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tfarney

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  1. Pity I don't have your email, Bob. I could correct you directly. Peace out. Tim
  2. JC - I'm pretty sure Ashley left before he was "banned." BobH - I cannot allow you to speak that way about Guinness, but we'll have to take it up somewhere else...Art of Sound, perhaps(?) ...because... Matt - As The Eagles said, I'm already gone. Tim
  3. ""Do you agree that members here should not be allowed to link to information on another site if Chris thinks it is competitive?" This is a blatant mischaracterization and couldn't be further from the truth. This is your only warning that these types of comments will not be tolerated." OK, here you go. From a post this morning in which I was trying to answer a direct request from Peter: "Peter... "Ok, that shouldn't be addressed to me. At least I don't want it to. So Tim, could you hand me a link to that file please ?" I was not addressing you, Peter, I was talking to Chris. A site not operated by Ashley or his "marketing team," but by a rather nice young man named Darren..." Do you see the rather obvious hole in that post, between "I was talking to Chris..." and "a site not operated by Ashley..."? That's where you removed the link that Peter specifically asked for. The link to the competitive site. No email. No private message. No explanation. A chunk of my post just disappeared. Exactly how did I blatantly mischaracterize that? Ah well...my wife thinks I was spending too much time on the internet anyway. Tim
  4. Do you agree that Ashley has a very strong, perhaps rigid point of view and that his arguments can be relentless and demanding? Perhaps even more demanding of others' arguments than his own? Ok, that's one thing. Do you agree that the behavior described above, devoid of personal attacks and the kind of blatant self-promotion that has gone unchecked in others is call for banishment and a sound beating here where he can no longer defend himself? Do you agree that members here should not be allowed to link to information on another site if Chris thinks it is competitive? There are several things going on here. I doubt you agree with all of them. Tim
  5. And I highly recommend against slagging those from whom you have taken, for no good reason, the ability to respond. Very, very bad form. And yes, I was making a point. I still am. And you're missing it completely. Let's move on from Ashley, if you don't mind. And please understand that if, in the future, I take a position here at odds with the management here and its sponsors, that I am promoting nothing other than what I see as a bit of good sense. I suspect I'll leave you alone to discuss your untested phantoms for awhile, though. At the moment I'm a bit pissed. Tim
  6. OK, I accept that the files are his. And perhaps he has more to do with Darren's site than I might think. I have no answer for Coops saying, once again, that Ashley has been banned from sites all over the net. I have been HERE. I have known him HERE. And I know exactly how he behaved here: Strong opinions, strongly and repeatedly stated. A deliberate avoidance of naming and overtly promoting his own products. An utter failure to stoop to name-calling. His behavior has been better than some who remain, yet I understand that today, a few days after he left on his own, he has been blocked from this site. So Ashley is gone. We don't have him to blame for our friction anymore. But I continue to have a point of view that is probably an annoyance to you and your advertisers, a point of view I had long before I knew who Ashley James is. Let's see how we do. Let's see if the problem was Ashley or the disagreement. Let's see how long it takes before I get blocked. By the way, if I put a relevant link to head-fi or AudioKarma or Steve Hoffman's music forum in a post, are you going to remove them from my post as well, or is it just hddaudio that I'm not allowed to mention? Just trying to get a grip on the rules.... Tim
  7. I think "audibility" is at the heart of the controversy and IS the point. It is certainly the point of all the discussion. "Dueling engineers" is a sideshow at best. I grow weary of this. Tim
  8. "Ok, that shouldn't be addressed to me. At least I don't want it to. So Tim, could you hand me a link to that file please ?" I was not addressing you, Peter, I was talking to Chris. A site not operated by Ashley or his "marketing team," but by a rather nice young man named Darren, who was a member and contributor here until he mentioned his new site, at which point his access to Computer Audiophile was suddenly cut off without explanation. Evidently Chris considered him a competitor. Fair enough. What's not fair is the idea that his site, his tests and his opinions are those of Ashley and that he is a part of Ashley's "marketing team." Yes, Chris, I have contributed an article and a handful of posts to that site. It is a fraction of what I have contributed to this one. And what I had in the mind in the way of stepping up was not dueling engineers. I'm sure I could find engineers to support almost any point of view. What I had in mind was you running your own tests. Listening tests (trust OUR ears). If you think the files posted by Darren are Ashley's and are dishonest, you would be doing us all a great public service by demonstrating the audibility of that which Ashley has tried to deceive us into believing is inaudible. Find your own engineer, create own your files, run your own test. Darren described his methodology and posted his files for all to hear, sometime between his classes at the university. I don't know if they're bogus or not. Maybe it's a ruse. Maybe they are all exactly the same. Show us something different. Measure. Test. Report. This is a commercial audio site. I think that's kind of the point. Tim
  9. "Hi Tim - I'm guessing your Hi Tim - I'm guessing your comparing Ashley's files that his engineer friend made for him. I just can't take his little experiment seriously since he clearly has an agenda to sell more speakers and bash any true high end engineering. I do have a question for you though. In your opinion how would you know if jitter was or wasn't a problem? What would you hear or not hear?" A) If Ashley's agenda were to sell more speakers and bash any true high end engineering, he would have been mentioning his speakers by name and making competitive claims for them. And I'm hard-pressed to understand why his agenda would be to bash high-end engineering when his own products are so full of quality engineering themselves. What he bashes is over-engineering that he believes is inaudible. What he bashes is what he believes is not sound engineering, but audiophile salesmanship. You do not have to agree, but there is no need to mis-characterize his agenda. B) IF I heard a difference, in this case I would know the simulated jitter is the difference because it was the only thing that was different. The essence of objective measurement. Change one variable and one variable only. In a proper test, if there is an audible difference, it can be attributed to that variable. If there is none, that variable is not audible to the listener. But this was not a proper ABX, so the only thing that was really determined was that I didn't hear a difference in a few listens, lost patience, and quickly moved on to listening to music. I thought I made that clear. Regardless, I still would recommend that the OP, who said he could not hear differences, but that it all sounded good, should relax and enjoy the music, and NOT spend $1200 of his fixed income on products of questionable value to reduce artifacts of questionable audibility. And I would expect you, and anyone with a modicum of perspective and responsibility would do the same instead of fencing with the ghost of Ashley. If you don't trust others' engineers or the results of their testing there is a simple path open to you. Engage your own engineers. Do your own testing. If you believe these artifacts are audible in equipment that lacks what you consider to be true "high-end engineering," whatever that means, test it. Find a re-clocker or a DAC or a piece of software that you believe audibly reduces jitter and ABX exactly the same file through the same equipment changing just that one variable. It is easy and cheap to sit back and question someone else's expertise, methodology and sincerity when your own is not on the line. Step up. Tim
  10. This may very well be paranoid, but given the recent history of this board, a discussion opening with "It all sounds the same," and continuing with "I am actually trying to save up for an Off-Ramp TurboIII w/ Superclock 4 and the mega battery ($1,200 should do it.). But, most of my income is from IRAs and we all know what happend to them. If it weren't for my pension and Social Security, I would be living under a bridge," is a bit suspect. It could very easily be a troll strategically pushing buttons to stir up a stink here on CA. I'll assume you're sincere, but answer carefully. I doubt your hearing is the problem, if you can hear a difference between lossless and lossy files. I test to 14.5khz and can't hear the difference between lossless and 320kbps. Personally, I doubt there IS a problem. There is no analog signal, nothing that can be recognized as "music" by your audio system, until the digital data has been converted to analog in your DAC. Therefore, as long as the data stream is bit-perfect to the DAC, the zeros and ones are identical, regardless of the playback format or software you use. The only possible variable is jitter, and if you don't hear jitter, you have a lot of company. I spent a bit of time last night comparing files from another board that had their signal voltage modified to emulate the effects of jitter at various levels in both a flat jitter spectrum and sloping jitter spectrum (don't ask me to explain that part). Evidently sloping puts the jitter where the music is and is much more detrimental. Regardless, after a few very careful listens, I can't tell you which ones are jittered. I can't identify the best or the worst. The sample used was the first 45 seconds of Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me," and all I could hear was two spare, beautiful guitar parts, wonderful piano, and Norah's lovely voice. So I stopped listening for jitter, loaded up the whole file, and listened to the music instead. That's what I recommend you do. And I most enthusiastically DO NOT recommend that you spend $1200 of your Social Security on the reduction of digital artifacts you have already found that you do not hear. Other people may hear them, and be compelled to slay them with magic boxes. It sounds like you're good to go. Go buy that Norah Jones album instead. You'll get much more musical pleasure from it and it will cost $1185 less. Tim ON EDIT: Yes, by all means, turn off the upsampling. I don't know if it is killing the emotion in your music or not, but you can't hear it anyway, so turn it off; why take the risk? Personally, I think if you can't get the emotion from the music with a pair of earbuds and an iPod, it's your heart that is mid-fi, not your gear, but not everyone agrees with that point of view.
  11. I'm a pretty big fan of industrial design myself. It's a part of the reason why I like Apple products so much. That Classe is gorgeous. Pride of ownership? I can't imagine how you could avoid it. (the other) Tim
  12. I don't think all electronic components sound alike, just really, really close. And I don't think you necessarily have to get to an $8,000 Classe to get that last little improvement. Here's a very common example you can go hear at Best Buy. If you listen closely enough, long enough, you will hear a bit of midrange "warmth," for lack of a better term, in Pioneer Elite receivers, and more of an open, clear quality in the high-current, better Yamaha stuff. I won't even say one is better than the other. It's so subtle I'll call it a matter of taste, though I suspect the Yamaha is more transparent. If I had it to do today, I'd probably pass go and head straight for Cambridge Audio. I think they get it absolutely right at a reasonable price point. Tino -- I don't have a studio background, I have a musical and commercial production background, which has put me in a lot of studios over the years. The midfield monitors I had in mind were custom built for the two studios I had in mind, and the amps and active crossovers were outside of the cabinets in a rack, a tweaker's dream ...but for a simpler solution, something like the Dynaudio Air 20, self-contained 3-way active at around $6K a pair is worth a listen. The woofers are only 10", though and to get the larger than life scale of big floor standers you'll probably still need a well-integrated sub, but for speed accuracy, integration, imaging and most importantly, resolution, I'd put my money on them against almost any high-end passive box speakers I've heard, regardless of the size and cost of the box. And while I haven't heard them, given the design principles they're based upon, I'd expect very high-end performance from AVI ADM 9.1's with sub. I have every reason to expect the most of them. Clay -- "The trouble starts when an objectivist tries to insist that these opinions are NOT valid unless they have data to back them up, IOW, trying to insist that only their approach to developing opinions is valid." Sometimes. And sometimes the trouble starts when subjectivists aren't subjective at all, when they present their opinions as absolutes, declaring the clear superiority of their gear and only calling themselves subjectivists to avoid the need for evidence to support their declared superiority. IN MY OPINION. In any case, it is all easily addressed. We can have measurement and trust our ears at once. It's called the blind listening test. The ultimate trust of your ears. Tim
  13. "I hate to say it, but I have yet to hear the gear at a mid-fi shop match the fidelity of the gear in the high-end shop." -- But have you ever heard the electronics from the mid-fi shop playing the same recordings and driving the same speakers in the same room? Even that is not an ABX test, but it is the only test that will give you even a compromised opportunity to judge "mid-fi" against "high-end." I have done the test and concluded that the entire mid-fi/high-end gap is a myth. I have listened to high-end sources and speakers powered by "mid-fi" AV receivers. I have disconnected a rack of high-end gear from a very high-end CD player and a very high-end pair of speakers and substituted a cheap, all-digital receiver. I have listened for differences in DACs through reference headphones driven by dedicated, "high-end" headphone amps, and trust me, or trust a whole world full of studio engineers -- that is the way to listen for the small stuff. And I have concluded that the overwhelming majority of fidelity is in the recordings and the transducers, that the stuff in the middle has reached such a point of maturity that, while there ARE differences, in competently executed gear they are so insignificant WHEN THE POWER IS MORE THAN SUFFICIENT FOR THE LOAD, that they would be unlikely to be recognized at all in blind testing. I put that sentence up there in all caps because it's important. An audiophile friend of mine was hearing things in his system, built around a very expensive 30-watt amp, that weren't right. I went over to his house with a very common, inexpensive AV receiver with 100 watts per channel, substituted it, and the problem was gone. After a week or so of listening, he concluded that, while my cheap receiver opened a door to much greater clarity in his system, it lacked a certain warmth and richness. He's right, of course. I like to call that warmth and richness he seeks harmonic distortion, but he went off in search of it anyway, looking for much more powerful esoteric amps. These are the "experiences in this hobby that have helped form (my) beliefs." And believing as I do, it is sometimes difficult to see someone ask for advice only to be rushed by magic box merchants and their devotees and to be directed to upgrade their wire, their DAC, their clock, their amp...when I so firmly and sincerely believe that it is all piss in the wind compared to better speakers, a good pair of headphones, or adequate headroom. The experiences above are mostly related to helping friends. Most of my experience is with pro and semi-pro recording and performance gear. And that experience tells me that the better stuff kicks high-end booty every time. If you want to upgrade your system, a significant step up in passive speakers, well-matched to your amp (power to load. synergy is mostly nonsense) is the best single improvement you can make. But they'll never reach the speed, clarity, and resolution of good actives. I've heard several very high-end floor-standers. What they have on a pair of top-notch 6" active monitors and a well-integrated sub is scale, and...perhaps...a rather pleasant and natural-sounding integration of sound stage (this may require some further explanation, if you're interested). Everything else goes to the better active monitors. Everything. Ashley is right about that one. Custom mid-field studio systems that actually cost nearly as much as the big "high-end" floor standers? No freaking contest. I could walk you into a virtually unknown studio and play you a custom, 3-way, active midfield monitoring system that would make Watt Puppies live up to their name. YMMV. MHO. :) :) Tim
  14. Not sure I'd even rush into the external DAC. I don't know the Mini, but the innards of a Mac laptop are remarkably quiet, and the analog that comes out is surprisingly good. It may exceed the quality of those CD jukeboxes and be all you'll ever need. One other thing I'd do, though. Get an internet connection to the back of that server, wirelessly or otherwise. For discovering new music, internet radio is the greatest thing since toilet paper on a roll. Tim
  15. That was pretty brilliant, markr, no pebbles required. I'm not planning on going anywhere unless the balance continues to shift. But I'm just not interested in hanging in places that are dominated by the traditional "high end." I've been there. I'm a member of the Art of Sound, an English forum populated by a high-end tube and vinyl crowd. I don't contribute much anymore. I gave it a good shot. I tried to be gentle in my opinions, I peppered every post with MHO, YMMV, :) ...but I could not be gentle enough and still express what I truly believe. I came back here for refuge, but it has started looking like CA is becoming AOS with a computer front end, and if that is the way it's going, I won't belong here. And I'm sure I won't be alone. If CA can maintain some kind of balance, that will be great. If it gets to the point, like AOL did, where expressing my beliefs is just raging against the overwhelming majority, and any opinion I express, no matter how carefully, is a challenge to the prevailing belief, well, there isn't really much point in hanging around, is there? I often think I should go start a blog where the primary subject is the art, and the gear is secondary at best. But I don't know if that's even realistic. Alll these boards seem to end up dominated by equipment discussions. Boys and their toys. It's hard to get around it. Tim
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