The criticisms that people have of this site are ridiculous. People can be a little worrisome.

[Thomas savage]

I'm the same online as off line , I'm a little more familiar online I guess but if you knew me for a bit in the real world you'd get the same bloke.

I'd happily have anyone read my 6000 odd posts on ASR and be happy with the fact they are representative of me , for good or bad . In fact some folks in my life would do well to do just that.

 

[Ratatoskr]

Relax and listen to the music.

Good advice, this is supposed to be a fun and rewarding hobby. I still remember the magic when I put my first good system together and realised it was possible to come close to recreating the sound of live music at home. This was when Harry Pearson and The Absolute Sound were taken very seriously. SBAF is really a private club of Friends who have similar views and the moderators can be intolerant of visitors who don't respect the rules.

Think of SBAF as your local neighbor dive bar where conversations are between people who know each other. If you have a strong opinion, don't immediately barge in without expecting a regular patron to swing a barstool over your head. Get a lay of the land. Understand local customs. Get to know the people. You don't want to be the guy walking into a Barca pub arguing Ronaldo is way better than Messi. Sometimes it's just not a good fit. It's nothing personal.

If you don't like the way SBAF approaches this hobby no one forces you to visit. I have found very valuable advice there in choosing equipment that works for me. It is the closest thing on the internet to TAS back in the early days. To me that is a good thing others may disagree no need to get bent out of shape one way or the other. Take a break from forums and enjoy some music.

 

[amirm]

I hope you were not involved in Win 8x. What the hell was Ballmer and team thinking with that thing? I guess they thought the future was a phone interface to rule them all. LOL

No, I left two versions back. I don't know the process that was involved for Windows 8. I do know the person they put in charge came from Office team and had no intuition about Windows, PC market, etc.

 

[amirm]

If you don't like the way SBAF approaches this hobby no one forces you to visit.

Well, there is another side to this discussion. Complaining the way they do about our work, creates FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Fortunately we are beyond it but for a while people did not know who to believe. As such, they have done damage to the cause of proper audio science and engineering.

 

[restorer-john]

I do know the person they put in charge came from Office team and had no intuition about Windows, PC market, etc.

Ah, now it makes sense. Probably the same person who created that wretched 'ribbon' for Office 2007? I still miss Office 2002- I knew where every function was, all via 'alt+ a letter' from the top drop downs.

I'm also glad you had nothing to do with the abomination that was Windows 8. They still haven't recovered. The last truly polished product was 7 and it's still a joy to use when I fire it up on an old machine.

 

[Sal1950]

The last truly polished product was 7 and it's still a joy to use when I fire it up on an old machine.

Nope, IMHO the last good Windows OS were 95-XP
After that they slid into hell. LOL

 

[Dialectic]

Nope, IMHO the last good Windows OS were 95-XP
After that they slid into hell. LOL

XP SP2 was good, solid. Windows 7 was fine.

No Windoze 8 or 10 for me, except on a dual-boot basis. My main computer is a 2006 piece-of-crap Dell laptop running stripped-down Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I have a Mac for running BACCH.

 

[Sal1950]

XP SP2 was good, solid. Windows 7 was fine.

No Windoze 8 or 10 for me, except on a dual-boot basis. My main computer is a 2006 piece-of-crap Dell laptop running stripped-down Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I have a Mac for running BACCH.

IMO Win 10's biggest issues are the updates and it's bloat. You need a high powered box and SSD to get decent speed out of it. I only boot into 10 once or twice a week to update Quicken and a couple other things, otherwise for the last 20 some years my entire computer life has been Linux. Never trusted Win's security, it always had holes a mile wide., not sure about Win 10, but I know and trust Linux.

 

[Zerimas]

FWIW, cogging is supposed to have been eliminated in the latest and greatest Panasonic SL-1200 and SP-10 decks. For my part it was never something I ever experienced with any DD deck--at least as far as I noticed any effect that was supposed to 'sound' like cogging.

Basically all motors exhibit "cogging" (yes, even glorious synchronous AC motors) just due to the fact that they have separate poles and spaces between them. I also think that Hitachi designed a motor they termed the "Unitorque" which was supposed to eliminate this "problem". It totally exists, but I don't believe it is audible at all and especially not to the extent that the audiophile press claimed it was. Not an engineer, so I could be mistaken.[/QUOTE]

 

[Dialectic]

IMO Win 10's biggest issues are the updates and it's bloat. You need a high powered box and SSD to get decent speed out of it. I only boot into 10 once or twice a week to update Quicken and a couple other things, otherwise for the last 20 some years my entire computer life has been Linux. Never trusted Win's security, it always had holes a mile wide., not sure about Win 10, but I know and trust Linux.

Good for you. I did cheat a bit and put a 2010 vintage Intel SSD in the Dell. I continue to boot it up in about 9 seconds and do what I need to do on ASR, Gmail, etc.

Aside from the bloat and the security flaws, Windoze and Mac both remind me of work. I don't want to use the same OS at home that I use in the office all day.

 

[agtp]

Yep, and keyboard cowboys will say things that would get them knocked on their asses in person.

“Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right.” ― Alexander Berkman,

In those instances where you felt violence was the answer, what was your position that was being challenged? Could you not defend it on an intellectual level?

Let's not single out SBAF, the internet is full of audio sites that don't know their butts from a hole in the ground. Head-Fi has a Sound Science header, just don't get too objective on it, along with it's DBT censored Cable header. Things are the same at WBF and it's "Measure Based" header, don't get too objective there and I won't go into it's history or Amir's and mine there. Not much better at CA/AS, put on the gloves if you want to talk science there. LOL
Nice to have a home here that knows the difference between science and voodoo.. Amazing how far it's come here in the last 3 1/2 years, I remember when we were better known as "The Dirty Dozen".

just don't get too objective on it
don't get too objective there
put on the gloves if you want to talk science there.

This site suffers the same issues you mention.

If you want to talk science here, you can’t be too rigid or demanding or you risk censorship/banning. There is accommodation for a certain level of anti-science thinking here; if not, the site will lose a good number of members. Sites are primarily concerned with maintaining followers and increasing site traffic, clicks and views. The science and proposed mission statements are secondary.

Question and inquiry should never be silenced. Only those who hold indefensible positions fear and object to questioning.

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” -Thomas Berger

 

[agtp]

Amirm, which OS version are you currently using? Brief thoughts? I’ve been thinking of going back to Windows.

 

[Zerimas]

I


Purr1n also allows transparently racist vitriol to be directed toward Amir on SBAF.

Are you referring to the "Amiristan" bit or the "Dragon" part? In any case neither are good. "Amiristan" isn't even clever. If he want to paint us as oppressive and conform to proper Internet Trolling and Meme regulations he should have called this place "AmiriKKKa". It ticks all the boxes: offensive, already an established meme, and it is actually a pun (it sounds like a "America" lololololol).

All in all I give a SBAF a 0/10. Transparently racist and not even an attempt at a ****** internet joke. #EpicFail.

 

[amirm]

If you want to talk science here, you can’t be too rigid or demanding or you risk censorship/banning.

What? That is not remotely true.

What is true is that if you are obnoxious and mean to the other members, then yes, this place is not for you. Read the mission statement. It is very clear on this point:

This is supposed to be a hobby and as such, an enjoyable endeavour. I didn't create this place for people to make enemies of each other just because they can't behave in a professional manner.

There is accommodation for a certain level of anti-science thinking here; if not, the site will lose a good number of members. Sites are primarily concerned with maintaining followers and increasing site traffic, clicks and views. The science and proposed mission statements are secondary.

That is not true. There is no advertising here so click counts and traffic are of no motivation that way. Yes, I like us to be successful so that what we do matters to larger set of audiophiles. And that we can take on larger projects with respect to advancing our understanding of audio such as the case with getting into speaker testing.

I also do not believe in running an orthodox, extremist objectivist site. Go and spend some time in HA forum to get an idea of what that looks like. The lynching that goes on there puts audio beliefs ahead of humanity. And ahead of science by rejecting things like measurements.

So yes, you can say you bought a recommended DAC and you enjoy it more than your old DAC. We have far bigger fish to fry than to go and challenge that person in a double blind test to prove that is the case. I don't want us to be known as a mean and nasty place that people avoid. Just like how I charactrized the HA forum above.

 

[amirm]

Amirm, which OS version are you currently using? Brief thoughts? I’ve been thinking of going back to Windows.

I use Windows 10 on all of my machines. Reliability is very good but update by update, they are breaking features on my laptop. First thing was my hotkey for screen brightness not working starting last year. Now recently they are killing me by reducing the playback volume to levels where I can hardly hear my laptop speakers. Run the "troubleshooting" task and it fixes it so they surely know about this issue as there was no troubleshooting for sound before.

I run a ton of applications on my machine that don't run on anything but Windows so I cannot switch even if I wanted to.

 

[Dialectic]

Are you referring to the "Amiristan" bit or the "Dragon" part? In any case neither are good. "Amiristan" isn't even clever. If he want to paint us as oppressive and conform to proper Internet Trolling and Meme regulations he should have called this place "AmiriKKKa". It ticks all the boxes: offensive, already an established meme, and it is actually a pun (it sounds like a "America" lololololol).

All in all I give a SBAF a 0/10. Transparently racist and not even an attempt at a ****** internet joke. #EpicFail.

I was referring to the Amiristan part. I had not found the ugly China bashing to rise to the level of racism, but I had stopped reading before the word "dragon" appeared.

Yes, SBAF is all in all a rather bizarre and unpleasant place.

I'm quite confident that purr1n/Marv/Merv would not behave that way in my presence and especially not in @Sal1950's. I hope his employer and, if he has any, his offspring never become aware of SBAF.

 

[Zerimas]

I was referring to the Amiristan part. I had not found the ugly China bashing to rise to the level of racism, but I had stopped reading before the word "dragon" appeared.

Yes, SBAF is all in all a rather bizarre and unpleasant place.

I'm quite confident that purr1n/Marv/Merv would not behave that way in my presence and especially not in @Sal1950's. I hope his employer and, if he has any, his offspring never become aware of SBAF.

Maybe he thinks we're like some kind of Soviet state? The kind where subjectivists are shipped of to "camps" for their "counter revolutionary" attitudes? Objectivism=oppression, subjectivism=freedom, bruh. Or at least that is how they think.

But seriously, I am actually curious as to whether there is some kind of correlation between audiophile attitudes and political alignment. It wouldn't surprise me if hardcore subjectivists were actually crypto-fascists. I feel like I'm getting dangerously off-topic.

But seriously, it honestly wouldn't surprise me at all if hardline subjectivist attitudes tended correlate with certain sets of beliefs to an extent that statistically significant. I'm not qualified to design or run such a study, and the people who are don't care.

 

[Sal1950]

Good for you. I did cheat a bit and put a 2010 vintage Intel SSD in the Dell.

I love SSD's, I bought my first 60g Vertex in 2008 and paid a bundle for it. But the speed it brought to booting, loading apps, etc was amazing.
I've been waiting for prices to come down just a bit more before my next build. I want to put togehter a new totally silent box for my music and video server that I hope will last for 15 years. That should about do it for me. LOL

 

[agtp]

What? That is not remotely true.

What is true is that if you are obnoxious and mean to the other members, then yes, this place is not for you. Read the mission statement. It is very clear on this point:

View attachment 30440

This is supposed to be a hobby and as such, an enjoyable endeavour. I didn't create this place for people to make enemies of each other just because they can't behave in a professional manner.


That is not true. There is no advertising here so click counts and traffic are of no motivation that way. Yes, I like us to be successful so that what we do matters to larger set of audiophiles. And that we can take on larger projects with respect to advancing our understanding of audio such as the case with getting into audio testing.

I also do not believe in running an orthodox, extremist objectivist site. Go and spend some time in HA forum to get an idea of what that looks like. The lynching that goes on there puts audio beliefs ahead of humanity. And ahead of science by rejecting things like measurements.

So yes, you can say you bought a recommended DAC and you enjoy it more than your old DAC. We have far bigger fish to fry than to go and challenge that person in a double blind test to prove that is the case. I don't want us to be known as a mean and nasty place that people avoid. Just like how I charactrized the HA forum above.

Hi Amir,

As you've mentioned recently, you can't read all posts. I'll PM a short message a little later describing what I'm referring to.

 

[Dialectic]

Maybe he thinks we're like some kind of Soviet state? The kind where subjectivists are shipped of to "camps" for their "counter revolutionary" attitudes? Objectivism=oppression, subjectivism=freedom, bruh. Or at least that is how they think.

But seriously, I am actually curious as to whether there is some kind of correlation between audiophile attitudes and political alignment. It wouldn't surprise me if hardcore subjectivists were actually crypto-fascists. I feel like I'm getting dangerously off-topic.

But seriously, it honestly wouldn't surprise me at all if hardline subjectivist attitudes tended correlate with certain sets of beliefs to an extent that statistically significant. I'm not qualified to design or run such a study, and the people who are don't care.

I doubt that there is any such correlation. Having been in the bowels of elite social science departments, first as a grad student and then briefly as a person involved in the process of making grants to academics, I tend to believe that there are people on the political left and right who endeavor to proportion their beliefs to the evidence.

Another data point running against your theory: There was an enthusiastic member here who briefly used an obscure fascist (not Nazi, just fascist) symbol as his avatar. I reported it, and Amir and Thomas swiftly took action. I'm not sure if that member is still around.