Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[kumakuma]

15 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

 

You call the industry I work in and the job I do a form of swindling and you take offense at my response.  And you do not address one single point beyond your faux condescension - "not bad Michael".

 

Please put me back on your ignore list. No apology needed.

 

This is the major reason why many people have a hard time taking the audio press seriously.

 

Real journalists such as those who report on financial services for The Wall Street Journal, for example, don't consider themselves part of the industry that they report on.

[kumakuma]

11 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Only what I have found from personal use in a Video editing program where I use different Codecs , and find a sweet spot for the bit rate with most.

This is yet another red herring from you. The committee that sets the standards would have access to suitable test material and very high quality monitoring equipment. They would also undoubtedly use test transmissions in various countries as well .

However, as many of them on the committee may be old fogeys like yourself, with age related visual and audio degradation, perhaps this is no guarantee ? 

 

 

Having seen pictures and videos of manrs, "old fogey" is not the term I would use to describe him. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he was asked to show ID when buying a drink.

[kumakuma]

29 minutes ago, OldBigEars said:

 

He probably should have.  But he comes over as a pretty decent guy with a deep passion and knowledge about audio equipment.  So he discreetly read you the riot act.   Naturally,  being a self-important twit, you took umbrage and have been wandering around for past 2 years with your tail between your legs.  Time to man up and get over it.

 

Interesting how perspectives differ. 

 

To you ML comes across as a "pretty decent guy" while I see an authoritative a$$hole who visited this site every three or four weeks to pick a fight.

 

You read his email as discretely reading someone the riot act while I read it as someone censoring an opinion he didn't like.

[kumakuma]

41 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

The bulk of participants in this nasty thread would demand proof from their own mother !

 It's not just John Swenson that you guys demand proof from. It's virtually every C.A. member who makes a subjective claim that you guys believe is impossible. This is often followed by calling the poster/s delusional.

 

Yup, there's a lot of bad hombres here at CA and they need to go back to where they came from.

[kumakuma]

8 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

 

I love Internet police!

 

 

[kumakuma]

17 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

While one may think that "a difference was "somewhat probable/possible", your conclusion simply that "you are prone to find one" does not logically follow. To talk about "without realizing it" or "without even being conscious of it" is nothing more than speculation on your part, absent an evidentiary basis. To suggest that physical differences are inevitably going to influence what one hears is similarly speculative and, IMO, simply wrong. I readily agree that some or,  perhaps, many people may conform to your scenario but, IMO,  it does not apply to experienced listeners whose focus is limited to the fundamental issue.

 

For some reason, your insistence that you are able to override the deeply-ingrained human propensity to judge based on appearance, etc., reminded me of this old cartoon character who had a similar self-image:

 

 

[kumakuma]

43 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Coincidentally,  you and elsdude also bring to mind an image.

 

 

I can't see any reason why the findings of this recent study wouldn't also apply to audio products:

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/the-mysterious-nocebo-effect-a-drugs-side-effects-may-hinge-on-its-price-tag/ 

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, wgscott said:

 

We were already told to shut up and go away.

 

Regardless of how many times Alex posts something with the "Audiophile" portion of "Computer Audiophile" highlighted in bold, I refuse to give into the bullying tactics of the hardline audiophiles that have overrun this site.

[kumakuma]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

Tom

 BTW, Calling people you don't agree with Delusional, is another form of Bullying, as is subjecting them to ridicule .

It tends to make some members think twice about posting again, and often  stops others with similar views from posting at all.

 

Alex

 

Regardless of what I may think, I have never called anyone delusional. Unlike members of the Audiophile Taliban, I believe that multiple faiths can coexist peacefully on this site.

[kumakuma]

Just now, Ralf11 said:

 

 

I agree with you in general (not surprising) but isn't this a bad example?

 

that is, a matching checksum does not guarantee 100% that all bits in the string are identical, does it?  I thought it was only an addition of the bit values or some such

 

The chance that two files having the same checksum are different is extremely small. 

 

For the record, I have compared files that Alex claims sound different and they are bit-for-bit identical.   

[kumakuma]

26 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

As I have just posted, I also normally seek confirmation from others BEFORE posting my reports.

You will also find that last year there was a thread where several members, including Peter St., Manisandher,  and ACG ( Anthony) confirmed my results with uploaded versions  of "Unter Donner und Blitz Polka, Op. 324" from the album "Ein Straussfest -  Erich Kunzel

 

Are these the results you are referring to?

 

Quote

 

Recently I uploaded the last pair of comparison tracks that appeared on the CD that I sent esldude several months ago, and from which the CD-R was burned .

All 3 C.A. recipients had no problems identifying audible differences between the tracks. There was however disagreement on which track was which, with 2 reporting that the cannon at the end of the track sounded not quite right. The 3rd recipient accurately identified it as thunder.

 

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/27206-jitter-problem/?page=15&tab=comments#comment-541812

 

 

 

[kumakuma]

14 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

yes, small but not zero - do you happen to know how small?

 

According to the following page, a "32-bit hash gives you roughly 4 billion possible hashes" 

 

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=149670

 

Search google using "crc32 hash collision probability" to find more information

[kumakuma]

9 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Who gives a rat's ass about what you refuse to give into? Your use of the word "audiophile" as a pejorative term only serves to highlight your abject negativity. While I generally and strongly reject Michael Lavorgna's characterization of the Computer Audiophile community, at least in your sad case, he appears to be right.

 

It was a joke, Allan, in the same vein as Bill's Taliban references.

[kumakuma]

Religion and humor often have a stormy relationship.

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, Allan F said:

 

The line between sarcasm and snide remarks can become so thin as to be virtually non-existent, especially with certain members of this forum. Those who closely approach or occasionally cross it should not expect apologies but, if it makes you feel better, I offer mine.

 

Please accept mine as well. I'll try to remember to include the smiley next time.

[kumakuma]

15 minutes ago, wgscott said:

HTFU, snowflakes!

 

Bill, perhaps this article will help you understand the passive aggressive nature of Canadian apologies:

 

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-use-and-abuse-of-sorry-americans-do-not-say-it-the-british-do-not-mean-it-and-canadians-overdo-it

[kumakuma]

58 minutes ago, wgscott said:

Thanks for the link!

 

Even being married to a British individual for > 20 years, I still find the whole "sorry" business a sorry business.

 

My wife is Japanese so someone (usually me) is always apologizing in our house:

 

https://kotaku.com/behold-extreme-japanese-apologizing-1553479803 

[kumakuma]

57 minutes ago, Tony Lauck said:

I admit this was a slippery slope argument.  IMO this was well deserved because the long history of some objectivists calling some subjectivists delusional over the very issue of playback of bit identical files. 

 

We have been down this road multiple times before as you well know. 

 

Alex is saying that he is able to generate two bit identical files that sound different when played under identical conditions (same playback chain, same media, same everything). His theory is that noise is somehow embedded in one of the files and travels along with it when it is copied to a USB drive and sent to the UK or downloaded over the Internet.

 

Glad to hear any theories you have on how this is possible. 

[kumakuma]

15 minutes ago, jabbr said:

@Tony Lauck's argument is no red herring. He has disproven an assertion with an example. It is clearly stated and real. There simply *are* conditions where bit identical/same checksum files "sound" different. Moreover there are many conditions in which the media containing the files whether this be CD, or hard drive contain embedded noise. That is to say that although the files are bit identical, they are not electrically identical. @alfe who has real experience with CD, DVD and hard drive technology at a professional level said as much and was hounded endlessly.

 

Now this doesn't mean that these electrical differences are embedded in the file as "memory" that travels with the file across, say a network. Perhaps what you mean to say is that: a network can eliminate embedded electrical differences between bitwise identical files.

 

Copying the file to memory for playback would also eliminate any "embedded electrical differences".

[kumakuma]

47 minutes ago, jabbr said:

The apparent belief that each bit is electrically identical to every other bit remains a dogma despite measurable details to the contrary. 

 

I think you will find few people here who believe this.

 

Also, the fact that they are not electrically identical provides no useful clues to solving mysteries such as bit identical files sounding different on a consistent basis after being transferred over to the Internet or after being compressed and uncompressed as the electrical state of the underlying bits has changed multiple times during these operations.

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, barrows said:

Of course, there will always be room for improvement: this is like the tangent line (is that what it is called, forget my math), which gets closer and closer to the axis, but never actually meets: same thing as diminishing returns...

 

asymptote ?

[kumakuma]

27 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I’m not much of a CD rom person — and rip all my music to my NAS, but @alfe who used to participate here is a real laser/CD/DVD/Blu-ray expert had posted some links to measurements etc that indicate otherwise — I’m not prepared to debate this beyond what he would say, and I trust him. Unfortunately he’s under very strict NDA at work and was not able to speak as directly as would be ideal.

 

I remember Barry D saying that he could hear differences between CDs pressed at different plants but that these differences disappeared when the CDs are ripped to a hard drive. Makes sense to me. 

[kumakuma]

7 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Is there a compelling reason differences in manufacturing tolerances could not create differences in playback jitter levels, which would vanish when the contents were stored as files on a hard drive?

 

Similar to the principle behind technology like SHM-CDs:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_High_Material_CD

 

[kumakuma]

16 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Has anybody else tried burning CDs that were ripped to SSD, to Blu Ray discs ?

 A while back I lost 2 HDDs due to their old age, and then archived quite a few of my favourite CDs to BluRay to put away for safe keeping.  I tried them on  my Oppo 103 via my DIY DAC to verify that they were O.K. and was surprised just how bloody good they sounded !

 

Why not just play the original CDs?