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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 12:13 am   #521
Craig Sawyers
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Default Re: Audiophoolery?

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Surely a second hand one would be worth more as it's already been "burned in"

"Do you want to save your N.O.S. tubes from further wear?" Then you need a cable cooker.
I would love to put my scope on this thing and find out what it's really doing if anything.
Here is a pic of what is inside https://www.ls3-5a-forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=544231

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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 12:28 am   #522
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Default Re: Audiophoolery?

Ah so there is more than a brick in there, seems like a waste of good components.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 2:07 am   #523
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I think I had better get my special purging resistor out.
It is a great tool for purging all the bad electrons out of cables and especially amplifiers and power supplies.
It can be seen in action purging bad electrons out of a power supply.
The pesky things had been taking short cuts in a transistor so badly than a new transistor had to be fitted before purging.
The bad electrons go away after being made to go around the corners on the six sided former a few times
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 7:59 am   #524
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Default Re: Audiophoolery?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Silvered_Mica View Post
Blue arctic cable with gold connectors, they dont look as good as the toaster leads but they
cost more so they must be better
Interestingly, the Indian guy called Ajay Shirke that owns Siltech and Crystal Cable also owns SME and Garrard. His company is called Cadence Audio https://cadenceaudio.com/what-we-do/cadence-companies/ . I did not realise that he also owns Spendor.

Craig
Clearly audiophoolery knows no bounds.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 8:36 am   #525
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Shirke, apart from being a very successful industrial entrepreneur, is and always has been an audiophile (I'm avoiding audiophool). He actually set up Cadence to manufacture electrostatic speakers, amps and so forth, but has decided instead to spend his money in buying audio companies.

And judging from what he has done SME, all he has actually done is put a new MD in place, put money in and let it get on with doing what it does and progressively introducing new product - and building up its subcontract engineering activity.

And whatever you think about stupidly expensive cable like Siltech, they have been in business since 1983, so they clearly sell product. And anyway, if someone is wealthy enough to spend 60 grand on a single cable, what do you care? It is no more daft than buying a Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron, or Rolls Royce - hey it has four wheels - why not just buy a Panda? What a motorphool!

Don't get me wrong - as you know I completely agree that there is a whole lot of madness out there to suck in the non-scientific gullible. But I'm not about to knock a guy who steps in to save one of the finest engineering companies out there - SME. It was on the cards that they were looking to close the place, bulldoze it and sell the land for housing. As far as pure money was concerned that would have been a lucrative deal in Steyning in Sussex. And that would have been a tragedy. So thank you Mr Shirke.

And at least he keeps manufacture in the original place, unlike the Chinese who transfer the entire manufacture and often product development lock stock and barrel to China. Quad, Wharfedale, KEF, Castle, Audiolab - all gone to China.

Craig

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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 9:16 am   #526
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I couldn't help but notice inside the 'cable cooker' a lack of audio grade wiring and lack of high end components. The way that electrolytic is 'tacked' to the 12V DC socket, not best practice. Presumably the unit runs from a wallwart PSU, hopefully not a SMPSU, think of the noise injected into your expensive cabling!

Hmmm, although the cable cooker was not designed to pass an audio signal, you'd of thought it would be nicely put together.

I wonder how a bunch of paralleled interconnects would sound after have 12 volts at 1 amp running through them for a week? Am thinking, bench PSU one end, and an old car filament lamp at the other.

Mark
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 9:18 am   #527
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Default Re: Audiophoolery?

I agree, there is a world of difference between the treatment of SME and Spendor compared with the fate of some other renowned names.

David
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 9:25 am   #528
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I couldn't help but notice inside the 'cable cooker' a lack of audio grade wiring and lack of high end components.
Mark
There is a subtle principle there that has to be handled in the field of measurement equipment (real scientific and engineering stuff, no fairy dust)

It takes cunning to design a new instrument with better performance than the previous state of the art. This involves making something which is better than the equipment used to make IT. Some serious creativity is needed.

I rather suspect the cable cooker does not fall into this category. It's pretty crude and not that well built. It's a motor for spinning prayer-wheels and the issue is whether prayers work.

David
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 9:29 am   #529
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A great shame the Leak name faded and hasn't yet been revived.

Great to see some UK based manufacturing companies though, still going.

Agreed, it's a difficult thing to measure/quantify cable nuances, and to make a device to release their magic would be a trifle difficult.

I do have spectrum analyser, distortion analyser, RMS noise meter and 'scope. Would we realistically see any real 'before' and 'after' changes with such humble test equipment? Not likely I'll wager, but possibly worth a shot.

Mark
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 10:07 am   #530
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To think I spent 38 years at my shop in South West London selling 5 amp twin flex for 25p a metre....I knew I had done something wrong even back then but nobody told me the secret.
All I can say is if ill informed and gullible guys believe this tosh then so be it and good luck to the guys that manage to extract vast amounts from their wallets yet still keep a smile on the poor deluded souls face. Regards, John.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 11:26 am   #531
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Default Re: Audiophoolery?

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Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers View Post
Shirke, apart from being a very successful industrial entrepreneur, is and always has been an audiophile (I'm avoiding audiophool). He actually set up Cadence to manufacture electrostatic speakers, amps and so forth, but has decided instead to spend his money in buying audio companies.

And judging from what he has done SME, all he has actually done is put a new MD in place, put money in and let it get on with doing what it does and progressively introducing new product - and building up its subcontract engineering activity.

And whatever you think about stupidly expensive cable like Siltech, they have been in business since 1983, so they clearly sell product. And anyway, if someone is wealthy enough to spend 60 grand on a single cable, what do you care? It is no more daft than buying a Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron, or Rolls Royce - hey it has four wheels - why not just buy a Panda? What a motorphool!

Don't get me wrong - as you know I completely agree that there is a whole lot of madness out there to suck in the non-scientific gullible. But I'm not about to knock a guy who steps in to save one of the finest engineering companies out there - SME. It was on the cards that they were looking to close the place, bulldoze it and sell the land for housing. As far as pure money was concerned that would have been a lucrative deal in Steyning in Sussex. And that would have been a tragedy. So thank you Mr Shirke.

And at least he keeps manufacture in the original place, unlike the Chinese who transfer the entire manufacture and often product development lock stock and barrel to China. Quad, Wharfedale, KEF, Castle, Audiolab - all gone to China.

Craig
My point is, whether he's an audiophool or not, when it comes to making money - and I'm not against that! - he's seemingly as happy to sell high-end, no-nonsense, 'credible but expensive' SME products as he is cables that cost a mortgage and make no audible difference. No scruples, money talks, and that's generally the way of dealers in the audiophoolery market. Peter Belt being one such person.

The notion that someone has enough money to spend 60 grand on a single cable is not one that I "care about", indeed I find it quite funny, ridiculous even, hence the whole audiophool thing that we're now discussing and enjoying. Paying a large amount of money for a Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron, or Rolls Royce is not a valid simile, you will get an awful lot more of a motor car and objective, measurable added value than say an old Ford Escort.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 2:40 pm   #532
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To think I spent 38 years at my shop in South West London selling 5 amp twin flex for 25p a metre....I knew I had done something wrong even back then but nobody told me the secret.
Ah, if only you'd known, John. During the odd quite patch you'd have been sat there steadily stamping little directional arrows along that 5A flex and erasing the decimal point on the price tag....

David
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 2:43 pm   #533
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... cables that cost a mortgage and make no audible difference ...
On a point of detail, 'audible difference' is a phrase which is used in two distinct ways.

Some people use it to mean a difference which passes a rigorous test e.g. double-blind ABX comparison (actually harder to carry out than we might imagine, but that's a separate issue).

Other people use it to mean the situation where there is a perceived difference in the 'heard experience' inside their heads. They would argue that that is the more useful definition when it comes to judging home entertainment equipment, and I might even agree with them actually.

The question of whether a product has been sold on the basis of objective scientific untruths is a different one. I disapprove of that. Where life gets difficult is when a listener's subjective pleasure depends on them believing the objective untruth. Then I might have to decide whether it really is best to pee on their parade.

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 5:34 pm   #534
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Default Re: Audiophoolery?

I had a customer for whom money was no object. He had all sorts of esoteric equipment in his listening room. I went with him to a hi-fi exhibition and the reps all flocked to him to sell him the latest thing. I was therefore excited to hear his sytem - and it was terrible! Everything was mis-matched and his room was like a tunnel. Of course I said all the right things and he went back to his listening pleasure, even if better results would have come from a system costing a fraction of the price.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 6:09 pm   #535
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I once was at an exhibition where a cost-no-object, but apparently DIY system had been set up for punters to listen to with rows of seats in front of the open baffle speakers. These were driven by ginormous shiny valve amplifiers, source was probably CD as this was long before the recent vinyl revival.

And the sound was...

Terrible!

Yet all these people were seated nodding away in time to the music and apparently thinking it was great.

The other extreme was at one of the London Hi-Fi shows held in a hotel in the 90s. The small rooms weren't ideal and the sound most people were getting was harsh and unforgiving. I then wandered into another small room which had a pair of enormous horn loudspeakers squashed into it. The speakers looked such a mismatch to the room I thought 'this is going to be awful'. Then the music started playing: valve amp fed by a turntable. It sounded great and I could have sat there all day, my ears went ahhh after all the harshness.

The moral of the story: Don't judge by appearances, technology or price tag, only by what it sounds like!
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 6:18 pm   #536
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When does all this turn into exploitation? Are these folk not effectively being 'groomed' by all the hype so they can then be parted from their cash? Yes it's fine to make money honestly and to give fair value but to take advantage of those who are vulnerable and profit shamelessly from it is not on in my opinion.

Steve.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 6:48 pm   #537
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I'm going to say it, 'cryogenically treated' valves?

Discuss ...

The thought of popping all my valves in a dewar-full of LN2, gadzooks! What are the chances of the vacuum 'escaping'?

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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 7:24 pm   #538
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Do you suppose we could talk an audiophile into having his ears and brain cryogenically treated? Or maybe an April the first article?

We could wax lyrical about how it had to be liquid helium and not common nitrogen. How while his brain was superconducting he could understand Delius and Mahler, how tuning dots worked and he could hear a pin drop in the next county.... but he lost the understanding as he came back to room temperature although he still remembers that he had it. All that remains of his adventure is that he levitates while asleep.

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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 7:39 pm   #539
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I had a customer for whom money was no object. He had all sorts of esoteric equipment in his listening room. I went with him to a hi-fi exhibition and the reps all flocked to him to sell him the latest thing. I was therefore excited to hear his sytem - and it was terrible! Everything was mis-matched and his room was like a tunnel. Of course I said all the right things and he went back to his listening pleasure, even if better results would have come from a system costing a fraction of the price.
That is so often the case. And more often that not I find that the main 'culprit' is the speakers. Many audiophools seem to be drawn to esoteric limited edition ones made by self designated speaker gurus who take months to knock up one pair. And they sound awful, just random - but 'fashionable' - drive units and a dodgy, over simplified crossover in a poorly designed box with a frighteningly attractive piano finish. If you like that sort of thing. If only people would stick to makers of no-nonsense monitor quality speakers such as high end models from (to name a couple) B&W, Spendor, Harbeth etc. Those guys have been designing and building speakers for use in the most demanding monitoring applications for donkey's years.
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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 7:53 pm   #540
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Cryogenically treating the brain is easy, whacking great scoops of ice cream, responsibly sourced, organic, in recyclable tubs too. They're free to choose the flavour.

The ears? Perhaps a snow machine whose mains lead is 2 metres long, uses oxygen free directional copper and costs circa £1500 a centimetre, thereby giving the reassurance of 'quality'.

Joking aside, I once went to a Hi-Fi show in the late 90's. A dealer was selling 'isolation' platforms at something like £2000 a go. The improvement in the 'sound-stage' was apparently something to behold used on say, a CD player. Using a platform on the source, pre-amp and power amp would 'apparently' be astonishing! The dealer had 6 of these platforms under the CD player, 6 under the pre-amp, 6 under each power amp (one for left, one for right) plus, 6 under each loudspeaker.

£72000's worth of granite with gold spikes. How did it sound, in a tiny hotel room, next to the lift? Not a clue, the bloke was standing on carpet & I had a job to understand him. Too much distortion! Should've used some of his own granite platforms, he muttered something about 'music' and the ability to play it.

Mark
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