                            • 37

                            Originally posted by totoro
                            What a complete load of shit. When you can show a properly blinded and controlled test that shows such effects exist, and/or can come up with any kind of reasonable hypothesis as to what might cause these effects, other than placebo, it might be worth having a discussion. As to adults vs children: some of us here work with this technology everyday in a non audio context, and probably have bit more of an adult perspective on how these things work than you do.

                            I'd be willing to be that none of the "experts" involved in this testing have tried to control any of this by, for example, moving the files a couple of times, putting them onto partitions with different filesystems, checking before and after defragging, etc. All of this would be necessary for the pseudo-empiricism on display here to be anything more than the sad cargo-cult imitation of the real thing that it so plainly is.

                            You are essentially demanding that someone _proves_ a negative here, which you are just about smart enough to know isn't possible. But you do seem dim enough to think that is a clever polemical move.

                            Sigh. You are a troll and pretty clearly a shill as well.
                            As we have all said, there is no working hypothesis yet. Only anecdotal evidence, subjectively reported. For some reason, this makes you fearful and uncertain and doubtful, and want to hurl rocks.

                            No-one on this side of the fence is making demands of anyone: especially of proof: it's just interesting stuff to investigate. The more you look into it, the more evidentially based and interesting it becomes. The less one examines it, the simpler it seems and (apparently) the angrier it makes people.

                            Comment

                            • adamdea
                              Senior Member
                              • Apr 2010
                              • 788

                              Originally posted by item_audio
                              As we have all said, there is no working hypothesis yet. Only anecdotal evidence, subjectively reported. For some reason, this makes you fearful and uncertain and doubtful, and want to hurl rocks.

                              No-one on this side of the fence is making demands of anyone: especially of proof: it's just interesting stuff to investigate. The more you look into it, the more evidentially based and interesting it becomes. The less one examines it, the simpler it seems and (apparently) the angrier it makes people.
                              People are angry because non-information is being either cynically or stupidly paraded as some sort of evidence.

                              1 There absolutely no reason to believe that file location/identity of ripper/whatever affects the sound, on conversion to analog, of 2 identical files
                              2 there is no evidence they those files do "sound" different. Until such time as there is any evidence it is not an "interesting" topic of conversation any more than is the biochemistry of the unicorn.Anecdotal reports from audiophiles are of zero evidential value. There is no proposition too stupid to be reported by an audiophile

                              Having read your postings, I have come to the conclusion that they just consist of a loads of words put together more or less randomly. Eg "The more you look into it, the more evidentially based and interesting it becomes"-
                              This is just drivel. There is nothing interesting about people claiming to hear differences in things which sound the same. It's not the exception it's the rule.
                              Last edited by adamdea; 2012-02-28, 14:46.

                              Comment

                              • Phil Leigh
                                Senior Member
                                • Apr 2005
                                • 9991

                                Originally posted by item_audio
                                I'm refusing to scorn an idea that - granted - initially seems unlikely. I'm not leaping to the knee-jerk conclusion that everyone who says similar things is delusional. I am questioning the credibility of those throwing stones in ignorance. And, yes, we are a bit evangelical about computer audio in the geekiest possible way.

                                However, given that no-one stands to make a penny from the idea that rips or file formats differ, we can't even impute a commercial motive to the OP, who isn't even getting the right to reply. So that shouldn't annoy you.
                                Not only is this delusional, it is dishonest and unethical.

                                A bit-perfect rip is a bit-perfect rip and that really is all there is to it. There's nothing special about the bits on a music CD compared to those on a computer CD-ROM. They are both simply DATA. Are you trying to claim otherwise? To do so would be to deny that computers work properly and that there might be some variability in the way that CD-Roms are read by by CD-ROM drives. There isn't because - funnily enough - every time you insert a CD-ROM into a computer, it reads exactly the same bit values (or you get a fatal read error if it can't!).

                                Good heavens, man. What if you download the 16/44.1 files from the Internet (e.g. from Linn, Naim etc)? Are those files different to ones own rips - I'll spare you the trouble... they aren't. Same data. It's just data. Not magic, alchemy, unknown alien technology or random acts of chaos.

                                This can all be mathematically proven - something which is pretty rare in audio circles.

                                I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree on this.

                                There are lots of issues to resolve in audio reproduction. Getting the right data simply isn't one of them in the digital streaming model as this is all handled by the computers and - bizarrely - computers are rather good at handling data in reliable, predictable ways. The same comment also applies to networks.

                                This whole TAS thing is a complete crock from start to finish. They are desperate to convince people that there are black arts to be mastered and (inevitably) expensive solutions to be found, in order to fuel pernicious attempts by snake oil merchants to part fools from their money. Caveat Emptor indeed!.
                                You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal...
                                Touch(wired/W7)+Teddy Pardo PSU - Audiolense 3.3/2.0+INGUZ DRC - MF M1 DAC - Linn 5103 - full Aktiv 5.1 system (6x LK140's, ESPEK/TRIKAN/KATAN/SEIZMIK 10.5), Pekin Tuner, Townsend Supertweeters,VdH Toslink,Kimber 8TC Speaker & Chord Signature Plus Interconnect cables
                                Stax4070+SRM7/II phones
                                Kitchen Boom, Outdoors: SB Radio, Harmony One remote for everything.

                                Comment

                                Working...