Brave man, McGowan...

I’m a believer in spending a reasonable amount on cables but it needs to be relative to the cost of the equipment being fed. Otherwise, as the old cowboys say “you just put a $100 saddle on a $10 horse”

Anyway, I agree that Paul’s admitting that an expensive AC wire made a huge improvement on his best power plant design tells much about the imperfection of this design, but also about the failure of this design’s primary goal: which was to re-make the AC and make it pure. If AC wire for its input power makes a huge difference there’s no way this goal was ever met. It still doesn’t mean it’s POS, but its marketing certainly is.

I think it might be his polite way of showing that he does not know everything, you don’t know everything, I don’t know everything and..most importantly...


The oiler crowd and the naysyer crowd, really need to crack their head open and admit they don’t know everything and to stop attacking things they don’t understand. To embrace the reality that the world is full of unknowns.

To understand how science works.. and not attack everyone with ’facts’. As facts are for engineering and this is exploration, the realm of science, which has no facts, only theory. The word fact is a common misconception of the nature of reality and has no place in science. (go ask the entire professorial staff at any university physics department)

That the word fact can be bandied about and utilized, but with the fully realized and consciously carried deeper understanding that it is more an idealization of a deeply entrenched and seldom unpacked theoretical set of points or point...that is seldom wrong or seldom found to be incorrect, or not yet found to be wanting. A fact is nothing more than this.

Where empirical observation is not to be dismissed. As that is core to the very idea of science.. The two are inseparable.

But this highly desirable outcomes is not likely to happen any time soon, for some very basic reasons.

This sort of thing (fervent requests to have people open their minds, etc) has been said by others a thousand times over, and maybe some do finally get it..but... others seem to step into their space left open and continue the very sorry attack fest.

It is so bad, So rampant, so common...that the very idea of engineering was created as a system of formalized study to deal with such linear thinking mindsets (’fact’ oriented minds) - by the Germans, back in the early 1700’s.

Setting a pretty low bar for what constitutes bravery.
Paul's expressed an opinion (marketing opportunity) to a tiny niche within a niche (music fans who also chase unicorn audio gear).

It's not like he's on the front lines fighting terrorism.

Setting a pretty low bar for what constitutes bravery.
Paul’s expressed an opinion (marketing opportunity) to a tiny niche within a niche (music fans who also chase unicorn audio gear).

It’s not like he’s on the front lines fighting terrorism.

But he is willingly putting business concerns at risk, in some thinking in some people..
Try not to take a swipe at him and his market, like you just did (for no real reasons other than which might likely be selfish ones), and maybe the world will be slowly become a better place.

We’ve really got to try and get past these ’kill all whom I disagree with in order to achieve MY peace’ undercurrents of projections that are masquerading as solutions --- that run rampant in humanity.

It's kinda tough though, a real catch-22, as the fleshy box we project from and receive via --colors it all so mightily.

The first official "Technical/Engineering" university was in Czechoslovakia and predates anything in Germany by a few generations and it is likely that future German ones modelled after the Czech one. Specific Military engineering academies with formalized curriculum opened as early as the late 1600’s in France. Prior to that formalized engineering concepts were taught to military "engineers" and architects (which lead to civil engineering). The word engineer dates back to the middle ages. Facts do matter.

I actually do talk to people at my local physics departments. Universities often can provide access to advanced test equipment at reasonable rates, and they are more than happy to participate in joint industry research to keep a grad student busy if it does not distract from their primary research. While the bleeding edge theoretical physics gets the media glory, much of the work is in more mundane areas. I am also fortunate to have the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in my backyard and often attend their public lectures as well as at the University of Toronto.

Almost invariably, what is at discussion is what happens at the smallest scales, the largest scales, or at the very extremes of speed, and how robust current models are for "regular" problems similar to how Newtonian mechanics is extremely accurate except when dealing with objects approaching the atomic scale, or very high speeds. Anything in audio would be a "regular" problem. To suggest that unknowns in the current models and understandings of physics are responsible for perceived sonic differences in some products amounts to "special pleading", especially when there is no evidence that any of these products illustrate properties not explained within the framework of standard models.

As well, conceptually, scientific "theories" are very robust and don’t equate to casual use of the word "theory". They have been rigourously developed and extensively tested, and the only thing often preventing them from being "fact" is the extreme rigour of proving they are correct in all cases. Those "theories" are responsible for all our fancy gadgets, the satellites in space, and any number of things more complex and rigourous than audiophilia.
p.s. see #3: https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-logical-fallacies-know/

To understand how science works.. and not attack everyone with ’facts’. As facts are for engineering and this is exploration, the realm of science, which has no facts, only theory. The word fact is a common misconception of the nature of reality and has no place in science. (go ask the entire professorial staff at any university physics department)