Does Everything Make a Difference?

[Bobvin]

An “expert“? An “ex” is a has been, and a ”spert” (spurt)… is just a drip under pressure. Anthony Fauci comes to mind.

I have a saying I use to describe some audio experiences I have — “all the sounds are there, but none of the music.” I used some footers once because I didn't want my spikes to mark up the hardwoods beneath a carpet. My wife and I looked at each other “what the hell happened to the music?” All the sound was still there, but none of the music—somehow the wholeness, the gestalt, was lost. Removing the footers it all snapped back. You could probably get very “scientific“ and dive into what micro vibrations were attenuated by the footers but then saying that minor change was the reason for the perception would be an unrealistic stretch. How would you measure and account for the difference between the sounds and the music?

i like science. I appreciate the minds of scientists. I abhor hubris.

 

[Ron Resnick]

One can always NOT feed a troll

His answers seem thoughtful and substantive to me. Just because someone doesn't agree with the majority here does not make him/her a troll.

 

[marty]

Where do I come up with my understanding of chemistry? I have a Ph.D in Analytical Chemistry, so I think I know quite well what the state of the art is with regard to deconvolution of natural products.

I did research next door to a lab at UC Riverside where they were doing analysis of natural oils with 2 dimensional Gas Chromatography. They would use orthogonal methods to take a cut in the analysis, trap it with a cold trap and then reinject this onto another column with different selectivity. A 5 second cut would have literally several thousand compounds...most of which they could not identify. It was like this through a whole 1 hour run...so you are talking about literally millions of compounds in something like olive oil.

My point is that you, as a non-expert, have no clue how complex natural products are and the sheer magnitude of trying to account for the number of compounds in such a product. Chemistry 101 my ass...many a Ph.D thesis has been written over this kind of stuff. It is not possible to make something this complex synthetically beyond using some main and some minor components to get "close' to the natural taste.

I live in Switzerland, so while I am not particularly familiar with your Belgian chocolate I am quite familiar with Swiss chocolate and what they put into their excellent chocolates, which is natural...not synthetic.

Yes, natural flavors vary wildly, this is why people are very selective in what they use and often employ organoleptic detection on things like gas Chromatography. This allows for consistency with trained humans but it doesn't mean they know everything that is going on in the natural product.

Expensive stuff rarely uses synthetic flavorings because they simply don't taste right.

Ingredients and origin (spruengli.ch)

Origin (laderach.com)
This is literally the best chocolate I have ever had. Only natural ingredients.

The interpretation of what we hear from reproduced music is equally as complex. There are all kinds of subtle and not-so subtle additions and subtractions to the signal before it reaches your ears. This is further compounded to how your ear/brain machinery interprets what it the sound is. This is why it is so hard to predict how something will sound based on looking at measurements. At best so far, there has been some correlation but it has a high variability.

I loved this post because of the chocolate anecdote. If you think tubes vs SS is contentious, or analog vs digital, you ain't seen nothing until you watch Belgians argue over chocolate. I am on the Board of a Belgian company and they are all legitimately insane about their chocolate. I wouldn't be surprised if I lost my board seat if I ever suggested anyone ever made better chocolate than the Belgians. There's a reason why every 4th shop in Brussels is a chocolatier! (The other thing they are nuts about is their beer, but that's another story!). Some of the cognescenti walked me to their favorite chocolate shops in Brussels one day where I learned more than I ever wanted to know about chocolate! They all had their favorites but in general, I was surprised to learn three things; 1) they think Godiva is crap and is best sold to Americans in airports (the "Bose" of the chocolate world!); and 2) many locals think the best Belgian chocolate is Marconi, which they hate to admit, is made by a Frenchman! and 3) they will laugh at you if you like any chocolate that is sweet. The hardliners (which is to say, all Belgians) believe the only serious chocolate is bitter chocolate because it has the highest percentage of cacao. All I know is that they fed me so much of it that I didn't come down from the caffeine high for 3 days! No wonder my go-to is Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream!

 

[andromedaaudio]

I loved this post because of the chocolate anecdote. If you think tubes vs SS is contentious, or analog vs digital, you ain't seen nothing until you watch Belgians argue over chocolate. I am on the Board of a Belgian company and they are all legitimately insane about their chocolate. I wouldn't be surprised if I lost my board seat if I ever suggested anyone ever made better chocolate than the Belgians. There's a reason why every 4th shop in Brussels is a chocolatier! (The other thing they are nuts about is their beer, but that's another story!). Some of the cognescenti walked me to their favorite chocolate shops in Brussels one day where I learned more than I ever wanted to know about chocolate! They all had their favorites but in general, I was surprised to learn three things; 1) they think Godiva is crap and is best sold to Americans in airports (the "Bose" of the chocolate world!); and 2) many locals think the best Belgian chocolate is Marconi, which they hate to admit, is made by a Frenchman! and 3) they will laugh at you if you like any chocolate that is sweet. The hardliners (which is to say, all Belgians) believe the only serious chocolate is bitter chocolate because it has the highest percentage of cacao. All I know is that they fed me so much of it that I didn't come down from the caffeine high for 3 days! No wonder my go-to is Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream!

Its true there are countless chocolate shops in brussels.

In the Airport star alliance lounge they have a nice booth , they market it well

 

[Ron Resnick]

If you think tubes vs SS is contentious, or analog vs digital, you ain't seen nothing until you watch Belgians argue over chocolate. I am on the Board of a Belgian company and they are all legitimately insane about their chocolate. I wouldn't be surprised if I lost my board seat if I ever suggested anyone ever made better chocolate than the Belgians. There's a reason why every 4th shop in Brussels is a chocolatier!

Tinka, who is Dutch, said the same things. . . absurd to think that any chocolate in the USA could approach Belgian chocolate.

Until . . . she tried Li-Lac in Manhattan (especially the milk chocolate covered marshmallow bars and the hazelnut truffles). Li-Lac, starting from a small factory on Christopher Street in the West Village which they used to sell the chocolate out of, makes their chocolate fresh every day. So even if you buy it from one of their retail-only locations in Manhattan, the chocolate is never more than a couple of days old.

Tinka now believes Li-Lac is victorious.

 

[morricab]

I loved this post because of the chocolate anecdote. If you think tubes vs SS is contentious, or analog vs digital, you ain't seen nothing until you watch Belgians argue over chocolate. I am on the Board of a Belgian company and they are all legitimately insane about their chocolate. I wouldn't be surprised if I lost my board seat if I ever suggested anyone ever made better chocolate than the Belgians. There's a reason why every 4th shop in Brussels is a chocolatier! (The other thing they are nuts about is their beer, but that's another story!). Some of the cognescenti walked me to their favorite chocolate shops in Brussels one day where I learned more than I ever wanted to know about chocolate! They all had their favorites but in general, I was surprised to learn three things; 1) they think Godiva is crap and is best sold to Americans in airports (the "Bose" of the chocolate world!); and 2) many locals think the best Belgian chocolate is Marconi, which they hate to admit, is made by a Frenchman! and 3) they will laugh at you if you like any chocolate that is sweet. The hardliners (which is to say, all Belgians) believe the only serious chocolate is bitter chocolate because it has the highest percentage of cacao. All I know is that they fed me so much of it that I didn't come down from the caffeine high for 3 days! No wonder my go-to is Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream!

Haven’t tried all Belgian chocolate obviously but from what I have tried the Swiss Laederach and Merkur are my 1, 2 respectively.

 

[andromedaaudio]

I have tried quite a few types of chocolate in belgium .
I tried also peruvian chocolate " supposed to be good "

In the end I like verkade milk chocolate from the Netherlands , you can buy it in almost any supermarket

Belgian bonbons are great though indeed probably the best

 

[wil]

Other than being a huge fan of Gene and Amir apparently, who the heck are you?...

I feel no need or desire to explain myself to you.

You're some new guy (might as well be new since you've been a member for 7 years with only 34 posts) that came on here and all you do is argue EVERYONE'S point of view. That to me is a troll.



I will say this about the "sound of cables". If YOU can't hear a difference in cables, either your system is lacking, or your hearing is lacking... Probably both in your case.

Why go to the personal attacks and get so upset about someone’s point of view? I think he’s made his points in a calm, reasonable, Non-offensive way. I don’t agree with a lot of it , but it’s been thought-provoking, which is a good thing in my opinion. It’s also led to some interesting posts in response.

 

[wil]

You will have more in common with the guys over on Headfi, they DSP the feck out of everything.

So, we should only converse with people here who agree with us in the WBF silo?

 

[bonzo75]

Why go to the personal attacks and get so upset about someone’s point of view? I think he’s made his points in a calm, reasonable, Non-offensive way. I don’t agree with a lot of it , but it’s been thought-provoking, which is a good thing in my opinion. It’s also led to some interesting posts in response.

no he didn’t. he repeated the same thing that you can read here from ten or more years ago. And presented it with an eureka expression. If he wants to educate the rest of us, he needs to go out and learn first instead of do the Science says and Simon says…he doesn’t want to discuss. He wants to come across as smart without doing the ground work

 

[sbnx]

An “expert“? An “ex” is a has been, and a ”spert” (spurt)… is just a drip under pressure. Anthony Fauci comes to mind.

I have a saying I use to describe some audio experiences I have — “all the sounds are there, but none of the music.” I used some footers once because I didn't want my spikes to mark up the hardwoods beneath a carpet. My wife and I looked at each other “what the hell happened to the music?” All the sound was still there, but none of the music—somehow the wholeness, the gestalt, was lost. Removing the footers it all snapped back. You could probably get very “scientific“ and dive into what micro vibrations were attenuated by the footers but then saying that minor change was the reason for the perception would be an unrealistic stretch. How would you measure and account for the difference between the sounds and the music?

i like science. I appreciate the minds of scientists. I abhor hubris.

Bob, One thing to consider is that unless you measured from the floor to the base of the speaker and held this constant when the footer were inserted when you added the footers the height of the speaker would have changed dramatically.

 

[sbnx]

One thing about science. The more you know the more you know what you and the rest of the world doesn't know. A lot of people today want to act like we know everything and have it all figured out. This is very far from reality. You never know what paper could be published tomorrow that would completely change the way we think about something.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

They did. They were quite explicit about which ones and why. A couple of my favorite ones that I would have picked as least likely to use artificial flavors had artificial flavors.

Nope. The science is about understanding the chemistry and doing careful, gasp, double blind taste tests

Perfect is an absurd notion given all natural flavors vary widely. No two bananas, no two strawberries, no two plums etc etc taste exactly the same. It’s about fooling people. And it is not only possible to fool people with artificial flavors it’s done with a great deal of regularity.

Where do you come up with this? Accurate chemical analysis is chemistry 101.


you are just making this up now. I’m pretty confident you are quite unfamiliar with Leonidas. But anyway…

Please show me one example of Stereophile measuring the DC of any component’s internal power supply and finding levels of noise that demonstrably bl the d system not to he audio signal. Let’s not limit it to Stereophile. You are going to have to cherry pick some really cheap gear to find an example. And a power cord ain’t gonna fix it. Not to mention how wierd it would be to put a five figure power cord on a two figure piece of audio gear.

Would have loved to have seen the test protocols. The lack of double blindness is an issue.

Ignored.

 

[PYP]

I do wonder though, at some point do folks who believe in these products ever and genuinely ask themselves “if my wife can hear a night and day difference from the kitchen while doing the dishes why can’t anyone reliably identify such massive differences in basic ABX DBTs?” Doesn’t that make you go hmmm?

My wife is my tester. But I had to learn the code: Did you change something? = bad change; does not sound natural. Is that [recording] in our library? = sounding good. Is that xxx [usually first name of musician]? = very good sound; timbre and tone are working well. Overall, if she chooses an album she likes and turns up the volume to levels I would choose [meaning, higher than she would usually think is reasonable], then synergy has been achieved.

We don't need no stinkin' ABX DBT.

 

[andromedaaudio]

I have got it exactly as i wanna have it.
My first 10 audiophile years i Changed a lot .
I m a happy music lover / audiophile whatever you wanna call it..
I basically only upgraded in the same brand system wise .
For digital im back to where audiophilia started for me .
Old school mark levinson digital

 

[Bobvin]

F

Bob, One thing to consider is that unless you measured from the floor to the base of the speaker and held this constant when the footer were inserted when you added the footers the height of the speaker would have changed dramatically.

Footers were under my racks, not speakers. The “footers” (Herbie’s) were nothing more than furniture sliders with a metal disc glued to them so spikes would not punch through. Nothing fancy but I was shocked at the difference in musical presentation. This is not a disparagement of footers, or even Herbie’s footers. They did, in my system, have a profound sonic impact far greater than I think science might explain. (My racks start at about 135 lbs before adding any components.)

 

[PYP]

Except that your example of taste it isn't quite the same situation as audio...perhaps you can spot the difference?

Um, no. Can you give me a clue or make this multiple choice? Does it have anything to do with chocolate?

 

[wil]

no he didn’t. he repeated the same thing that you can read here from ten or more years ago. And presented it with an eureka expression. If he wants to educate the rest of us, he needs to go out and learn first instead of do the Science says and Simon says…he doesn’t want to discuss. He wants to come across as smart without doing the ground work

So personally attack, and tell him “to get back in his silo.”

 

[PYP]

Tinka, who is Dutch, said the same things. . . absurd to think that any chocolate in the USA could approach Belgian chocolate.

Until . . . she tried Li-Lac in Manhattan (especially the milk chocolate covered marshmallow bars and the hazelnut truffles). Li-Lac, starting from a small factory on Christopher Street in the West Village which they used to sell the chocolate out of, makes their chocolate fresh every day. So even if you buy it from one of their retail-only locations in Manhattan, the chocolate is never more than a couple of days old.

Tinka now believes Li-Lac is victorious.

That must have been fun. Back in the day in Manhattan, https://teuschernyc.com/ had some mind-blowing Swiss chocolate. A friend worked in one of the shops and would bring home samples. I'm not a big chocolate consumer, but the first one I tried knocked my eyes back in my head. Still trying to get that experience with my hifi. I know, I need a low-powered SET and horns. See, I do learn.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Um, no. Can you give me a clue or make this multiple choice? Does it have anything to do with chocolate?

The same apllies for both.

Why would they make so many different kind of chocolates , ...
To satisfy demand whether people like one over anothet or just want something different after a while.
Same Aplies for audio just throw all the dogma in the garage bin.
And buy what you like makes you feel good .
All the whats best fights you can leave best to reviewers lol