Recent content by Francis Vaughan

Not really. This is a modern take on a purist version of science, mostly down to a mistaken view of Karl Popper's work. Whilst I'm a big fan of Popper, he was, like many philosophers of science, mostly thinking about physics. Even then it is more nuanced. Science is much wider than falsifiable...

There are deep truths and issues here. IMHO it is a bit more nuanced, but the above cuts to the core of what is reasonable. This is a huge part of the reproducibility crisis in science. You can mine pre-existing data to demonstrate an existing hypothesis, but what cannot do is both derive your...

I'll make a distinction between data mining and what Olive did. Modern data mining is more about looking for correlations in raw data and eliciting the existence of correlations. Olive went into the study with a clear idea about what the correlated data were, and what figures of merit to use...

Of course the formula has not really been designed. There is a hypothesis that the factors chosen are those that are the most important, choosing of basic simple, single number, figures of merit for each, and finally an empirically derived statistical fit to how those simple values are convolved...

This is true. When they do run out of features and gimmicks, I guess they will simply have to return to the more traditional model of perhaps actually selling what the consumer wants.

John Dunlavy was an advocate of the felt approach (indeed he claimed to have invented it, and had the patent.) He was pretty clear that it was for control of diffraction and managing directivity. Then again, he told me that he sourced his felt from South Africa, because it had to be just the...

Ah, sorry, I wasn’t being as clear as I might. No, the directivity and other major issues won’t be affected. But there will be changes to the bass and lower mid. There is a whole lot a waffle about the merits of the kind of damping and what resonances it can affect. The design of NoRrez is very...

The subjective is never going to be settled. But that is not what we want to see anyway. Mostly not anyway. Whether the small roundovers make a useful difference and the effect of the magic stuffing will be clear on measurements. Capacitor and tubes can be ignored unless there is a clear change...

Probably true. But right now they are dismissing the measurements for reasons of component quality or meeting the hive mind’s build instructions. New measurements will act to falsify the current assertions. The usual pseudoscience arguments will move the goalposts. To a large extent that is...

I would really like to see the high spec build tested. IMHO the add ons are worthless. (Other than some cheap generic damping material.) But it needs proving. I’m happy to kick say $50 into helping the cause. If there are a few more like minded happy to fund it, we can band together and donate...

These speakers seem just odd. The passive radiator is too small. Simple physics says that it needs to have an area significantly larger than the bass driver - its whole point is to take over shifting air at frequencies below where the bass driver has given up. I have a horrid feeling that the...

I hope it was clear that by “square wave” I meant a theoretical square wave as I went on to distinguish it from the “as reproduced” signal. Nothing has zero rise time. Testing amplifiers does require that you are clear about the spectral energy content of your test signals. Whilst it is...

I'm starting to think that there is a need for some serious forensic analysis of what is going on inside these AVRs. We have been concentrating on questions from the DAC onwards, and it looks more and more as if there are significant questions to be answered about the digital chain as well...

Yeah, all except for one. x86. Which is another great misstep of history. Curiously the RISC theory does not have the world to itself in performance. Cache performance and in particular pressure on the I cache can make for some interesting effects. Get enough smarts into instruction decode and...

Egads. The sun will be cold before the Gnu Hurd ever happens. I remember when the effort started. There were some serious missteps in the way that was run. Linux just steamed past them and never even noticed. Which is a great pity. It could have been very different.