Article: Guest Editorial: Why did audio stop being about audio?

[Superdad]

26 minutes ago, plissken said:

I use the term lying with full understanding of what I'm saying. If you are a company producing an audiophile Ethernet cable or audiophile Ethernet switch that meets compliance you are indeed scamming people.

 

Good grief Mark.  You are like a broken record. 

Why is it that for the past 5 years—since we introduced our original USB REGEN (into which category a whole bunch of other firms followed), that UpTone invariably gets dragged into every objectivist/subjectivist debate? 

We sell our products with a 30-day money-back guarantee, are about to cross the 10,000 order mark and have a less than 1% return rate. We don’t even advertise—it’s all word of keyboard and people demonstrating to each other.

 

I am sorry that you choose not to understand the working principles of our products. And I am sorry that we have not yet produced graphs to prove their efficacy to your satisfaction. But I assure you we don’t just throw random parts on a circuit board. Look closely and you will see a lot of care and expense in what we produce.

 

Quote

There is one way to shut me up and I can't even pay a manufacturer to shut me up.  But we all know why that is.

 

I have already told you several times that I don’t want your money. And why would I want to shut you up? You are driving interest the EtherREGEN (admittedly from the other end of the spectrum) and resulting in even more sales. So please, keep going! 

[Superdad]

17 minutes ago, mansr said:

Well, I find your "hit piece" rather offensive.

 

Pot, meet kettle.

Among a couple dozen other posts with mostly factually incorrect things you said about our new product, there was this gem you wrote specifically about John Swenson (who designed the power networks inside large, sophisticated chips for 3 decades). You wrote:

 

That's the thing with anyone selling such products. They must be either incompetent or dishonest. There are no other options. Oh wait, they could be both.

 

Sadly, the above barely makes it into the top 10 insults hurled at us recently over in that uncivil and intellectually uncurios place.

[Superdad]

52 minutes ago, wgscott said:

This "editorial" is essentially just another (albeit officially-sanctioned) troll-thread designed to bait "objectivists" and possibly to increase site traffic (and therefore advertising revenue).

 

Really? How does that work? Maybe @The Computer Audiophile can comment on this because, AFAIK advertising rates here are fixed price, per year, for different sizes and placements, and having seen the rate sheet they have not changed much over the past 3 years.

So more traffic here does not result in more revenue for the site. Though it might increase traffic to those of his advertisers.

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

So, the wait staff don't tell you the name of the chicken you are served?

 

Colin of course.

[Superdad]

Over in the thread titled “Forum Decorum” I just posted and then realized that my short statement aligns more closely with the debate in this thread. So here it is:

 

The main problem I have with the objectivist/measurement/“scientists” here is that many are closed-minded to the likelihood that the current standard suite of noise/distortion/jitter tests are not telling the whole story with regards to the micro-perturbations that circulate in our audio systems and affect the clock thresholds in commonly used silicon.

 

I liken the situation to that period in medical science when we had microscopes and X-rays but not CT scanners or an understanding of the DNA and the genome. Even during that transitional period good medicine was practiced, sometimes based mostly on empirical outcomes and not full understandings of the mechanisms (in fact there still exist drugs that work without complete understanding of why).

 

And what will all the most vocal skeptics here (and in some of the very same people in another popular forum where they are FAR less civil) say when the science advances or when explanations and proof come to the fore? Will they all apologize for being so utterly dismissive and for their years of ridiculing those who have been reporting hearing differences all along?

I am not holding my breath. 

And I guess we are in for more years of being told that our ears and our audio companies are deceiving us.