WTF!

randella

He's a shark, he's selling bullshit.

See also: cosmetics industry.

Sassafras

randella said:

He's a shark, he's selling bullshit.

See also: cosmetics industry.

Is the bullshit cryogenically frozen or burnt in?

beed84

“Russ Andrews - for those with more money than sense”

Sporky

What seems to be being forgotten is that the mains never gets near the audio path in any hifi. The mains is used to charge up the bank of capacitors in the power supply; the capacitors drive the circuitry.

Thus a mains cable could only make a difference if the designer of the thing being powered was utterly incompetent and didn't understand basic power supply design.

Presumably anyone considering buying one of these has some pretty expensive hifi kit, which will have good power supply stages inside it.

Also what ICBM said about upgrading the National Grid as well.

Snap

@Sporky

at risk of blowing a lot of fragrant smoke up your ass mate, many years ago you posted some good stuff about cabling and quality that I have remembered til this day. About HDMI cables, and how when they are less than 10 feet long, they are all the same regardless, in terms of quality of signal etc.

Sporky works in this field, its his career. I believe him.

However, these Russ Andrews things are all coated in elbow grease, so must be worth it

Legionreturns

Elbow grease? Ohhhh! So that's the fabled burn in process!

Corvus

Buyers will almost certainly hear two sonic events - a gentle weeping sound from their credit card and a thud as the arse falls out of their credibility.

CabbageCat

Rocker said:

robwright said:

http://www.russandrews.com/the-superkord500-sdii-uk-mains-w350i-ag-hc/

Sigh! When you have nothing to say, slag off audiophiles. If you had simply tried one in your hi-fi system, you do have a hi-fi system?, and found that everything that RA wrote about it is bollox, your opinion would have some credibility. Without trying it out yourself, your opinion is mere conjecture [whatever the "experts" say]

If you learned (through scientific tests or admission of bullshittery from RA) unequivocally that the sound improvement you are hearing is placebo-style self-delusion at the "ear end" of the listening process and not an actual change to the sound you are hearing would you still consider it to be money well spent? After all, you are perceiving the music differently, even though it is the same sound.

randella

CabbageCat said:

If you learned (through scientific tests or admission of bullshittery from RA) unequivocally that the sound improvement you are hearing is placebo-style self-delusion at the "ear end" of the listening process and not an actual change to the sound you are hearing would you still consider it to be money well spent? After all, you are perceiving the music differently, even though it is the same sound.

I have a rule - if the *thing* makes less difference to your sound than £7 worth of new strings, then it's not getting bought.

In this case, if the *thing* needs legal wrangling over whether or not it makes any difference to anything at all apart from your bank balance, then it's not getting looked at.

Sporky

CabbageCat said:

If you learned (through scientific tests or admission of bullshittery from RA) unequivocally that the sound improvement you are hearing is placebo-style self-delusion at the "ear end" of the listening process and not an actual change to the sound you are hearing would you still consider it to be money well spent? After all, you are perceiving the music differently, even though it is the same sound.

And the thing about placebos is they're meant to be much cheaper than the "active" alternative.

£1500 for a placebo seems silly when I made a fancy-looking mains cable for about a tenner. Add a blob in the middle - about an hour with the lathe - and you're there.

http://www.monkeyfx.co.uk/pictures/FancyMainsCable.JPG

Rayon covered cable for,  erm, something, transparent 3-pin plug for, erm, transparency, and white (aka hospital grade) IEC end for cleanliness.

Three-ColourSunburst

Octafish said:

I think Three-ColourSunburst was being facetious.

More ironic than facetious, but yes, I was just repeating some arguments presented in different (but not that different) context. That reminds, me. I missed one. "If a peer-reviewed academic paper has appeared in some physics journal saying that a 'SuperFuse' make no difference to the sound, then it must have been written by a typically corrupt foreign type, who lied and said they make no difference because this meant someone was going to give his wife a new fur coat."

crunchman

crunchman said:

Where's 3CS when you need him?

Sorry, take that back

ICBM

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Odd that you should put such faith in a graph found in a student project, and yet reject the findings of a properly controlled academic study...

It was you who posted a link to that research when you thought it supported your prejudice, not me. Funny how you've changed your position on it now.

Three-ColourSunburst said:

As Karl Popper pointed out, one disconfirmation is all that is needed to disprove a hypothesis.

Gagaryn

Rocker said:

robwright said:

http://www.russandrews.com/the-superkord500-sdii-uk-mains-w350i-ag-hc/

Sigh! When you have nothing to say, slag off audiophiles. If you had simply tried one in your hi-fi system, you do have a hi-fi system?, and found that everything that RA wrote about it is bollox, your opinion would have some credibility. Without trying it out yourself, your opinion is mere conjecture [whatever the "experts" say]

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]

You should have taken heed of your own signature. :-)

scrumhalf

"Burn-in process?"

Thank the lord they don't make toilet paper.

Rocker

chillidoggy said:

You'd be better off spending the same amount on upgrading your CD player, amp, or speakers.

True if your hi-fi system cost less than £2K, there is no point in spending serious money on cables. The consensus is spend around £200 on cables for such a system. They will make a positive difference. However if your system cost £20K or more, cables like the much derided RA cables will make a huge difference, one that will literally be jaw dropping. The only RA cable in my system is from the mains block to the wall socket. I use it because it is the right length, almost everything else is pure silver wires. They cost a lot less than RA stuff, a lot less than a Squire PJ bass I looked at recently, but they work exceptionally well and their use is a no brainer. I may in time replace the RA cable with a silver one but there is no great urgency in that as the music sounds so good as it is.

jonnyburgo

File next to Klon and Dumble

Legionreturns

"Literally jaw dropping"

Just read that back to yourself  

Three-ColourSunburst

ICBM said:

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Odd that you should put such faith in a graph found in a student project, and yet reject the findings of a properly controlled academic study...

It was you who posted a link to that research when you thought it supported your prejudice, not me. Funny how you've changed your position on it now.

My position hasn't changed. The writer's conclusion is perfectly sound:

Analysis of the data shows that in an electric guitar the body wood type does not contribute significantly to the sound
of the amplified instrument.

http://www.stormriders.com/guitar/telecaster/guitar_wood.pdf#

The included graphs also clearly show that differences in the acoustic sound of each type of wood are not replicated via the signal from the pickups, any difference being greatly attenuated.

That said, this was just a student project and most unlikely to have included the level of control that a proper academic study would have. As you are aware such a study has been done and found no differences for 9 different types of wood.

https://physicae.ifi.unicamp.br/physicae/article/view/154

That first (student) study was indicative. The second one - published in a peer-reviewed physics journal - was definitive.

Unless other peer-reviewed academic research comes to light (or is done) on the topic (not student research projects, or papers on other topics, such as the formation of 'dead spots)', the only rational thing to do is to accept what the balance of the evidence tells us. That is, 'tone wood' does not affect the timbre of a solid-body electric guitar, and certainly to a degree that is perceptible.

Beyond that the only left to debate is why so many should persist in believing what physics tells them cannot be true, whether this relates to 'tone wood' or a 'SuperFuse'. And I just can't be bothered to do that any more. 

ICBM

Three-ColourSunburst said:

My position hasn't changed. The writer's conclusion is perfectly sound:

Analysis of the data shows that in an electric guitar the body wood type does not contribute significantly to the sound
of the amplified instrument.

http://www.stormriders.com/guitar/telecaster/guitar_wood.pdf#

The included graphs also clearly show that differences in the acoustic sound of each type of wood are not replicated via the signal from the pickups, any difference being greatly attenuated.

Just look at the graphs. Clear differences in the pickup signals by up to 10dB at different frequencies, and a roughly 2-3dB difference in overall high frequency response. That's very significant and completely negates what they've said as a written conclusion, but like you they wanted to believe there was no difference so they ignored their own evidence.

You've flip-flopped your position on this at least twice now. First you referenced it to show you were right, then you derided it as just an undergraduate project when it was pointed out that the conclusion was wrong, now you're saying they're still right? Which is it - are the graphs right, or is their conclusion? They can't both be.

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Beyond that the only left to debate is why so many should persist in believing what physics tells them cannot be true, whether this relates to 'tone wood' or a 'SuperFuse'.

Why do you persist in refusing to believe what experimental testing has confirmed to be true, just because one other study has supposedly found no difference? The hypothesis is that body wood does not affect tone, and as you say just one piece of evidence to the contrary disproves a hypothesis, so consider it disproved.

I'm done with this now too and I shouldn't have got involved in you deliberately introducing the same topic into another thread, but I'm pleased you think it's a waste of time as well.