HiFi and religion are similar in a lot of ways.
😛
Both, when taken to the extreme require the suspension of rational belief and a willingness to replace a lifetimes experience with the opinion of others.

Flat earthers/Linn evangelists are usually the worst – Scientology for non Americans.

My brother in law is manager of a Hi-Fi shop and while he acknowledges that there ‘probably’ isn’t any picture quality difference between using a cheap HDMI cable and an expensive one, the sound quality coming through that same cable is another matter.

In addition he sells expensive cloths for wiping dust off your CDs and insists the difference between a freshly wiped CD and a slightly dusty one is night and day.

Don’t you just wipe cd’s and dvd’s on your jumper before playing them??

Que? It’s digital. It either reads or it doesn’t. It’s not a vinyl record. There are some proper whoppers in the HiFi world 😆

I remember seeing a similar advert years ago for a wooden volume knob to replace your existing (terrible sounding) one. The description of how it achieved superior sound quality was comedy/marketing gold. Think it was about £800.

My brother in law is manager of a Hi-Fi shop and while he acknowledges that there ‘probably’ isn’t any picture quality difference between using a cheap HDMI cable and an expensive one, the sound quality coming through that same cable is another matter.

It’s the same technology so how on earth can be better for one and not the other, except for helping the sales figures in your brother’s shop?

Hifi reviews – the ultimate source of confirmation bias (mountain bikes = second)!

I see that and raise you the cosmetics industry. You clearly need different pots of gloop at £40 a pop for your face, hands, feet and arse, and only our arse cream has Rectinol pro-vitamin a55, because we’ve just made it up. In tests, 90% of the ten women we cherry-picked results from said it made their skin feel younger-looking.

Que? It’s digital. It either reads or it doesn’t. It’s not a vinyl record. There are some proper whoppers in the HiFi world

Didn’t we have a similar “hifi nutters” thread a while back where they talked about how the type of digital storage media that your NAS uses (e.g. hard drive versus flash) alters the soundscape and tonal warmth of your mp3s?

Barking.

I reckon we are missing a trick here

With the current tariffs, we could take electricity and pre-filter it to a higher accuracy than the standard CEGB grade, then feed it back in to the national grid for delivery to audiophiles via the existing network

I estimate this should be deliverable for only around 20% more than existing mainstream electricity prices, and my testing shows it provides a measurable improvement in sound quality!

Can’t tell if it’s a piss take or not, the fact that they can’t even take a picture of the current version of a £5000 cable and the mad testimonials don’t help…

Then I thought it was probably serious, until I saw the fitting instructions for the £5000 cable with pure silver rhodium plated connectors, which include cutting the old plug off your CD player and attaching a £6.20 plastic b&q special female end to plug it in to….

Didn’t we have a similar “hifi nutters” thread a while back where they talked about how the type of digital storage media that your NAS uses (e.g. hard drive versus flash) alters the soundscape and tonal warmth of your mp3s?

Aye.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/hifi-breakthrough

Comedy gold.

Just looking for the correct plug and socket, cabling and distribution board, meter tails and meter to match this superfuse…hang on, I might need a new underground supply cable and ask the local supplier to fit a new transformer….or does this superfuse clean everything up…..are people that gullible?

The fanbois got all up in arms when the ASA ruled against Russ Andrews. There is a What-HIFI thread full of folk, including the editors coming to the aid of their beloved Russ. http://asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2014/1/Russ-Andrews-Accessories-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_228690.aspx

the ASA ruled against Russ Andrews

Although I think that it’s a complete load of horse shit, the ASA never ruled against Russ Andrews, as they never claimed the tests indicate the leads make any difference.

Similarly, the graphs do not prove that the rejection
measured in the lab has a perceptible (ie audible) effect

Personally I think they should of. These people are as bad as any other “rogue trader”.

Their whole website is amazing especially the descriptions of the “technology”.

Que? It’s digital. It either reads or it doesn’t.

Not quite true with reading a CD. A dusty CD may still play without any obvious skips or jumps but it doesn’t mean all the data has been read.

Not quite true with reading a CD. A dusty CD may still play without any obvious skips or jumps but it doesn’t mean all the data has been read.

I think it does; any unread data up to a certain threshold can be exactly recreated, using the same Reed-Solomon error correction redundancy principle as used when a large data Parchive is recovered if some of the .par segments are lost. A dusty disc would certainly be within this recoverable tolerance. iirc you can drill a 2mm hole in a CD and still be able to recover all the data.

you can drill a 2mm hole in a CD and still be able to recover all the data.

After you.

My brother in law is manager of a Hi-Fi shop and while he acknowledges that there ‘probably’ isn’t any picture quality difference between using a cheap HDMI cable and an expensive one, the sound quality coming through that same cable is another matter.

In addition he sells expensive cloths for wiping dust off your CDs and insists the difference between a freshly wiped CD and a slightly dusty one is night and day.
Yeah, riiiiiiiight! 😀
Having said that, CD’s are certainly prone to bit-rot; the lacquer coating on the label side isn’t always good quality, and can be pervious to damp getting through, which leads to the aluminium coating corroding. The worst for this were, ironically, Nimbus Records, a label who produced high quality classical recordings, but the lacquer stays tacky to the touch, and if the discs are kept on a shelf next to an external wall where they can get a bit damp, it’s not unusual to find mould growing on them. Mine are fifteen-twenty years old, but they still feel slightly sticky to the touch.
They still play ok, though, and they’ve been ripped into iTunes as well.

Woodlenses anybody?

HiFi and religion are similar in a lot of ways.

Both, when taken to the extreme require the suspension of rational belief and a willingness to replace a lifetimes experience with the opinion of others.

Flat earthers/Linn evangelists are usually the worst – Scientology for non Americans.
How well I remember the magazine articles, particularly about Linn kit. Advising hifi buffs to have their music room set up without any driven transducers, like speakers* in telephones, TV’s, digital watches… 🙄
That’s when the directional cable cults started up, back in the 80’s.
*apart from the hifi speakers, of course. 😉

It’s not even gold, I’m ooot! 👿 😉

Not quite true with reading a CD. A dusty CD may still play without any obvious skips or jumps but it doesn’t mean all the data has been read.

That may be true as far as it goes, but data is still data. The extensive CD error checking and correction will repair any glitches to a point but the fact remains that a CD will either play (perfectly) or skip. It’s not possible to get a CD that sounds a bit crap because it’s dusty. The thing about zeros and ones is that there’s no such thing as 0.8.

Now, the DAC that converts digital data to analogue audio is wholly susceptible to quality issues; a crap DAC will always be crap. But faults on the raw source? No, sorry, it either works or it doesn’t.

The AV industry is still trading on the idea that digital media is prone to the same problems as analogue and that’s borderline criminal IMHO.

The thing about zeros and ones is that there’s no such thing as 0.8.

You say that, but in comms it’s quite common to have digital decoders work on ‘soft bits’ which mean they take the raw value (between 0 and 1) and then iterate to a hard value via a algorithm e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_output_Viterbi_algorithm

I’ve even got a patent on a particular user case for them.

. The extensive CD error checking and correction will repair any glitches to a point but the fact remains that a CD will either play (perfectly) or skip.

I thought there was actually a half way house where if there were data points that couldn’t be reconstructed that the CD player would interpolate between those points to allow it to keep going without dropping out. Might need to see if i can hunt down where i saw that but it was a while ago now

interpolation of missing data…

It is easy to mock…

I used to work with one of these audiophiles loonies. He used to only play music in the small hours of the night, because “the electricity supply was superior”

He would also polish the connectors and plugs to get better contacts. I asked him if he did the same with the house wiring, the look he used to give me was priceless.

🙄

A fool and his money

http://www.chainreactionhub.com/latest-news/1287-what-makes-oakley-eyewear-so-good

TurnerGuy – Member
interpolation of missing data…

TurnerGuy – Member
It is easy to mock…

Could you expand a bit on this please?

Could you expand a bit on this please?

Which bit?

Wikipedia has some stuff about interpolation of data :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_player

Wikipedia has some stuff about interpolation of data :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_player

Indeed it does.

It also has some stuff about

Red Book CD Standard

Error Correction and Detection

Reed-Solomon Error Correction

… the tl;dr upshot of which is that a CD needs to be pretty screwed up to defeat the error correction (that is, the exact bit for bit reconstruction of missing data) inbuilt into the CD standard and require interpolation to be used. Certainly more than a bit of dust or a few scratches.

Certainly more than a bit of dust or a few scratches.

Or an unpolished fuse.

… the tl;dr upshot of which is that a CD needs to be pretty screwed up to defeat the error correction (that is, the exact bit for bit reconstruction of missing data) inbuilt into the CD standard and require interpolation to be used. Certainly more than a bit of dust or a few scratches.

The was a Cambridge Audio player than had a red light that came on if it had to interpolated, or maybe only if it had errors, but I don’t think it came on much.

But CDs have a life which is apparently shortened quite a lot if they have a printed label on. My mate did some research while at cerl in leatherhead, whereas they might have a life of 30 years with no printed label, it could be lowered to 10 with a printed label.

I have some old CDs that have unrecoverable errors on – at least when trying to rip them.

Just a short email to tell you how impressed I am by my latest upgrade from your company.
As previously described by another purchaser, the speakers almost disappear because the soundstage is vastly increased in size. I also note a considerable increase in volume and a deeper bass which seems more controlled. Separation between instruments and detail is also greatly improved.

Thank you once again for a great product.

Mr R Aitken

Is this “latest upgrade” of which you speak actually the fuse against which your review is placed?
Con merchants the lot of em.

ps. That’s PeterPoddy’s brother isn’t it? 😉