MIT Love 'em or Hate 'em

he too reminds me of Carl Eberhart, & like Unsound, I really do miss the guy. Certainly Carl was/is controversial but he sure knew what he was talking about, unlike the above-mentioned clueless blowhard uncle-naysayer.

Obviously Maxgain was right and it is good riddence.

Carl is extremely knowledgeable, owns an excellent system but he didn't like it if you DISAGREED WITH HIM! I have seen him on the asylum dishing out good advice. Good thread Bundy, MIT will guarantee you 50 responses. MIT is the bomb!!! (that will get 20 more!)

I'm back. Unlike a good bunch of you I don't live on the threads but do enjoy a life outside of this little area of virtuality.

Maxxie - I know your stuff all too well. Been in this game for a long long time and owned many many things. You would do well to forget about how insulted you are and take some decent advice for once.

Far from clueless, kids. You may not like me, or how I say what I have to say - but I speak from a very long time of experience. I've discovered two kinds of people in this business: Music lovers and equipment worshippers. Almost without fail the people that own "magicbox" cables have neatly fallen into the equipment worshipping category. That's just the way it is.

As for my address being "bogus" - it was fine up until two days ago, when I switched it because of some quite nasty emails I was receiving for sharing my personal opinions.

Filterboys - enjoy yourselves. Compromise is compromise is compromise. Magicboxes sound great on systems that need the repair, but veil the performance of a truly well matched high-resolution audio system.

See you in the trenches, ladies.

Asa - in answer to your questions

Everything is a filter, for sure. Now - take a $20,000 amplifier, for instance. Of what use is a truly extreme filter (2nd order low pass) to that $20k amp? Well, if it is really useful, then the amplifier manufacturer should have made it $21,000 and put some paralelled caps in to "power factor correct" his amp's obvious flaw.

Un boxed wire vs. boxed wire: Wire is a filter in the same way that water is an acid (or alkaline) - in the presence of real acid (or alkaline) water is just water. Likewise, in the presence of a real filter wire is just wire.

The basis of my opinion has been laid out in several technical arguments here on the thread. Look back and read.

Meanwhile, I've also had experience with Transparent boxes a coupe of years ago, and once had kooky MIT digital cable that had dipswitches on it. Both quite obviously changed things, veiled things in the systems. The Transparent boxes I was running were loudspeaker cables between a Cello Duet 350 and a pair of Avalon Ascents. The digital cable stood between a WADIA 6 and a Muse Model 2. No matter what little setting I chose, it didn't come close to a normal AES/EBU cable.

As far as philosophical methodology: One can arrive at a basically satisfactory result by consistently adding band aids until your system is EQ'd to the point that you no longer hate it. One can also take the efficient approach and seek the help of an experienced pro who can help to match your preamp/amp/speakers. With a good choice in the latter you will get off of the moving sidewalk that has many upgrading and crossgrading forever and just settle into music. In the former, one winds up trying to match the system to the magicboxes often times.

You can't expect to have a high res system with a mid res preamplifier. First order of business is to get a fantastic preamplifier, then have it matched to a fantastic amplifier. Then the only upgrade path you'd be following is the one for speakers. Start small and move up as money allows. No magic box cable is going to turn a $1,000 pair of speakers into a $5,000 pair of speakers, but some folks will wind up blowing another few grand on these magic cables instead of looking for more effective roads to upgrade.