Audiophoolery: Pseudoscience in Consumer Audio.
You might think that a science-based field like audio engineering would be immune to the kind of magical thinking we see in other fields. Unfortunately, you would be wrong [...] As a consumerist, it galls me to see people pay thousands of dollars for fancy-looking wire that’s no better than the heavy lamp cord they can buy at any hardware store. Or magic isolation pads and little discs made from exotic hardwood that purport to “improve clarity and reduce listening fatigue,” among other surprising claims. The number of scams based on ignorance of basic audio science grows every day. Via.
posted by amyms
on Jan 11, 2010 -
209 comments
Well, I'll tell you, Yanni would sound great on this system at The Great Theater in Ephesus, Turkey. A log cabin in the Bluegrass mountains would be another perfect setting for this system. Wow -
the possibilities are endless.
posted by squalor
on Mar 20, 2009 -
60 comments
In a single 1931
document, electrical engineer
Alan Blumlein patented stereo records, stereo movie sountracks and surround sound. His equipment was used to make some of the
first stereo recordings at EMI's Abbey Road studios - several decades before the technology came into popular use. Blumlein went on to pioneer
405 line TV (the first wholly electronic format which won out over John Logie Baird's rival system) and to produce the equipment that made the
first outside TV broadcast possible. At the outbreak of World War 2 he was a key architect of the secret
H2S radar project. Unfortunately he was killed in a plane crash while testing the technology and the whole incident was kept secret. Hence he remains an obscure figure despite his achievements. A
recent BBC Radio 4 program contains a lot of the archive stereo footage and tells his story.
posted by rongorongo
on Aug 7, 2008 -
5 comments
