I have a wry smile now reading your posts.
Keith
Keith
My condolences.I will buy my Wireworld Silver Eclipse
Difference is, to get a wine credential (like WSET, MS, MW...) or even to judge in major competitions, you have to show that you can do proper evaluations blind.There is a separate thread for discussing cables. But this is a topic with a clear, objective answer: Any perceived difference between two properly-made cables disappears when conducting a properly controlled blind test. If you think you hear a difference, it is in your head - there is also a separate thread about this phenomenon ("psychoacoustics").
To address the wine issue, this is likewise an area filled to the bring with shysters, scam artists, and people who get off on huffing their on farts. Plenty of blind tests showing that oenophiles don't have nearly the distinguished palettes they think they do. Pour such a person a glass of $20 wine and a glass of $400 wine and he'll invariably prefer the $400 wine. Pour two such glasses without disclosing the price or product name and such preferences miraculously disappear.
It's still a venerable font of bullshit and hilarious frauds - a business and a hobby that brings out the absolute worst in people, and you can absolutely fool even those credentialed wine-experts by waving your arms around and spewing bullshit. And there's the whole field of wine accessories that's every bit as nonsensical as anything in the audiophile world. The entire endeavour is ultimately based on the same pretentious bullshit that the audiophile world is - the delusion that your senses are far more sensitive than they actually are, that having a "golden ear" or a "golden tongue" makes you a smarter, more refined, more interesting, or better person, and the end result - insufferable people wasting money and fetishizing their ability to show off how refined they are over just enjoying a good meal, or a good piece of music - is the same. I'm not giving any respect to people who participate in perpetuating those fallacies, regardless of whether or not they've had some kind of formal training.Difference is, to get a wine credential (like WSET, MS, MW...) or even to judge in major competitions, you have to show that you can do proper evaluations blind.
In audio, all you have to do is wave your hands around, tell a good story, and regurgitate the bullshit that the ripoff artists spew.
Comparison of the two is a bit insulting to those who work very hard in the wine world to do proper analysis.
You are just saying that so that the audio-market crashes and you can finally buy a pair of DanD'Agostino's Relentless Epic1600 MonoAmps...It is merely foolish
but even at $8K, they still ain't a bargain!... something that can be had for 1/10th or 1/100th the price...
I won't argue that there's far too much pretense and fraud in the commercial end. Looking at a magazine like Wine Spectator is a nauseating experience for me. My fights in the past with Robert Parker (who to me is the exemplar of everything wrong in the fine wine world) were stuff of legends.It's still a venerable font of bullshit and hilarious frauds - a business and a hobby that brings out the absolute worst in people, and you can absolutely fool even those credentialed wine-experts by waving your arms around and spewing bullshit. And there's the whole field of wine accessories that's every bit as nonsensical as anything in the audiophile world. The entire endeavour is ultimately based on the same pretentious bullshit that the audiophile world is - the delusion that your senses are far more sensitive than they actually are, that having a "golden ear" or a "golden tongue" makes you a smarter, more refined, more interesting, or better person, and the end result - insufferable people wasting money and fetishizing their ability to show off how refined they are over just enjoying a good meal, or a good piece of music - is the same. I'm not giving any respect to people who participate in perpetuating those fallacies, regardless of whether or not they've had some kind of formal training.
Well, you don't see the bottle, but you have to be able to check the color(s) in the wine, don't you? It holds very key info...... you still have to name variety, region, age, winemaking styles, oak types, the works, all blind.
Absolutely. "Blind" doesn't mean "no visual examination," it means you don't have any knowledge of what's in the glass other than... what's in the glass. Looking at the bottle is the equivalent of peeking in audio evaluation.Well, you don't see the bottle, but you have to be able to check the color(s) in the wine, don't you? It holds very key info...
Many guys get excited anytime someone talk about to buy a cable the costs more than 50 dollars as If the money belong to them. What is going on here!?I have a wry smile now reading your posts.
Keith
That's some very serious wine knowledge. It's almost unfathomable that a person could amass such a huge amount of knowledge and then prove it taste testing with no knowledge.I won't argue that there's far too much pretense and fraud in the commercial end. Looking at a magazine like Wine Spectator is a nauseating experience for me. My fights in the past with Robert Parker (who to me is the exemplar of everything wrong in the fine wine world) were stuff of legends.
BUT... you can't bullshit your way to a WSET cert. Or an MW. Or even an MS. Want an enology degree from Davis or Cornell? You can't bullshit your way to that. either. Sorry, that just doesn't happen. You have to pass rigorous blind tasting tests. Wave your hands all you want, you still have to name variety, region, age, winemaking styles, oak types, the works, all blind.
You can't bullshit your way to a Doctor of Chiropractic either, but that doesn't mean that chiropractic medicine isn't 90% bullshit.I won't argue that there's far too much pretense and fraud in the commercial end. Looking at a magazine like Wine Spectator is a nauseating experience for me. My fights in the past with Robert Parker (who to me is the exemplar of everything wrong in the fine wine world) were stuff of legends.
BUT... you can't bullshit your way to a WSET cert. Or an MW. Or even an MS. Want an enology degree from Davis or Cornell? You can't bullshit your way to that. either. Sorry, that just doesn't happen. You have to pass rigorous blind tasting tests. Wave your hands all you want, you still have to name variety, region, age, winemaking styles, oak types, the works, all blind.
I'd like to see evidence of that.You can't bullshit your way to a Doctor of Chiropractic either, but that doesn't mean that chiropractic medicine isn't 90% bullshit.
But you don't need to do that for an EE certification. IME, most EEs have zero knowledge, training, or experience in sensory evaluation. A few do, a very few. @j_j , @amirm, @Floyd Toole, @Sean Olive, and... hmm, I can't think of any more.And you can't bullshit your way to an electrical engineering degree, and some trained audio engineers can detect small differences in sound reproduction most listeners will miss.
...
In terms of inflated egos, willingness to spend obscene amounts of money on things that don't matter, and self-delusion, audiophilia and oenophilia are pretty comparable.
Amir once reviewed some $5 RCA cableAnd I like and own a BJC and compared it with a friend's expensive cable on his expensive set. Same sound. BJC LC-1 Stereo Audio Cables (Black, 3 Foot) https://a.co/d/izTYkGn
(despite being or not a junk) Here in Brazil, we call "Coca KS" the 290ml glass bottle of coca-cola. And many many people say it is better than the canned and plastic bottled coca-cola, even the content being the same. Period.Amir once reviewed some $5 RCA cable
that likely performs as well as BJC in 99% of cases (not requiring very low capacitance).
I still buy $50 BJC because I like the construction, the look and feel, and the company. Paying 10x the cost for comparable performance does not make economic sense, but I am happier with my purchase. I don’t like the look of those thin, flaccid cables - I like thicker Belden coax.
That’s often the case with linear power supplies and other premium audio goods. Sometimes aesthetics and perceptions of non-functional characteristics (e.g., biases) do make for more satisfying results, even when the objective performance is the same.
Amir helps us decide, using data, if the non-functional aspects are worth the difference to us, or not.
Amir cares 99% about electrons crossing a copper wire and the inteferences this flow suffers due isolation of the wire etc. I think he has no intentions to focus and spend his time in subjetivities like coca-cola bottled in glass, plastic or aluminiun. I take his analysis in count, together with other things, like my personal taste, the built of the product and the price. For example, I have a Pioneer VSX LX 503. His new brothers 504 and 505 was detonated on Amir tests and I agree with those results take mine as reference. Hot as Hell etc etc. But was the one with 11 channels processing I could buy. PeriodAmir once reviewed some $5 RCA cable
that likely performs as well as BJC in 99% of cases (not requiring very low capacitance).
I still buy $50 BJC because I like the construction, the look and feel, and the company. Paying 10x the cost for comparable performance does not make economic sense, but I am happier with my purchase. I don’t like the look of those thin, flaccid cables - I like thicker Belden coax.
That’s often the case with linear power supplies and other premium audio goods. Sometimes aesthetics and perceptions of non-functional characteristics (e.g., biases) do make for more satisfying results, even when the objective performance is the same.
Amir helps us decide, using data, if the non-functional aspects are worth the difference to us, or not.
Amir cares 99% about electrons crossing a copper wire and the inteferences this flow suffers due isolation of the wire etc. I think he has no intentions to focus and spend his time in subjetivities like coca-cola bottled in glass, plastic or aluminiun.