Audioholics vs Synergistic Research

[bob_m_54]

17 hours ago, MattyW said:

Logically, I'm in complete agreement with you @Old Man Rubber, though in terms of perception for me at least, there has been a difference. The thing that irritates me no end is that based on how networking works there absolutely should not be any difference..... Anyway, when it comes down to such things I'll trust my senses instead where I know many others will not. All good.

 

The power cables I bought were for aesthetic reasons.... Surprised me when plugged in there was an unexpected improvement. My findings are not in any way rooted in science or engineering. It's purely whether something makes a difference for myself and myself alone. That's enough for me.  Anyway, time for me to unsubscribe from this thread. I sense it derailing.  Cheerio 

Trust your eyes as well. Get a 5000 page text document (that's around 25MB or so) then send it via your network to your NAS, then send it back to your computer with a different name. Use a file comparison program (unless you want to read them both) and compare the two files, and see If you have one character different in the text.

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

4 hours ago, bob_m_54 said:

Trust your eyes as well. Get a 5000 page text document (that's around 25MB or so) then send it via your network to your NAS, then send it back to your computer with a different name. Use a file comparison program (unless you want to read them both) and compare the two files, and see If you have one character different in the text.

I want to try that with one of these cables to see it if fixes my grammar. 

[bob_m_54]

7 hours ago, Old Man Rubber said:

I want to try that with one of these cables to see it if fixes my grammar. 

Your grammar must have lots of money...

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

7 hours ago, bob_m_54 said:

Your grammar must have lots of money...

I'll have you know she lived modestly and within her means! 

[075Congo]

Interesting that Ted Denney took the option of posting the two Challenge Videos aimed at Gene Della Salla (Audioholics) rather than use the ignore it approach. I bought three of the SR Foundation Power Cords and they do their job and are very well made. I am looking at the SR EXCITE Speaker Cabling and Interconnects and  again I am assured they are excellent products and are covered by an International Warranty and a 30-day Return option.

Make my point you say! It is my business how I make decisions for good or bad. The reference to the whole SR vs Audioholics background history dating back some 4/5 years(?) is puzzling and I wonder what the motives are for its reappearance.

Its great to generate debate on this forum and reading the last 7 pages of input has been very illuminating.

 

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

23 hours ago, 075Congo said:

I bought three of the SR Foundation Power Cords and they do their job and are very well made. I am looking at the SR EXCITE Speaker Cabling and Interconnects and  again I am assured they are excellent products and are covered by an International Warranty and a 30-day Return option.

Make my point you say! It is my business how I make decisions for good or bad.

 

I have no doubt that the items in question are well made - I would assume that they would need to be exceptional for the company not to be inundated with returns.

 

In fact, if I paid $1000 for an (say) an ethernet cable, I'd put it at the front of the system, not the back, just so people could gaze upon it.

I also have no doubt that the pile of ugly, black IEC cables that snake around the floor in your average system are a horrible eyesore and anything that can be done to fix that would make me feel better about my system.

 

  What I doubt is that the extra claims that can never be proven.  It's one thing to pour a pile of false-but-plausible advertising into a product (for reference:  any 4WD advertisement showing the rugged adventures a suburb-locked kiddie hauler will never go on), but quite another to claim a power cord or an ethernet cable is going to have an audible effect in a hi-fi system.  It's an extraordinary claim and it requires extraordinary evidence.  We live in an age inundated with misinformation and the hi-fi world is not exempt.  It needs to be rigorously challenged, not because I worry about somebody getting ripped off,  or fretting about what other people spend their money on, it's because I worry about companies selling bald faced porky pies as facts.  Facts are important.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Old Man Rubber
fixed quote

[muon*]

OK, Flash.

 

Then maybe you need to target the manufactures making the claims, not the end users which will accomplish nothing.

[MLXXX]

1 minute ago, Old Man Rubber said:

Facts are important.

Perhaps to you and me.  Extraordinary subjective claims that appear to fly in the face of engineering/scientific knowledge warrant the obtaining of solid objective evidence to confirm the subjective impressions.  (In the context of the current thread,  making audio recordings of streamed audio of the same song under different streaming conditions would seem a useful thing to do, if wishing to substantiate a claim of audible differences for different streaming conditions. )

 

However for a significant percentage of the audiophile community, belief is all that is required.  The belief can be based on a personal subjective listening experience, reports by others of their subjective experiences, or on faith that no manufacturer would offer an audiophile product for sale at a premium price, and describe it as delivering a massive audible improvement, if it did not deliver at least some audible improvement. 

[muon*]

The recording process likely adds confounding variables, I don't know why you prescribe to this as any kind of scientific exercise.

[MLXXX]

3 hours ago, muon* said:

The recording process likely adds confounding variables, I don't know why you prescribe to this as any kind of scientific exercise.

There is no need for a recording process to add "confounding variables" to such an extent that they would mask clearly audible differences.  

 

If there is a clearly audible difference between two versions of streamed audio, versions A and B when listened to live, recordings of live streamed version A and live streamed version B  should upon playback reveal audible differences.  

 

Edit: Even Ted Denny of Synergistic Research endorses the idea of making recordings,  and hearing audible differences in the recordings compared with use of another manufacturer's [cheaper] state of the art product. Watch the Vimeo video in the opening post of this thread beginning at 4 min 40 sec into the video to hear his challenge and his claim that differences will be audible in 24/96 recordings.

Edited October 24, 2021 by MLXXX

[POV]

2 hours ago, muon* said:

OK, Flash.

 

Then maybe you need to target the manufactures making the claims, not the end users which will accomplish nothing.

Isn’t it appropriate to consider that discussions such as this may cause otherwise unsuspecting end users to give more consideration to how they spend their money, and what type of businesses they choose to support.

 

I feel like there is an undertone amongst some folks that they would prefer no objective analysis discussion at all and for this forum to be purely based off positive subjective posting.

[muon*]

Maybe get some perspective in this, these claims are not endangering lives, are not bring down democracy or propping up dictators.

 

It seems to effect you guys more than anyone else.

 

Edit: maybe it satisfies a need, so go at it, I'm not here to stop you.

Just thought some perspective might be useful.

Edited October 24, 2021 by muon*

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

26 minutes ago, muon* said:

Maybe get some perspective in this, these claims are not endangering lives, are not bring down democracy or propping up dictators.

No but they contribute to the unease we all feel when BS is allowed to fester uncontested.

 

All of the hi-fi charlatans like ENO and the thousands of other BS companies making "audiophile ethernet" should be marking their claims the same as astrologers:  for entertainment value only.

 

 

 

[MLXXX]

1 hour ago, muon* said:

Maybe get some perspective in this, these claims are not endangering lives, are not bring down democracy or propping up dictators.

 

It seems to effect you guys more than anyone else.

 

Edit: maybe it satisfies a need, so go at it, I'm not here to stop you.

Just thought some perspective might be useful.

 

On the question of perspective, the country where the claims arose that this thread is about, is the same country where the last presidential election was almost overturned by a storming of a joint session of the federal parliament, and where the parliamentarians present were lucky to escape with their lives. 

 

Once facts become optional, society begins to fall apart, I'd suggest.

 

I guess though that if people are not challenged for fervent, unsupported beliefs about such things as the performance of audiophile gear, whether man landed on the moon, or whether vaccine injections include nanobots that collect and transmit information, it sort of doesn't matter, if that is your point. However it certainly makes me feel uneasy.

[Assisi]

5 hours ago, Old Man Rubber said:

No but they contribute to the unease we all feel when BS is allowed to fester uncontested.

 

All of the hi-fi charlatans like ENO and the thousands of other BS companies making "audiophile ethernet" should be marking their claims the same as astrologers:  for entertainment value only.

 

 

 

It must be very gratifying to be so overly confident of certain of your views to which you provide no evidence or proof whatsoever to substantiate the discourse. 

 

You say in a previous post

“Facts are important”.

Where are your facts to prove or support your position?  Do you have any experience of "audiophile ethernet" ?

 

If not, when you have time to reflect you may find it a satisfying listening experience to experience a system with a serious implementation of an audio quality network and switches etc.  For some of us with a perspective to explore it is the new frontier with significant SQ benefits.  I am sure that you will be surprised at the outcome if you do explore.

 

Astrology - Interesting topic

John

Edited October 24, 2021 by Assisi

[rocky500]

I like this video.

From 9 minutes 30 on.

 

 

Edited October 24, 2021 by rocky500

[LogicprObe]

 

Sorry.............I clicked on this thinking it was the alcoholics thread................

[Ittaku]

8 minutes ago, LogicprObe said:

Sorry.............I clicked on this thinking it was the alcoholics thread................

If we keep reading this thread, we all will be soon enough...

[tripitaka]

41 minutes ago, LogicprObe said:

 

Sorry.............I clicked on this thinking it was the alcoholics thread................

 

 

 

 

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

10 hours ago, Assisi said:

It must be very gratifying to be so overly confident of certain of your views to which you provide no evidence or proof whatsoever to substantiate the discourse. 

 

You say in a previous post

“Facts are important”.

Where are your facts to prove or support your position?  Do you have any experience of "audiophile ethernet" ?

 

I work with networking as part of my job.  The claims made by "audiophile ethernet" companies are all either weasel words or completely made up BS.  Any company that claims their product increases the audio quality while somehow leaving the stream of data untouched is flat out lying.

 

It's not on me to prove that the claims made by these charlatans are true, it's on them.  They can't do it, otherwise they would be providing proof (which they don't).

 

It is absolutely, totally and utterly true that in networking, bits are bits and the system is designed to correct for transmission errors.  If you would like to present a link that shows one of these companies with proof that their ethernet product somehow improves the data on the way through it then feel free.

 

Having said that, I have no doubt that playing with these products is changing what users are hearing.  I am 100% confident that change has nothing to do with the products themselves which cannot possibly change what you are hearing, and if they did, would be changing the bits.  Which they cannot possibly be doing.  It's absolutely impossible.

[BugPowderDust]

@Old Man Rubber, this is the closest anyone has gotten to explaining what might be happening that people can say that they hear.

 

 

Many people here claim to be able to hear a difference with Ethernet tweaks, but I'm still pretty dubious myself. I've seen the inside of enough major data centres to know anything that needed to get solved on the ethernet side was done for a higher purpose than audio transmission many moons ago. 

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

21 minutes ago, BugPowderDust said:

@Old Man Rubber, this is the closest anyone has gotten to explaining what might be happening that people can say that they hear.

 

 

Many people here claim to be able to hear a difference with Ethernet tweaks, but I'm still pretty dubious myself. I've seen the inside of enough major data centres to know anything that needed to get solved on the ethernet side was done for a higher purpose than audio transmission many moons ago. 

 

This is a working link to the Swenson white paper.  Sounds awfully convincing calling it a "white paper".

 

The major problem with the UpTone white paper is that it is 80% a description of how electric signals are turned into networking, and 20% absolute garbage about the rise time of the electrical signals on the cable changing the bits in some mystical way.  Any electrical engineer given that paper to read would be choking on his weeties.  If what Swenson says is true, nothing that is based on digital transmission would work reliably.

 

I quote:

Quote

This ground-plane noise subsequently induces jitter on what is producing an output (USB, I2 S etc), (see the first section); thus what is coming out has jitter that is a combination of upstream clocks and the internal clock. If the endpoint is a separate box from the DAC, the data signals carry this overlaid clock signature into the DAC, where it creates ground-plane noise which in turn creates jitter on the clock going to the DAC chip—and that affects the audio signal. What is important to understand is that this causes a modulation of all audio signals.

It absolutely cannot happen.  Down at the signal level, well before anything is translated back to digital, all of this hand wavy nonsense is sorted out.  It's true that the signals vary at the electrical level by minute amounts.  It's completely false that anything in that realm is audible on a digitally transmitted audio track unless the signal completely drops out.

 

Swenson's products might be well engineered, but his claims are absolute BS and his background unfortunately gives him some credibility to people who don't work in electronics or networking.

 

Swenson is pretty much the king of the charlatans.  He has long promised to provide proof of this BS but never has.  His products simply cannot change the sound of the audio stream moving through them in the way he describes.

 

 

[BugPowderDust]

@Old Man Rubber this has all been thrashed out ad nauseam on this forum and most other audio related forums for the past few years. I'll leave it to you to sift through the rubble, but it's safe to say you will have a hell of a time changing opinions on that matter.

[Guest Old Man Rubber]

8 minutes ago, BugPowderDust said:

@Old Man Rubber this has all been thrashed out ad nauseam on this forum and most other audio related forums for the past few years. I'll leave it to you to sift through the rubble, but it's safe to say you will have a hell of a time changing opinions on that matter.

 

Yeah, I know.  The thing that annoys me is that Swenson in particular should know better given his (purported) background but he seems to have decided that selling a fraudulent product is better than selling a good but honest one.  On top of which, the harm (if any) of telling people what they want to hear is minimal, merely a few thousand dollars missing from their bank accounts they may well have wasted on orgone energy crystals or magical boxes of dirt or this thing whatever the hell it is supposed to do.

 

If UpTone stopped making blatantly false claims about their product(s) and instead put them in decent looking boxes that were more in line with other things in the hi-fi cabinet, he could probably still make just as much money.  Instead, he packages up $25 worth of electronics and a massive pile of lies in the cheapest alloy enclosure he can find and sells it for $1000+

 

It beggars belief that anybody falls for it.

[Ittaku]

1 hour ago, Old Man Rubber said:

If UpTone stopped making blatantly false claims about their product(s) and instead put them in decent looking boxes that were more in line with other things in the hi-fi cabinet, he could probably still make just as much money.  Instead, he packages up $25 worth of electronics and a massive pile of lies in the cheapest alloy enclosure he can find and sells it for $1000+

 

It beggars belief that anybody falls for it.

This is the same market you can buy a $75,000 power cord. I'd say swenson's crap is a bargain as far as snake oil components go.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Ittaku