Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?


It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.”  And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything?  For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think. 
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is. 

chayro

                            May as well hit the rewind:

     Feynman was and will remain, my favorite lecturer (yeah: I'm that old).

     He mentioned often (and: I took to heart) his favorite Rule of Life: "Never stop learning!"

     For all his genius, he never grew overly confident in his beliefs.    The perfect obverse to the Dunning-Kruger sufferer.

     ie:  “I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.”

     and: “I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything.”

     Tesla is probably my favorite innovator, who (despite the incessant, projectile vomit, from his day's naysayers), took the World, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century, with his inventions.

                                                  His thoughts: 

     “Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.”

     “All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed, only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

rodman99999

5,786 posts

 

     "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."  (Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872) 

     "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,"  (Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873)

      "The super computer is technologically impossible.  It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required." (Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University)                        

      "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."  (Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923)

      "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." (Dr. Lee DeForest, Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television)

      "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible!" (Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895) 

      "The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives."  (Admiral William Leahy, re: US Atomic Bomb Project) 

     When the steam locomotive came on the scene; the best (scientific) minds proclaimed, "The human body cannot survive speeds in excess of 35MPH."

      Until recently (21st Century); and the advent of the relatively new science of Fluid Dynamics, the best (scientific) minds involved in Aerodynamics, could not fathom how a bumblebee stays aloft. 

     Often; Science has to catch up with the facts/phenomena of Nature and/or, "reality" (our universe). 

     I haven't been in school since the 60's, but- at Case Institute of Technology; the Physics Prof always emphasized what we were studying was, "Electrical THEORY."         He strongly made a point of the fact that no one had yet actually observed electrons (how they behave on the quantum level) and that only some things can really be called, "LAWS." (ie: Ohm, Kirchoff, Faraday)   

                     PERHAPS: that's changed in recent years and I missed it?

 

       Inescapable FACT: No one understands exactly how electricity works.     

                         That’s why there’s so much Electrical THEORY.     

      The number of Wiki-Scientists on these pages, attempting to win the IG-Nobel Prize in Pseudo-Physics, is always amusing.             

       Whenever some highly educated person actually does discover exactly how electricity functions, they’ll be lauded by the scientific community, will have solved some of the disparities between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, receive a Nobel and we’ll hear about it.     

      Newton’s THEORIES were largely superseded by Einstein and Bohr's.   Then came Feynman’s.       For now; none of you can absolutely prove your statements (theories), regarding electricity, fuses, wires, or anything else, as regards our systems.    

             The following articles, read in sequence, illustrate my point:

 https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/how-einstein-challenged-newtonian-physics/     

      then:

  http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Forces/qed.html#:~:text=Quantum%20 electrodynamics%2C%20co....               

       and: 

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/an-updated-feynman-experiment-could-heal-the-rift-between-quantum-mechanics-and-general-relativity/

The model for Tesla was Goethe... His mentor... He get the idea about his electric motor at 25 years old reciting Faust ...Goethe is on par with Darwin as a natural scientist... Jay Gould say it in his own words not me...

@amir_asr Thank you for posting your system photo. For someone so into the science of audio, I am very surprised that you have seemingly given no consideration to room acoustics! There are a number of great room acoustic products/treatments that i am certain would do marvels for your SQ in your room. You may want to try some of them, although I admit, they are all passive, and as such, pretty hard to measure! Your ears would be in for a treat though....if you would allow yourself to believe in them.

My pleasure.  Did you think the system is resolving enough to tell the difference between cables?  If so, or not, how did you determine that.

As to acoustic products, this is my field of study as I post yesterday.  Quickly: there is a lot of money wasted there on stuff people intuit and read online.  The confusion there is much worse than it is in audio cables!

But addressing your question anyway, did you not notice the measurement microphone and computer in that picture? 

They were there in the process of testing Lyngdorf's excellent RoomPerfect EQ system.  I clicked on your profile and i see no DSP solution.  Shame as that *guarantees* your bass response is poor.  And that what you are hearing is bloated bass that is obscuring the detail in the rest of the spectrum.

Forget everything we have been discussing here.  If you are not measuring your room and correcting for bass errors, you have a lousy audio system.  Period.  Measurements will absolutely show that the acoustic stuff you have thrown in there have little to no impact in this regard (don't be fooled by the name "bass trap, " they do no bass trapping).