Your $7,250 speakers cables are crap! Mine cost $43,000.

October 21, 2007 9:43 AM

Journalist Accepts $1 Million Challenge: Do $7250 Cables Sound Better or Not? (Or they could use these $43,000 cables instead). At least, it sounded like acceptance, even to James Randi. But then... maybe not. So while you're waiting to find out if you should spend that much for cables, maybe you can buy something from this collection of fine audiophile products. $400 for a pair tweeters may not be too bad. You can use them with your $350,000 amplifier, and your awesome-looking $100,000 turntable. Make sure you set aside $13,416 for a decent power cable, though, or you're just wasting your money.
posted by The Deej (147 comments total)

Don't miss this blurb where the Pear cables are described as "danceable."
posted by The Deej at 9:48 AM on October 21, 2007

Wow. Monster cables don't seem so overpriced anymore.
posted by dgbellak at 9:52 AM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Eponysterical.
posted by hermitosis at 9:52 AM on October 21, 2007

Most magazines that review audio or music gear are in the business of selling the audience to the highest paying advertisers. So of course they'll make up things like danceable cables. I can only imagine how hard they shat themselves laughing at that one over the editorial bong.
posted by fleetmouse at 9:57 AM on October 21, 2007

But my Brilliant Pebbles are worth every penny, right?
posted by Brocktoon at 10:03 AM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

When I see these kinds of things, especially the Brilliant Pebbles or the CD Stone, I always think I could be rich if I had no conscience.
posted by The Deej at 10:05 AM on October 21, 2007

Brilliant Pebbles = feng shui repackaged. Instead of redirecting the flow of qi, this jar of rocks "acts as both a vibration 'node damper' and EMI/RFI absorber, depending on application, via atomic mechanisms in the crystal structures."

What an amazing scam. Seconding Deej on the money to be made by the amoral.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:13 AM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yes, my heart bleeds for people who make gobs of money through alliance and influence only to lose it through stupidity.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:14 AM on October 21, 2007

Do we really get to call this guy a journalist? It seems that "magazine writer" is much more appropriate. Maybe "ad-copy writer?"
posted by Llama-Lime at 10:17 AM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm a fan of Randi, but I think he's making himself look like the ass with his insistence on the "paranormal" term. Just do the damn double-blind test between cheap cable and expensive cable, watch the Stereophile guys ace it, and leave with your tail between your legs. Hmmm, not likely.

/me owns a modest system endorsed by Stereophile (modest by their standards, that is)
posted by intermod at 10:17 AM on October 21, 2007

As clearly stated, I have designated the Pear claim, by its nature, and by definition, to be a paranormal event.

The cable people seem to have been scared away less by fear of losing and more by Randi and friends being complete thundering self-satisfied dickbags. If this challenge goes ahead, I'm rooting for the shysters.
posted by cillit bang at 10:17 AM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

It wouldn't be hard to make the pear cables sound 'different' then monster cables, maybe not 'better', but you could throw something in there to dampen a specific frequency just enough to be noticeable if you're looking for it. I wonder how Randi expects to control for that?
posted by delmoi at 10:22 AM on October 21, 2007

i'm not sure how you could. A wire is just a wire.
posted by empath at 10:29 AM on October 21, 2007

With oxygen-free gold-plated post tagging, I heard previous MeFi discussions of this topic that I'd never noticed before (1, 2).
posted by RogerB at 10:31 AM on October 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

Damn. I was only using regular copper-plated tag searching.
posted by The Deej at 10:39 AM on October 21, 2007

intermod writes "ust do the damn double-blind test between cheap cable and expensive cable, watch the Stereophile guys ace it, and leave with your tail between your legs."

Yeah, this could be done better. Randi could easily do the test himself with a random group. Just ask Pear to supply the cables.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:42 AM on October 21, 2007

I'm a fan of Randi, but I think he's making himself look like the ass with his insistence on the "paranormal" term. Just do the damn double-blind test between cheap cable and expensive cable, watch the Stereophile guys ace it, and leave with your tail between your legs. Hmmm, not likely.

With a million dollars to be had for free, I really don't understand what's stopping these august journalists from completely acing these trials. Just think, with all that free money, they could have as many bottles of 'Brilliant Pebbles' and Shakti Hallographs as they want -- without even have to worry that people will think that they're suckers because Randi will have paid for them.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:43 AM on October 21, 2007

Randi could easily do the test himself with a random group.

That makes no sense. Randi is arguing for the null hypothesis, so he's saying that his random group *wouldn't* be able to tell the difference. But if someone thinks that the difference is sufficiently discernable, they can have a million dollars simply for being able to reliably identify which is the cheap one, and which is the expensive one.

Just ask Pear to supply the cables.

Pear are now refusing to loan a set of cables to the guy that was championing them by claiming he *could* tell the difference. They surely aren't going to loan Randi a set so that he can prove that his bunch of random non-audiophiles can't tell Stork from Butter.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:49 AM on October 21, 2007

Did anybody expect Michael Fremer to take this test in the first place? As soon as I saw the first announcement on Randi's web page, I knew he was going to back out. He saw that Randi is a stubborn motherfucker, ready to put his money where his mouth is, and begged his buddies over at Pear cables to get his ass out of the fire.

And somehow, he'll come out of this with cred in the audiophile world, because he stood up to that big meanie, James Randi.
posted by god hates math at 11:01 AM on October 21, 2007

I think that the law of diminishing returns definitely comes into play here. Even if they do sound a tiny bit better, is it really worth that much money?

I think for most of us the answer would be no.

I also wanted to say that this post is somewhat eponysterical.
posted by DMan at 11:11 AM on October 21, 2007

People can't even reliably tell apart amplifiers of anything approaching similar specs.

The only time we can tell the difference between cables is when there's something wrong with the cable. It's easily possible to have a cable that's too thin for the power you're putting through it, but as long as the thickness is adequate for the application, you really can't hear much difference.

Electricity in a wire is a lot like water in a hose; you push electrons in one end, which pushes electrons out the other. As long as there aren't any kinks, you'll get a nice smooth flow out the other end. With a speaker wire, the amplifier is essentially vibrating the electrons in the wire, sending impulses down like a fast stuttering valve might with water.

There are two basic effects wire can have on sound; resistance, and capacitance. Resistance can matter: if your wire is too thin and your run is too long, you can't get the proper volume out of it, and it will sound a bit weak and tinny, because bass takes the most power and is absorbed first. Capacitance basically means that the wire can absorb transients a little bit; as the amplifier vibrates on one end of the cable, the wire smooths out the speed of the transients by a tiny, tiny bit.

The resistance problem is easily gotten around just by using thick enough wire; a nice thick lamp cord is just as good as these $7500 jobs. Capacitance is such a small problem that it doesn't appear to be worth solving. You can see just barely see tiny differences with a scope, but no human listener has ever demonstrated that they can reliably differentiate between copper cables of a similar thickness grade that are built and connected properly.

With the amount of money in these hoodoo cables, you can be absolutely certain that if anyone COULD tell the difference, they'd be trumpeting this to the skies. Instead, they have to rely on weasel words and the placebo effect. You see wording like "you will hear", or "many listeners enjoy", or "experience the awesome power of X": it's all subjective and deliberately unprovable.

Speakers matter. Take a long time shopping for speakers, and spend most of your money there. You can drive thousands of dollars in speakers with a $500 receiver and be perfectly happy.

The DAC/receiver can matter, as different manufacturers may aim for different sounds. So you want to sample with the receiver driving your specific speakers.

Apparently, all decently-built amplifiers of the same wattage sound about the same; people haven't ever been able to reliably differentiate between similarly-rated amplifiers that are running within spec at the same volume. Don't buy white-van specials, but don't spend thousands on an amplifier unless you have very special needs.

Cable, as long as it's thick enough for your run length, matters not at all. Use anything you can find. I generally buy my speaker wire at Home Depot; they've got good 12- and 14-gauge wire for quite reasonable prices.
posted by Malor at 11:14 AM on October 21, 2007 [28 favorites]

An Absolute Sound review of a Virtual Dynamics $2000 power cord. (Appropriately named company.)

He compared it to the "Kimber" power cord and boy was he impressed!
------
...the Master Series expanded the dynamic envelope ... extended and tightened up the bass, and threw the door on the treble wide open ... was articulate ... sparklingly “clean.” ... the notes ... seemed to hang in the air just a breath longer than with most power cords ... bigger bass and a hint more lower treble ... enlivened the horns and violin sections in a way that shed more light on inner details without added edginess. Likewise the ominous rumble of the bass drums seemed to emerge from a quieter space on stage and propel its way towards the audience ... seems more detailed and extended and marginally faster and more dynamic ...

Lyle Lovett’s vocal ... defined the crucial difference: The Master Series made his voice sound slightly higher and more forward in his throat.

... Virtual Dynamics Master Series Power Cord. An expensive but unforgettable power cord.
------
Hell, if I spent 2 grand on a power cord, I certainly woudn't forget it either.
posted by The Deej at 11:14 AM on October 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

A wire is just a wire

On circuit diagrams maybe, but in the real world a wire is a complex electrical system in its own right, and all sorts of interesting phenomena happening within it (and around it). Randi happily accepts this.

I really don't understand what's stopping these august journalists from completely acing these trials

I can't see why these august young ladies aren't volunteering to prove they aren't witches.
posted by cillit bang at 11:17 AM on October 21, 2007

cb, the parallel would be if the august young ladies claimed they were witches, and Randi said "prove it."
posted by The Deej at 11:21 AM on October 21, 2007

Another great "audiophilia = insanity" page here.
posted by longdaysjourney at 11:32 AM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

I should add: It is possible to get very well-built amplifiers with deep power reserves. Many of the expensive amps really are using excellent components with a very solid design. But I'm not aware of any tests showing that real people can actually hear the difference as long as the amp is within specs (not clipping.)

The expensive amps are harder to force into clipping, and can be driven somewhat past their nominal wattage rating, but with the logarithmic nature of hearing, even small improvements get exceedingly expensive. To produce twice as much perceptible volume, it takes ten times as much power, so the superbly-built amps won't add much in terms of playable volume. Even a 100-watt unit can damage your hearing.

That said, however, it's not completely insane to buy up a little in that area. Unlike receivers, amplifiers don't change much, and a good one can last for decades.
posted by Malor at 11:37 AM on October 21, 2007

Well no, because the being a witch claim is very literally coming from Randi:

Official rules for the James Randi Educational Foundation challenge state that $1 Million will be paid to "any person who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability." Michael Fremer has expressly stated as a condition of his challenge acceptance that he does not possess any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal abilities, and that he does not believe he has above average hearing.

This was never a test he could win.
posted by cillit bang at 11:49 AM on October 21, 2007

I can't see why these august young ladies aren't volunteering to prove they aren't witches.

I don't understand. These journalists aren't saying that they can't discern a difference, they're saying that they can. If you can do something, then it's pretty easily tested. All you'd have to do is reliably and repeatedly tell x from y. They're selling the cables on the basis of the claim that that's just what the listener will be able to do. Why wouldn't anyone who believed they could do that do it for a free million dollars?

Judging by this piece, none of these high end producers seem to welcome double blind trials.

Also: isn't there a rational subset of audiophiles, who devote their time and energy to finding the sweet spot -- that point at which increased expenditure hits the law of diminishing returns?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:59 AM on October 21, 2007

If Randi has a million to pay Fremer he has a few grand to buy the test cables. It looks to mey like Randi is the one backing out here.
posted by caddis at 12:07 PM on October 21, 2007

This was never a test he could win.


Randi has stated that even though he sees the claim as paranormal, we would create a special "golden ears" category and phrase the ability in a way that was agreeable to the subject. If the subject says "there is a difference, and I can tell which is which" and he passes a test with an agreed upon protocol, Randi will award the prize.

But the claim is indeed paranormal, because the manufacturer and the journalist are claiming there is a difference in the way the cables sound, even though there should be no scientific or logical explanation for such a claim.
posted by The Deej at 12:08 PM on October 21, 2007

asavage, you've got to test this one...
posted by cosmac at 12:12 PM on October 21, 2007

caddis, you can't be serious. It's the responsibility of those making the extraordinary claim to back it up. But it's not going to happen because the manufacturers, reviewers, and other cheerleaders know they will fail, even if the listener is the Pear CEO himself.
posted by The Deej at 12:17 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Trickle down economics at work?
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:23 PM on October 21, 2007

Caddis, since Pear said they'd lend a set of cables for the experiment, there's no need to buy anything.

No matter how often Randi shows cables that don't work, people can insist that there are some that do.... so the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate at least one set of cables that are provably superior to basic copper for at least one listener. It's not a hard test process.... of three signals, A, B, and X (where X is randomly either A or B), indicate which two sound the same consistently.

If Fremer wants that million bucks, all he has to do is borrow those cables for a few weeks and step up to the plate. Even if Randi didn't pay out, he'd get so much credibility from the process that he'd become very wealthy anyway.

If he's worried that Randi will cheat, he can provide for impartial monitoring. The test protocol is somewhat flexible, and Randi has indicated he'll agree to anything that's scientifically valid. But Bremer is insisting that he 'couldn't get a fair test' without even trying to negotiate for one.

He's saying that because he knows, in his heart, that he can't actually tell the cables apart, and that's he's lying to you and his other readers.

It's Fremer that's backing out, not Randi.
posted by Malor at 12:24 PM on October 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

I've distrusted audiophilic writing since reading a review of some piece of equipment or another that claimed a "sweet high-end coupled with a massive, tight bottom."

Exciting.
posted by BaxterG4 at 12:25 PM on October 21, 2007

Pear will not lend the cables, that is why the test is off, or did I just skim this too quickly? If I were Pear I wouldn't lend them. What have they to gain. If he can't tell they look like fools, if he can then all they have proven is that their top of the market cables are better than bottom of the market cables. This is lose, lose for them.
posted by caddis at 12:32 PM on October 21, 2007

Beleive it or not, it's the room you're in that most influences the quality of the sound you hear. After that, probably the loudspeakers.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:33 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is known as marketing to the top of the pyramid. There will always be a small amount of people that will pay the highest price possible for something to be able to say that they paid the highest possible price. Quality is irrelevant. Therefore, this "$1 Million Challenge" is nothing but an advertisement, designed to make people scoff and pass the link on to their friends.

All the guy needs to sell is one pair of cables and he's made a ton of money. He probably only has one pair of cables.
posted by dobie at 12:33 PM on October 21, 2007

He's saying that because he knows, in his heart, that he can't actually tell the cables apart, and that's he's lying to you and his other readers.

So why did he get involved in the first place? It looks to me like an "agreeable protocol" wasn't forthcoming, and they realised they were being set up. The test going ahead was just as unacceptable to Randi as to Fremer, since they'd never agree to rules they didn't have a chance of winning, and Randi sure as hell wouldn't let that happen.
posted by cillit bang at 12:43 PM on October 21, 2007

in the real world a wire is a complex electrical system in its own right, and all sorts of interesting phenomena happening within it

I understand food tastes better if you salt it with a $46,000 crystal shaker with an ultra low flux transient alloy NaCL distributor head patterned after the Manipura chakra. It causes the salt particles to land on the food with their ionic crystal lattices in a perfectly even distribution that clarifies and softens the flavors.
posted by fleetmouse at 12:47 PM on October 21, 2007 [15 favorites]

So why did he get involved in the first place?

The longer that he and Pear can keep receiving media coverage, the more money they make.

Anyhow, the idea that Randi is the asshole in this scenario is laughable. The high-end audio industry has been making ludicrous claims for decades. Randi's saying "I'll give you a million bucks if you prove it."
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 12:57 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

The longer that he and Pear can keep receiving media coverage, the more money they make.

Bears repeating.

But every time you call these woo-woo artists to the task, they slither away into darkness.

All that Randi does ir provide a clear shining light - and in a way it is entertaining to watch the cockroaches run away again and again, just like this one.

Sad, but entertaining. I have no doubt this journalist will in the future claim to have "called" the Randi challenge, and claim that the limits Randi set on the test were soooooo ridiculous...
posted by DreamerFi at 1:11 PM on October 21, 2007

If Randi has a million to pay Fremer he has a few grand to buy the test cables. It looks to mey like Randi is the one backing out here.

That million wouldn't last very long if Randi had to invest upwards of even $5k for each test. In fact, he could only do 11 tests with the accumulated interest in the fund (which is doing very poorly, by the way)
posted by delmoi at 1:17 PM on October 21, 2007

caddis writes "If I were Pear I wouldn't lend them. What have they to gain."

A million dollars PLUS an insanely strong endorsement that will make you the clear leader of your industry.
posted by bugbread at 1:32 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

what strong endorsement, better than monster cable? meh, and they weren't going to get the million anyway, Fremer was. Fremer should have bought the cables. Now of course Randi is also backing out saying the challenge is over, so even if Fremer could obtain the cables Randi won't let him try. With a million on the line I guess everyone gets nervous.
posted by caddis at 1:35 PM on October 21, 2007

I understand food tastes better if you salt it with a $46,000 crystal shaker

It does taste better, actually, which gets to the nub of the whole matter.

Human perception is greatly influenced by our expectation of events. There are psychological studies out the wazoo demonstrating this.

So whether the cables perform better in a double blind test is somewhat missing the point. The money is being paid not for the superior waveform they supposedly carry but for the superior over-all listening experience they provide, and part of that experience is the expectation you have knowing that you're using super high end equipment.

Really you have a happy little circle here -- Pear makes the cables and tells everyone to expect greatness, Stereophile confirms how great they are, and the wealthy consumer (having been told once and having had it confirmed that they are great) has a great listening experience. Everyone's happy.

James Randi blunders into the middle of this like a concrete mule, saying to the consumer "You're not *really* enjoying it more, you just *think* you're enjoying it more." In order to "prove" this he offers a test in which a major component -- knowing that you're listening through super high-end cables -- is missing.

If there is an extraordinary claim being made here, it is James Randi's implicit claim that the overall human experience of researching, purchasing, installing -- and the building up of expectations that comes with those -- are not an integral part of listening to and enjoying a good audio system.

Humans aren't compartmentalized like that, as much as Randi wishes they were.
posted by tkolar at 1:43 PM on October 21, 2007 [4 favorites]

caddis writes "Now of course Randi is also backing out saying the challenge is over, so even if Fremer could obtain the cables Randi won't let him try."

He's backing out because Fremer can't obtain the cables. Where do you get the impression that Randi wouldn't let him try if he got the cables? The only thing that gets Randi and folks to back out is when the supposed paranormal person makes demands which would violate the integrity of the test ("I must be allowed to wear a wireless radio receiver during the test"), or are prohibitive ("Sure, Randi, I'll agree to all your conditions, but you must fly me in first class to the testing center, feed me caviar and champagne, and put me up in a first class hotel for the entire preparatory period, which I expect will take approximately 3 years. Oh, and this all has to happen in Morocco, and the tester has to be the Queen of England."). "Fremer obtained the cables" doesn't strike me as a condition that would either violate the integrity of the test, or put an unfair burden on Randi, so I don't see why you would assume that Randi wouldn't give him a chance.
posted by bugbread at 1:45 PM on October 21, 2007

On circuit diagrams maybe, but in the real world a wire is a complex electrical system in its own right, and all sorts of interesting phenomena happening within it (and around it).

No, it isn't. Longer: Sure, physics is a complex ordeal, but you use what you can with the problem at hand. In this case, it's exactly as Malor explained above: when the cabling is used to drive speakers, you can ignore all physical properties of the wire (like what color it is, what it smells like, its temperature) except resistance and capacitance. This is not complex.
posted by odinsdream at 1:45 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

The money is being paid not for the superior waveform they supposedly carry but for the superior over-all listening experience they provide, and part of that experience is the expectation you have knowing that you're using super high end equipment.

Which, of course, is where it all falls apart. There is really only so much you can do with a cable. It isn't super high end. You're being lied to. If, in fact, you knew you were being lied to, that might damn well influence your "psychological" enjoyment of the product.
posted by odinsdream at 1:48 PM on October 21, 2007

tkolar writes "James Randi blunders into the middle of this like a concrete mule, saying to the consumer 'You're not *really* enjoying it more, you just *think* you're enjoying it more.'"

No, he "blunders" in saying "Pear says you can hear the difference. You can't." He never says "You don't think you can." I mean, if people didn't think they could, there wouldn't be a need for a challenge, because Pear would never have sold a single cable. The whole point of the challenge is the disproving of untrue statements. If Pear only claims that "you'll enjoy our cables more because they cost a lot", Randi wouldn't have challenged him, because that's not an untrue or paranormal statement.
posted by bugbread at 1:48 PM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Worst Audiophile Technology forgets to mention the Teleportation Tweak.

Note: Machina Dynamica's Teleportation Tweak is not covered by our 30-day money back guarantee.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:58 PM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Randi absolutely knows that humans perceive things based on expectations, an has made his living as a magician on exactly that knowledge. But he is a self-described honest cheat. As part of his act, he may claim to be doing the impossible. But if he were to continue to claim impossible powers outside of his "magician" character, he would slapped down just as quickly as any other charlatan.
posted by The Deej at 2:03 PM on October 21, 2007

thkolar - so by your rational, we could also test by simply telling the listener that the Monster cables are the expensive ones, and see which they think sounds better, no?

Seriously, as someone who has, at various times, owned some rather odd audio gear, especially electrostatic speakers, I do think there's something to the "high fi" world. Pear, etc., are insane. There's simply no way around it. I have double-blind tested Transparent Cable MusicWave (part of the high end, but not stupid end) v. a very expensive competitor (10x the price). The reality was? I could pick it 50% of the time. Therefore, no difference. I also compared them to Monster (at about 1/2 the price), and got it right about 55% of the time. Not a stellar showing. This was on a performance that I was in, so I knew it inside out, backward and forward.

If however, you swap my Magnepan speakers for even high end B&W speakers, I could tell you in a heart beat. Speakers you can tell the difference, mostly because there's so much noise and distortion in them that it becomes a characteristic of the speaker. Wires? Nope.

The only reason I suspect the Maggies even cared about cables was the current they pulled required something a bit heftier than the average cable. That's also why some amps sounded very different. It wasn't so much "quality" as you slam into clipping faster. Even driven with a pair of Adcom GFA-565 amps (300W/8ohm monoblocks), you could actually clip the amplifier. Until then, no difference. Otherwise? Spend your money on real things.

This is all a bunch of mumbo jumbo to fleece the stupid. I would have loved to have rationalized spending more money, whether it be on Mark Levinson, Krell, or anything else semi-exotic, but I simply couldn't hear the difference.
posted by petrilli at 2:08 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Another source of audiophile scam debunking is http://www.theaudiocritic.com/blog/index.php
posted by kevinsp8 at 2:12 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

when the cabling is used to drive speakers, you can ignore all physical properties of the wire

Ignore anything you want. The human ear is an unbelievably sensitive instrument, especially when, for instance, processing minute variations in phase to detect location. Intelligibility of rapid speech can recover information to the granularity of individual cycles of oscillation.

Methodically exercising the acuity of audible perception will steadily increase your ability to make reliable judgments. And, yes, you may seem a little prickly once you can't help but be aware that those Bose speakers sound like crap because you know what it could sound like.

In a loosely packed bundle of filaments an electrical charge can, just for instance, create a force that causes them to repel each other, and vary the conductivity where they make contact, and it is not impossible that this could be heard by a careful listener.

Listening is an acquired skill and some people will exploit those who do not have confidence in their own ability, or who haven't taken the effort to develop listening skills.

Ridiculous claims like the magic wooden volume control are easy to spot. Ridiculous skepticism reminds of the friend of my mother's would rant up and down that garlic powder tasted exactly like fresh garlic in cooking.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:35 PM on October 21, 2007

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 writes "Worst Audiophile Technology forgets to mention the Teleportation Tweak."

That's fucking awesome.
posted by bugbread at 2:35 PM on October 21, 2007

except resistance and capacitance. This is not complex.

But it is more complex than that. The complexities may not matter at audio frequencies, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
posted by cillit bang at 2:36 PM on October 21, 2007

StickyCarpet writes "Ridiculous skepticism reminds of the friend of my mother's would rant up and down that garlic powder tasted exactly like fresh garlic in cooking."

So your mom's friend couldn't tell the difference between garlic powder and fresh garlic, and you can't tell the difference between valid skepticism and ridiculous skepticism?
posted by bugbread at 2:38 PM on October 21, 2007 [5 favorites]

I can say this for sure: the difference between Radio Shack interconnect cables and $100 cables is clearly audible to me. I'm not ruling out that this effect will continue upwards indefinitely. When I can't afford the next step, or can't hear it on my equipment I'll stop. That doesn't mean I rule out any possibilities because I'm unhappy with my finite resources in relation to anyone else.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:45 PM on October 21, 2007

Ironically, Fremer works for Stereophile, which appears to be the only audiophile publication to actually perform fairly-rigorous scientific testing as part of its reviews.
posted by kickingtheground at 2:47 PM on October 21, 2007

Randi is as crazy an extremist as the people he tries to 'out'. He's a self promoter and a megalomaniac.
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 2:49 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Henry C. Mabuse writes "Randi is as crazy an extremist as the people he tries to 'out'. He's a self promoter and a megalomaniac."

Yes. Unlike them, however, he's often right. He's a complete dick about it, but that doesn't make him wrong, it makes him unpleasant.
posted by bugbread at 2:59 PM on October 21, 2007 [6 favorites]

LOLDIOPHILES
posted by kaseijin at 3:16 PM on October 21, 2007

Speaker wire is pretty much speaker wire , and this applies equally to the Monster brand, yet another marketing scam; but on a much bigger scale. Whereas companies like Pears have extremely small market share, Monster is the market behemoth, sold almost everywhere, and the oly brand most consumers know. So successful is their brand-positioning that even the cable cynics posting here use them as an example of more rationally priced products. Never buy Monster brand when an equivalent product is available at half the price

While copper wire is copper wire, this is not true of interconnects. There is a difference in the amount of shielding which they provide against electromagnetic interference and radio frequency interference. As always however, the law of diminishing returns quickly kicks in. Once a certain level of performance is achieved , it is very difficult to go beyond that, and very few consumers have the ability to hear or see the difference between a $100 set of interconnects and a $200 set. Wrap all the mylar and dielectric foam around a conductor you want, it's pretty hard to increase pereceptible performance beyond that produced by a well sheilded $100 cable.

In the twenty years that I've been selling electronics I've always used this rule of thumb when advising my customers. If you can't see or hear a difference in any component of a system, including the interconnects, then DON'T spend any more money. I usually tried to make this easy for customers by having an amplifier hooked up with entry, mid and high end cables, and then switching between inputs. Under blind tests, every consumer could hear the difference betwen the entry and mid level connectors, and most could also hear the differnece betwen the mid and high end.

Having demonstrated that there was a difference in performance in analog interconnects, I would then lead my customers to a higher end set-up, with a better amp and speakers, and switch between the high-end and ultra-high end interconnects. It was only very rarely that anyone would ever hear the difference in such a test. As Brocktoon has so astutely noted above, your money is better invested in making your room more acoustically friendly. And don't forget to condition your ac power, a common mistake.

On preview , Bose is another example of a marketing scam run amok. Bose are the joke of the speaker industry, and the expression amongst those with an interest in high fidelity is that " If it has no highs, and it has no lows, it must be Bose". On those occasions when I carried them and customers would come in asking about them, I'd take them into a sound room and have them listen for a minute or two. I'd then switch to a real pair of speakers and have them listen to those. The typical response would be, "well those do sound quite a bit better, but I really didn't want to spend more money" It was always gratifying to see the look on their faces when informed that the other brand were 1/4 to 1/2 the price of the Bose.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 3:17 PM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

you can ignore all physical properties of the wire... except resistance and capacitance

Well, there is inductance too, although it's not likely to cause problems with any competently-designed hardware.

Do Naim still make those power amps that don't have output inductors and therefore rely on high-inductance cables to prevent the amps breaking into oscillation?
posted by the duck by the oboe at 3:22 PM on October 21, 2007

it makes him unpleasant

Randi couldn't be as unpleasant as the people he debunks if he exhaled mace and skunk spray while scratching his fingernails down a chalkboard and singing "My Humps".
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:27 PM on October 21, 2007 [18 favorites]

Horace Rumpole writes "Randi couldn't be as unpleasant as the people he debunks if he exhaled mace and skunk spray while scratching his fingernails down a chalkboard and singing 'My Humps'."

Yeah, but it's not a very high bar to set yourself to, is it?
posted by bugbread at 3:50 PM on October 21, 2007

Really you have a happy little circle here -- Pear makes the cables and tells everyone to expect greatness, Stereophile confirms how great they are, and the wealthy consumer (having been told once and having had it confirmed that they are great) has a great listening experience. Everyone's happy.

I have a friend who sells and installs home entertainment centers. He told me recently that he was putting a seventy-thousand-dollar system into a guy's house. I asked him what the difference was between a 70,000 dollar system and a 50,000 dollar system.

"Twenty thousand dollars." he said.
posted by Bookhouse at 3:56 PM on October 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

Audiophiles are neurotics with too much money.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 4:31 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Audiophiles are neurotics with not enough sex.
posted by ericb at 4:48 PM on October 21, 2007

Where do you get the impression that Randi wouldn't let him try if he got the cables?

Read carefully, the challenge is closed. Randi is just as big a pussy about this as Pearl, and each has about as much to lose. Fremer is the only one who can come out on top. Win the challenge, get a million bucks and some serious golden ears cred.
posted by caddis at 4:51 PM on October 21, 2007

cillit bang writes:
"Official rules for the James Randi Educational Foundation challenge state that $1 Million will be paid to "any person who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability."

Michael Fremer has expressly stated as a condition of his challenge acceptance that he does not possess any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal abilities, and that he does not believe he has above average hearing.

This was never a test he could win."

But Randi specifically adresses this in his response: "Regardless, we of course have the right to accept this claim as paranormal in nature, and we hereby do accept it as such. We will even create, for the purposes of this experimental protocol, a special category of "golden ears," just for you."

So yeah... this is a prize Fermer can win. Except that he is lying or deluded.

The amazing one suffers no fools. Audiophile's "Scientific Tests", on the other hand, are highly dubious. Have they ever reviewed one of their advertiser's products and concluded: "It doesn't work. It's a sham." I'd like to see a single example of this.
posted by MotorNeuron at 4:51 PM on October 21, 2007

'Tommy Can You Hear Me.'
posted by ericb at 4:51 PM on October 21, 2007

Read carefully, the challenge is closed. Randi is just as big a pussy about this as Pearl

not following.

how did you get 'randi backing out' from the facts of this situation?
posted by Hat Maui at 5:03 PM on October 21, 2007

caddis writes " Read carefully, the challenge is closed."

Read carefully, and you'll see that the challenge is currently closed because Randi doesn't think the cables will be provided. Read through previous challenges and you'll see that closed challenges get reopened fairly often. "Closed" does not mean "permanently and terminally invalidated".
posted by bugbread at 5:03 PM on October 21, 2007

I believe someone once calculated that with what some of these audiophiles waste in a year they could have just hired a small orchestra to come play for them every weekend.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 5:19 PM on October 21, 2007

If there is an extraordinary claim being made here, it is James Randi's implicit claim that the overall human experience of researching, purchasing, installing -- and the building up of expectations that comes with those -- are not an integral part of listening to and enjoying a good audio system.

What he's trying to point out is all that "research, purchasing, and installation" is a lie, because if someone invisibly swapped many of the 'audiophile' components for cheaper ones, you couldn't even tell.

What you're passionately arguing for is the ability of humans to fool themselves.

You can fool yourself for a lot less money, and not make shysters rich in the process.
posted by Malor at 5:20 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I read that carefully. Randi does not back out of the challenge. How anyone could reach that conclusion escapes me.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 5:23 PM on October 21, 2007

...and on the other end of the spectrum: Anti Cables.

Pretty much proves that expensive isn't better.
posted by spish at 5:25 PM on October 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

StickyCarpet: "In a loosely packed bundle of filaments an electrical charge can, just for instance, create a force that causes them to repel each other, and vary the conductivity where they make contact, and it is not impossible that this could be heard by a careful listener."

Of course it's not impossible. But it has never once been demonstrated that a listener can reliably tell the difference between any two competently-designed speaker cables connecting competently designed equipment. Ever.

I've seen one case where a digital transport could affect perceived sound. I saw a writeup by an electrical engineer about two units connected via S/PDIF weren't well designed (it was an 'audiophile' player with a really dismal circuit design), and it required cable that was much tighter-specced than normal to get a reliable signal between them. 'Audiophiles' could hear that the music was messed up with some cables, so they raved about the 'revealing nature' of these two units... when in actual fact, the best they could hope for was the original signal. They jumped up and down yelling from the rafters about what 'great' equipment this was, because most cables failed to work properly. The equipment sucked, it was badly designed, and this was a net positive for the audiophile crowd.

You can clearly hear a difference if a speaker cable is too small, or if it's not properly connected. That's the ONLY difference that's reliably detectable in cabling.

Arguments to the contrary are much like arguing for creationism... doggedly sticking to a belief despite active evidence to the contrary. It's not quite to that level of deliberate ignorance, since the body of contradicting evidence is much smaller. It is, nonetheless, the same thing in small print.

It's wishful thinking. You are lying to yourself, and if you buy hyper expensive cables, you are being ripped off by unscrupulous people.

I should also add: audio and video signals are different. You can get noticeable degradation on poor quality copper when sending video signals, because they use so much more bandwidth. This was how Monster Cable got its start, in fact, because many video cables at the time were terrible. But for sound, which is a very low-bandwidth application, any properly-connected piece of copper thick enough to carry the required power the required distance is the same as any other.
posted by Malor at 5:39 PM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

Oh boy, I mangled that paragraph about the two S/PDIF-connected units. Please read around my poor grammar. :)
posted by Malor at 5:40 PM on October 21, 2007

Oh, and one more thing, in case I wasn't clear: speakers do matter. They're the most important part of a system. But spending a lot of money on speakers is not a guarantee of good performance.

The brain doesn't use many neurons, relatively speaking, for hearing, and everyone learns to hear a little differently. All speakers make tradeoffs in how they reproduce sound; the goal is to listen to lots of them and find speakers that fit your specific aural model well. There are broad similarities, which is what lets lossy compression like MP3 and AAC work, but everyone's a little different.

Buying speakers is like buying clothes. You need ones that fit your ears. Once you find a set you really like, almost any competent electronics and cabling will drive them fine. You don't need to pay super-premium prices.

The room you're in is the other really large factor. Speaker position really matters, and treating the room is far more important than buying better electronics. $7250 is enough for a very thorough set of bass traps and treble absorbers. This will improve your sound far, far more than the cables would. (This makes the room look weird, but it will sound MUCH better.)
posted by Malor at 5:52 PM on October 21, 2007

...and on the other end of the spectrum: Anti Cables.

Pretty much proves that expensive isn't better.
posted by spish

Holy crap, those are still $80 for 8 feet! It's sad when that is considered inexpensive.

*Rips cord from old lamp in the garage*
posted by The Deej at 5:59 PM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

You're quite right, The Deej. The same hyperbole is found in testimonials on the Anti-Cable site, but with an added level of smugness from users, congratulating themselves for "only" spending $80 for $2 worth of copper wire.

This kind of marketing is equally invidious, although less financially rapacious.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 6:25 PM on October 21, 2007 [2 favorites]

If I had no morals, I would open a business selling audiophile wire, kissed by only the finest snake oil from the pine snake, quite rare. Nevertheless, I bet Fremer would have taken the million. I don't know so much from speaker cables, but I have heard differences in interconnects, say between a CD player and a preamp. I am thinking that golden ears such as Fremer could easily distinguish between cables at the top of the market and the bottom. Now, take two hundred dollar or four hundred dollar cables versus the Pear cables and then I am not so sure, but that would be interesting. People up thread have said things like you can't even tell differences between amps etc. That is ignorant talk. There are outrageous things foist upon gullible audiophiles, but that doesn't mean that you can not hear quality in components.
posted by caddis at 6:37 PM on October 21, 2007

Best to get a noisy hobby (like skeet-shooting, jackhammering, etc) and then your standards won't be so high.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:43 PM on October 21, 2007

Oh, and I read more carefully and it seems like Fremer might still be able to take the million if he can come up with the cables. Sorry about that earlier comment.
posted by caddis at 6:44 PM on October 21, 2007

It causes the salt particles to land on the food with their ionic crystal lattices in a perfectly even distribution that clarifies and softens the flavors.

Drink Penta Water. The water molecules have been specially aligned, similar to the ionic crystal lattice effect your product offers. Indeed, I am certain the products complement one another: people should be purchasing both Penta Water and Fleetmouse's Ionic Latticized Salt.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:46 PM on October 21, 2007

To add to Malor's comments about how critical speakers are to the sound, you should hear what an astonishing difference the choice of microphones makes. Sound recording engineers don't get to just pick a "good" or "transparent" mic, they have to pick one that's colored the way they want, or the way that's least bad. This was made horribly obvious to me once when I was trying to select among various vocal mics once. Do you want nasal? Boomy? Raspy? Take yer pick, and choose your own reality.
posted by intermod at 6:47 PM on October 21, 2007

I'm surprised the audiophile hucksters haven't adopted more RF connectors and cable. Those RCA jacks are just hideous. N connectors are so much sexier: high-end interconnect
posted by ryanrs at 7:54 PM on October 21, 2007

Many people have said that the cables don't matter. Normally this is true. But now I bring in my AT&T phone and watch the speaker cable act as a giant interference sucking antenna.

That said, it doesn't cost $7,000 to shield a cable. Ordinary coax will cut out a lot of interference, high quality interconnects help, and you can always switch to digital optical cable, which gets rid of the entire problem. In fact, you can buy the digital audio cable and a just-off lease car to carry it home in for the 7 grand.
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 8:04 PM on October 21, 2007

I'm surprised the audiophile hucksters haven't adopted more RF connectors and cable. Those RCA jacks are just hideous. N connectors are so much sexier: high-end interconnect


Seriously, music sounds like complete garbage with the RCA jack's attenuation of the harmonics in the HF and UHF regions.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:09 PM on October 21, 2007

Again, the most important part of your sound system is the room you put it in; loudspeakers second.

I think some of you are missing a fundamental aspect of the "audiophile" hobby. IT'S A HOBBY. Most audiophiles enjoy tinkering and tweaking their system as much as they do listening to the music produced by it. There are many expensive hobbies. Wine is a good comparative example.
posted by Brocktoon at 8:39 PM on October 21, 2007

Cecil Adams wrote about this sort of thing a while back.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:50 PM on October 21, 2007

People up thread have said things like you can't even tell differences between amps etc. That is ignorant talk. There are outrageous things foist upon gullible audiophiles, but that doesn't mean that you can not hear quality in components.

In double-blind testing, amps of reasonable build quality are largely indistinguishable from one another. As long as they're not clipping, and are outputting roughly the same volume levels, people do no better than chance in choosing between them. (This probably isn't true of tube amps versus transistor amps, which do sound quite different from one another.)

This may not be true of the golden ear crowd, but I've never seen anything definitive that shows that even very gifted listeners can reliably tell the difference between a $250 Onkyo amp (which are definitely good for the price range) and a $2000 monster, as long as both are driven within the volume limits of the lesser amp.

This is not true of receivers, because those include DACs, which definitely sound different. I'm just talking about the pure amplification stage. That doesn't matter all that much. As long as you have enough power for your application, the only real difference at higher price levels is better build quality and a lower chance of failure.

I've seen studies that support this, and I can probably find links if anyone actually cares. :)
posted by Malor at 9:32 PM on October 21, 2007

(well, and more power too, so you can turn the volume up or drive more challenging speakers.)
posted by Malor at 9:37 PM on October 21, 2007

There is a price point for all components at which you hit a pretty hard wall of diminishing returns. For example, quality varies a lot, but typically a $1500 amp is going to sound better than an $800 amp. To get to the "next level" from that $1500 amp, though, is going to cost you up in the $6k range, and even if you can notice an improvement in detail, whether or not it's going to enhance your music experience is questionable. I have a decent system I like to use, but I'm just fine with the ipod.

When I first fired up my current system, I thought to myself "wow, that really does sound like a guitar." I think a lot of people have never heard a good stereo.

Things like $2k power cables (or any power cable that "features" anything more than the proper gauge wire for the amount of current being drawn) are completely ridiculous, of course. Any EE could tell you why. A lot of audiophiles have zero electronics knowledge which leads to a lot of religious style arguments and claims when it comes to their equipment.
posted by MillMan at 11:36 PM on October 21, 2007

First, you should know that I'm the guy who tipped Randi to the ridiculously expensive Pear cables a few weeks ago. I know that Randi has long been interested in silly high end stereo flim-flam so I forwarded an article about Pear from Gizmodo.com to him. Last year I also forwarded some information about a "CD demagnetizer" to him without realizing that this same guy apparently gave his imprimatur to that snake oil too.

OK, some of you don't seem to understand the nature of Randi's Challenge in this case. This "journalist," who has been something of a nemesis to Randi for a while, claims that he can reliably detect a difference in the quality of music carried by the Pear cables as opposed to the same music on the same system carried over lower-priced cabling. Randi's betting he can't, nothing more, nothing less.

The test would be double-blinded with nothing changing other than the cables. The system would be switched between the Pear cables and the Monster cables and the guy would say which cables he thought were in use as he listened to the same musical passages over and over. He would have to agree that he could determine which cables were in use at a significantly higher rate of accuracy than chance would predict (without that agreement, there would be nothing to test, really).

Yes, the usual rules of Randi's Challenge talk about "supernatural" abilities to which the "journalist" objected. Randi said he would take the references to "supernatural" stuff out of the specific challenge in this case to accommodate him. That should solve that problem, right?

Randi is NOT weaseling out. This "journalist" and/or Pear is/are weaseling out. This is not unusual; people make extraordinary claims, say they will take the Challenge and then back out all the time.
posted by Cranky Media Guy at 1:07 AM on October 22, 2007 [3 favorites]

For the record, I'm DYING to do this on Mythbusters. An entire audiophile hour. Discovery's not convinced that it's visual enough for television yet, but I'm working on it.
Randi's also a friend of mine, and I promise you he's chomping at the bit to do this test.
Also, when chastising Randi for being a dick, I'd consider the THIEF selling audio cables for thousands of dollars far worse than the man who calls him a THIEF in public. Which he is. Which he deserves to be called.
The assholes who make these claims don't do it for fun. Nearly all of the time they do it to make money. Lots of money. From people who don't know any better. They make it dishonestly, selling a service that doesn't exist, and that is stealing.
Think about all those people investing in Free Energy. I don't consider that there's much of a difference between them and the audiophile bozos.
posted by asavage at 1:41 AM on October 22, 2007 [10 favorites]

I sincerely hope that the challenge does not go through.

I would deeply regret anything happening that might reduce the chance that someday caddis would spend 10K on a pair of wires.
posted by lastobelus at 2:06 AM on October 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

What always confuses me is the fact that all these audiophiles are ignoring the obvious way to get the best sound: listen to what the pros use. I don't have enough time (or money) to sit down and test every possible combination of speaker, amp, cable, DAC, blah, blah, blah, so I just deferred to the judgment of the people who do this stuff for a living. Look at any catalog, web article, or magazine for pro audio equipment, all the "good" stuff is the same. Active speakers, quality, balanced interconnects, and a good DAC. A stereo system like this comes in under $500 and the sky's the limit if you want to spend more.
posted by Skorgu at 5:27 AM on October 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

Cranky Media Guy that's awesome, thanks for your input here. You put that way more succinctly that I have been trying to.

asavage thanks for your input as well. I would love to see this on your show. Here's how to make it visual: any piece of equipment that fails, gets blowed up real good! Just keep your eyebrows out of the way.
posted by The Deej at 5:32 AM on October 22, 2007

Before he when writing crime novels full time, Ian Rankin (or Rebus fame) used to review music systems for magazines. He's admitted in interviews that towards the end he wasn't even taking most of the stuff out of the boxes before he wrote the reviews and no one cottoned on.

Once he managed to get a (then) top of the range Linn system out of it I think he jacked it in.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:44 AM on October 22, 2007

I'd just like to point out that, while the spirit of Malor's comments are entirely correct, his facts are somewhat simplified. The "water in a hose" analogy works for DC electrical currents, but not for AC. A cable pair carrying AC currents are more than just a series resistance and a shunt capacitance. Audio frequencies are high enough that frequency dependent nonlinearities like skin effect and proximity effect come into play.
That being said, he's correct that you can get decent cable for cheap, and almost all "audiophile" equipment is a scam.
posted by rocket88 at 6:51 AM on October 22, 2007

TheOnlyCoolTim wrote:Seriously, music sounds like complete garbage with the RCA jack's attenuation of the harmonics in the HF and UHF regions.

Whoa, whoa! I didn't say that—I said N connectors were sexy. And they are: 1 2 3 4 5

I agree that the electrical performance of RCA connectors, though crappy, is more than adaquate for audio use. But their mechanical performance is also crap. N connectors, on the other hand, are very robust. Hell, they're waterproof.

As I said, I'm surprised the audiophile crowd hasn't adopted more RF components. There's a ton of upsell opportunities from the incompatability alone.
posted by ryanrs at 7:02 AM on October 22, 2007

I'd pay money to see a Mythbusters where they set fire to Pear cables. Maybe have a remote detonator wired up so the "golden ears" guy presses a button indicating what cable he thinks is being used.

If he gets it wrong, the cables catch fire.
posted by aramaic at 7:20 AM on October 22, 2007

Wow... I've just seen there's special stones to rest all your overpriced overengineered electronic crap on. This actually sort of frightens me a bit. And I thought a mate of mine was mad spending twenty quid on a pair of speaker stands back in the 80s.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:35 AM on October 22, 2007

what the difference was between a 70,000 dollar system and a 50,000 dollar system.

I was having champagne in a booth at the opera with Mark Levinson (true story) and I asked him what was the difference between a $50,000 dollar system and a $200,000 system and he said: "For fifty thousand you can sit in your living room blindfolded and not be able to tell the difference between a live flutist and the stereo. For $200,000 you can do that with a Harley Davidson."
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:37 AM on October 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is crazy easy to win! I'll share my plan with the blue, and who ever executes can just send me half of our profits.

Step 1: Build ridiculously bad cables. They must be the worst cables in existence, causing a tinny, underpowered sound. As long as any sound can make it through, claim they sound great , and are clearly superior to all other cables.
Step 2: Claim horrible cables are the world's greatest and charge $10,000 a pair.
Step 3: Wait for JR to challenge your claim.
Step 4: Easily differentiate your cables in a double blind test (hint: yours are the ones that sound like shit).
Step 5: Profit.
posted by ShadowCrash at 7:58 AM on October 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

You can get noticeable degradation on poor quality copper when sending video signals, because they use so much more bandwidth.

If you buy into the 20,000 HZ ceiling. While that may top out pitch determination, much finer resolutions in phase relations can be perceived in spatial localization.

My position on all this is the result of experimenting with blind testing myself. I did blindfold myself and had someone move a speaker between two positions about 8" apart. At first I could not reliably tell the difference. After numerous tries over several days of highly focused concentration I found my guesses becoming more accurate, and it felt like I was growing a new part of my brain. I think the exercise permanently improved my hearing. Every time I have put in the time and effort to ask more of my ears, they have delivered, so I'm reluctant to accept a ceiling beyond which I will decide that my hearing can't go.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:12 AM on October 22, 2007

Whoa, whoa! I didn't say that—I said N connectors were sexy.

I was just making a joke along the lines of how these snake oil merchants would probably try to sell N connectors.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:42 AM on October 22, 2007

If Randi has a million to pay Fremer he has a few grand to buy the test cables. It looks to mey like Randi is the one backing out here.

My undertanding of Randi and the JREF is that they dont have any money. They have promise notes from donors who say that in the event of a win they will pay out. At the time I was reading into this stuff none of this was guaranteed money, theyre bonds and of course if they dont pay out the winner can sue, but blood from a turnip and all that. 10k is guaranteed though.

I imagine the whole this is fairly academic. Assuming some kind of paranormal event was repeatable I dont think Randi's methodology would allow it to win the test. The donors can be assured that they'll never have to pay out. The structure of the test involves judges who are little more than JREF confederates. Lastly, the payout is cancled if the event is shown to be a "natural, scientific event." So anything that can be proven/repeated is a scientific event, thus no one ever wins.

While in theory this kind of thing is good (think snopes), for some reason Randi and the JREF cross into some real douchebag territory. I call this the dawkins curse. (can I get a million dollars for testing this curse?)
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:24 AM on October 22, 2007

Damn Dirty Ape, your encapsulation of Randi's methods misses the point.
Here's a case: Girl says she can read a newspaper while blindfolded. Randi challenges her to do it. Like most of his tests, she does it her way first, then she does it under controlled conditions. Her way, she easily reads the newspaper, seemingly while blindfolded. When Randi tapes her eyes shut, and covers them his way, she can't read the newspaper at all.
The "scientific event" is that she has a particularly shaped nose, where the bridge allows her to see down through the bottom of a seeminly tight blindfold.
The reality is that she can't see through a blindfold.

Therefore she doesn't get the money, because her claim is bunk. Rather than generalize, I'd be curious to see if you could find an example at Randi's website of any flawed methodology in testing the claims that come to him.
posted by asavage at 10:41 AM on October 22, 2007

By the way, I really mean I'd be curious. That's not a rhetorical challenge. Randi in person is a passionate and gentle debunker. All who know him have an affection for him that's difficult to describe.
posted by asavage at 10:47 AM on October 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Exactly as asavage says. I've followed Randi's work since the late 70s, and have gotten to meet him. He is actually quite a charming, funny, and self-deprecating individual.

If someone repeated something supernatural, under control conditions, he would have to pay out. He can't just say "because you repeated it, that means it's not supernatural." I don't know where you get that from.

But... the money is safe.
posted by The Deej at 10:50 AM on October 22, 2007

A couple thoughts regarding JREF:

They dont allow independant judges. This is a bit unsettling. JREF judging is either soley led by Randi himself or he chooses a panel. Thats far from impartial.

The JREF seems to do a good job with obvious charalatans like psychics but at the same time I wonder how many accepted field and practices would even come close to passing the JREF test as its been used. I would imagine the entire chiropatric field would be "bunk." Lots more people would have back and neck problems. Or depending what study you quote you can toss out the validity of medical marijuana or any politicized thing out there. This gives a JREF-like test quite the manuvering room.

I think its obvious that scientific materialsm has reached a point where only highly-trained experts can make crazy claims like, oh, the entire field of relativity or just cosmology in general. The JREF works against psychics and scammers, but applied to anything that is remotely controversial but potentially plausible, there's a built-in wiggle room (mostly in the judging setup) that guarantees a political and propaganda win for Randi.

I imagine a 17th century JREF would have been a nasty problem to one-man geniuses like Newton or Franklin. Explaining that rocks actually do come from the sky to the defenders of the status quo who have a witchhunt for "bunkers" and "scammers" would have been a nightmare. I think we're better off without a JREF as the showboating, wiggle room testing, etc cannot have a good effect on the long run. The incredible childish mess that is the "5,000 dollar cable" I think shows that the JREF mentality has almost reached the point of self-parody as people en masse have given up on psychics and spoonbenders. Perhaps JREF and Randi are a victim of their own successes.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:15 AM on October 22, 2007

Obviously above that should be an 17th or 18th century jref.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:17 AM on October 22, 2007

I imagine a 17th century JREF would have been a nasty problem to one-man geniuses like Newton or Franklin. Explaining that rocks actually do come from the sky to the defenders of the status quo who have a witchhunt for "bunkers" and "scammers" would have been a nightmare.

There's a scene exactly like this in Robert Anton Wilson's Historic Illuminatus Series. I forget which book. Presumably you've read it. I'm generally a big fan of RAW, but I think he went way overboard in his distaste with PSICOP and Randi and the like, conflating them with the people who burned Wilhelm Reich's books and the like. Especially when the alternatives he gave more credence to were folks like Jacques Vallee.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:34 AM on October 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

people en masse have given up on psychics and spoonbenders

NBC hopes not. Phenomenon (hosted by Uri Geller and Criss Angel) premieres this Thursday night.

"...[they] will scrutinize 10 contestants demonstrating spellbinding illusions on a panel of celebrity guests and the studio audience.

Which of those contenders will take a mind trip to victory? Viewers at home will choose the most mind-blowing mentalist, with $250,000 the grand prize.

And the whole thing happens live."^*

posted by ericb at 11:34 AM on October 22, 2007

And who can forget Randi exposes Uri Geller and Peter Popoff?
posted by ericb at 11:36 AM on October 22, 2007

damn dirty ape, The fact that you question the validity of the prize without spending a few seconds looking on the JREF website and you insist on painting Randi and his associates in the worst possible light implies that The JREF aren't the ones with a problem being open minded.


As for Chiropractors, why would anybody classify them differently from psychics or any other similar charlatans? Is there a substantial difference?



posted by Megafly at 11:38 AM on October 22, 2007

Well, I'm a scientist. I work on equipment WAY more expensive and sensitive than any HiFI I've ever seen (even on Gizmodo).

I've used 4 machines that could measure mechanical measurements to sub-nanometre resolution. One of those instruments could actually function as the most accurate record player on the planet and is still cheaper than the most expensive record player.
I've used machines that can measure a single photon and what happens to it in a few billionths of a second.

Guess what?
All that gear uses fairly ordinary cable. To repair it, we use ordinary cable.

It's only when dealing with huge bandwidths or high voltages that special stuff is required. The most I've ever paid for cable is €70 per metre for stuff that could handle up to 4Ghz. In fact, it's hard to find cable more expensive than that (from specialist cable suppliers).

I blame the placebo effect myself (as has been mentioned above). You want to believe, so your brain gives in and let's you believe.
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 12:12 PM on October 22, 2007 [6 favorites]

Numerous people wrote something like this: "If I didn't have any ethics, I'd be rich!"

Here's the thing: no, you wouldn't be.

Very few of these absurdist companies have any staying power, because there aren't that many people who actually go out and buy four digit power cables, and marketing costs drive most of these slimebuckets out of business.

If you really want to get rich in audio today, team up with a high-end home architect to build home media additions, where the room is custom built and furnished to be comfortable, luxurious and acoustically excellent. Get the rooms THX certified.

Then once you've demonstrated a product, team up with luxury home builders to offer various versions of your magical media room as options on their $1m+ homes.

But I guess that's not as fun as thinking that people actually get rich by selling $7k speakercables.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 12:22 PM on October 22, 2007

There's a scene exactly like this in Robert Anton Wilson's Historic Illuminatus Series. I forget which book. Presumably you've read it. I'm generally a big fan of RAW, but I think he went way overboard in his distaste with PSICOP and Randi and the like, conflating them with the people who burned Wilhelm Reich's books and the like. Especially when the alternatives he gave more credence to were folks like Jacques Vallee.

He also talks about it in The New Inquisition, which was the point at which I started to turn away from Wilson, though I enjoyed his fiction and still think he had a hell of an imagination and a fantastic pranksterish sense of humor. It was a bit too "well who's to say what's right or wrong these days, what with all our modern ideas and products", to quote another eminent modern thinker.

fnord
posted by fleetmouse at 12:46 PM on October 22, 2007

10 contestants demonstrating spellbinding illusions

illusions
posted by The Deej at 1:43 PM on October 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

damn dirty ape: "A couple thoughts regarding JREF:

They dont allow independant judges. This is a bit unsettling. JREF judging is either soley led by Randi himself or he chooses a panel. Thats far from impartial.

If you actually read the website, you'll see that the testing is always entirely reasonable. If it's videotaped and a copy is given to the applicant, should Randi refuse to pay out a proper win, they'd be able to wreck his organization in the media. "I performed X, and Randi didn't pay out... here's the proof!" Poof, no more JREF.

The JREF seems to do a good job with obvious charalatans like psychics but at the same time I wonder how many accepted field and practices would even come close to passing the JREF test as its been used. I would imagine the entire chiropatric field would be "bunk." Lots more people would have back and neck problems.

Well, their test isn't really set up to do medical field trials, because that takes a huge expenditure in time and money. Their test is designed for single, repeatable tests over a short period of time. They simply wouldn't offer an opinion on chiropractic care, or psychiatry, or engineering standards, because their test would be entirely unqualified to deal with those. And they would say so.

Or depending what study you quote you can toss out the validity of medical marijuana or any politicized thing out there. This gives a JREF-like test quite the manuvering room.

You really seem convinced these guys are scammers, and I think you're convinced because you're listening to scammers that don't like them. Here's a big clue, which you should think about: Randi doesn't really make any money from this. If he was scamming, he would charge money for his 'service'. Instead, he's trying to protect you from fraudsters. The people who attack him are the fraudsters themselves, the ones that want to separate you from your money. (or convince themselves that they haven't been scammed, when they have.)

I think its obvious that scientific materialsm has reached a point where only highly-trained experts can make crazy claims like, oh, the entire field of relativity or just cosmology in general.

Einstein was a patent clerk, you know. If a new Einstein happened tomorrow, he'd be accepted if his papers proved out. That's the thing about science: facts trump everything. If Timecube guy actually could make a sane argument, and could explain all the evidence we've accumulated better than our existing systems, Timecubism would be accepted. It's jeered because it's completely silly and not grounded in reality, not because the guy "isn't mainstream".

The JREF works against psychics and scammers, but applied to anything that is remotely controversial but potentially plausible, there's a built-in wiggle room (mostly in the judging setup) that guarantees a political and propaganda win for Randi.

He doesn't win anything. If he succeeds at disproving someone, you win. He gains essentially nothing. He's already as well-known as he'll ever be. He might make a few bucks selling advertising or something, but his gains are very, very small. There's just not much money in proving that things people like are fraudulent.

I imagine a 17th century JREF would have been a nasty problem to one-man geniuses like Newton or Franklin. Explaining that rocks actually do come from the sky to the defenders of the status quo who have a witchhunt for "bunkers" and "scammers" would have been a nightmare.

Again, JREF isn't about testing whole fields of thought, but specific testable claims. Newton and Franklin would have been smart enough to make claims that were quite testable; the fact that lightning is made of electricity, for instance. The famed kite-flying experiment would have passed JREF with flying colors.

Quantum mechanics is the closest thing to voodoo that we have in modern days, and specific tests, like photon duplication, would have no trouble passing JREF.

I think we're better off without a JREF as the showboating, wiggle room testing, etc cannot have a good effect on the long run.

You keep asserting this, but you haven't proven a damn thing. Can you give an example of them wiggling out of paying a valid claim? And 'showboating'? Oh please. What possible damage could they be doing? If it's truth, they're not going to be able to suppress it by asking for proof of claims.

The incredible childish mess that is the "5,000 dollar cable" I think shows that the JREF mentality has almost reached the point of self-parody as people en masse have given up on psychics and spoonbenders. Perhaps JREF and Randi are a victim of their own successes."

Even you admit they're successful. Why are you attacking them?

They're saying, "We don't think competently-designed cables on competently-designed equipment make a testable difference to human ears, and we're willing to pay you one million dollars if you can prove us wrong." Just what, exactly, is wrong with that?

If you're a cable believer, you're backing the wrong horse.
posted by Malor at 1:50 PM on October 22, 2007 [1 favorite]