As a recovering addict (car stereo....leave me alone...I had lots of windshield time in a past life), I've tended towards an occasional foray into the home audio game. Just long enough to get what I consider acceptable sound, and get out.
I'm not sure when this got started, but I saw nothing of it during my previous expedition in the mid-90's. I've been quite literally astonished to learn of the amount of items sold and expounded upon by what would be otherwise reputable audio component purveyors that can have, as defined by the laws of physics, no effect whatsoever. In no arena is this more evident than cables. Did I miss something? Have home electronics now superseded the limitations of physics, electromagnetism and forged some new kind of science that confounds and eludes our most complicated test equipment? Are human ears now better than precision test gear? Perhaps if, and only if, they have been properly trained by hours of listening music reproduced on ungodly expensive gear; so sensitive even, that they can detect with ease the fact that an interconnect has been swapped end for end (as a stupendous number of forum trolls attest)?
Now I'm reading that these companies, these paragons of science and leadership are selling at HUGE cost, directional interconnect cables!!! As if the electrons they snare have a preference in their path to earth. Some are even claiming, and I do not exaggerate here, that the process by which the conductor wire was formed can impart sonic qualities which are undetectable by anything other than subjective listening. So profound is this process, that it is sometimes necessary to cryogenically treat the wires so the grain of the metal crystals is relieved, further improving their....their....uhh. Yeah.
What happened? Is skepticism dead? I thought the scientific method won! Something on the order of 4 or 5 centuries ago now. I do not claim to electronic competence in the slightest. But, I did have, as most adults in this country did, physics classes. I got enough Faraday, Coulomb, Maxwell and Ampere to get by, and was indoctrinated in the fundamentals of circuits and the laws of resistance, capacitance, inductance, just like everyone else. Again I ask, what happened? It smells like religion.
PS>Don't get me started on DSD, HiRes, etc. Was Nyquist also disproven or improved upon while I slept? I feel like Rip V...
I'm not sure when this got started, but I saw nothing of it during my previous expedition in the mid-90's. I've been quite literally astonished to learn of the amount of items sold and expounded upon by what would be otherwise reputable audio component purveyors that can have, as defined by the laws of physics, no effect whatsoever. In no arena is this more evident than cables. Did I miss something? Have home electronics now superseded the limitations of physics, electromagnetism and forged some new kind of science that confounds and eludes our most complicated test equipment? Are human ears now better than precision test gear? Perhaps if, and only if, they have been properly trained by hours of listening music reproduced on ungodly expensive gear; so sensitive even, that they can detect with ease the fact that an interconnect has been swapped end for end (as a stupendous number of forum trolls attest)?
Now I'm reading that these companies, these paragons of science and leadership are selling at HUGE cost, directional interconnect cables!!! As if the electrons they snare have a preference in their path to earth. Some are even claiming, and I do not exaggerate here, that the process by which the conductor wire was formed can impart sonic qualities which are undetectable by anything other than subjective listening. So profound is this process, that it is sometimes necessary to cryogenically treat the wires so the grain of the metal crystals is relieved, further improving their....their....uhh. Yeah.
What happened? Is skepticism dead? I thought the scientific method won! Something on the order of 4 or 5 centuries ago now. I do not claim to electronic competence in the slightest. But, I did have, as most adults in this country did, physics classes. I got enough Faraday, Coulomb, Maxwell and Ampere to get by, and was indoctrinated in the fundamentals of circuits and the laws of resistance, capacitance, inductance, just like everyone else. Again I ask, what happened? It smells like religion.
PS>Don't get me started on DSD, HiRes, etc. Was Nyquist also disproven or improved upon while I slept? I feel like Rip V...
