July 11, 2006

• Doesn't buying a $485 knob qualify you as being ... a knob?
• I'll see your knob and raise you a jar full of Brilliant Pebbles .
• Wooden knobs for this thing. And I guess this is how it works.
• Don't miss this bargain speaker cable.
• Hey, a quality knob can be hard to find sometimes.
• If you're going to use that expensive speaker wire Wolof, you're going to want to keep it off the floor.
• Wait.. a potentiometer... IT"S A FREAKING VARIABLE RESISTOR! Oh my.
• It's not even the pot (just the knob) Yeah. I don't know what is more retarded, fringe audio or mainstream audio. There'a a happy medium... You guys should totally read up on the c37 lacquer though.
• Don't be makin' fun of my cable elevators! Alas, the word is out. I..I'm an...audio geek. Yes, I own a set of those very elevators. Do they make a difference? Let me preface this by saying that the total value of my home system is roughly the value of a decent used car. I've spent a lot of sweat and hard-earned dollars towards it. Most importantly, it gives me great joy. Music can touch like no other art. Uh, so do the elevators work? On my system: hell yeah. I won't fool around with geek talk, but they are pretty surprising. I bought them thinking I would be shipping the little buggers back, but no deal, Howie! Would they work with any system? You will probably not hear any difference on a very basic stereo setup. So, back to the knobs. Hey, I ain't geeky enough to believe THAT! You can stop giggling now!
• I have pulled my knob off on many occasions, and can only say I was most satisfied by the results.
• 8 track woo!
• As an audio engineer, I can tell you that there often is something in wacky ideas like this, but not this time. (Any audio heads out there heard of 'bass gravity'? I didn't think so)
• I have pulled my knob off on many occasions, and can only say I was most satisfied by the results. I prefer to finish with a little counter-clockwise flair at the end and then making a little trumpety noise to celebrate my success. Makes sticking the dismount harder, though.
• I'll see your knob and raise you a knob. Isn't it kind of late for April Fool's pranks?
• Anyone who would pay $30,000 for audio cables would pay god knows how much more than that for an entire system, and would have certainly reached the point where it would be less expensive to hire a full orchestra to come over to the house and play from time to time.
• The acoustic theory must be present in order for the whole theory to actually provide harmony that is musical. In the acoustic theory, we see the benefit of treating the notes as particles instead of as waves. There, they exert two types of gravity to the perception. The first type is determined by the size of the note. Called bass gravity, the correct formula to determine its influence was recently worked out upon the incorporation of pi. It has been proven positive by way of a small computer program which creates complex chords and chord changes by determining perceptive ratios between notes. This is only made possible by the second type of gravity. Called harmonic gravity, it is the amount of support via agreement that each note receives from the others. This amount is determined by an appropriate use of the harmonic series whereby each note is personified and gives to the others by its own nature. They are thought of as words that wear little cone-hats which contain their individual meaning. *sput*
• I have pulled my knob off on many occasions, and can only say I was most satisfied by the results. *ahem* Off? As in, detached?
• Hey, ball point head, was it your house I went to that party at, where there were tape marks on the floor to show where the speakers had to be put back>
• ask me about my career as a knob polisher, sometime...
• Once, I aspired to being an audiophile. However, as I grew up, I failed to become rich. Then I aspired to make fun of audiophiles. However, it's just too easy.
• Actually...no. But don't put it past me. Hell, I even tweaked a mini-system in a hotel room once (sans tape). BTW, here is a friend of mine. I haven't heard his sytem in this latest version, but I know it is likely one of the top ten reference systems on the west coast. I also bet big bucks that there are no parties in this room. (There are both the Transparent Opus speaker cables AND the cable elevators in his room...whee!)
• Audiophiles never seem to have much knowledge of electronics or physics, but more than make up for it in gullibility.
• Mr. ball point, when testing the cable elevators did you test it on another person in a blind test, such that the listener didn't know whether the cable was elevated or on the floor? I once spent 80 bucks on a subwoofer cable (a piece of wire), but only after a blind test on my dad proved that it made a major difference.
• I can't get past power cables costing hundreds of dollars the meter that are plugged into house wiring that costs pennies a meter. Some cables are obviously worth spending money on, but the line cord? Please.
• Well, sfred, you'd only plug your hundered dollar power cable into your thousand dollar anti-harmonic power conditioner. I mean obviously.
• Six.oh.six, true enough.
• rocket88: If you mean me, I'll have to tell you that I am currently building a headphone amplifier that uses a 3-channel setup so that the headphones don't disturb the signal ground; BUF634 chips as current buffers after a AD8620 opamp; and runs in Class A bias once I connect in two pairs of FETs. I mention this as example of not all audiophiles being ignorant with electronics. six.oh.six: Yes I did! Two of us traded off on a random blind test. The order of presentation was decided by the other. It was more fun that it sounds...haha.. My first two trials for the other person wer identical. That way the other person tried to hear something that really wasn't there. Look, it's all for fun. Me loves me music with a passion. Audiophiles do get bashed a lot. Why don't people pick on photographers who only take black and white photos? Why don't people pick on "art connoseurs" who prefer oil on canvas as "the only way"? It's silly. Audiophiles love music, and will do a lot to make it even better in their own homes. Ah well. No hard feelings!
• Ball point head, no bashing from me here. I love the high-end aesthetic and part that is the shear excess of it all. Still, there is a lot of snake-oil going around and the resistance of people like John Atkinson (Stereophile) to blind testing is sometimes problematic. As for myself, I'm on a mid-fi budget, and that means I've got to spend my money where it will be most effective. That means I don't spend money on speaker cable that would be better spent on speakers. What's great these days is just how well you can do at that level compared to the mid-eighties when this market was starting to open up.
• Monkeyfilter: making a little trumpety noise to celebrate my success
• ball point head I have noticed the following formula: I = interest in something C = the cost involved M = mockery M increases in inverse proportion to I, and in direct proportion to C. Therefore, the more expensive something is, and the less the subject is interested in it, the more they will make fun. Audiophilia is a common target, because it is very expensive, and also wholly uninteresting to a lot of people. (Note that C can be a function of time, as well as money, which is why trainspotting also ranks high on the Hobby-Mocking Scale.) I myself have no interest in audiophile stuff, but I don't make fun, because I'm a knitter. The non-knitting public doesn't yet seem to have a solid grasp on how much money knitters spend on yarn, or how much time we spend knitting it. Once the word gets out, I'm prepared to find myself on the wrong end of the Hobby-Mocking Formula.
• My main worry about audiophilia is the price/payoff gradient. The curve is geometric. You can go from a hundred dollar ghetto blaster (does anyone still use that term?) to a 500 dollar stereo to maybe a 2000 dollar stereo with seperate receiver and amp and then... well... you're buying wooden knobs for 500 bucks and two coils of wrapped wire for 7000$. You can joke all you want about photographers that only use Agfa 100 film pushed to 400 and developed in Ilfosol at exactly 2 minutes past recommended time (been there, man) but it's not like to get better paper you have to start forking over thousands of dollars per sheet. At some point you realize the most important part is the picture you're feeding in (going all the way back to decided what to shoot). I understand the beauty of sound. I have fallen to my knees in the 20,000 dollar tube monoblock amp room at the local Sounds of Music (and they were just playing the radio at the time) but when I start paying thousands of dollars for ceramic pots to keep my cable elevated, I sincerely hope someone schedules an intervention. btw I am mildly drunk.
• Hey could I buy one of those headphone amps off ya, ball point?
• bph: By "knowledge of electronics" I meant electronic principles, not component part numbers. As an example, the common explanation I've heard for the need for ultra $$$ cables and elevators has to do with resonance in the cable. I can show you, with basic principles and a little simple math, that the resonance effects of even the cheapest cables begin to appear at about 10MHz or so - well beyond the hearing range of the most aurally gifted audiophile. In the end, though, it's your money...and the important thing is that you get more enjoyment from your music with the fancy equipment. I don't mock your love of music or your quest for a better listening experience. As you said...no hard feelings.
• You guys are cool. Thanks for the calm replies. The last few days for me have been awful, from work (laptop died with no backup), to home (computer monitor died) to family (gross miscommunication resulting in fits of crankiness from bph) to my car (recent windshield replacement resulted in large scratch down to bare metal from idiotic installer). I hope my comments are not being perceived as those of a real jerk. Not trying to be. Now, on with the show. rocket88, first off: you do know that there is a nice tube amp with that given name, don't you? Heh. I agree with your idea about cable resonance, and also that nobody would be likely to hear it. The differences I heard with the elevators were very simple: a lower noise floor. A nice portion of noise was actually there, and was pretty clearly MIA with the cable elevators. My wife was my other blind-test listener. She hears me blather on about a lot of stuff, but she has no interest in whether this stuff works or not. She did, in fact, get every trial correct, which tells me that something pretty interesting is going on. Pretty cool. six.oh.six: The audiophile curve: I know what you mean. There are things that even I do not trust, and spending my hard earned doll-hairs on a tweaky CD player might be fun, but audiophilia really does go overboard a lot. I just read a stereopile review of a, I think, 90K turntable. I'm sure it's pretty special. But I think you would need an additional 90K system around it to hear all it has to give, and that would definitely take food off of the plate of my beloved family. No deal, Howie. And six.oh.six: I can custom build an amp for you. Drop me an email and we can chat! mechagrue: a friend of mine at work knits. Pretty funny that this would come up. She recently received some skeens of silk/alpaca. Luxurious. Expensive! Holy moly! Again: thanks for the spirited conversation. And one last time: those knobs are a hoot.
• I love you guys. *cries, guzzles vodka*
• Hey! You guys should knit with old, used audio cables! You could make, like, doilies to set speakers on, or bags to carry audio equipment.
• I believe that "knitted" (braided) audio cables are quite prized by some audiophiles. Might be fun!
• Vodka. Ice. Ahh.
• I had just had bourbon and beer. If I had scotch as well, I still wouldn't be nearly as cool as John Lee Hooker. I consider this to be emblematic of the inherent unfairness of life.
• Um, you're alive and he's not?
• One bourbon + one scotch + one beer = a lethal combination
• = one terrible waste of scotch, too
• scotch tastes like kerosene
• You have been drinking the wrong stuff.
• As I post this...tomorrow is Friday. Drinky day! BTW: Merlot is the nectar of the gods as far as audio tweaks. The music washes over me in an amazing way. I think it rates up there with those woody knobs...
• When you're unemployed everyday is drinky day!!!!!
• reminds me of the old song: ... 'Ye can tell the man that boozes by the company he chooses,' and with that, the pig got up and walked away.
• The kerosene is the the RED can; the Scotch is in the BLUE can.
• I'm a little dismayed by the skinny stream of actual knob jokes here.
• Take off, eh!
• I'm a little dismayed by the skinny stream of actual knob jokes here. When I go wee wee my knob lets loose with a skinny stream.
• Berek, that's because most of these louts are too busy fondling cheap knobs.
• Try coat hangers you dweebs.