Holographic imaging

Norm,
I agree with you that 95% of the High-End product have a hard time justifying their cost but I would venture to say that a good 70% of them are technically sound and can be defended in terms of theory and science.

An amplifier circuit is as you say nothing new either in tube or solid-state form but it either works or it doesn't. In other words, it either does what it claims, amplifies, or it doesn't. A Preamplifier has to by definition switch between inputs and adjust gain or it does not do its job.

But when it comes to tweaks, cables, power conditioning to a certain extent, isolation devices and so on; I whole heartily agree with you that most of the claims are unfounded and are faith driven.

Remember the title of my upcoming book: "The Great Audiophile Swindle!"?

I recently read a review where the reviewer says: "yes, like many other audiophools, I have a bad tendency to equate price with performance"

Audiophiles for the most part are gullible and will take these faith based products at face value. The ear is a powerful tool but it can be misguiding as what may sound neutral and true to the original to me may not be true to you nor anyone else on this forum.

This subject fascinates me as we are all after that "Absolute Sound" and spend thousands of dollars trying to achieve it. But in reality their is no such thing as we were never present at the original performance to base it on and compare it to; and even if we were all there we would all hear a slightly different account of the performance. The "absolute sound" that we all seek is a VERY personal thing that only makes a one-to-one connection and that is to ones self by ones self.

I could go on and on but I wont. The bottom line is that at the end of the day, ONLY you have to be able to live with what you have purchased and it sound like you and I and the rest of the people on this forum have; but don't expect the H-CAT to be the cats meow to everyone else.

My only problem with Roger is his lack of technical foundation, and when he does try to get technical he makes some outlandish claims.

Norm do you happen to know Roger Paul's academic credentials?

Tbg, some more things to point out. I've been careful not to say anything about how any of these products sound. I have only offered personal experience on what causes imaging. As far as the H-Cat goes, I'm only concerned with the explanation, not the end result.

Here is an insight. Life is. It does not care what we think of it, it simply is. Humans usually exist as reason and meaning making machines. We attach reasons and meanings to everything. In fact, we are generating stories all the time (reasons, interpretations, beliefs, etc.) about life. This is not a problem so long as we are aware of it, but when we try to live our lives as if our made-up stories are real, anywhere where life disagrees will be a source of suffering.

for more info see http://www.landmarkeducation.com -if any of this resonates with you, do not hesitate and take the class called the Landmark Forum.

My feeling through this whole thing is that Roger latched on to a 'story' or 'reason' (I use that word since he concedes that he never tried to prove or disprove its reality) to justify his actions regarding his 'phenomena'. That is not to say that whatever he's *doing* does not work, but the 'reason' does not hold water. It is a matter of **profound luck** that he has success (if you are to be believed), this bit of 'profound luck' (and contradictory explanations) led me to Occam's Razor- I doubt its coincidence, I doubt its luck and think there is a simpler explanation.

There are many products well defended by theory and science. In that conversation, I would be careful about assuming that just because that is so, that that product is a mere rehashing of old circuits. For example, we built the first fully-differential balanced preamps, which were also the first to have a direct-coupled balanced output. That's not exactly a rehash... I can point to some other examples, like the Messenger, that are not rehashed either, and they are all supported by theory and science.

To answer your previous question, yes, bandwidth is what you need for imaging. Imaging is reliant more on bandwidth than any other 'phenomena' in audio. Naturally low distortion is helpful to improve detail, but you can have quite a lot of distortion and imaging will still occur as long as there is good bandwidth. If you think Roger's design has good imaging, if you check you will find it also has good bandwidth (well beyond 20-20KHz). This happens to be one of those things that is audible and measurable. Anytime **those two** coincide, you've got something that is real.

Carlos269,

Very well said. Bravo!

Atmasphere, while I understand what you are saying, my concern is with the sound not the explanation. As I have said, I didn't buy the line stage until I heard it. I did buy the amp before hearing it and did wait a long time for it to satisfy Roger and have it shipped. I can assure you that whatever he is doing is greatly improving over time.

I have had at least 30 different line stages or preamps in my 45 years in audio. After a certain period where I experimented with solid state line stages and amps, I went fully tube and presently have about 2000 tubes. I think I had the ARC Reference and the Exemplar parafeed linestage at the time I got the H-Cat. There were many things that the H-Cat could not equal, especially in the Exemplar, but man could it image. And instruments and vocalists were actual size. I did not have vocalists with five feet wide mouths.

Gradually, a purity of sound emerged also, with it sounding neither like a tube or a SS product. The real shock for me came with the amp. Even straight out of the box and just turned on, it was different. The top end had such scene and extension but quite sweet. Roger was expecting me to rave immediately, but it was two weeks later when it just became impossibly good.

So you can see what guides me-sonic realism. This has to have some explanation, but I know from my experiences with science that many explanations are wrong. But Roger had something directing him. His amps of 25 years ago were quite good, but never like this one.

If so many had rushed to judgment that H-Cat was a fraud, I think you would find that Roger knows more about circuits than you think and has sought to measure what he is getting by leasing the best testing equipment despite his meager resources. As I said to Carlos, you need to realize that the H-Cat could probably be copied.

There in lies the rub:

Norm there are a number of ways to enhance the spatial image and its dimensionality. BUT according to Roger Paul he's not processing the signal in any way other than purely amplifying it. He claims no processing nor signal manipulation!.....So what does the H-CAT "WTC" controller actually do? That is the crux of the matter and so far Roger has not been able to address that with any type of factual response.

Spatial processing is an area of interest to me and I have well over 40 type of processors (both analog and digital) that are designed to enhance spatial cues; but they are and do not claim to be anything other than "audio processors". I'm actually able to manipulate the stereo image as I wish in either the digital or analog domain with these processors to obtain my desired effect.

Roger Paul claims to be able to correct "Velocity Errors" captured by his "Doppler Detectors" and claims to do all this in the classic straight-wire with gain approach; so we go back to the WTC...

Let me ask you a series of questions that will shed some insight into the H-CAT (at least for me):

1. Does it have great dynamic range or does the volume/spl of the presentation seem to stay on an average level?

2. When you play the "soundstage" track (track # 10) on the Stereophile Test CD#2 where the person is clapping from one side wall (one edge of the stage) to the other and then from the far wall all the way back up the stage (Piano), does the sound presentation follow the diagram and the description on the CD booklet of what took place? Or does most of the sound appear to originate from the middle?

Give me the answers to those two questions as they may shed some insight into what "non-process" he's using.

Others on this forum and on Audioasylum have claimed that adjusting the WTC controller has no effect so it makes me wonder if this is 100% a placebo effect.

Whatever is potted in those encapsulated components is either manipulating and enhancing the spatial image as you claim or is not doing anything as Roger Paul claims.

I'll await your responses.