Well that felt like a public lynching, with "likes" cheering from the sidelines...
Hi Mark,
There was certainly no intention to personally attack any individual in my first post in this thread. As the starter of this thread, however, I can understand if you somehow felt as though you were being addressed. I can't deny that I pulled no punches and wrote without restraint, but my target was pseudoscience, not people. As Alex has said above, I think the 'likes' were in support of science rather than a ganging-up against any individuals. Many of the people who hit the 'like' button were those who had earlier admitted to having invested (either financially or just intellectually) in the very thing I sought to debunk.
...lets face it going around calling people names isn't on!
Perhaps I've missed something, but I can't find an instance of name-calling.
...from the Recording fraternity to the Hifi loons.
I fall into both these categories. In talking about the modification of my house, I tried to demonstrate that I am most definitely a HiFi loon! However, I'm also a graduate physicist whose mind had been trained to be sceptical. I cannot suspend what I know to be true or false in favour of what I'd personally like to believe.
...these very same alchemists, quacks, loony bins have produced some astonishing equipment over time that then go back into recording studios...
This is undoubtedly true. The HiFi industry has developed lots of great equipment, like amps, DACs, and speakers, that have subsequently been used in studios. Indeed, B&W (who make the aforementioned Abbey Road Studios speakers) are originally a HiFi company whose products were so good that studios all over the world adopted them. But, crucially, all the HiFi-derived equipment that is held in high regard within recording circles is precisely that: equipment, not cables. My original post within this thread takes aim not at funky CD players, super-isolated turntables or alternative speaker designs but only at the misinformation that surrounds cables.
B&W are an engineering firm who research, build and market their products using science. The laser interferometry data from their Kevlar cones is, I believe, in the public domain. The same cannot be said for businesses like Russ Andrews.
I saw an advert for an event at the NEC in Birmingham recently. It was all about Dragon Healing, which paints itself as one of the many alternatives to evidence-based healthcare. Attendees paid £15 each to attend a Dragon Healing seminar with a lass called Momoyo. From her website, I quote...
"Momoyo downloads the dragons in her own body and performs the dragon healing while in trance for her clients. Dragons have high frequencies of love that can bring instantaneous healing to people. Dragon healing is very powerful. People can experience healing by just being in the seminar room. Tears may suddenly start to flow, or physical pain may disappear."
I can't imagine there are many people here who believe that any attendees were healed of their health conditions due to dragons or their high frequencies of love. Momoyo took their money without any repeatable, verifiable evidence that she actually did anything for them. Some people would argue that she's a fraud, who preys on people's ignorance and willingness to believe in fantasy. On the other hand, if the attendees had a nice time, met other like-minded people and were distracted from their health conditions, if only momentarily, is Momoyo really doing any harm? If the law banned such people from trading, would we be creating a deeply illiberal society and restricting freedom of thought or behaviour?
I'm sure everyone can see where I'm going with this. Russ Andrews is just another Momoyo who trades within the world of audio rather than healthcare. It might pain me to see good people haemorrhage money to such businesses, but banning them altogether on the grounds that they peddle nonsense opens a huge can of worms.
We were having a nice time here in this thread and that was the reason it was set up to swap and exchange ideas, learn and to swap music within the forum...
And long may it continue! Although my first post was described as a nuclear bomb, possibly puncuating this entire thread, there's still so much to talk about. I'm sure that the collective membership of A2OC has a huge wealth of experience with different amps, source components, phono stages, speakers, listening environments, stone plinths, etc. There's also a vast amount of incredible music that each of us will never have heard before, so please keep it going.
Cheers,
Tom