PS Audio Noise Harvester

[pchams]

As an amateur recording engineer (I occasionally charge some bands), I have more than once been tweaking the EQ on the hi band, and made several adjustments carefully listening for the track to blend better with the mix, and laughed after realising the EQ wasn't engaged for the track.
I don't know any engineers who haven't made this same gaff. It teaches one something about placebo.
My favorite was the engineer who was bothered by the guitarist in the control room constantly complaining about his sound.
The engineer hooked up a dummy compressor and labeled one knob "soar".
The guitarist was allowed to control this knob during the mix, and was quite satisfied with the difference he made in the mix.

Extreme Skeptic, you are contolling the soar knob.

 

[MRC_Hans]

As an amateur recording engineer (I occasionally charge some bands), I have more than once been tweaking the EQ on the hi band, and made several adjustments carefully listening for the track to blend better with the mix, and laughed after realising the EQ wasn't engaged for the track.
I don't know any engineers who haven't made this same gaff. It teaches one something about placebo.
My favorite was the engineer who was bothered by the guitarist in the control room constantly complaining about his sound.
The engineer hooked up a dummy compressor and labeled one knob "soar".
The guitarist was allowed to control this knob during the mix, and was quite satisfied with the difference he made in the mix.

Extreme Skeptic, you are contolling the soar knob.

Good story!

But I have a correction to the last sentence:

Extreme Skeptic, the soar knob is controlling you.

Hans

 

[Paulhoff]

The guitarist was allowed to control this knob during the mix, and was quite satisfied with the difference he made in the mix.

Extreme Skeptic, you are contolling the soar knob.

Sorry, I can't help it, that would be the only knob he ever controlled.

Paul

 

[MRC_Hans]

Audiophiles are smarter than skeptics because they try it for themselves. The skeptics just like to dig themselves deeper into their delusional darkness and then laugh at everything that doesn't match with their classical physics books written by men who are dead.

ES, not that it matters, and I'm sure it doesn't matter to you, but I have built audio equipment before you were born. I didn't learn my stuff from books, I learnt it from experience. And I learned it well enough that people have been paying me money to teach them. More money than you have spent on your silly audio gadgets.

But, don't let realities bother you, sonny. Just dream on.

Hans

 

[ktesibios]

Lets look that the bottom-line, and that is the human mind and its great need to have some kind of control over things.

In audio some 30 years ago and more, they had all kinds of things to play with. The turntable was most likely the favorite audio play toy. You could change the audio cartridge, play with the balancing of the audio cartridge, to get those right grams of force. Play with the anti-skate adjustment. Adjusting the pitch of the cartridge, find the right pad to absorb unwanted vibrations on the turntable. Boy, what a good play toy the turntable is and or was.

The thing is, getting mechanical adjustments like tracking force and anti-skating force and electrical adjustments like the load resistance and capacitance presented to the cartridge adjusted correctly really did make a difference in the turntable's perfomance, as did things like getting the geometry of the tonearm-turntable relationship right. These differences were measurable.

Back in the day when recording studio control rooms invariably contained turntables, my job included periodically checking these adjustments, as well as putting on a test record (after inspecting the stylus with a magnifier for wear), checking the frequency response and channel separation of the turntable/preamp combination and fixing or adjusting anything I found to be off.

If you can find a copy, H.M. Tremaine's The Audio Cyclopedia contains a wealth of information about that stuff, as well as everything you could possibly want to know about the film sound technology of the '50s and '60s.

OTOH, stuff like coloring the edges of a CD don't make any difference in the performance of the disc and player, and if you produce measurements showing that the green Sharpie doesn't affect the read error rate in the least, you'll never get an audiopill to believe it.

So I said to an audiophile friend of mine after that test "Look, we will put a lot of knobs on the front of your CD player, they won’t do any thing, but it will give you something to adjust and play with anyway.

On a recording console, that's called the "producer's knob". There are stories of studios installing do-nothing knobs for just that purpose, but I've never seen one in the flesh. I can, however, verify that after a certain Far Side cartoon was published, live sound boards all over the place started sprouting "suck" knobs.

Back when I did live sound work, I found that when a musician was zarking about his monitor mix, I could "fix" the problem at least 7 out of ten times by reaching down to the board, twiddling a knob on an unused channel and asking "how's that?".

 

[Paulhoff]

The thing is, getting mechanical adjustments like tracking force and anti-skating force and electrical adjustments like the load resistance and capacitance presented to the cartridge adjusted correctly really did make a difference in the turntable's perfomance, as did things like getting the geometry of the tonearm-turntable relationship right. These differences were measurable.

I agree with you, but ES is talking about woo-woo. The big thing you wrote was "These differences were measurable". Now these guys didn't know what to do with themselves, they don't know how to just listen the music.......................

There you do man, be cool as you can............

Paul



You're made of magnetic ink .............

 

[TjW]

So, ES, have you ever applied a tweak that did nothing at all? I seem to recall you saying something about tweaks that you thought made it worse, and of course those you thought made it better. Has there ever been one that you just couldn't tell if it was in or out?

 

[Dan O.]

You're made of magnetic ink

I'm more than that, I know I am, at least, I think I must be.

 

[ExtremeSkeptic]

So, ES, have you ever applied a tweak that did nothing at all? I seem to recall you saying something about tweaks that you thought made it worse, and of course those you thought made it better. Has there ever been one that you just couldn't tell if it was in or out?

Yes. Brilliant Pebbles didn't do anything. But that could have been just because I already had vibration isolation and ERS Paper that was more effective than the Pebbles.

CD tweaks also didn't do anything. But later I realized it was because my Cary 303/300 CD player buffers the data into RAM like a small computer. I lost over a grand from CD tweaks that didn't do anything.

 

[osmosis]

Yes. Brilliant Pebbles didn't do anything. But that could have been just because I already had vibration isolation and ERS Paper that was more effective than the Pebbles.

No, it's because Brilliant Pebbles are useless. If you actually knew what skepticism was, and applied some skepticism to your endeavors, you would have known that. Everyone else here could have told you that (and did) without ever laying eyes on the silly things.

I lost over a grand from CD tweaks that didn't do anything.

That's money you could have spent on other things, had you simply been skeptical and, dare I say, had a little book learnin'.

Is it starting to sink in, ES? Skepticism and education are not limiting, they are empowering. The skeptics on here aren't trying to harm you, we're trying to help you. But first you must stop embracing ignorance and credulity, and consider that there may just be some important things we can teach you.

Check out my sig ES, it's inspired by you.

 

[osmosis]

or make love to a real woman

I believe it was implied (and not denied) early in this thread that he prefers men.

 

[Myriad]

I believe it was implied (and not denied) early in this thread that he prefers men.

That's as may be. I don't think it's very likely that he'll ever have to grow his own food or play poker for profit either, and I sincerely hope he never has to battle a severe injury or disease. My point is, expert knowledge (whether from books, teachers, or expert practitioners) is usually more appreciated when the task is challenging and the results matter -- neither of which is true for playing CDs.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[ExtremeSkeptic]

No, it's because Brilliant Pebbles are useless. If you actually knew what skepticism was, and applied some skepticism to your endeavors, you would have known that. Everyone else here could have told you that (and did) without ever laying eyes on the silly things.

It's obvious Brilliant Pebbles does something but the skeptics are clueless because their brain is limited. Instead they just laugh at their own stupidity.

I believe it was implied (and not denied) early in this thread that he prefers men.

I don't need to deny anything a delusional skeptic says. It's already obvious they don't have any credibility...and the sane people know that.

I don't prefer men, but obviously you do since you have made yourself believe I'm gay because then there would be one more gay person in the world for you to choose from.

When you see this pic you wish I was gay don't you?

 

[Paulhoff]

My point is, expert knowledge (whether from books, teachers, or expert practitioners) is usually more appreciated when the task is challenging and the results matter -- neither of which is true for playing CDs.

Respectfully,
Myriad

I wouldn't be at all surprise that it is that science doesn't give him the answer he wants, and that answer is that he is correct. He most certainly does not care what we say, no matter how true it is, he just wants attention, apparently he doesn’t get it at home.

Paul

 

[Paulhoff]

No, it's because Brilliant Pebbles are useless.

Not unless you what to sell them to someone that is clueless to the universe. It is like the old saying "Nothing in, nothing out".

Paul



Diamonds are brilliant pebbles to, and greatly over priced.

 

[TjW]

Yes. Brilliant Pebbles didn't do anything.

It's obvious Brilliant Pebbles does something but the skeptics are clueless because their brain is limited.

Since Brilliant Pebbles did nothing for you, does this mean your brain is as limited as a skeptic's?

 

[ExtremeSkeptic]

Since Brilliant Pebbles did nothing for you, does this mean your brain is as limited as a skeptic's?

Brilliant Pebbles reduces EMI because of the different stone materials. It also reduces resonances because each stone has a different resonant frequency. The glass bottle is airtight which does something also.
It's a fact that snug screws inside the chassis gives better sound than tight screws, it's because some of the resonances are lost to heat from friction of the snug screws. But skeptics with tin ears don't think this matters. Everything matters!

If the EMI is removed from ERS Paper and resonances removed from Magix, then there is nothing left for Brilliant Pebbles. Magix is real and can be measured, ERS Paper can be measured as well, there is no snake oil here. But with Brilliant Pebbles I'm still a skeptic because it hasn't been measured. I couldn't hear a difference either, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. There is no doubt that Brilliant Pebbles makes a difference based on true physics, but the question is if it can be audible.

 

[Schneibster]

Back when I did live sound work, I found that when a musician was zarking about his monitor mix, I could "fix" the problem at least 7 out of ten times by reaching down to the board, twiddling a knob on an unused channel and asking "how's that?".

I've had that done to me at least a hundred times, and my response every time is, "No different. Try something that changes it."

 

[osmosis]

I don't prefer men, but obviously you do since you have made yourself believe I'm gay because then there would be one more gay person in the world for you to choose from.

Hardly.

I didn't make myself believe anything, I simply read a post on this thread that made an implication almost anyone would have denied if it weren't true.

Relax ES, I doubt anyone here cares if you're gay. I certainly don't. I just thought that if you were, you'd probably respond more positively to people's suggestions that you interact with real live humans if they got the gender correct.

When you see this pic you wish I was gay don't you?

I wish every man in the world were gay except me, then I'd have one hell of a harem.

 

[cloudshipsrule]

I was once caught up in the stereophile golden-ear world of woo. I still have a pretty nice system, but I don't have any components isolated on special platforms, I don't have any cables suspended off the floor, I listened to the manufacturer of my preamplifier/processor and don't have a power conditioner connected to it. And despite all of these no-no's my friends and family can hear a tremendous difference when they listen to a quality system with proper room acoustics and speaker placement.

In the end, the point of diminishing returns is quickly reached with every component in the chain in the following ascending order:

1 The cables (Including speaker cables.)
2 The preamp/processor
3 The amplifier (Tied with the pre/pro)
4 The speakers
5 Room correction measures/devices (Nearly tied with speakers)

There are some 'things' that can change the sound of a particular system, and there are certainly expensive systems that can sound better (different?) than low-budget out of the box surround sound systems. However, MOST of the crap spewed by publications such as stereophile magazine can be completely ignored with now measurable loss in sound quality from the average skeptic's home theater (or even plain-jane two channel) set-up.