Too good a post to waste


On a thread that is a running example of the textual equivalent of nonstop cat videos. So here it is again.


I could understand the cables are snake-oil doubters and take them seriously- in 1980. Back then there was no internet, Stereo Review was pretty much it, and Julian Hirsch was the Oracle of all things audio. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch said if it measures the same it sounds the same. Wire is wire, and that was that. 

Even then though J. Gordon Holt had already started the movement that was to become Stereophile. JGH took the opposing view that our listening experience is what counts. Its nice if you can measure it but if you can’t that’s your problem not ours. 

Stereo Review and the measurers owned the market back then. The market gave us amplifier wars, as manufacturers competed for ever more power with ever lower distortion. For years this went on, until one day "measures great sounds bad" became a thing.

Could be some here besides me lived through and remember this. If you did, and if you were reading JGH back then, I tip my hat to you, sir! I fell prey to Hirsch and his siren song that you can have it all for cheap and don’t really have to learn to listen. Talk about snake-oil! A lot of us bought into it. Sorry to say.

But anyway like I was saying it was easy to believe the lie back then because it was so prevalent and also because what wire there was that sounded better didn’t really sound a whole lot better.

Now though even budget wire sounds so much better than what comes off a reel you’d have to be deaf not to notice. Really good wires sound so good you’d notice even if you ARE deaf! No kidding. My aunt Bessie was deaf as a stone but she could FEEL the sound at a high enough volume, knew it was music. The dynamic punch of my CTS cables is so much greater than ordinary 14 ga wire I would bet my deaf from birth aunt Bessie could "hear" the difference. Certain so-called audiophiles here, I'm not so sure.

Oh and not done beating the dead horse quite yet, according to my calendar its 2020, a solid 40 years past 1980. Stereo Review is dead and buried. Stereophile lives on. A whole multi-billion dollar industry built on wire not being wire thrives. Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 
128x128millercarbon
Just to clarify, not all car CD players have buffers to prevent skipping. They still work just fine.
Sorry Mr. Pebbles, but what you have stated is an out and out lie. That is right. You are lying.  This is a really easy test, as many PC based readers will give you the C1 and C2 and uncorrectable C2 error rate. If there are no uncorrected C2 errors, then all you blathering and rambling is meaningless. Typical manufactured CDs have only a couple uncorrectable C2 errors on the CD, and it takes larger scratches to create more.

All your mumblings about scattered light, wobble, is just meaningless deflection in the face of real data, i.e. uncorrectable C2 errors. You claim to be a scientist, or physicist or something. Show us your data.
It is you, Mr. Pseudo Science, who persists on repeating the same jibber jabber. Everything is topsy turvy. Me topsy, you turvy. 🤗
No data, very easily collected to support your hypothesis Mr. Pebbles.  Very much noted yet again. Your silence is louder than any hypothesis you may preach.
Intro to scattered light problem in CD players, 

New Dark Matter White Paper

The Quicker Picker-Upper

Copyright January 2019 Geoff Kait

Have you ever wondered why so many CDs sound thin, metallic, dynamically compressed, bland, generic, congealed, uninvolving, whimpy, electronic, analytical, two dimensional, lifeless, distorted, sour, synthetic, rolled off, thuddy, strident, and like paper mache? All of that is about to change.

New Dark Matter NDM, the newest product from Machina Dynamica, is the only audio product that absorbs both visible scattered laser light and invisible scattered light in CD players, thereby improving optical signal to noise ratio, thus improving sound quality. The CD laser nominal wavelength is 780 nm, which is about 80 nm longer than the longest visible red wavelength, 700 nm. The laser is not monochromatic but has an effective wavelength range of around 650-850 nm. This means most of the laser light, and scattered light, is INVISIBLE. The portion of the laser light below 700 nm is visible red, presumably as a safety feature. 

The scattering of the laser light occurs when the laser beam strikes the physical nanoscale data on the CD. Then, scattered light reflects off surfaces inside the CD transport container, lighting up the interior like a Christmas tree. The Green Pen and other similar audiophile products (including our own Codename Turquoise tray treatment) affect the sound because they absorb scattered visible RED light. But most of the scattered light - around 75% - is INVISIBLE and not amenable to absorption by ANY color, including green, turquoise, or even black.