23rd Mar 2019, 12:13 am | #521 | |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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23rd Mar 2019, 12:28 am | #522 |
Pentode
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Re: Audiophoolery?
Ah so there is more than a brick in there, seems like a waste of good components.
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23rd Mar 2019, 2:07 am | #523 |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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 |
23rd Mar 2019, 7:59 am | #524 | ||
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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23rd Mar 2019, 8:36 am | #525 |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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 Last edited by Craig Sawyers; 23rd Mar 2019 at 8:45 am. |
23rd Mar 2019, 9:16 am | #526 |
Hexode
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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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23rd Mar 2019, 9:18 am | #527 |
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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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23rd Mar 2019, 9:25 am | #528 | |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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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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23rd Mar 2019, 9:29 am | #529 |
Hexode
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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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Slowly turning the 'to-do', into 'ta-dah' Last edited by mark2collection; 23rd Mar 2019 at 9:39 am. |
23rd Mar 2019, 10:07 am | #530 |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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. |
23rd Mar 2019, 11:26 am | #531 | |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
Quote:
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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23rd Mar 2019, 2:40 pm | #532 | |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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David
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23rd Mar 2019, 2:43 pm | #533 | |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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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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23rd Mar 2019, 5:34 pm | #534 |
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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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23rd Mar 2019, 6:09 pm | #535 |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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! |
23rd Mar 2019, 6:18 pm | #536 |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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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23rd Mar 2019, 6:48 pm | #537 |
Hexode
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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'? Mark
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23rd Mar 2019, 7:24 pm | #538 |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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. David
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23rd Mar 2019, 7:39 pm | #539 | |
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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23rd Mar 2019, 7:53 pm | #540 |
Hexode
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Re: Audiophoolery?
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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Slowly turning the 'to-do', into 'ta-dah' Last edited by mark2collection; 23rd Mar 2019 at 8:02 pm. |