Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
let me discuss it with the admin team but Mike's last caveat summarizes the issue quite succinctly
Introspection and hyperbole control
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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IMHO posting all in color, bold or caps is equivalent to shouting in a conversation - it was the analogy used in old newgroups. I can easily accept and enjoy its exceptional use to enlighten part of a post, not as an usual style. I have participated in many internet forums, and this was never an issue. We can have different size or color cables
, but IMHO we should all post in the same type of font, size and color. Technically, once we adjust our browsers and monitors for a comfortable reading in soft monochrome text, bright blue has excessive contrast with the same settings. Moving between texts with the two types is tiresome.
Steve,
Patents are no better than white papers, meaning they are pretty much worthless as evidence or proof, the applicant more or less writes what he wants and nobody in the patent office cares unless it's in utter conflict with laws of nature or established engineering rules. What would be convincing is a publication in a technical peer reviewed journal such as Journal of Sound and Vibration. There the author has to expose his stuff to experts in the technical field who will shred that stuff to pieces if need be.
Klaus (senior patent examiner, European Patent Office)
Steve Williams said:
Patents are no better than white papers, meaning they are pretty much worthless as evidence or proof, the applicant more or less writes what he wants and nobody in the patent office cares unless it's in utter conflict with laws of nature or established engineering rules. What would be convincing is a publication in a technical peer reviewed journal such as Journal of Sound and Vibration. There the author has to expose his stuff to experts in the technical field who will shred that stuff to pieces if need be.
Klaus (senior patent examiner, European Patent Office)
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I can't dispute that but nonetheless I tend to pay these more attention than anecdotal raves with nothing but metadata for support.
Steve Williams said:
What the patent examiner checks is if the device as claimed is new and inventive, inventive meaning not obvious to the skilled person. What he generally does not check (exceptions however do occur, in which cases the examiner requires evidence) is whether or not the device works as decribed and claimed, this is left to market and consumers. So basically an applicant can write complete technical nonsense, within limits that is, and will get a patent if the above conditions are met. So you should read patents with more than just a grain of salt.
Klaus
Thank you, Klaus. That is very interesting, and I'm a bit surprised to learn this. Are you suggesting that we read patents from established high companies which have multiple patents claiming new technologies with perhaps some degree of skepticism?
In Biotech patents usually are sound science. And it's very hard to get a patent for anything. I know because I am working in Biotech.
So it will depend on the field in which the patent is claimed for. Maybe the patent situation for high-end audio is pretty fluffy, who knows (Al ducks for cover).
So maybe just a bit more introspection about how much and how often anyone uses an effect like a super loud all blue type or how concise we can be when we make our POV could be good. I love the concept of things and at times am shocking at letting the idea get away on me when typing. It's so easy to drown in a stream of consciousness when struggling away at a keyboard.
When battling to bring out a big idea to then be able to write succinctly can be a hurdle and I often have to remind myself that the writing itself can be a trap. We try to communicate challenging concepts and ideas like the nature of the sound of things and that is just in truth really hard.
It is so easy in a forum thread to get caught up in the cycle of the super long post and the super big idea and lose touch with the original substance or the signal and get caught up in noise of our own style. I found myself doing that when I first started posting on forums and realised that wasn't the way I was in life so I just did my best to pull back on the noise and the hyperbole and consciously aimed to just write more openly... and as you can see am still just learning.
A forum like this is great to teach you how many things there are still left for us all to learn.
When battling to bring out a big idea to then be able to write succinctly can be a hurdle and I often have to remind myself that the writing itself can be a trap. We try to communicate challenging concepts and ideas like the nature of the sound of things and that is just in truth really hard.
It is so easy in a forum thread to get caught up in the cycle of the super long post and the super big idea and lose touch with the original substance or the signal and get caught up in noise of our own style. I found myself doing that when I first started posting on forums and realised that wasn't the way I was in life so I just did my best to pull back on the noise and the hyperbole and consciously aimed to just write more openly... and as you can see am still just learning.
A forum like this is great to teach you how many things there are still left for us all to learn.
I must be missing something, Mike. I appreciate those members who avidly read patents from respected high end audio companies like Pass, Spectral and MIT, who understand what they are reading and who try to explain them to fellow members like me, who may be too dense to understand them. I also very rarely use emojis for clarification.
why something works and how to define it is not relevant to the hobby, we care whether it reproduces music effectively, not why or how. and many times something works for reasons not exactly why we were told it does.
so 'marketing-speak' in patents regarding high end audio is like grains of sand in the wind. hard to grab hold of. no matter that some of us try very hard to do it and dissect it.
how many times do we get some sort of consensus on cause and effect here regarding manufacturer's technical claims? particularly the deep dark sorts of things claimed in patents?
Peter; no doubt you are one of those who pursue details of why and how, and I am not. so we view this issue completely differently.
I have written before about this subject, sharing KlausR views on it. I can understand what is written in these patents, but it does not explain how it sounds and why it sounds so. It mainly describes a topology or a particular way of doing things. This does not mean that the inventor does not know it, but it would be craziness to reveal the fundaments, that can not be patented.
Take a simple, almost childish high-end patent - George Cardas "Multi-strand conductor cable having its strands sized according to the golden section" US 4628151 A https://www.google.com/patents/US4628151 I quote from it:
The cable disclosed herein contains a plurality of individual conductor strands which are designed to act as a single conductive element, even though each of the individual conductive strands within the cable is individually insulated. This is accomplished by providing for a common input to each conductive strand at one end of the cable and a similar single connection to each of the conductive strands at the output end of the cable. Although the phenomenon is not completely understood, employment of different sized individual conductive strands within the cable according to the predetermined golden section ratio produces significantly improved efficiency in the transmission of signals from one end of the cable to another when compared against prior art cables which do not employ this system.
Surely no one asked for listening tests or measurements to prove the improved efficiency in the transmission of signal.
What is protected is the right to manufacture cables having a particular ratio - the called the golden section - between strand sizes. Anyone if free to manufacture cables with the same size strands!
Although I do not work in biotechnology, I know patenting in this area it is a moving field - currently many companies choose to protect their intellectual property as a trade secret, as they can not be sure to be granted patents on it.
I'm not so sure, Mike. It seems to me that we are always discussing why things work and defining them: Differences in formats, why D2D sounds better than a pressing from tape, SS/Tube, speaker typologies, etc. The forum is full of these discussions. Though I am one of those who does not approach the hobby from a scientific background, I do think that some audiophiles indeed care very much about "why something works...in this hobby." Fellow member Ack, for instance, often sites patents by both MIT and Spectral to understand what products from those companies are trying to do, and I think he feels the patents can help explain the "why". And Ack often has very interesting posts in which he breaks down the patents and shares his understanding of them with those interested in reading his posts and learning more about these products.
Of course, I primarily care about how it sounds, and I assume Ack does also. But referring to patents in the high end audio industry as "marketing-speak" just runs counter to what I had thought. I appreciate Klaus bringing this notion to my attention.
I do think we may both be interested in pursuing details and care somewhat about the why and how. For instance, you certainly went to great effort to tame the reflections in your listening room, and you reported great results. I don't think you did your experiments blindly. I'm sure you listened to results and then thought about what areas to try next. Those reports added to others encouraged me to consider reducing the reflections in my room. I think you commended me for paying attention to the details. The why and how were a part of it.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Not break in. Settle. The filters are multilayered. The weight of the equipment compresses the filters. Fairly light components like our Lamm preamps and phonos at about 30 to 40 its take longer to settle/compress than the amps which are 60 to 70 lbs.
Oops I thought you were asking about Steve's not Stehno's.
Oops I thought you were asking about Steve's not Stehno's.
It's a mechanical settling in process. Not sure exactly why but most likely for the same reason why your home's foundation continues to settle into the ground for decades and most likely for the entire duration the dwelling remains standing. As evidenced by cracks in the dry-wall.
In direct contrast to vibration isolation, the objective (at least my objective) of resonance energy transfer is to create a superior mechanical conduit between normally disparate objects i.e. component to rack, rack to sub-floor in order to more freely allow mechanical energy to travel. Remembering of course that mechanical energy's first priority is to travel but without a lot of push behind it and if it encounters much resistance, it'll quickly attach itself to an object and release its energy there, and hence is not very forgiving.
Probably the best analogy is to imagine sandwiching 2 pennies extremely tight in a vice and they were left in the vice for 50 years. Chances are pretty good when you release the vice grip, you’d probably have to pry the pennies apart. Almost like a passive or soft weld. But if you left the pennies in the vice for only a day or so the pennies most likely would separate immediately upon releasing the vice grip.
More specifically, what I picture happening when two disparate objects are joined together is an almost molecular exchange at a microscopic level between the surfaces of the disparate objects where over time they become more congruent and the more congruent, the more superior the mechanical conduit. Short of welding, this exchange process is never instantaneous but can only occur over an extended period of time. The more inferior the design and execution the quicker the settling-in process reaches its full yet immature max potential.
For example, I’ve had one of my racks take upwards of 18 months to fully settle in while experiencing several hundred distinct audible gains along the way. The bulk of my rack’s settling in occurs within the first few months but then a more infrequent stream of improvements for many more months thereafter. Since applying a far more extreme mounting strategy, my current amps when mounted in my already settled-in rack took nearly 5 months to reach full maturity and that’s with at least one small but distinct audible improvement occurring on an almost daily basis. In all, I estimated over 120 improvements there. Prior to this, the longest it took a component to fully settle in at a more immature performance level was 15 days with maybe 25 small but distinct audible gains.
Unlike complex electrical objects (i.e. an amplifier or CDP) electrical burn-in, which after x time, goes from A directly to Z in one or 2 fairly instantaneous leaps, a more complex mechanical object (i.e. a rack and components), its mechanical settling-in never ever leapfrogs from A straight to Z but will go thru the entire alphabet one letter at a time. And the more extreme the design/execution the more letters are added after Z as the improvements just continue.
On the other hand, and to be more accurate, the more inferior a rack's design/execution the more quickly the mechanical settling-in ceases at a given letter e.g. C, D, E, F, etc and that’s its max maturity or full potential. With always the potential that in the next 6 months or a year or 5 years down the road one may encounter another improvement or two.
Unless there is non-conductive material between the component’s bottom plate and shelf surface, every component goes thru some settling in process, small or great depending on other variables.
Those who’ve dabbled with mass-loading are potentially accomplishing 1 or 2 types of performance gains when/if they realize any improvements:
1. Assuming there’s superior conductive material between the component and shelf, they are improving the connectivity or mechanical conduit between the disparate objects so energy can more freely travel.
2. They are potentially damping their component’s often times more flimsy vibrating top plate that may not otherwise be sufficiently rigidly anchored to the component chassis. Even some of the better quality components pay less attention to the top plate than they should.
And though I find some of electrical and mechanical energy’s behavioral similarities quite fascinating, one other very distinct difference to note is that electrical burn-in has a restart memory whereas mechanical settling has zero or close to zero restart memory.
For example, if you knew a new speaker cable was going to take roughly 5 days to burn-in, you could remove the cable after 3 days and when you re-install, the burn-in process will, in my limited experience, pick up pretty much where it left off. And once the cable is fully burned in, you could remove it and install it at a friend’s house and within maybe a half-hour – hour warm up, it should be operating at its full post burn-in status.
Not so with mechanical settling in. Should you move the mechanical object even 1/16th of an inch on its platform, you most likely must restart the mechanical settling-in process all over again. Same is true after the mechanical object has reached full settle-in status. In other words, if one were to experiment, make sure the mechanical object is placed exactly where you want it to be long term and then don’t touch it, because once you realize the benefits, the last thing you wanna do is have to move it and start the process all over.
Anyway, that’s my take on mechanical settling in.
Peter, I apologize for not engaging in your new thread yet as I've been pretty busy these past few days. Plus, considering the demeanor of some here, I'm a bit concerned of what may be waiting for me there.
But I'll try to get over there tomorrow evening.
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