If I was trying to sell amplifiers that used a huge amount of negative feedback, I, too would write something similar. It's good marketing.
I wonder if anyone's ever thought of the possibility that I might have turned to designing low distortion amplifiers that have lots of feedback because they work better than the ones that don't? It's a lot easier to to design non-feedback amps and waffle about those than to learn how to do feedback and then try to sell amps to a populace that, on the whole, is suspicious of feedback. People seem to think that I just happened to have high-feedback amps handy by chance, and needed to flog them. Does anyone have the faintest idea how complicated this stuff gets, particularly as applied to class D amplifiers? Seriously, trying to make a quick buck by designing and selling amplifiers with a lot of feedback in the current audiophile market would not count as a rational way to get rich.
There is no question that he is wrong about the statements you quoted. He leaves no place for sighted listening to be wrong. As noted, he has to make a living and that has a way of corrupting one's views.
You're misreading me. All I'm saying is that if someone has a particular listening experience, I've no business denying that. But I don't have to assume that the explanation given by that person is the right one either. Almost all of the time psychological factors fully cover the facts. Just not always. And in those proverbial 99% of cases where a sonic claim turns out to be spurious, there's no point in me making a big poohaa about it, is there?
People closer to me are actually annoyed by this marked tendency I have to reject
any form of audiophile claim out of hand, and only to investigate when pressed hard.
If you read his earlier articles, interviews and see his ideas from a decade or so back when he was with Philips they read like some completely different person vs newer interviews since he has his own high end company or worked with people like Grimm. The answer is extremely simple. His work and design ability is at a very high level. Nevertheless, he has become the Smart Engineer.
I didn't know I was that famous in my Philips days. When I started there, I subscribed to every single item of audiophoolery around. It was a slow and painful process to extricate myself from that and attain a degree of rationality. What helped massively is that as I became more conventional (i.e. measurement driven) in my design approach, the stuff clearly started sounding better too. I'm now very much in the "meter reading" camp. And indeed as mentioned somewhere, I haven't based amp design decisions on listening tests for a long time. Anyway, listening tests should only serve to refine one's measurement procedures, not the actual designs directly. But where some of my fellow rationalists and I part company is when they keep insisting that any amp with a THD below some ridiculously high number is automatically perfect. Mind you, there's probably a lot of truth in this when you insert a simple static nonlinear transfer in an otherwise blameless signal chain, but most distortion isn't like that.
Play the game, say the right thing, spend more time developing an aura of mystery rather than spilling out the hard numbers. It opens up pocketbooks.
I wasn't aware that I was that reticent on hard numbers. But if by playing the game you mean "break it to people gently without chasing them away" I'm totally in with that and I have to admit I've put in the effort to learn how to do that. At least in writing - in speech I'm still as blunt as ever.
For instance, most of the audiophile public is so dead set against rational design (using measurements to diagnose and feedback, DSP and whatnot to cure) that they wouldn't even countenance exposing themselves to a quick listen. The problem is that it's not 100% imaginary: some of them have heard atrocious amplifiers that they were told had low distortion and a lot of feedback (at 10Hz perhaps they did), and drew far reaching conclusions from that. If you want to stand any chance of winning them over, the least thing you can do is to give them a cogent explanation for that experience if there is one (there is, I think. Read the F word). Then they might let you invite them in for a listen. You can call that playing the game if you want. You can also call it giving people a modicum of respect. All I know is that calling people silly sods for not agreeing with you in full without as much as offering an argument is not going to advance any of science, society, or your job security if that's of any value to you.
http://www.brunoputzeys.be/r4.php
Apparently Mr. Putzeys isn't big on the influx of refugees in his part of the world.
If you need it spelled out: it's religion I have a problem with. All of them. But since people being religious is part of reality, one can't just wish it away. So politically I'm a secularist. Folks who laud the West on its Judaeo-Christian roots have got it spectacularly wrong. The West only really came out of the bush when it discovered secularism. That's what we ought to defend. Concerning refugees and other immigrants, I'm actually strongly in favour of taking in more of them. I think it's unbelievably unjust that the place where you're born should have such an impact on your chances in life. But, as they are coming of their own volition that would be an excellent opportunity to ask them to sign up to that particular value that keeps this European ship afloat. Sadly we can't do that with the people who are already here.