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Damned audiophiles

Almo said:
CDs degrade with time. The time is shorter is direct sunlight is involved.
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CDs use an extensive Reed-Solomon ECC. In general they don't "degrade" but gradually the ECC can fail if enough errors occur. Until then the reproduction is perfect. They are most susceptable to scratches parallel to the tracks which is why you should always clean or polish them from the center outward.

There are utilities that will read the raw tracks and tell you how much redundancy remains. I have a lot of old CDs (30 years) and haven't seen any problems however high humidity can create problems eating away at the aluminized layer. Or so I've heard. None of my CDs have experienced that though so no first hand experience.
 
Nessie said:
The impression I get is that many computer makers know that people use them as a music source and sound cards are getting better for sound quality.

I had background noise and dealt with that by using a couple of mains conditioners, one from Russ Andrews and another from Tacima. Now right up to the highest volume setting on my amp, way beyond what is a listenable volume, I get no background noise at all.
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I don't think noise is the problem with a working unit in these days, to be honest. It's more a problem of a more or less subtle distortion (cramming of dynamics and sound frequency band width) by cheap DACS.
 
Check out the "Clever Little Clock." $299 for a cheapo $15 Casio digital travel alarm clock of the kind they sell behind the counter at Walgreen's. But this one has allegedly modified to perform extra functionality that not only enhances the performance of audio systems, but increases the clarity of video as well. $300 is actually a pretty good price for something that works by a process of "disintegration of time".

The same company, Machina Dynamica, also charges customers $60 to receive a magic phone call from the company, that they allege will improve the audio in one's listening room through a "Teleportation Tweak."
 
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John Albert said:
The "Coconut Audio" guy has a page up with pics and descriptions of his "experiments": http://www.coconut-audio.com/hifijustice/experiments.htm
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Crystal cores

For each cleaning core we are using a natural form of noise reduction using quartz crystals. We found that these crystals amplify certain frequencies. But one type of crystal only amplified a single frequency and left the others unfocused. We discovered that when adding different crystals to the mix, multiple frequencies were amplified. We continued by adding thousands of different crystals until all the frequencies were amplified, this resulted in neutral sound. But the problem was that the noise from the audio system was also amplified. We went on a mission to find the crystals that "contained" that noise and we removed them. So in the end, the whole music was amplified except for the noise itself.
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I don't think he knows the meaning of the word "frequency".

Proximity Stone

[...]

Built from volcanic magma that is rapidly cooled into a glass like black pyramid. This pyramid naturally collects negative energy from the base, and beams out positive energy from the apex using our proprietary crystal formulas.

When audio components are turned on, they generate an electromagnetic field around them which will stay at a constant size. When our product is inside this field, the size of this field is reduced, because the noise is collected and beamed away quicker than new noise can be generated by the component.

[...]

Multiple stones for grounding

Unlike our 'single point ground' that converted a noise stream into heat, the Proximity Stone will convert the noise into positive energy, which gives greater improvements the more of them you use, without negative side effects.
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I don't think he knows the meaning of the word "energy".

http://www.coconut-audio.com/vibraportal.htm

Um, isn't that Fimo?

White Beach

Designed for recording studios who want to create the purest music possible. The White Beach products are extremely neutral and will only clean the noise in the system, without adding any colors or taking anything away.
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That's clever. It'll remove some of the sound without removing any of the sound.
 
I am pretty sure Coconut Audio was set up as as spoof by someone who was banned from Head-fi for attacking audiophoolery, particularly by the makers who advertise there.
 
Check this thing out.

They claim it "clones" the signal, then (somehow) piles all the distortion and noise off of the original onto the cloned signal, then discards that noisy, cloned signal, leaving only the purified original signal.

I have no idea where to begin addressing all the nonsensical claims in that statement.
 
That's the problem with this kind of stuff - who can tell. I thought that the Machina Dynamica site was a spoof, not least because I'd read an exchange on a Hi-Fi forum with the owner of the company in which he was called a "piss-taker" and was compared to the guy from Coconut-Audio. He responded in apparent mock-outrage and complained about Coconut-Audio muscling in on his territory.

Then you visit the site, and check out the review he cites, and find out that there are audiophile magazines giving the Clever Little Clock positive reviews.

Poe's Law, isn't it?
 
I'd be surprised if some people fear a device adding color to a sound. That would be weird. Dude, that song needs more green!
 
Lessloss are typical of such companies and they fail my rules for all audiophile cable companies.

Rule 1 - They have no independent verification of their claims.

Rule 2 - They take known effects with cables, such as skin effect and suggestion that somehow affects sound quality. No one has ever shown skin effect to have an affect on sound quality.

Rule 3 - They emphasise build quality, which is a way of generating a feel good factor for those who buy the product.

Rule 4 - They talk pish "buried in an amorphous nanoparticle bed," but it sounds really really good pish!
 
carlitos said:
I'd be surprised if some people fear a device adding color to a sound. That would be weird. Dude, that song needs more green!
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Well the audiophile reviews do often use the word "blackness" as a positive or desirable component of sound. Dunno exactly what that means in objective terms of frequencies, harmonics and dynamics, but I have a feeling some artists like Charlie Mingus, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and Bootsy Collins have it...
 
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The idea is to be as close to the original sound as possible as it was recorded. But that is nonsense on a number of levels as we don't know what the original really sounded like, we may prefer a little colour (eg more bass) than was intended and our ears and preferences mean sound quality is more subjective than objective.
 
Nessie said:
Lessloss are typical of such companies and they fail my rules for all audiophile cable companies.

Rule 1 - They have no independent verification of their claims.

Rule 2 - They take known effects with cables, such as skin effect and suggestion that somehow affects sound quality. No one has ever shown skin effect to have an affect on sound quality.

Rule 3 - They emphasise build quality, which is a way of generating a feel good factor for those who buy the product.

Rule 4 - They talk pish "buried in an amorphous nanoparticle bed," but it sounds really really good pish!
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You get a lot of that same kind of promotion from companies like Denon, and even Monster Cables.

The plain fact is that the kind of cables you use is irrelevant to the sound quality, so long as they're properly installed copper conductors of sufficient gauge and equal length, fitted with connectors of reasonably good manufacture. The super-pricey "silver crystal" cables have actually been shown to have poorer conductivity than regular copper wire of the same gauge.
 
Nessie said:
The idea is to be as close to the original sound as possible as it was recorded. But that is nonsense on a number of levels as we don't know what the original really sounded like...
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One could listen to it on a set of high-end studio monitors rated for a flat frequency response, and powered by a high-end professional amplifier calibrated using a spectrum analyzer for a flat response across the entire spectrum of human hearing.

But home audio equipment is not set up to accurately reproduce music like that. Home audio equipment is designed to produce sound that is most pleasing to the listener, not most accurate.
 
Take a look at their "Firewall" power conditioner here.
It has no capicator, no inductors, no resistors, no fuses, and no diodes. What, if anything, could possibly be inside that would condition the power?
 
JohnnyG said:
Take a look at their "Firewall" power conditioner here.
It has no capicator, no inductors, no resistors, no fuses, and no diodes. What, if anything, could possibly be inside that would condition the power?
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But it has fancy wood... and carbon fiber!
 
The first time I modded the Valhalla from the original 3 conductors per signal into 2 conductors it sounded very thin, edgy, open, cold and fatiguing. Later I realized it was just more revealing. I found the problem and it was resonance making everything brighter, after I added more vibration isolation everything got too heavy, and then I tried the Valhalla mod again and it worked. I got more speed and low-level detail. After I wrapped the Valhallas in ERS Paper I could move down to 1 conductor per signal. The improvement in low-level detail was crazy.
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Holy crap this guy is going to kill someone. The picture that goes along with the text is a grounded power cable. Did he seriously mod this to only carry hot? In which case, seriously dangerous ground loop here.
 
John Albert said:
$300 is actually a pretty good price for something that works by a process of "disintegration of time".
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Oh man, that is classic! From the description:
"...Let's say a recording was made of a live performance of Götterdämmerung with the Berliner Philharmoniker on July 21, 1930 between 12 Noon and 5 PM. During the performance the actual time coordinates of what was then Present Time - a unique time coordinate for each instant of the performance - are somehow captured on the recording along with the acoustic information of the musical instruments and singers. When the recording of Götterdämmerung is played at some point in the future - say, one day in 2010 - the stream of time coordinates from July 21, 1930 is projected into the listening room by the speakers along along with the acoustic information. The two out-of-synch streams of time coordinates - the Past Time coordinates from July 21, 1930 and the Present Time coordinates - confuse the listener and reduce his sensory acuity. So, even though the glorious sound of the Berliner Philharmoniker is reproduced in the room the listener cannot hear it in all its glory."

When you consider that, $300 is a small price to pay!
 
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