Do you believe in Magic?

Actually, if you can read and comprehend plain English, it happened exactly the way Bryon said. He went through 6 of the so called "explanations" of your products. I haven't had that good of a laugh in some time. This is coming from someone that believes in cables, tweeks, etc. and has a strong background in science.

Csmgolf, if you don't mind too much I'm going to quote you from a thread discussing cables on Agon last year. I couldn't have said it better myself.

"...listen for yourself. That is the only way. Assuming that we know how to measure everything that the human hearing mechanism can distinguish is incredibly arrogant. Fortunately, at one time, someone proved that the world is not flat. All of the scientists and people who knew beyond any doubt otherwise, thought him a fool for holding such beliefs without ever investigating themselves. Again, listen for yourself. It can be done with little to no investment other than time and an open mind."

03-15-12: Cbw723
Bryon, I agree with one of your earlier comments: they should just say “we don’t know why it works, but it does.” And then offer a money back guarantee.

That is my feeling also. To me it is a turnoff when an explanation is presented that I know to be techno-gibberish.

Concerning the broader issues that are being argued/discussed, IMO the bottom line is as I stated early in this thread:

01-22-12: Almarg
Each issue and each tweak should be considered on an individual basis, and broad latitude should be allowed for the possibility that subtle and counter-intuitive phenomena may be at play. But that latitude should remain WITHIN FINITE BOUNDS OF PLAUSIBILITY!!

As a fellow audiophile said in a thread here some years ago, one doesn't have to jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet without a parachute in order to determine that it's not a good idea. Some things are sufficiently implausible that they can be discounted "a priori".

Regards,
-- Al

03-16-12: Csmgolf
Actually, if you can read and comprehend plain English, it happened exactly the way Bryon said. He went through 6 of the so called "explanations" of your products.

Thank you for that, Csmgolf. Geoff's "recollection" of events is distorted. Maybe he can invent a Machina Dynamica device to reduce that kind of distortion... "Codename Reality" ?

03-16-12: Geoffkait
In your own words you were being confrontational and I responded.

Those are not my own words, Geoff. When I used the word 'confrontation,' here is what I said...

03-14-12: Bryoncunningham
[My last post] was a request to explain why it is you fail to provide substantive information about the products you design and sell, unlike several other well regarded manufacturers who contribute to A'gon. You may experience that as an attack. I would call it a confrontation.

That is a far cry from calling myself "confrontational," which of course would imply that the problem lies within me. And I confronted you only AFTER you ignored my repeated attempts to engage you in a substantive conversation. Your attempt to invert the sequence of events, turning the effect into the cause, will not persuade anyone, since if you haven't noticed, the whole thing is written down.

You used veiled insults and innuendo, and continue to do so.

I would not call my insults veiled, but I'm happy you see them that way. Again, I would invite you to examine my posting history. You will see that I don't make a habit of insulting people. On the contrary, I make an effort to treat people with respect. As a result, I have had MANY perfectly courteous conversations with other A'gon members, including those with whom I disagree.

I fully acknowledge that I have not treated you with respect. If we assume for the moment that my characterization of myself is accurate, and I do generally treat people with respect, then why haven't I treated you that way? Because, Geoff, in this thread, YOU did not treat other people with respect. Again, your comments were both provocative and obscure. That happens to be a combination that irritates me, having spent years in the company of "literary intellectuals," many of whom fit that description. IME, the intellectuals who relied on provocative obscurity were invariably concealing intense insecurity about their own ideas with their cryptic conversational style, in the hope that colleagues would confuse the Obscure for the Profound.

For years I thought you could win over such people with calm, rational, open discourse. That is sometimes true. But when repeated efforts to reasonably engage a person are met with more provocative obscurity, you are left with two choices: ignore them or confront them. I sometimes choose the one, sometimes the other. Obviously I chose to confront you, and now I'm afraid your obscurantism and other foibles have been dragged into the light of day. Don't be disheartened, though... There will always be those who confuse the Obscure with the Profound, and that ensures a steady stream of customers.

It's also worth noting that my irritation with obscurantism isn't merely academic. Obscurantism may be harmless in the audio world, but it isn't harmless in the real world. In the real world, obscurantism thrives in the form of political propaganda and economic deception. If you need an illustration of this, look no further than the recent financial crisis. The world was brought to the brink of economic oblivion by the actions of people armed with Multifactor Derivatives, Collateralized Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps, and a host of other financial instruments designed with one thing in mind: Obscurantism.

Obscurantism is used to control what people think, or more to the point, what people DON'T think. That was Orwell's great insight in 1984, that obscurantism makes certain ways of thinking impossible, and that effect can be used to any end whatsoever. As he predicted, in industrialized nations of instant communication, obscurantism is a weapon. It may be THE weapon.

Returning to the world of audio...

What was that term you used, close minded?.....hmmmmm.

Does it not strike you as strange that you are the only person on this thread who has said this, and that at least 4 other posters have said the EXACT OPPOSITE? You are sadly out of touch with the people around you, Geoff.

Time to start designing "Codename Reality"

Bryon

03-16-12: Sabai
Science is often used in the service of those with special agendas. Science can be used and has historically been systematically used to arrive at pre-determined conclusions. Science is often fraudulent. So-called "scientific scrutiny" is often just an exercise in smoke and mirrors.

I don't disagree that SOME scientific research fits this description. But your characterization gives the impression that you believe that a LARGE FRACTION of scientific research is, to use your word, fraudulent. If that is what you believe, then I would say that you have probably been exposed to a MISrepresentative sample of scientific research.

Consider the following discoveries, each paradigmatic examples of scientific research...

The Periodic Table
Newtonian mechanics
Copernican Heliocentrism
The Germ Theory of disease
Electromagnetism
Evolution of Species by Natural Selection
Atomic Theory
Radioactivity
Special Relativity
General Relativity
Plate tectonics
DNA
Thermodynamics
Radio waves
X rays
Quantum Mechanics
Penicillin
Anesthesia

...and on and on it goes.

For each of these historic discoveries, there is a veritable mountain of subsequent scientific research. Tens of thousands of scientists working on every continent over centuries. Can you possibly believe that a large fraction of these researchers are conducting fraudulent research? If science is that fraudulent, how did it eradicate Polio? How did it put a man on the moon? How did it put cell phones in the hands of 87% of the world's population?

For whatever you think they're worth, those kinds of achievements would be all but impossible if the scientific research upon which those technologies are based were in fact fraudulent.

I suspect that you've had some bad experiences with folks who you identify as scientists, and that has colored your perception of science more generally. If those experiences were with physicians, as your examples seem to suggest, then I would say this: A physician is rarely a scientist, either in temperament or in training. Judging the whole of science on the basis of some abusive medical practices is like judging the whole of world literature on the basis of comic books.

Bryon