Mac Mini heat sink upgrading?

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Has anyone heard of someone changing the heat sink on their Mini?

No one in their right mind.

What would be the purpose of doing this? Would this reduce the fan noise from my PPC 1.25 ghz Mac Mini?

Regards,

John Byrns

Disregard The New Guy. The guy is obsessed with heat sinks, and is under the mistaken belief that all Macs are insufficiently cooled.

John,

As Jolly Roger has said, be wary of what "The New Guy" has to say about cooling in general and heat sinks in particular. It's not that TNG is absolutely wrong about absolutely everything, but he is remarkably confused about fundamentals in such a way that a little knowledge really is dangerous.

I most certainly don't want to repeat the discussion that has already taken place, but you can go back a few weeks and look the discussion he started about iMac cooling.

-j

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

How about not trying to sabotage a thread?
I simply asked if anyone has heard of the Mini heat sink being upgraded. The answer is a Yes or a no-answer. If its a Yes, hopefully an URL will follow so I can learn about it. Surely this hardware deficient newsgroup can grapple with that simple task.

Because you asserted in a subsequent post that the change make a hugely positive impact, and you are woefully under-qualified to make a statement like that.

If all you were interested in was an answer to your question, you wouldn't have attempted to shove bad advice down someone else's throat. Leaving that as is would be extremely irresponsible.

In short, you sabotaged your own thread. Next time if all you want is an answer, don't offer bad advice in a follow-up.

Is that all you asked?

I responded to message-id

<replytogroup-250C73.18342527062007@news.lga.highwinds-media.com>

in which you stated:

[putting in a larger heat sink] would dramatically reduce [fan noise]. The same way good heat sinks dramatically reduce the noise of fans in any computer.

I did not respond to your question that started this thread.

Anyway, I do hope that you succeed in your project to upgrade your heat sink. I hope that you keep a record of CPU and other critical component temperatures as well as fan noise both before and after the upgrade. When you do, please post your results.

And for the record, I do agree that a good heat sink versus a bad heat sink can have the effect that you describe here. Much of what you say is correct. Although I have no reason to believe that the heat sink in the mini is inadequate. But even when you are right, you've shot your credibility when it comes to talking about cooling. So go ahead and do your heat sink project, but if you recommend it to others before you have results, I (and apparently I'm not the only one) will advise people to take your recommendations with a large grain of salt.

-j

The Mac mini fan is only a minor annoyance, what really needs better heat management is my "AirPortExtreme 802.11n" base station whose top surface gets nearly hot enough to fry eggs on.

Regards,

John Byrns

Previously, John Byrns <byrnsj@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
....

The Mac mini fan is only a minor annoyance, what really needs better heat management is my "AirPortExtreme 802.11n" base station whose top surface gets nearly hot enough to fry eggs on.

He who controls the air flow controls how the
eggs are cooked.

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:

Anyway, I do hope that you succeed in your project to upgrade your heat sink. I hope that you keep a record of CPU and other critical component temperatures as well as fan noise both before and after the upgrade. When you do, please post your results.

For my 1.25gHz Mini, the HDD temperature is the only one Temperature Monitor displays. Can this Mini keep show other temperatures?

Apparently replacing the Mini's processor with a Core 2 Duo (2.16GHz Merom T740) results in lower temperatures:

<http://macenstein.com/default/archives/323> <http://homepage.mac.com/macaholicg5/PhotoAlbum12.html>

Maybe you don't need to change your heatsink at all (c:

That is correct; however, when the truth of the statement is not self evident, the credibility of the person making it comes into question. And when the person making the statement has demonstrated repeatedly that he doesn't know much, if anything, about the topic, his credibility is very much an issue.

Some of you are well educated in science yet lack real world experience so you don't recognize where the priorities lie in the computer cooling world.

You have demonstrated lack of education in the field as well as lack of real-world experience, nor have you shown any cognizance of what the priorities are.

In other words, you don't know what you're talking about again.

No, just the opinion of everyone of this NG who has two braincells to rub together, a department in which you were sadly short-changed.

Ya know, you keep saying that. But looking back at that thread about heat sinks, I can't find one single person that agrees with you. Why does that not tell you something? If you're so right, how can everyone else be so wrong?

Maybe you just can't stand it when _everyone_ disagrees with you.

Ruby.

I'd say it's because the New Guy is a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>

Do you read for comprehension or just blather? Its his Airport Base Station, not the Mini that he says is getting hot.
Sheesh!

As is the hardware experience.

My
experience gave me knowledge and now I know why certain designs are lacking. If someone else doesn't have that experience, they may not agree with me. Perfectly understandable.

Exactly what experience do you have? What degrees do you hold?

On 2007-06-28 16:50:45 -0500, James Glidewell said:

New Guy is a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>

From that page:

"Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence."

Word. It's quite typical for engineers in most engineering teams in which I've worked to create performance estimates (with little outside (marketing etc.) influence) that lean heavily to the pessimistic side. Ans the sure-tell sign of a person without much experience is that they tend to bite off more than they can chew. ; )

Previously, James Glidewell wrote:

I'd say it's because the New Guy is a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>

I think you hit the nail on the head.

I software and hardware, your knowledge isn't there.

In real world experience, less so. Maybe you just can't stand it when someone disagrees with you?

Oh, I can stand it alright. What I can't stand is when someone who knows less than I do insists that I'm wrong and he's right, especially when it is obvious that he doesn't know what he is talking about.

I'll stack up my hardware knowledge and real-world experience against yours any day.

Just how long did the engineers say that the Mars rovers were going to last? And how long have they lasted? Would you say that they were "optimistic?" Most of the design engineers that I worked with were always "hedging their bets" when it came to design life. They'd guarantee 500 hours MTBF, but we would typically actually experience 2000 hours or more. No electronic engineer that I worked with would consider pushing the environmental envelope to get a little more performance. Everything was always derated. But you probably wouldn't know about that criteria.

D-K indeed.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

This thread is simply about if anyone has read or heard of the Mini heat sink being replaced. I Googled but didn't have much luck.

That should give you a hint right there.

You should apply to Apple for this job; it fits your self-described expertise:

<http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=6501& CurrentPage=2>
Requisition Number
2946588
Job title
Engineering Project Mgr: Enclosures
Location
Santa Clara Valley
Country
United States
City
Cupertino
State/Province
California
Job type
Full Time

Job description
As an Engineering Project Manager within the Product Design organization you will be responsible for managing the development and implementation process for one of our Product Design teams. The position will support multiple product lines from our Mac engineering organization. In this role you will drive the day to day program activities to meet the overall program objectives with a heavy focus on the mechanical design engineering cycle and deployment planning. Key skills to include: the ability to create and maintain program schedules; the ability to predict pitfalls and develop a better course of action; the ability to identify and direct all resources required to execute successful programs; and the ability to collaborate across engineering, operations and our OEM partners to meet very aggressive cost, schedule, quality and TTV goals.
The ability to work closely with the respective Eng Managers, Operations managers, Marketing managers and Product Design Engineers, as well as our vendors and OEM partners is crucial to success. The ideal person is a Project/Program Manager with a mechanical engineering or related technical background.

* At least 8 years of combined experience in project management and mechanical engineering delivering products comprised of multiple materials and high esthetic quality.
* Detailed knowledge of the product development processes as well as a strong understanding of manufacturing
processes.
*Experience interfacing with Operations, Mechanical Engineering/Design and Marketing
Preferred Experience:
* Masters in Engineering preferred.
* Multi-national development experiences also a plus.
* Understands CAD/Mechanical design

In other words, nothing worthwhile.

Before I gave results showing very effective and silent cooling options. Temperature results. The only thing that matters.

You didn't measure the right things, and your interpretation of your results is screwy.

No, I don't mean the optimistic side. Experienced engineers don't set themselves up for failure. You haven't ever worked in engineering, have you?

See above.

The New Guy wrote:

Does anyone know if the Intel Minis have temp sensors in them?

Yes they do - that is how I was able to provide you with temperatures in an earlier thread. Here is a screenshot showing the sensors probed by Temperature Monitor:
http://freespace.virgin.net/george.coward/other/temp-mon.png

The Mini is the latest model (just a few days' old). I've suspended SETI@home for the time being, so those temperatures are with the Mini idle and a room temperature of 18 C.

On 2007-06-28 20:23:09 -0500, The New Guy said:

any idiot knows that the
cooling is working if the exhausted air is cool.

No, cooling is working if the temperature of the components being cooled is low. The temperature of the exiting air is insignificant.

You have a lot to learn, my friend.

This is why people here tend to think you are a know-it-all teenager. You have zero knowledge of engineering, you hold no degree, yet you claim to know why engineers design things the way they do.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

...... Its about specific points. My experience gave me knowledge ...

Experience isn't getting an empirical idea of how hot exhaust air is. You need to measure the temperature of component of interest (eg, cpu) and find the operating range of said component. Then if make a modification (heat sink, fan, baffles, etc), then you need to report the resulting temperature of the component. Finally, if both the before and after temperature are within the stated operating range, you need to find some information to suggest that there is some value to your modification - perhaps the component life is lengthened. But you need to get some solid information suggesting that this increase in component life is significant in this applicatin. If the component normally lasts 10 years and your modification makes it last 20, it is probably a waste of time.

If you really want specifics, you'll take a course in thermodynamics.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Michelle, you seem exceedingly angry lately. Maybe some more cardio would relieve some of the angst?

You seem exceedingly smarmy and insulting lately. Maybe knowing what you're talking about would let you stop making a complete ass of yourself.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Now would someone please enlighten me on how a component can be cooled at near ambient levels and the exhausting air is hot.

The heat transfers from the component, heating the air, and the air then leaves the enclosure. That is a concept that you refuse to understand.

I agree that it is the "temperature of the components being cooled" that is important, but I don't agree that the "temperature of the exiting air is insignificant", although "The New Guy's" conclusions about the exhausted air don't necessarily follow.

Regards,

John Byrns

On 2007-06-28 23:30:37 -0500, John Byrns said:

I don't agree that the "temperature of the exiting air is insignificant"

It's insignificant when you consider that the air flow rate is variable.

If a statement can be proven true or false, sure. However, you've done nothing of the kind. For all you know, a larger heat sink will lower air circulation sufficiently to completely fry the CPU. You do know the heat has to go somewhere after the heatsink draws it away, right?

Replacing the heatsink. *YOU* go ahead risk your mini by doing it if you're brave - just don't assert that it will make things better when it isn't proven. I mean, you haven't even TRIED it on ONE computer yet, where the hell do you get off telling people to do it because it will have a huge, positive impact? At a minimum, it will void the warranty, so it's automatically bad advice on those grounds. Honestly, it's difficult to imagine someone who gives as little thought to things as you.

It really begs the question (and excuse my language if that sort of thing if frowned upon here) of why the fuck you think you're in a position to second guess the Apple ENGINEERS that designed and built the fucking things in the first place?

Personally, I can't remember reading anything about the mass-recall of Mac Minis that had died due to overheating issues. Can anyone point me towards a source that shows *any* Mac has overheating issues under normal conditions?

Sheesh...

Andy.

You may be worried about something other than your job, or indeed anything about _your_ life specifically. Engineers and architects (whether we're talking about computer systems or physical structures) are very often financially liable for the expenses incurred when the things they've created don't match what someone - often not them - has promised. Sometimes those "expenses" manifest as injury or death, which can be a crippling burden for anyone with a conscience.

If you strive for high goals, you may risk more. It all depends on the job.

True. If nobody's safety depends on you getting it right you can go pretty wild.

G

Yes, any idiot probably would assume that without bothering to verify.

G

It's also possible that the air flow was way faster than needed, which begs the question "How much power was the machine consuming at the time?".

Previously, Jolly Roger wrote:

It's also possible that the air flow was way faster than needed,

But was it faster than a unladen swallow?

Would that be a "gulp"?

African or European?

Does one swallow faster than the other?

It could also mean that the heat sink is packed with dust, or that it has become thermally disconnected from the chip it's supposed to cool.

The only *proper* test, is to measure the temperature of the chip you're trying to cool -- not the exiting air, not even the heat sink (which doesn't actually "sink" any heat at all, but rather just moves it from one place to another).

I don't play an engineer on TV, but I am one 8^}

Isaac

It is impossible for the heat sink to be at a lower temperature than the exiting air that is removing its thermal energy.

Isaac

On 2007-06-29 11:19:51 -0500, isw said:

The only *proper* test, is to measure the temperature of the chip you're trying to cool

Exactly.

True in the strict sense, but you're not taking into account that some systems funnel heated air from multiple components into a single air channel before final exit.

It seems to me that, to a first approximation, the temperature of the exausted air would only depend on the amount of heat being generated and the rate of air flow, and would be independent of the condition of the heat sink. If you do something to make the heat sink work poorly, then the temperature of the chip would increase until the temperature differential is large enough to transfer the same amount of heat as before.

No they will not cool lower than 70 F. There is no evaporative action, which is what is happening to your stupid hand when you feel the exit air. This whole thing is how you FEEL about it. Check out some thermodynamic laws about heat transfer. Do you know "easy" it is to transfer heat from one object at 26C to ambient air of 25C? If the incoming air is 25C and the exit air is 25C just how much heat is being removed from the system?

No; the cooling effect you observe under those conditions is mostly due to evaporation of the moisture on the skin. Inanimate object do not perspire. The heat of vaporization of water is approximately 539 cal/gram.

Even if such objects did perspire, no amount of airflow would cool them below the temperature of the air passing over them; the moisture would just not vaporize. You would do well learn a little about partial pressures and thermodynamic equilibrium.

On 2007-06-29 12:25:17 -0500, The New Guy said:

Have you ever heard of any product that could not be improved? I'm trying to improve one area of the Mini that bugs me. That's all.

What area would that be? I have yet to see a shred of proof from you that the Mac mini runs too hot.

I barely hear any of my three Mac mini fans, even when I'm pushing them. Then again I live in a big city.

Yes, will do. As a matter of fact I plan to pop the hood in the very near future in order to add more RAM.

I presume that was taken when idling?

Yes; the temperature doubles when pegged at 100%. I'd like to resume SETI@home on it, but 81-88 C cannot be good for the CPU. I will be looking into "non-invasive" cooling solutions in order to avoid voiding the warranty...

The fan in my Mac mini is on and making noise any time the computer is not sleeping, I would be happier if the fan only came on when the CPU is under stress as with my iBook book.

Regards,

John Byrns

Previously, Grandpa wrote:

Just how long did the engineers say that the Mars rovers were going to last? And how long have they lasted? Would you say that they were "optimistic?"

Without knowing the confidence values and the distribution of failure, I don't know. If the numbers usually bandied about for the "design lifetime" were actually, e.g., the expected minimum lifetime with a confidence of 95%, and the chance of failure follows some distribution characterized by high infant mortality (quite likely!), then the usual case would be lifetimes much longer than the design lifetime.

However, this is off the topic of whether "The New Guy" is suffering from Dunning-Kruger... I'd give way better than 95% confidence for a YES on that one :-)

Free clue: No one cools a component to "near ambient levels". It's both impractical and unnecessary.

You seem to be under the misconception that the heat sink is doing any cooling at all. It's not. The heat sink is being passively heated by the component. The airflow is effectively doing ALL the cooling (radiation to the environment is not significant); the heat sink itself is just a middleman.

The Mac Minis I've seen have been near enough to silent for my tastes.

Then again, I own a Dual G4 MDD "Wind-tunnel" model _without_ the PS/Fan upgrades and don't really find it a problem.

Andy.

Previously, Andy <nospam@no.no> wrote:
.....

The Mac Minis I've seen have been near enough to silent for my tastes.

Then again, I own a Dual G4 MDD "Wind-tunnel" model _without_ the PS/Fan upgrades and don't really find it a problem.

HELLO? WHAT? COULD YOU SAY THAT AGAIN? :-)

Well, when you become competent in the area, then perhaps you will have something constructive to add.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Methinks an Intel Mini is something I should get soon.

Methinks a Dell, Gateway, HP, or Compaq is something you should get soon, so you would bug their newsgroups instead of this one.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

When we go outside, the higher the wind, the lower the temperatures feels.

Not always. Try going out in the 110 (+/- 5) degree temperature here in Phoenix on a windy day. The temperature feels hotter than if there were no wind.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

I guess you haven't worked with heat sinks.

That's your stock bullshit answer, if someone disagrees with you, you tell them that they have no hands-on, real-world, etc., experience.

Or does it spit?

I recall Orlando at 100F, 98% humidity, and smoke from forest fires covering the city.

No amount of wind could have made a difference.

Same in Nawlins... And Atlanta...

Well, no. Actually, the heat generated by the underlying device is constant. It is coupled by the heatsink to the passing air no matter what the heatsink's temperature is -- a smaller sink will necessitate a greater temperature above that of the air, however. The temperature rise of the air is determined by how much airflow there is, and how much power (watts) it is carrying away, and has nothing at all to do with how large the heatsink is, or its temperature.

Bottom line: the rise in temperature of the air in passing through the unit is dependent *solely* on the total amount of heat generated inside (in watts, say), and is *not related* directly to the temperature of any particular heatsink which may be inside. Applied to a given device, a small, hot heatsink or a large, warm one, would result in exactly the same exit air temperature.

Which is exactly what I've been reiterating from the beginning.

I'd suggest you "guess" again (to quote something I read recently).

Isaac

On 2007-06-30 00:08:26 -0500, isw said:

The temperature rise
of the air is determined by how much airflow there is

This is what I've been telling The New Guy all along. Good luck with getting him to believe it...

On 2007-06-29 18:56:01 -0500, The New Guy said:

When my CPU use is above about 75% they ramp up. Are you using Intel Minis? Maybe they are quieter?

I have a G4 mini and two Intel minis. None of them seem excessively loud. Then again my office environment is not so quiet I can hear a pin drop anyway.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

If you review this thread, I never told anyone to do it. I asked if it had been done.

On the contrary: You recommended it to someone in the third post on it. Thus, the storm.

Previously, John Byrns wrote:

The fan in my Mac mini is on and making noise any time the computer is not sleeping, I would be happier if the fan only came on when the CPU is under stress as with my iBook book.

There's a small cable in your mini that you or whoever worked on your mini forgot to plug back in. Without that cable, the fans run at full.

Same here. In fact the ATI Radeon X850 XT in my G5 tower makes *way* more racket with it's stupid noisy little fan than *any* of Apple's fans.

"Gutta cavat lapidem..." doesn't work on this stone, as it seems.

I didn't see the previous thread, but it's certainly not impossible in the general case. What makes it impossible in yours?

And consuming extra power and, ironically, generating excess heat.

G

You do know that last thing wasn't a sentence, right? It didn't express a complete thought, so I'm not really sure what you intended to say.

And you know they're near ambient how? I thought you said you didn't measure anything.

Why? It doesn't substitute for "real world experience". If you don't believe me, just ask New Guy; he'll tell you.

He knows that they're near ambient because the exhaust air is near ambient.

Well then blame Steve Jobs and the Apple factory for that, my Mac mini has never been worked on by me or anyone else since it first left the Apple store, I don't even have a clue how to open the box. Speaking of that how do you open the box, I assume it takes some kind of special tool? I would like to add more memory and an airport card as I did with my iBook.

Regards,

John Byrns

<shrug> It happens sometimes. Don't worry about it.

If you get a local dealer to install the memory, they'll be able to reconnect the cable at the same time. Getting a mini's case open is only the first problem in working on it.

Technically, he *feels* the exhaust air is near ambient.

On 2007-06-30 09:46:04 -0500, John Byrns said:

Speaking of
that how do you open the box, I assume it takes some kind of special tool? I would like to add more memory and an airport card as I did with my iBook.

You can find various web sites on the web with detailed instructions showing how to take Mac minis apart. Google is your friend. Here's one:

<http://www.applefritter.com/Mac_Mini_Take_Apart_Guide>

There's a video here as well:

<http://www.smashsworld.com/2005/01/taking-apart-mac-mini-how-to.php>

You getting new agey on JR?

Hey I can be sensitive.

The Mac mini uses the same exact fan as the Radeon X850 XT? Citation please? If that's true, the mini's is somehow *way* quieter, because I never hear it.

If the heat
sink was larger, one could use a larger fan. Same airflow with less rpm's. Noise problem solved.

There is no noise problem here - and that's with three different minis. Even when I put the CPU through its paces there's no noticeable noise.

Then why does the Book fan only run when the CPU is stressed? Are you saying the iBook has "a massive heat sink" maybe even as large as an "entire Mini!"?

Regards,

John Byrns

That, or any other sort of "heat pipe", doesn't get rid of any heat at all; it just moves it from one place to another with good efficiency. Heat pipes have been used in laptops for a long time.

If you really want to stick a large radiating element on your mini, a surplus heat pipe might be a way to go.

Isaac

This is untrue and underpins your lack of understanding of this subject.

Now
it just happens that 120 mm and larger fans fit nicely on larger heat sinks. So now many users are finding they can run that 120 mm fan at inaudible speeds and still get good cooling.

Correct. The closer to ambient, the harder the cooling process becomes. Exponentially harder.

I'd just say he's just a thick cunt who is unaware that he is. Unless he's MC in disguise.

[snip]

This is one of the bits Mr NG doesn't get.

It's not semantics; it's basic concept. Until you understand basic concepts, you will not be able to have a meaningful discussion on the topic, and will continue to post the nonsense that you continually write.

I have the PPC mini and two Intel minis. None of them are very loud.

The CPU on
the Mini - is that a notebook style CPU? Or a desktop style? Or is there even much of a difference anymore?

The G4 mini has a 1.42 GHz PowerPC 7447a (G4) processor:

<http://tinyurl.com/cpjvg>

<http://tinyurl.com/2pyxfn>

Previously, The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> wrote:

Post your measurements of the component and temperature
of exhaust air. Measure this for several values of airflow.

Q = -hA(Ts - T)

Huh? There's no "notebook style" 7448. It is what it is.

I can't say about the mini and its CPU in particular, but it's common for the temperature sensor to be built into the CPU chip itself. It's just another transistor, wired in a special way.

You can find little apps that can give you a readout from it.

And remember, it will be measuring the temperature of the active surface of the processor directly, so it'll be considerably warmer than any external surface you can stick a thermometer on.

Isaac

Isaac said, correctly, that the heat sink is providing an impedance matching between the chip (which is small) and the air (which ultimately carries the heat away). As with any impedance matching device, it has an optimum size. For a given chip producing a certain amount of heat, and a given airflow, there will be more or less one size of heat sink that is correct. Size in this case may simply be nothing more than the surface area due to it having lots of fins.

You vary one of the parameters, such as heat produced, and if you want to remain at equilibrium (i.e. constant chip temperature), you better also vary the other parameter you have control over, namely airflow. So we see what is observed, namely the fan speeds up. You optimise the heat-sink size to maximise the heat transfer from the chip to the heat sink, and then to the air. It doesn't necessarily lead automatically to the conclusion that the heat sink is large.

Many of us have tried, in vein, to explain this to The New Guy repeatedly. He refuses to believe it. Good luck with that.

Previously, Jolly Roger wrote:

Many of us have tried, in vein, to explain this to The New Guy repeatedly.

<grammar/spelling nazi>

"in vain"

<end nazi>

Maybe that meant they got so frustrated they cut themselves..

Good catch. Thanks.

I can see how you made that error; he is, after all, a blood sucker--metaphorically speaking, of course.

No, the optimum size is that which, for the given conditions, transfers the maximum heat to the cooling stream.

Not necessarily, as we all keep pointing out. Probably you would have to use calculus or numerical methods to calculate the optimum size.

I noticed you didn't bother answering
a question that I asked you twice......namely, "Name a high end heat sink that is small."

Of course not. Why should I know anything about specific heat sinks made by particular manufacturers? Or care, more to the point? And who says that any such heat sink bought pre-designed, is going to be the best for a particular application? I'd rather have the one designed for the situation. What these and previous threads have been trying, with little evident success, to dun into your head, are the principles involved.

Another of the constraints is bound to be cost, something else you seem to poo-poo. One would make the bulk of the heat sink out of aluminium, to reduce cost and weight, and have a copper plug in it where it meets the chip. The plug itself would need to be designed, again to provide a good impedance match with the aluminium. The impedance mismatch is due to the different thermal conductivities of copper and aluminium.

Not necessarily. Other factors come into play, and "large" is ambiguous. All else being equal, increased surface area will generally help.

G

Right, but with properly designed fins. It does no good to have large fins with insufficient cross section area to accommodate the heat flow at any point along the its height.

Nope; the amount of heat transferred is always the same; only the temperature is different.

I noticed you didn't bother answering
a question that I asked you twice......namely, "Name a high end heat sink that is small."

"High end" heat sinks are never small because they are after-market items, bought mostly by individuals for whom the clue-meter reads very low. IOW, they're big because that's what people who know nothing about proper device cooling will pay for. That, and the "mine's bigger than yours" strategy of marketing.

Compare to "high-end" audio cables at a few dozen dollars a meter -- they're not better because they're bigger or more expensive.

--

There are some fairly subtle reasons why very large heat sinks might be useful to folks who want to overclock processors "to the max", but those don't apply to *properly designed* commercial gear.

Isaac

Actually, thermal calculations are similar to the ones used to calculate series resistors. IOW, really simple.

1) From the chip's data sheet, determine the "thermal resistance" from the chip (it's called the "junction" for historical reasons) to the package (called the "case") -- it's called "theta j-c", and it's expressed in degrees per watt.

2) Use the data sheet for the heat sink grease (or pad) to determine theta c-s (case to sink, again in degrees per watt).

3) Use the heat sink data sheet to determine theta s-a (sink to air, degrees per watt, and it's given for still air and for a range of flows). For a custom sink, you can easily measure theta s-a.

4) Simply *add* theta j-c, theta c-s, and theta s-a. That gives you theta j-a, the temperature difference per watt transported between the junction (the chip) and the air, for that specific heat sink, installation method, and air flow.

5) From the chip data sheet, look up the power consumed by the chip (in watts), or measure it.

6) Multiply that number by theta j-a. That gives you the actual temperature difference between the chip and the air when transporting the specified number of watts.

7) Take the maximum air temperature you expect (you *do* know where this thing is going to be used, don't you?), and add to it the temperature difference determined in (6). That tells you the chip (junction) temperature for that air temperature.

8) Use the device data sheet to determine the maximum allowable operating temperature for the chip. Compare to the number you calculated in (7). If (7) is lower, you can go with it, or you can consider a smaller heat sink, a smaller fan, or any similar combination. If the junction temperature is higher than specified, you have a different set of choices, involving a possibly reduced functional lifetime, or a better sink or fan. Or you can change the operating parameters of the device (e.g. reduce the clock rate) to reduce the amount of heat generated.

--

Now you know more about thermal calculations than most of the newly-minted engineers I've worked with during my career.

Isaac

You really don't have a fucking clue, do you?

I know about heat sinks to the same extent that I know about how cars work. As someone with a physics degree, and from Imperial College at that, I can be relied upon to understand the basics of heat sinks. Friend Isaac obviously has a better detail knowledge of the theory, but then I never studied it from an engineering perspective, just from one of heat flow, and what heat is.

Equally, I know the basic principles of how car engines work. But that doesn't mean I know how to design them. When I buy a car, I might well match it to the purpose - a small car for commuting, possibly a slightly larger one if I'm a commercial traveller. But I don't buy a Range Rover unless I'm a farmer.

You give the impression of someone who's heard that you put fuel in one end of the car, and it makes the wheels turn. Then you come along and say "Gee, I've got this fluid called water, a whole lot cheaper, why don't we run the car on that instead?".

That the Mac Pro's heat sinks are large is not at all interesting. They're just the end result of the design.

And by the way, increasing the surface area of something within the same dimensions is easy. You might try googling for "fractal solids surface area" or some such.

Sure you can; just put in more fins that are spaced closer together.

So if you meant large by that definition - the displacement of the object if sealed in plastic wrap - then, no. A "large" heat sink is not necessarily better than a smaller one.

Its rather hard to dramatically increase surface area and keep the overall dimensions the same.

No. Actually it's not. Didn't you get the demonstration in grade school where the teacher cut a hole in an 8.5x11 piece of paper large enough for him to walk through?

This, by the way, is equally important for brains. It's not volume that counts, it's surface area; and the size of the skull really has very little implication for the surface area of the brain jammed inside it.

Defined "worked better." I expect what the prior poster was trying to get across to you is that heat dissipation isn't the only axis in real-world equations. More particularly, as you strive to maximize heat transfer you will hit a point where it's gratuitous...where the fact you happen to be running 3 degrees cooler isn't really gaining you anything that's worth the money you dissipated getting there.

Note that the prior poster did not express that high-end cables weren't better. He just expressed that it wasn't the price or size that made them so. (And, relatedly, cost and size are thus not reliable predictors of quality.)

Who are these "they"? I was responding to your blanket statement.

I think you are confusing "semantics" with physics.

You persist in thinking that there's something important about "cools as well"; overclocking excepted, there's simply not.

Isaac

It's true that I didn't specifically say it in that post, but I will now:

There is no demonstrable advantage *at all* to be had by using high-cost "high-end" audio cables -- other than bragging rights, that is.

Isaac

That might increase the surface area, but it doesn't work as one might hope vis-a-vis being a better heat sink. For one thing, air gets viscous and "sticky' when you try to force it through small slits. There are other problems, too...

Isaac

Very few people have the ability to be patient. Very few people even know how to properly ground themselves! This is I recommended he see a dealer or other qualified (and patient) person. Are you offering to take responsibility if he fries his computer?

Not in general, as has been pointed out. And explained.

But you're a physicist and know all that.

Yes that's right. But unlike you, I'm willing to be educated by the several people here who, also unlike you, actually DO have "real world experience".

All of this brings up an interesting question. The Widget on my MBP says the CPU A temperature diode is 145.4 degrees F. Is this a good place to measure temps that might cause a problem and is this a good temperature?

Intel specifies that the absolute maximum operating junction temperature for the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is 100Ë Celsius (212Ë Fahrenheit). So 145.4Ë F is just fine.

<http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sspec=sl9se#>

It's the best possible place; that diode is on the same substrate with the rest of the CPU chip, and was fabricated along with the rest of it. FYI, a diode shows a "forward voltage drop" that is a predictable function of temperature. You just run a constant current through the thing, and measure the voltage across it.

145 F is about 62 C. I don't have a data sheet on that specific chip, but in general, microprocessors are perfectly happy up to about 100 C.

Looks like you have plenty of margin.

Isaac

Thanks. I am not sure what to make of this, but the same widget says the bottom side of the enclosure is exactly 98.6 degrees. Cue the Twilight Zone theme _grin.

On 2007-07-04 17:13:09 +0100, Kurt Ullman said:

Thanks. I am not sure what to make of this, but the same widget says the bottom side of the enclosure is exactly 98.6 degrees. Cue the Twilight Zone theme _grin.

You are spending too much time with your laptop on your lap ;-)

JOOI my MacBook reports 48 C (118F) diode temperature, 29C (84F) bottomside at the moment. I'm using Temperature Monitor from bresink.com

Making the CPU work can jump its temperature relatively quickly - I noticed the Adobe Acrobat Reader installation took it up to 70-odd C (168-odd F) in a matter of seconds, then the fan kicked in at high speed and dropped it by 10 degrees within a very short time. The X Windows peformance tester (/usr/X11R6/bin/x11perf) makes it sound a little like a 747 winding up for takeoff.

Doesn't that assume that the constant current source and the voltage reference for the ADC that measures the voltage are not affected by temperature?

Regards,

John Byrns

<pedantry>
Not at all. What it does is fail to address the practical difficulties associated with trying to run a constant current through something or measure the voltage across it when temperature is neither uniform nor constant. </pedantry>

Ian

isw <isw@witzend.com> writes:

It's true that I didn't specifically say it in that post, but I will now:

There is no demonstrable advantage *at all* to be had by using high-cost "high-end" audio cables -- other than bragging rights, that is.

More accurately: Upgrading from garbage to good quality stuff will show a strong improvement. You'll eliminate crackling, hiss, dropouts, etc. This kind cabling is not expensive.

Upgrading from good cables to audiophile-cable may show an improvement on test equipment, but most people won't be able to hear the difference, and even if you can hear a difference, I doubt it's significant enough to justify the tremendous price involved.

It's like when I was shopping for a home theater system. A $5000 set of speakers I auditioned definitely sounded better than the $1500 set I ended up buying, but it didn't sound $3500 worth of "better".

-- David

Since you were talking about overclockers then the definition of better ought to be something like "allowed the system to run reliably at a higher clock rate than with less agressive cooling".

If you are going to be running your system at higher than normal clock rates then your CPU will consume more power and generate more heat. At some point it may become necessary to improve the cooling system in order to keep the CPU temperature within the allowed range. Also, at some point, you may reach a clock rate limit due to finite switching speeds, and that limit might be higher if the CPU temperature is decreased.

However, if you are running a bog standard Mac there is no advantage to beefing up the cooling system - it will not make it any quicker or more reliable - in other words it won't make it any better. At best it will give no benefit and if you do it by running more or faster fans it will just make the system noisier and use more power. The cooling is part of the design and if it needed more cooling it would have been designed with more cooling. Can we just dispense with all this meaningless "my CPU runs cooler than yours" bs?

Ian

Aha, so you are in the business of selling motherboards!

Its the Apple way. And to be fair, probably the same for Gateway, Dell, HP, etc, as well.

If you mean that taking pains to ground one's self when working on computer innards is the Apple way, that's true, and Gateway, Dell, HP etc. along with any other computer maker or responsible tech would say the same.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Well the guy obviously doesn't have any real world experience in the audiophile world either.

Your answer for everything that disagrees with you is "no real world experience". Going by what you write here, I say that you have no real world experience and you have no theoretical knowledge either. You just plain do not know what you're talking about.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Well the guy obviously doesn't have any real world experience in the audiophile world either. I've never met ANY audiophile that doesn't take care in his cables. Its because it does matter. Otherwise a few of them wouldn't bother.

You probably respond to those letters from the wives of deposed Nigerian despots, too, don't you?

In fact, there are no "practical difficulties" at all, using well-understood semiconductor fabrication techniques. The problem is not even slightly difficult until you get to about the third decimal place, and determining the temperature of a microprocessor to three decimals is way more than good enough to decide when to turn on a fan.

Isaac

Measure the differences. Show your work and show the quantitative differences as numbers. Then attempt to show that level of difference can be perceived by human ears.

I'll wait...

Isaac

Bzzzzt! Wrong. The physics of heat flow is very well understood indeed -- no black magic at all.

"Basic theory" as you call it, *always* works, so long as the theory is well understood (but frequently it is not) and correctly applied (but frequently it is not). Do not blame Mother Nature for your inability to understand and follow Her rules.

Isaac

Well, without getting into a big contest here, I would just ask how many commercial computers and similar products *you* have designed personally, starting with the basic components? (A pre-built motherboard is NOT a "basic component; the individual parts that go on one are, however).

If the number is not considerably greater than zero (which I'd guess is the number you've actually done), then my "real world experience" is quite a bit greater than yours.

Isaac

This thread started off as a specific question from you, but after a few posts it moved to the principles of heat flow etc. And you haven't absorbed a single thing from all the good quality information posted here by others.

Since, unlike you, I am not a subscriber to "Heat SInks Monthly", I neither know what a "top end" heat sink is in your terms, nor care. To everyone following this thread, except you, a top heat sink is one that does the job it is designed for, such as in the Mac pro and so on.

The antics and toys of a few overclockers are of no interest to the millions of Mac owners whose heat sinks work just fine.

Pot, meet kettle.

Have you read a post for content in your entire life? You just argued with something that wasn't actually said.

Or are you still
listening to that 8 track from the basement?

Hey, until I can find an uncut version of Allan Sherman's rendition of the "Twelve Gifts of Christmas" on modern media, that 8-track is all I've got.

G

You've confused the anecdotal reality that common heat sinks today are large with the notion that large heat sinks are inherently superior. I can easily show you a large heat sink that's _terrible_.

You've just lost the debate. You've shown that you're completely and irrevocably out of your league if the only way you can reconcile disagreement with the foolish things you're saying is to make the unfounded and false assumption that no-one you're talking to has any experience outside of Apple's product lines.

Jeez, are you unable to read or just unwilling? How are you conflating quality with price or with user care?

Previously, Gregory Weston wrote:

Hey, until I can find an uncut version of Allan Sherman's rendition of the "Twelve Gifts of Christmas" on modern media, that 8-track is all I've got

Do it yourself:
<http://dmdb.org/lyrics/sherman.swingin.html#10>

...or maybe it's because Mac users are more interested in getting productive work done than they are in spending every waking moment tweaking every little thing they can get their hands on, and as a result, getting nothing productive done.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

That's because Mac owners are rarely interested in hardware excellence. And that's precisely why they are satisfied with the hardware flushed on them by Apple.

Actually, we are interested in hardware excellence; that's one reason we bought Macs in the first place.

And we're satisfied with Apple's hardware because the hardware is excellent, and not like the crap that you would design.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

The Absolute Sound, Stereophile and several others can open your eyes/ears to what is possible with reproduced sound.

I doubt that you have ever read an issue of either of those in your life.

Many of us have repeatedly demonstrated the validity of that point, but you keep repeating the same old crap, and accusing anyone of disagreeing with you of having no real-world experience.

You're a total waste of space in this conversation.

You are a total waste of space, period. You are a fraud, a liar, and a fool with delusions of adequacy.

Actually, what you said was, "The maximum heat transferred is always going to come about using a large heat sink though, right?"

It's right up there, just a couple of inches. Look. No, really, go look. See? The response to _that_ query/assertion is "not necessarily" but you don't seem to want to believe that.

Because size matters.

Of course it matters. It's one of several factors that come into play. It's not such a dominant factor that it trumps every other one, though, and that's where your argument falls to bits.

By apparently rejecting the notion that the elimination of "crackling, hiss, and dropouts" might count as "improvement" in some peoples' estimation.

Now look carefully what you wrote. You wrote "there is no crackling, hiss, dropouts with cable improvement." That reads to me an awful lot like "improved cabling will eliminate such presentation defects as crackling, hiss, and dropouts." And _that_ sounds an awful lot like a simple restatement of the assertion with which you were arguing.

Um. I never said anything of the sort. I said that diminishing returns would eventually argue against continuing to pursue perfect cooling. And I'm not a Macster. I think. Frankly I'm not even sure what a Macster is, having never heard the word before. But what I think you probably mean doesn't apply.

And since you're being so dense I'll ask the central question in more direct terms: What exactly is the benefit to superfluous cooling? Certainly you don't do it for the sake of doing it. Most people have better things to do with their time and money than spending them on a task that gains them nothing. So what does it gain you? What benefit do you perceive in trying to bring arbitrarily close to ambient temperature a component that has greater environmental tolerance than _you_ do? And don't come back with something circular like "Good cooling results in dramatically reduced temps." _What_is_the_benefit_?

G

Do you read what you reply to?

I explicity said "garbage". By which I mean the tangled mess of old cabling that everybody has lying around in their closets. Stuff that lots of people use, even though the quality is lousy.

If you read "garbage" as "brand new consumer-grade", that's your problem, not mine.

Perhaps you should read what people write, instead of what you think they should have been writing.

-- David

The New Guy wrote:

the reason the manufacturer wants to use smaller heat sinks is to save material costs. Aluminum and copper are very expensive.

Now youâve gone and made me spit my beer on the monitor. Thatâs just bloody hilarious. Are you really serious?

Processor temperatures are usually measured in °C, from what Iâve read.

For comparison with your processor, my Prescott is about 50°C when idle⦠47°C on a good day. I donât know how hot Core 2 Duos run, or if your system was really idle when you measured the temperature, but your 63°C may be a bit hotter than average.

But as Jolly Roger points out, 63°C is perfectly healthy.

Point out one credible source for heat sink ratings.

Which real world examples would those be, aside from those of you being ham-fisted and ignorant?

Excellence being your mommy and daddy buy you a cheap PC to stop your whining, and you scraping the nickels and dimes from your paper route together to buy an aftermarket heatsink, so your l33t overclocking skillz donât fry your processor?

As "The New Guy" demonstrates: it's not what you don't know that hurts you; it's what you know for certain that ain't so.

My MacMini with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor is about 50°C when idle (about 23°C room temp.), and the fan speed then is about 1500 rpm. The temp of the outgoing air is about 45°C.

The highest processor temperature I've seen on this machine, after several hours of nearly 100% load, is 81°C. The fan speed was about 2500 rpm, and the temp of the outgoing air was 56°C.

By the way, the noise of the fan is well below the background noise ( < 35 dBA), even when it's running at high speed.

But as Jolly Roger points out, 63°C is perfectly healthy.

Yes, there is plenty of headroom left.
--

58-59°C here with a dual 1GHz G4.

In that you're wrong. Bad cables are common cause of crackling and dropouts at least.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

If you can't open a Mini maybe you shouldn't even get out of bed. A lobotomized chimp with Parkinson's could do it. If you can read that is. This was a typical Macster afraid of anything hardware related. I work with motherboards all the time and never ground myself. I have yet to see any adverse affects. I don't dance around on the carpet of course. Its just common sense.

I've opened close to 60 Macs (40 of them in one sitting). In that time, one of them was damaged. (Ironically, it was one I took every reasonable precaution on - a Quadra 840. I'm still not entirely convinced I fried it, and it wasn't a coincidental failure)

You shouldn't be recommending major surgery to a user with unknown technical skills on a Mini, MacBook (Pro), PowerBook or iBook. Because you need a *LOT* more skill and knowledge than that chimp, and for all you know the person you're telling to do it has even less skill. Unless, as I asked, you're willing to foot the repair bill?

I whole-heartedly agree. It's irresponsible to assume others have the same level of knowledge and experience as yourself when offering advise in this forum.

The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> writes:

I see you ignore all things that disagree with you. Name a top end heat sink that's small. UNLIKE the heat sinks in the Mac Pro.

I think that you should go ahead and replace the heat sink. I think that you need a heat sink at least as big as a piano. Probably bigger, but that would probably be big enough, provided it is water cooled. Of course liquid nitrogen would be better, but it's probably not necessary.

I think that you should go ahead and _do_ it. When you've finished, then come back and report how much better it works.

The New Guy wrote:

99% of you think I'm a brainless idiot that just babbles incoherently via a keyboard.

I can't speak for others, of course, but I've been under the impression that you're actually quite intelligent but you're also 15 or thereabouts years old and think you know everything, as is typical of people your age.

Previously, The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> wrote:
....

At least someone here has a sense of humor! :) Thanks William! And I believe you meant not just any piano, but a grand piano. And not just any grand piano but a 9'+ concert grand piano.

He meant a 9' water cooled concert grand.
They present the best sound stage.

On 2007-07-08 18:59:01 -0500, The New Guy said:

you think I'm a brainless idiot

I don't think you are stupid, but I do think you're a know-it-all.

Sure. It shows that you ignored everything I wrote, and posted an entire paragraph of off-topic material in response.

Since it's obvious that you don't read anything you reply to, any futher discussion would just be a waste of my time.

Welcome to my killfile. Please don't change your e-mail address. I don't want to have to do this again.

-- David

Or, simply, that curiosity isn't enough of a drive to take away time from actually getting things done.

And if the lifespan of those components with the stock cooling solution is 5 times the projected usable life of the system?

G

Such as, perhaps, crap cabling?

G

And yet the person to whom you're responding was talking about the other end of the market. The people who pay insane prices for something that actually _doesn't_ gain them anything except aesthetics or misplaced warm fuzzies.

I've never, ever, signaled out appearance as a basis for a product's worth. If you've been reading here you'd know that. In fact its appearance that has doomed the potential of the Mac Mini so far. Their insane infatuation with "tiny".

The size of the mini is more than appearance. For some applications and environments, size is a salient feature. One of the machines in my house is a mini. If the mini was larger, I wouldn't have bought it because it wouldn't fit where I needed it.

You might recall that that primary market for the mini was individuals that already had machines but did not have Macs. The size, in that circumstance, is important because it was expected to join an existing setup, not necessarily supplant any machines. Almost everyone has room to add a mini on/near their desk. Far fewer people have room to add, for example, a Shuttle.

G

Previously, Gregory Weston wrote:

Hey, until I can find an uncut version of Allan Sherman's rendition of the "Twelve Gifts of Christmas" on modern media, that 8-track is all I've got

Greg, I don't know about 'uncut', but there's what appears to be a full version of this tune on Dr. Demento's Christmas Album. It's cut #4. The full title is 'Dr. Dememto presents The Greatest Christmas Novelty CD Of All Time'. My favorite is cut #9, 'I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas' by Yogi Yorgesson.

--Fred

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

The typical person is the guy getting into high end audio, listening to quality for the first time in his life. Its going to take him a while to get used to that level of reproduction. His equipment has probably cost him at least a couple thousand,

If he's getting into high end audio, his equipment cost him a heck of a lot more than a couple thousand.

Someone who has never read an issue of any of those magazines, but who has read about them, could have written the above.

Do you see that I used those same words? If it's a 2-grand starter system, he's not into high end; he's not even at the bottom of high end. He's in upper mid fi at best.

I once owned a $600 tone arm (in mid 1970s prices), but I bought it while in Japan for about $200.

I think that he's read one copy too many of CPU or Maximum PC. I also thingk that I'd just _love_ to watch him try to take apart a classic Mac, or a first generation iMac, or an eMac. I've still got my MacCracker and my extra-long T-handled TORX screwdriver, not that he'd have clue one about either.

Previously, Gregory Weston wrote:

....... Almost everyone has room
to add a mini on/near their desk. Far fewer people have room to add, for example, a Shuttle.

Too true. I picked up an old space shuttle the other day
but it would only fit in the garage.

Thanks for the pointer. If the clip at Amazon is accurate, this is the edited version, though. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that day 5 had to be sanitized.

G

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

For days now I have challenged someone to come up with a highly rated heat sink that is small. And not one of you has met the challenge.

You keep making the mistake of imagining we care. In fact it's a matter of complete indifference to me, at least.

What counts is whether actual heat sinks in actual computers work. And they do.

Still, this has been the most amusing and witty thread for a while. Keep it going.

You missed it completely. Like many other items people buy, aftermarket heatsinks arenât needed. But that doesnât stop people from wanting them. And the manufacturers and vendors are more than happy to take your money.

âTinyâ is fine if you can make it work. Which Apple does.

NRen2k5 wrote:

Copper costs about $3 per pound, aluminum is about $3.50. See for yourself.

I duffed up. Aluminum is about $1.30 per pound.

Nice.

I have to admit I plopped a Prescott in a case that was never meant for it. I only keep the temps that I do with my fans set to run constantly at â¥3000 RPM. Itâsâ¦â¦â¦ a bit noisy. :|

This is true. But anything better than dollar-store cables will be fine.

Nope. Bad cabling can cause all those problems. It may depend whether theyâre being used to carry an analog signal or a digital one, though.

Sanitized? How?

The New Guy wrote:

Many types of audio equipment does not devalue at all as long as you buy it used. You can use it for years and sell it for the same price if you bought cautiously. There are other areas of audio that appreciate as well. There's not many hobbies you can say that about.

I hope that clarifies things.

Hmm. True. Itâs about the same for âtraditionalâ archery tackle like mine. I bought a Martin Hatfield (a $700 bow) from someone on eBay for $400. And I can tell from certain design features that this bow is between 5 and 10 years old. If I keep it in good shape, I can get $400 for it too. If I can bear to part with it.

Thereâs a distinction to be made between âhigh endâ and âjust plain extravagantâ. âHigh endâ sounds amazing and *can* be had for a few thousand dollars. âJust plain extravagantâ is something that sounds amazing *and* can shake your house off itâs foundation.

The actual physics of the matter are very specific as are the tolerances of the hardware. Itâs pure and simple fact that the Mac Miniâs cooling is adequate.

And you in willful ignorance. I thought nobody could beat creationists at that. That was before I encountered you.

Previously, NRen2k5 wrote:

Thereâs a distinction to be made between âhigh endâ and âjust plain extravagantâ. âHigh endâ sounds amazing and *can* be had for a few thousand dollars.

Well, I do know that the high end of mid fi sounds amazing to those used to low fi or even mid mid fi. But compared to true high end, it sounds muddy.

Back when I could afford it, and when my hearing had not suffered from age and abuse, I bought the best I could afford (which sometimes sounded better than stuff more expensive), but lamented that I could not afford stuff that sounded even better than that.

Now I'm satisfied with a 7.1 system for movie tracks that also doubles as a stereo for music. Satisfied because I know that even with my hearing aids, anything better would be wasted on my ears. (and I do turn on closed captioning <sigh>).

Yet, I remember how it used to was.

The original version (1963) is

"A statue of a naked lady with a clock where her stomach ought to be."

Virtually every release since then has the word naked clumsily edited out. I don't actually have it on 8-track. I have it on 45 and I know where I can get a turntable to grab it, but I don't know _when_ I can get the few minutes it'll take. Apparently an Allan Sherman boxed set was released a couple of years ago with the original version but, considering the only other song of his I really like is "You Went The Wrong Way Old King Louis," $100 or more is a bit steep.

Previously, Gregory Weston wrote:

Apparently an Allan Sherman boxed set was released a couple of years ago with the original version but, considering the only other song of his I really like is "You Went The Wrong Way Old King Louis," $100 or more is a bit steep.

I like Harvey and Sheila.

Have a naglia, have two naglia, have three nagila, they're very small

Previously, Michelle Steiner wrote:

Now I'm satisfied with a 7.1 system for movie tracks that also doubles as a stereo for music. Satisfied because I know that even with my hearing aids, anything better would be wasted on my ears. (and I do turn on closed captioning <sigh>).

I hate 5.1, I truly do. That middle channel destroys the dialogue tracks in a movie when it's played back on a 2.0 mix (what we used to call "the 2-track"). You very rarely get a 2.0 on a DVD these days, and it's not mixed "by hand" anyway.

5.1 is great in the Leicester Square Odeon, but simple consumers have been conned into running wires around their living room for "surround" that has nothing much in it most of the time outside of Star Trek, with systems that they paid 99.99 for at Costco. "Ya hear that rumble, Thelma? That's what I'm talkin about."

How does your music sound? Do you set it to "stereo" when you play, say, Joni Mitchell's "Dog Eat Dog" (probably the best-produced rock/jazz album ever)? Maybe she should remix it in 5.1

Many DVDs give you the option of 2.0 or 5.1, and a few give you the option of 7.1 or 6.1 instead of5.1

How does your music sound? Do you set it to "stereo" when you play, say, Joni Mitchell's "Dog Eat Dog" (probably the best-produced rock/jazz album ever)? Maybe she should remix it in 5.1

My stereo sounds great, but I probably wouldn't have said that about this system 30 or 40 years ago, when my ears were better.

Charlie Byrd's white album is terrific, as is Lew Tabakin's "Summertime" album.

The only time I fiddle with the surround while playing vinyl is when I put on a quadraphonic record I bought in the 70s.

Previously, Tom Stiller wrote:

Have a naglia, have two naglia, have three nagila, they're very small

Way back when, I improvised, "Have a nagila, have a nagila, have two or three."

Okay, I just checked the Dr Demento version and 'naked' is indeed edited out. Never noticed that before.

--Fred

Advertisers want to get your attention so they increase the volume. We are constantly bombarded with more noise and few quiet areas. The mobile music market has abetted a culture of more personal noise battling external sources. Bah.

....

The Quad ESL-43 also excelled at this....

ESL-63?

The New Guy wrote:

Well quality audio reproduction has not much to do with shaking things. You sound like a home theatre enthusiast. Some people think its all about recreating the original musicians in front of you. But even that isn't it. What its really about is trying to put you back in the original musical event, with the original acoustics of the venue intact. That is a tall order indeed. But its thrilling when it occurs.

Actually I was thinking of how after a certain point with many enthusiasts it becomes less an matter of âbetterâ and more a matter of âmore.â

The New Guy wrote:

Well I guess you're deaf or listening on a very sub standard system. I'm not saying its worth it to spend $5000 on a 1 meter pair of cable. But there are most definitely differences in the sound of cables. Once again, no REAL WORLD experience.

Wrong. Cables are very simple beasts. Very good quality can be had very cheaply.

And yes, I do have real world experience. I have a college degree in electrical engineering technologies.

The New Guy wrote:

The differences, as noticed by anyone that is listening on good equipment and isn't totally deaf, are readily apparent. Only a fool would buy something on specifications alone. A prudent buyer purchases that what gives them pleasure. Things like resolution (the ability to hear detail at the lowest volumes possible), imaging extending way beyond the edges of the speakers going very deep with focus of the image within an inch in depth, width and height, bass that is raw, tight and extremely fast down to around 15 hz, highs that are not fatiguing, but seem infinitely extended......these are some of the things one notices, among many others, when listening to good equipment. The Absolute Sound, Stereophile and several others can open your eyes/ears to what is possible with reproduced sound.

And all that is trivial with a decent cable. All said cable needs is good conductivity, low capacitance, low inductance, and some good shielding. All of which can be had for much, much less than $5000.

If you have a problem with a $30 cable, the problem probably lies in your system or how itâs configured.

And you know what they say about opinions.

Longer lifespan of components and less airflow needed to cool to the same temperature.

There's only two ways to reduce airflow while keeping the temperature the same at the chip. One is to reduce the temperature of the incoming air, which is not under the control of the system designer. And the other is to get better coupling between the air and the component -- which means the exhausted air will be hotter, which you've claimed is a bad thing.

Glad to see this thread is still going. Excellent. Keep it up chaps.

Erm.

Do you have any idea what kind of practical experience it takes to get an EE degree?

I'm not lopping you in that group, ...

What an odd thing to say, considering you started off by asserting the prior poster's lack of experience.

G

We're not only talking about the ability to perceive those differences, but also the much more important subjective reaction to them. And I'm fairly certain that the majority of the world population does, in fact, have real-world experience in hearing.

[...]

Yes, anybody with an education worth more than a rat's fart would know, that such comparisons are worthless unless they are double-blind. (And yes, I had a 12 years long career as a loudspeaker designer.) --

The New Guy wrote:

Another example of a lack of real world experience. Real world experience is listening to a wide variety of high quality gear, changing one thing at a time to ascertain the exact differences. No degree gives you that. Its odd, but most highly educated "technical" people are profoundly ignorant of most things audiophile. I'm not lopping you in that group, but its an observation I've seen time and time. Probably because they lean on their theory and knowledge more than their ears. You should buy something because it sounds better, not because it has more impressive specifications.

No. âAudiophilesâ are just not very objective, and so are very susceptible to placebo effect.

An EET doesnât take much. A few hundred hoursâ lab time maybe. ;)

The New Guy wrote:

That does not help when judging music reproduction quality. Only listening does. Real world experience. Just as listening to music would not help much in writing a paper in electrical engineering technologies. Remember we're talking about the ability to perceive audio differences, not designing equipment.

So tell me, smartass. What sorcery does one perform on a couple of feet of electrical cable to warrant a price tag in the thousand-dollar range?

Oh, I forgot. âJust plain extravagantâ also replicates frequencies only your dog can hear. As well as frequencies that even he canât. ;)

The following, which supports you, is from the article, "The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio" from _The Audio Critic_ magazine:

1. The Cable Lie
Logically this is not the lie to start with because cables are accessories, not primary audio components. But it is the hugest, dirtiest, most cynical, most intelligence-insulting and, above all, most fraudulently profitable lie in audio, and therefore must go to the head of the list.

The lie is that high-priced speaker cables and interconnects sound better than the standard, run-of-the-mill (say, Radio Shack) ones. It is a lie that has been exposed, shamed, and refuted over and over again by every genuine authority under the sun, but the tweako audio cultists hate authority and the innocents canât distinguish it from self-serving charlatanry.

The simple truth is that resistance, inductance, and capacitance (R, L, and C) are the only cable parameters that affect performance in the range below radio frequencies. The signal has no idea whether it is being transmitted through cheap or expensive RLC. Yes, you have to pay a little more than rock bottom for decent plugs, shielding, in- sulation, etc., to avoid reliability prob- lems, and you have to pay attention to resistance in longer connections. In basic electrical performance, however, a nice pair of straightened-out wire coat hangers with the ends scraped is not a whit inferior to a $2000 gee-whiz miracle cable. Nor is 16-gauge lamp cord at 18¢ a foot. Ultrahigh-priced cables are the biggest scam in con- sumer electronics, and the cowardly surrender of nearly all audio publica- tions to the pressures of the cable mar- keters is truly depressing to behold.

(For an in-depth examination of fact and fiction in speaker cables and audio interconnects, see Issues No. 16 and No. 17.)

Issue 16 is at
<http://theaudiocritic.com/back_issues/The_Audio_Critic_16_r.pdf> The article starts at print page 51, or PDF page 37

Issue 17 is at
<http://theaudiocritic.com/back_issues/The_Audio_Critic_17_r.pdf> The article starts at print page 50, or PDF page 42.

No wonder The New Guy doesn't know about those articles. He wasn't yet born when they came out and he hasn't gone through back articles of audio magazines to get info. Why should he, when he already knows it all? In his not-humble-at-all opinion, anyway?

It's called the Spell of the Removal of the Money From the Suckers.

It generally involves (in no particular order) gold plated connectors, a large investment in the advertising budget, flashy packaging and the gullibility of those with more money than sense.

HTH.

People have asked questions about such equipment. I have answered some of them. So has she.

You're losing it. You're really losing it.

I have. I just don't think that you know any more about audio than you do about heat sinks, and you know zippo about heat sinks.

The Audio Critic blows them out of the water, and backs up its opinions with solid science and math. Give it a try.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Wow, Michelle. Cutting edge information from 16 years ago. Well done! LOL!!!! Are you going to be next posting information from the computer information era from 1991 also?

Are you saying that basic physics and math has changed in the past sixteen years? Oh, and please do not bring up relativity, quantum mechanics, and the like because they do not apply in this scenario.

Your failure to refute those articles indicates that you are unable to refute them.

Previously, Andy wrote:

It generally involves (in no particular order) gold plated connectors, a large investment in the advertising budget, flashy packaging and the gullibility of those with more money than sense.

Gold-plated connectors do make sense, though; it keeps the connectors from corroding. The point of connection between items is the weakest link in a signal path. (Cue Ann Robinson)

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Something else that is interesting in this area: often when equipment reproduces very high frequencies (far higher than we can actually hear), it replicates our audible frequencies with more ease, or less distortion. One sign of good audio reproduction is ease: the music sounds effortless. No strain, no struggle.

What the fuck does that gobble-de-gook all mean? You going to start going on about "spritual harmonics" next? If you can't hear it, it's because you can't hear it. You're not "feeling" it in your aura. --
W. Oates

Previously, The New Guy <replytogroup@here.thanks> wrote:
....

Something else that is interesting in this area: often when equipment reproduces very high frequencies (far higher than we can actually hear), it replicates our audible frequencies with more ease, or less distortion. One sign of good audio reproduction is ease: the music sounds effortless. No strain, no struggle.

Ideally one could identify specific measurable quantities that correspond to differences that people hear in double blind experiments. There are a wide variety of listeners,
so one cannot easily create a double blind study that proves a negative.

Some music, for example a cymbal crash, has a frequency distribution that peaks well above the audible range.
Music is full of peaks that contain many high frequencies that are nominally above the audible range. It is easy to see that very accurate reproduction of the highest audible frequencies including phase properties could be very important for high fidelity.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Previously, Michelle Steiner wrote:

(For an in-depth examination of fact and fiction in speaker cables and audio interconnects, see Issues No. 16 and No. 17.)

Issue 16 is at
<http://theaudiocritic.com/back_issues/The_Audio_Critic_16_r.pdf> The article starts at print page 51, or PDF page 37

Issue 17 is at
<http://theaudiocritic.com/back_issues/The_Audio_Critic_17_r.pdf> The article starts at print page 50, or PDF page 42.

Wow, Michelle. Cutting edge information from 16 years ago.

....

Research might progress over time, but basic human physiology doesn't. This solid work proceeds from idenifying measureable quantities: "There exists no mechanism whereby an audible difference could occur." This is the sort of assertion that is very difficult to prove.

"Could be" very important, but in fact have never been demonstrated to actually be important, or even audible.

Tests have been done using quality microphones and spectrum analyzers that show no "supersonic" components at all from any "standard" musical instrument (i.e. one used for any reasonable sort of musical performance). The conclusion was that the 22 kHz response of audio CDs was entirely adequate to capture everything a musical group could put out.

It was a while ago that I read about those tests, and I suppose things could have changed; do you have any more recent references to back up your statement? I'd like to study them.

Isaac

Your ears are very close to the worst possible instrument to use in judging. They are very fallible and can mislead you time and again. No amount of training can permit you to ignore their defects and work around them.

Surely you've seen optical illusions -- images that make you think things are there which most certainly are not. Even after you understand the illusions entirely, they still fool your visual system every time you look at them; there's no way to "train" yourself to not see them.

There are also sonic illusions, and they work similarly to "fool" our auditory system.

One such illusion is the illusion that a set of ears (any set) is able to detect artifacts that well-engineered test gear cannot.

Isaac

Michelle Steiner wrote:

Oh, and please do not bring up relativity, quantum mechanics, and the like because they do not apply in this scenario.

What about a time-travelling industrial rock band? That would seem to be highly relevant to this discussion. Or is that just a Phantasy?

Right. But it is important that listening is the ultimate yardstick and measurements are only used to extend the analysis. I remember a fascinating lecture I went to years ago about fourier analysis of vibrations induced in fine violins. The lecturer identified a certain signature common to these instruments, but never managed to quantify how this correlated with actual perception of "better" in the instruments.

I don't know of any such tests. But tests with negative results are not definitive of no effect.

They are the ultimate arbiter here. If you really prefer the sound of one set of equipment over another, there is no point in trying to measure something that proves your preference wrong. If the test gear says something else, let the test gear listen to the music.

.....

One such illusion is the illusion that a set of ears (any set) is able to detect artifacts that well-engineered test gear cannot.

Certainly if the ears are not consistently able to hear something. But if a repeatable listening test shows that people can actually hear a difference you need to come up with better test gear.

Because the "audio world" is full of wankers.

As for science and math.......what a joke. Does science and math make something sound better?

Errm, actually it does. You take the maths and the science, and you apply it.

In about 1983, I added a $150 BSR CD player to my Shure V15 cartridge, SME arm, Thorens turntable, Quad amp/preamp, Quad FM tuner, and IMF Studio Monitors. It sounded just as good as the $1400 Philips CD player that the local "audio buffs" were trying to foist on me.

The Quad amp, by the way, was serviced by the Quad rep in Daly City at age 15 years (he said it was within manufacturers spec, no work needed), and by Quad at Huntingdon when I returned to the UK, at age 30 years, when they replaced the large caps. Other than that, it all still works fine, with the Quad nearly 40 years old and the speakers over 30 years old (and well travelled). By good kit and it will last - and give you as good a sound a s you need.

I don't recognize any audio terminology in that fucking gobble-de-gook (mindless profanity re-inserted in the best Usenet fashion). --
W. Oates

If i say that 'There exists no mechanism whereby an audible difference could occur', you can disprove quite easily... produce such a mechanism.

I once encountered an 'audiophile' who swore that he could tell the difference between not merely vinyl LPs but between CDs and high-bit-rate AAC and Ogg Vorbis copies. (He insisted that Ogg gave 'purer' sound.) After I set up a little test suite involving LPs, CDs, DAT, and AAC and Ogg, and he could not tell the diff between the LPs and the DAT, and he thought that the AAC copy was _better_ than either the CD original or the Ogg copy, he insisted that it was because my 'crap system' wasn't capable of 'true reproduction' and that he'd be able to make better judgements if I used a 'real, quality' system. I offered to repeat the test using _his_ setup. He didn't have time just then. That was over a year ago. Several times I've offered to repeat the test, using his system. He's never had time. Gee. I wonder why.

The New Guy wrote:

[...]

More idiotic tests. Hey Isaac. Do you have your Mommy buy your sound system for you? Do you only buy what some test tells you? Do you people ever think for yourselves? This is getting positively pathetic.

Your problem seems to be that you're simply too ignorant to appreciate your own ignorance...
--

The New Guy wrote:

[...]

As for science and math.......what a joke.

Really? So, what about Matti Otala et al?
--

It's nothing to do with me *buying* stuff, nincompoop. It's to do with engineers *designing* stuff.

No. The buffs had two Phillips units, both top-loaders. One was $700, the other $1400. The buffs' audio store had a proper sound room with walls 3 foot thick, but I was unable to tell any difference between these two, so I went of and bought a cheap unit that sounded just as good.

[snip audio-anorak opinionated unsubstantiated drivel]

By the way, this thread now has 333 posts. Keep it up. We'd love you to reach 666.

In other words, you are full of hot air.

Because I guess you never were really into high end sound.

You guess wrong yet again. You're batting .000 so far.

Interesting how you refer to and quote magazines, but when a magazine disagrees with your uninformed opinion, you start screaming, "No real world experience!" I doubt that you have had any real-world experience yourself.

When they can't disprove a person's statements, some folks resort to a personal attack (it's called "shoot the messenger"), and hope people don't notice. Usually it doesn't work.

How many pieces of high-performance audio gear have you designed (not just copied from a magazine) and built with your own hands?

Isaac

Did you know that a very small difference in level -- well under a dB, and not noticeable as an actual difference -- will cause most people to choose the slightly louder source as "sounding better"? It's a trick used all the time by less-than-ethical salesmen to turn customers towards the high-profit-margin choice.

It can happen when attempting to do a "fair" test, too, if you don't know what you're doing. Without using instrumentation, it is impossible to get two audio systems matched well enough in level to avoid the effect.

Isaac

I don't know why you ask this, Isaac. We all know he's got no REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE (tm).

Oh, yeah. "Stunning" differences in the sounds of various pieces of wire. OFHC (Oxygen-Free high Conductivity) cables. The Tice Clock. Those wooden discs you put on your speakers. Putting green marker on the edge of CDs. Freezing CDs. Belt-driven CD players. Breaking in your speaker cables.

And by giving credence to those and other totally absurd audio devices instead of giving them the debunking they so richly deserve, it is certainly true that The Absurd Sound and Stereofool have had a major impact on "high-end" audio -- sadly, though, not for the better.

And you know, the funny thing is, if you happen to have a decent grounding in science and audio technology, you can easily see the flaw in the explanations for all of those.

Isaac

The fundamental point is to prove that an audible difference exists. We might be smart enough to find the corresponding mechanism, but the audible difference remains (assuming proper blind testing, etc.).

Perhaps, as you suggest, he didn't want to know that he couldn't tell the difference. Perhaps he couldn't. In any case, his ability doesn't prove a universal truth about audible differences.

.....
In this case, buy it if it will preserve the better sound
by avoiding corrosion. It isn't quite that simple.

That's true for anybody. What's so special about "audio enthusiasts"? These are precisely the ones who are *most* likely to be taken to the cleaners by the "Special wire" sellers. You know - high end spec stuff - what you specialise in.

Pot, kettle, black.

Tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of your system and what it comprised please.

You first. On second thought, don't bother; all you will do is find some components on the internet and claim that they make up your system.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Its hilarious. We're talking about sound differences. And you're saying " if you happen to have a decent grounding in science and audio technology, you can easily see the flaw in the explanations for all of those."

You are claiming that there are sound differences, yet you offer nothing to show that those differences actually exist. Meanwhile others are offering evidence to show that any perceived differences are merely illusionary.

That's why it's called psycho-acoustics.

<http://www.hoertechnik-audiologie.de/web/file/Links/psylab.php> --
W. Oates

Did the laws of physics change in the last 16 years? If so, I missed the memo.

You're losing it. You're really losing it.

Ironic coming from the guy who thinks the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics has changed sometime during his formative years.

Greg

well, that's an oxymoron if I ever saw one.

Isaac

Not in my experience. All someone has to do is to

1 show me a difference

2 show me how to replicate that difference.

If that can be done, then you have something. If it cannot be done, then you have nothing. A difference which cannot be detected is simply not a difference of any significance.

M'man thought that a DAT was an LP and the LP was a DAT. He thought that the AAC recording was the CD. He thought the CD was the Ogg. He thought the Ogg was AAC. He didn't get _one_ right. (Well, he did detect the difference between the digital recordings and the LP, except that he thought the LP _was_ a digital recording. And made a big deal over the 'harshness' of the 'hard-edged' digital sound, how it hurt his oh-so-sensitive ears after the smoothness of the analog sound from the LP... Pretentious boob.)

......

Exactly. Lately I have more experience listening to different violins in blind tests to see which is better. Normally several of us can easily tell the different instruments apart aurally as well as what we like or dislike about each range in each instrument. Critical listening takes work and one pretentious boob with tin ears does not prove any general point except that such boobs exist.

No, I said that I bought a tone arm that sold for $600 in the states. In Japan, it cost about $200.

Its funny. People claim that small differences don't exist.

Some people do, but no one in this discussion has claimed that.

I believe that you are a fraud and are merely regurgitating stuff that you have read, without actually understanding it.

On 17-Jul-2007, The New Guy wrote:

Nobody in their right mind would buy something because its SUPPOSED to sound better. We pay for something that IS better.

I believe you mean "sounds better to your ears."

In the final analysis, nobody in their right mind would buy something because it sounds better to "trained ears" if it doesn't sound better to their own ears.

No matter how you slice it, there is always a subjective element even in "trained ears" that does not exist in equipment.

On 17-Jul-2007, The New Guy wrote:

BTY, eyeglass wearers, take note. Take off your glasses when listening. They obscure imaging, as they distort the sound as it gets to the ears. If you have a decent system you'll hear the difference, but only, of course, if your speakers are set up for good imaging. Something that is rare unfortunately. (Max distance from the rear wall without getting a hole in the middle, grills off, tweeters at ear level, and NOT toed in. Only speakers with poor horizontal dispersion benefit from toeing in. Toeing in tends to result in a truncated soundstage where depth is more between the speakers than in the corners. Imaging detail is obscured as information is packed together.) And when you raise those speakers so the tweeters are at ear level, make sure they are on utterly rigid stands without a hint of wobble anchored through carpet to a hard surface below. That was something that Linn pioneered. Kind of woke the industry up.

The above is sheer nonsense--especially "they distort the sound as it gets to the ears."

Take your own advice.

For some odd reason you seem to really have a chip on your shoulder for everything I post.

Not at all; as with just about everyone else who responds to you, I merely attempt to correct the misinformation that you spew.

Then why is he so hesitant at doing the test using his equipment? I think I know why. He DID NOT GET ONE RIGHT. Not one. He damned the _LP_ for having 'harsh', 'hard-edged' _digital_ sound, and he praised the _DAT_ for having 'smooth' analog sound! He thought that an AAC recording made from the CD _was_ the CD! In short, he had no fucking clue! I had a serious problem keeping my face straight while he bloviated!

BTY, eyeglass wearers, take note. Take off your glasses when listening. They obscure imaging, as they distort the sound as it gets to the ears. If you have a decent system you'll hear the difference, but only, of course, if your speakers are set up for good imaging. Something that is rare unfortunately. (Max distance from the rear wall without getting a hole in the middle, grills off, tweeters at ear level, and NOT toed in. Only speakers with poor horizontal dispersion benefit from toeing in. Toeing in tends to result in a truncated soundstage where depth is more between the speakers than in the corners. Imaging detail is obscured as information is packed together.) And when you raise those speakers so the tweeters are at ear level, make sure they are on utterly rigid stands without a hint of wobble anchored through carpet to a hard surface below. That was something that Linn pioneered. Kind of woke the industry up.

I think I made a comment about a pretentious boob earlier. The above is the kind of crap I was thinking of when I made it. This is the kind of bullshit which was harpooned by Alan Sokol in his 'Social Text' hoax. His target was 'deconstructionist' pretentious boobs, who failed to notice that, among other things, his publication said straight out that gravity is a social construct, and that he had _deliberately_ dropped in references that only an idiot would take seriously and that he was laughing his ass off at them while they were praising him for his 'insight'. See <http://physics.nyu.edu/~as2/>. 'Audiophile' pretentious boobs construct elaborate mountains of crap on even flimsier foundations than did the twits that Sokol dropped the hammer on.

One of my fav bits is from the publication where he revealed the hoax:

"For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist:
if I find myself unable to make head or tail of _jouissance_ and _diff'erance_, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.

So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards,
I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies --- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries
as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross ---
publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if
(a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my article, ``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,'' in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of _Social_Text_. It appears in a special number of the magazine devoted to the ``Science Wars.''"

'Audiophile' pretentious boobs think that a DAT is an LP and vice versa... and blame the equipment for their error, and then run away when its suggested that trying other equipment might be a good idea.

If an 'audiophile' can't demostrate the difference between two systems to a non-'audiophile' I strongly suspect that there _is_ no difference. And that the 'audiophile' is a pretentious boob.

"Harsh", "hard-edged", digital sound, my ass.

Sure, but their being wrong about that does not invalidate the fact that there is no audible difference between audio cables.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

...... If you've tested the
eyeglasses theory, list the equipment it was tested on and how it was set up. Then we'll go from there. I, along with many others have tested it and it most definitely impedes imaging. We're talking audio here. Stick with audio.

......

It does seem unlikely that glasses could have any significant direct effect on the sound. But there
could very well be an indirect effect associated
with closing the eyes or, being faced with everything
out of focus, paying less attention to the room and
more to the music.

There's a whole class of errors produced by audio equipment called "euphonic distortions", so called because in some cases people can prefer the alterations they cause over the original material.

Single-ended amplifiers built with vacuum tubes and output transformers are particularly susceptible to even order harmonic distortion, which is in the class of euphonic distortions, for example, and some folks like the "punch" produced from soft clipping, another characteristic of tube amps.

The entire process of cutting a vinyl record is a stack of distortions from one end to the other (in that case, most were put there on purpose in an effort to make a "better" end product). Those, plus the characteristic distortions produced by turntable-cartridge systems result in a "sound" that some people prefer -- or simply have become used to and comfortable with.

Others, however, believe that the "original intent" of the composer/performer/engineer should be preserved (i.e. that it's *not* OK to add stuff to the original recording when you play it back). Or alternately, they don't want any alterations going on that they don't explicitly control, because not all source material benefits equally from the same amount and type of added distortion -- even if it is "euphonic".

When a person who thinks he has a "high-end" setup goes through a process of grading commercial recordings into groups such as "wonderful sound stage", "excellent bass punch", "worthless junk", and so on, what is probably happening is that the material is unconsciously being selected or rejected according to whether it benefits from the specific set of (euphonic) distortions his system produces.

Isaac

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

-- snippety-snip --

It has always seemed to me that if there was anything at all to "high-end audio", there should be a "convergence towards perfection", i.e. as different systems got "better and better" they should also sound more and more alike. IOW, if two "high-end" systems are perceptibly different in sound, *at least one* of them is somehow deficient (and therefore obviously not "high-end").

Oddly, most owners of "high-end" systems don't agree, arguing instead that their system alone is capable of producing the One True Sound ...

Isaac

Gee, you're back to your "real world experience" schtick again--I doubt that you have had any meaningful RWE yourself.

Audiophiles invest thousands of hours. Try to respect that a little.

You mean like a guy who invests thousands of dollars in the stock market and has nothing to show for it?

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

--snip--

All of that is true only for a certain class of loudspeakers (cone drivers in boxes); there are other types of speakers that don't need that sort of treatment, and some people think those are superior.

Isaac

Oh, because tonearms have bearings that have varying degrees of friction; they have mass and therefore resonances; they have tracking offsets; they have mechanical damping; etc.

If you really knew anything about the subject, you would understand and wouldn't have needed to ask me.

You're very good at searching, copying and regurgitating; you are very week at understanding.

The New Guy wrote:

I guess you didn't read my postings regarding Stereophile, The Absolute Sound and the type of equipment mentioned. Its from the same era.

I guess youâre not interested in saving face.

It sounds like thatâs happened to you once too often.

If you can't hear the difference, don't pay for the difference.

And if there is no difference, donât pay for it in that case either.

Seriously. Thereâs only one difference between $1000 cables and $20 cables: $980.

Absolutely not. Stop projecting your stupidity on other posters.

In 1983, some engineers knew how to master a recording for CD pretty well, and some didnât (the emphasis flag, for CD production of recordings meant for cassette, comes to mind). Donât automatically assume that he listened to the work of the latter.

The New Guy wrote:

Wow, Michelle. Cutting edge information from 16 years ago. Well done! LOL!!!! Are you going to be next posting information from the computer information era from 1991 also?

You're losing it. You're really losing it.

Tell me how you think cabling has changed over the last 16 years.

The New Guy wrote:

We're talking about sound. You keep on getting distracted. Because I guess you never were really into high end sound. Otherwise you'd talk the talk. No REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE? Is there an echo here? LOL...

I see a pattern here. Denial of reality.

Yeah, weâve noticed how reality tends to put you down.

I wear my glasses all the time, so to be as objective as possible, I should keep them on when performing a listening test.

If you have a decent system you'll hear the difference, but only, of course, if your speakers are set up for good imaging. Something that is rare unfortunately. (Max distance from the rear wall without getting a hole in the middle, grills off, tweeters at ear level, and NOT toed in. Only speakers with poor horizontal dispersion benefit from toeing in. Toeing in tends to result in a truncated soundstage where depth is more between the speakers than in the corners. Imaging detail is obscured as information is packed together.) And when you raise those speakers so the tweeters are at ear level, make sure they are on utterly rigid stands without a hint of wobble anchored through carpet to a hard surface below. That was something that Linn pioneered. Kind of woke the industry up.

Bla bla bla.

Yes, Iâve heard of it. You probably know as much about it as I do. So letâs NOT waste screen space talking about it.

Some of you are quick to judge and yet have invested very little time listening and comparing equipment critically.

And it seems the comparisons you read about and perform are anything but critical.

The New Guy wrote:

You can't measure emotional enjoyment from music. And that's what you're paying for.

Then youâre being robbed.

The New Guy wrote:

Use your ears to judge. Then you won't make mistakes.

Yes, you can.

That, and gold is a better conductor than steel, aluminum and even copper.

Denial of reality again. Iâm not even surprised anymore.

The New Guy wrote:

Yes - that's very basic stuff you learn when first getting into audio as is phasing tricks. I do hope we're a little beyond that. Man this is getting pedestrian. Any audiophile with more than a few brain cells won't get fooled by stuff like that.

Just had to be sure. After all, you arenât an audiophile with more than a few brain cells.

Previously, NRen2k5 wrote:

Seriously. Thereâs only one difference between $1000 cables and $20 cables: $980.

There are other differences:
1. Packaging.
2. The type of car the salesman drives.
3. The amount of sales tax (or VAT, depending on where you buy it) 4. The "smug" factor.
5. Etc.

The New Guy wrote:

More idiotic tests. Hey Isaac. Do you have your Mommy buy your sound system for you? Do you only buy what some test tells you? Do you people ever think for yourselves? This is getting positively pathetic.

What you think has to have some basis in reality. But it seems that that is beyond your grasp.

isw wrote:

When they can't disprove a person's statements, some folks resort to a personal attack (it's called "shoot the messenger"), and hope people don't notice. Usually it doesn't work.

I prefer âad hominem.â

The New Guy wrote:

Its called audio terminology. If you're into audio, you'd relate. If you're not you won't. We all learn terminology in our specific interests. Most of you have picked up piles of computer terminology that the average person wouldn't have a clue about.

While it is all âaudio terminilogy,â that doesnât change that some of it is bullshit.

Yup; you're silent.

Oh, it's now set up for three ears?

*loud guffaw*

Oh, gee; now you've resorted to "I'm rubber, you're glue".

Previously, NRen2k5 wrote:

Just had to be sure. After all, you arenât an audiophile with more than a few brain cells.

OK, then; is he

A. An audiophile with fewer than a few brain cells.
B. Not an audiophile, but with than a few brain cells.
C. Not an audiophile, and with fewer than a few brain cells.

So does that mean that Auric Goldfinger should be conducting a symphony?

None of which have anything to do with the cables themselves.

D. Good evening!

None of the above.

Because I didn't know better at the time.

But thanks for showing that you know how to use search engines and to copy and paste information that you know nothing about. You'd make a great parrot.

Exactly, just as the price has nothing to do with the cables themselves. But the price does affect what kind of car the salesman drives. <g>

But not, IME, at the "high end". "Accuracy" doesn't seem to be too much of a motivation to those folks -- not any kind of accuracy you can measure, anyhow. And if you can't measure it, how can you possibly know it's accurate?

As long as
they are regularly exposed to acoustic music for a reference.

I gave up on that Holy Grail a long time ago; it's hopeless. The best that any REproduction system can possibly hope for is to accurately reproduce the "waveform" of the audio as it is expressed on the transmission medium (I mean, the wiggles in the groove of an LP, or a plot of the waveform defined by the bits on a CD), as a sound field in front of a speaker. Period. If a music REproduction system adds anything to the waveform mentioned above, then it's become a music PROduction system -- IOW, you're *making* music, not playing it back.

It is totally impossible for any REproduction system to "reach back" beyond the storage medium to the live performance, because no existing recording system can capture anywhere near enough information to permit that to happen *with any hope of accuracy*.

Now, you might think that some system has that capability (on some carefully chosen source material, under some carefully controlled listening conditions), but the problem is that most of the time you have no way to know whether the illusion of venue your system produces is anything like the one where the recording was actually made. And so no matter how good it sounds, it's not "accurate". And no matter how good it makes *some* source material sound, it will inevitably act to make some source material sound *worse* (any audiophile worth his salt will, of course, simply classify those recordings as "junk" and try to find some others for which their system's artifact load is "beneficial").

--

If what you want is an accurate REproduction system -- one that is "source agnostic", then the best thing you can do is get gear that performs to the greatest extent possible to a "straight wire with gain". And that can be determined by properly utilized instrumentation, and not (absolutely not) by ears alone.

If this sounds like a long-winded way to say that "euphonic distortions" are a Bad Thing, well, that's right; they are.

Isaac

There is nothing to "extract more emotion from" except the waveform as it is expressed in the transmission medium (the LP or CD). If an amplifier's output is other than a larger amplitude version of that waveform, then it has added distortion *that did not exist during the performance*, not "emotion".

Emotion
is generally regarded as minute volume differences in tones. If you've ever played an acoustic instrument, you'll be well familiar with the impossibility of playing even an octave of notes of a scale with exactly the same touch. Of course an electronic instrument with no touch sensitivity will have no emotion as those volume differences are impossible to generate. Solid state equipment is getting better and better at this, but generally this is one of its weakness.

It sounds to me like you're confusing music PROduction with music REproduction. Or maybe some sorts of electronic musical instruments with a living room playback system. They are very different beasts.

Any amplifier worth using for REproduction -- whether solid state or tube -- will be capable of all the finesse needed to reproduce much finer differences in amplitude than any set of ears on earth can discern. Any failure to handle tiny changes in amplitude would show up easily on available instrumentation -- and it does not.

An amplifier (or any other device the signal passes through) that is used for music PROduction -- a guitar amp, say -- can do anything to the signal at all, just so long as the musician approves of the sound that comes out.

Isaac

Oh, most of them do need to have some attention paid to their positioning, but not to the same set of guidelines as for "drivers in boxes". And at least some of those don't require "great care" at all; some horns, for example, just need to get put into corners, and don't much care about carpet or "spikes".

Isaac

I don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice 8^} people tend to get confused.

Isaac

Since you asked, I designed some of it, built most of it, and modified what I didn't design. CD player (modified); control preamp (designed and built); power amp (built from a kit and modified); horn speakers (built); subwoofer electronic crossover and amplifier (designed and built); subwoofer enclosure (designed and built).

And you?

Isaac

Um, actually, gold is poorer than copper, but better than aluminum. Silver is slightly better than copper. Steel (iron) is pretty poor. Google for a table of resistivity values.

The usefulness of gold (in addition to the marketability of "shiny") is that it does not corrode.

Interestingly, while silver corrodes easily, the corrosion products are ugly but decently conductive, unlike aluminum or iron, for example.

Isaac

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Ever heard of binaural recording? They use a dummy head with mics in the ears. Then its played back with headphones. The realism is uncanny. The shape of your face helps your hearing.

Heard of 'em, and heard 'em, too. They sound pretty bad when played through speakers; practically no stereo effect. There's a reverse problem showing up nowadays, though. So many folks are listening with iPods -- and a few unfortunate enough to be stuck with a Zune -- that a lot of mixdowns are being tailored for headphone listening, and that plays hob with the stereo soundfield when the stuff is played back through speakers.

Isaac

Actual measurements show obvious differences between tonearms, and an analysis of their construction can show mathematically just why those differences exist. No legitimate test has ever shown any obvious (or even significant) difference between cables (other than resistance -- big wire has less than small wire) and an analysis of their construction shows very clearly that any differences are well below the human ability to perceive them.

Interestingly, IF a cable is long enough (hundreds of miles), the high frequencies get to the far end in advance of the lows to the extent that speech becomes unintelligible.

Isaac

The New Guy wrote:

Good imaging, good frequency response, but lacking warmth.

Warmth! LMFAO!!!

Well Iâll be damned. Youâre right. Iâd better dust off my textbooks. :|

And Iâm guessing itâs relatively easy to plate many materials with a veeery thin layer of gold.

Show me one moving coil cartridge of that era that didn't require pre-preamplification. Don't just name it, but give me a reference to its specs.

You've got a lot of hate in you Michelle. I hope you someday get over it.

No hate, just disgust at loud-mouth know-it-alls who really don't know what they're talking about.

I don't hate you; you're not significant enough to evoke that emotion.

I've sometimes wondered if anyone has designed a circuit which would allow some "leakage" from left and right channels when listening on headphones so as to more closely mimic listening on speakers where you do get some left speaker sound picked up by right ear (and right speaker left ear of course). Some mixes certainly sound strange on headphones with the extreme separation of channels.

Yup. 50 microns is pretty standard for connectors that don't see much action -- the ones on RAM sticks, for example.

Isaac

That used to matter, but with the avaliability of exceptionally linear solid-state units, it doesn't any more. Interestingly, most of the problem with early solid state amps (for horns especially) was at low levels. Crossover distortion tends to be a constant amount, so as the level goes down, as a percentage, it pops up. Sounds nasty, too. SS amps haven't had that problem for a long time, though. The first SS amp I designed from scratch was intended to deal with that very problem.

-- snippage of complicated stuff necessary to get good results from "cone in a box" speakers --

Remove grills as these can wreck horizontal dispersion destroying imaging.

Unless, of course, the engineers who designed the speakers actually knew what they were doing (gasp!), in which case those grills would be necessary for the unit to perform as intended.

-- snippage of a whole bunch more complicated stuff --

Or get a couple of good horns, stick 'em in the corners, and turn on the music. Twenty-foot wall? Not a problem; singers are still right near the middle. Try that with boxes 20 feet apart.

Isaac

Previously, isw <isw@witzend.com> wrote:
.....

Interestingly, IF a cable is long enough (hundreds of miles), the high frequencies get to the far end in advance of the lows to the extent that speech becomes unintelligible.

That explains why every time I call this guy in Europe it sounds like he is speaking a different language. :-)

I wasn't referring to my headphones particularly. I was making a general point about headphone listening as against listening via speakers.

Clearly when you listen on any headphones all the audio from the left channel of the stereo goes exclusively to the left ear, whilst if you listen on speakers some of the left speaker sound can actually be heard by the right ear as well as the left. This necessarily creates a very different sense of the stereo image. My speculation was about whether anyone has designed a circuit to compensate for this effect by intentionally allowing some of the respective channel's sound to cross over to the other ear when listening on headphones. (Obviously if the sound was recorded using the dummy head approach specifically for headphone listening this would not be appropriate.)

However, I suppose we shouldn't get too precious about the representation of a true stereo image on modern recordings. In nearly every case the stereo image is artificially created in the mix by panning individual tracks of relatively close miked instruments and adding various amounts of delay to create a sense of location and space. True stereo ORTF or XY microphone placement techniques may work for fairly small acoustic groups or choirs but that's about it as far as I know.

That's it - any stereo system is only going to give you an approximation, even if the waveform arriving at each mic is exactly the same (except for amplitude) as that created by each speaker. An orchestra is a distributed sound source; a stereo system is barely that.

That's why having bought the kit I did 30 years ago, and it sounding fucking good, I haven't bothered to upgrade it.

I would be too embarrassed in this elevated company to admit to my "hifi" components (34 year old speakers!) but it sounds good to me, and is often commented as sounding good by others.

He's so far up himself that he should coat himself with grease and slip into the next world. It would be doing this group a favour if he did so anyway.

Xeno

The New Guy wrote:

[...]

Ah, so you're that guy who have never heard of crossover distortion in amplifiers...
--

How's life on Mars? Crossover distortion is about the first thing an amplifier designer has to learn how to handle. Google for it. --

Suuure... Read a few lines up. It's noted that you didn't even have a beginner's knowledge about amplifier distortion mechanisms before Googling for it.
--

Well, you surely haven't done anything remotely positive. Why don't you rename this thread you hijacked and take it over to alt.audiowankers or someplace where your cowyard confetti will blend in well with the rest. This thread no longer belongs here.
In fact, it's people like you that are the reason I don't frequent alt.audio.xxxxx forums. People like you know just enough to be dangerous!

Xeno

What was it Bob Dylan wrote about "someone who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with..."?

The problem is; you have too many opinions all of which cannot be backed up by fact. Many others have made statements disagreeing with your opinions only to be met with jeers, taunts and insults. The only opinion I have right now is that you and this hijacked thread belong someplace else. A schoolyard maybe? Certainly your attitude smacks of the oneupmanship that adolescent males typically display. I grew out of that sort of attitude long before my teens, you obviously haven't. Now, for the last time, a thread on audio does not belong in comp.sys.mac.hardware unless you perhaps relate it to the audio capabilities of a Mac. In this forum, that is about the only audio capability I am interested in.

Xeno

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Hey, if you have an audio opinion, state it. If you disagree with an audio statement I made, state why you disagree.

You first. Take your own advice. You are long on proclamations, but short on rationale.

I was talking about croossover distortion in the output stage of the amplifier. It's a well-known problem.

lol indeed. I did audio (design and operation) professionally for some years.

Isaac

Things like that exist; google around a bit.

Isaac

No headphones ever made can give you that "kick in the chest" effect that good speakers deliver.

Isaac

Unlike you, I quote only that to which I am replying, so people don't have to wade through unrelated stuff they've read before. Unlike you, I retain the attribution line so people can check back the reference if they want to need to.

I find it highly amusing that you complain about me trying to put you down when all I did was suggest that you should take your own advice.

And you dare to complain about me trying to put you down!!! You are one of the most obnoxious assholes I have ever encountered; you are hypocritical and a liar, and ignorant about anything you write about here.

Your comments are less than worthless because some poor schlub might think that you actually know what you are talking about and believe you.

You are in serious need of psychiatric care, you dolt!

No it didn't.

Do yourself a favour and just shut up.

The New Guy wrote:

Hey, if you have an audio opinion, state it. If you disagree with an audio statement I made, state why you disagree. Fair enough?

Thatâs much more fairness than you deserve at this point.

The New Guy wrote:

if you're sick of me killfile me!

Thatâs the first worthwhile advice Iâve heard from you so far.

The New Guy wrote:

And what exactly, audio wise, did I say that was ignorant (in your opinion of course)?

For starters, you had not even the slightest clue about crossover distortion.

isw wrote:

No headphones ever made can give you that "kick in the chest" effect that good speakers deliver.

But they can give you a âkick in the headâ effect which itself can be fun.

No. Before that. Before someone had to tell you Google it, smartass.

Oh goody - a new thread hijack.

I was an operating engineer in professional broadcasting for a while -- no loud stuff there to speak of, but lots of music production and reproduction. Then I moved into design and did a very wide range of things -- broadcast transmitters, instrumentation and control, precision imaging, digital video, ...

For years, I've have an audio system that is capable of playing at very high levels (a sustained 120 dB plus, on musical material, *measured*) but that's because I don't want it to clip -- ever -- even on occasional peaks.

I think that a lot of folks these days are taking a real chance of ear damage because of the current combination of earphone listening and the type of music that tend to play.

I'm amazed that even in this day and age, after learning about the sensitivity of our ears to high levels of sound, most pro audio controllers insist on keeping the volume at levels sure to damage hearing, even when young children are present. This is the height of irresponsibility as we all know young ears are much more sensitive to this kind of auditory abuse. (Isaac, I'm not grouping you in there with them.)

As may be, but if they turned it down, nobody would pay for it.

Isaac

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Fact is what people hear.

No, it's not, any more than it is what people see. There are both auditory and visual illusions that clearly demonstrate how very easy it is to fool either sense.

Isaac

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

No respectable high end audio reviewer ever gushed over Hafler. Its the Toyota Corolla of audio. Nothing wrong with that. But that's all it was. Much like DCM Time Windows were. Great for the money but you can't expect too much out of them.

I guess that someone who really doesn't know what he's talking about--someone without any real-world experience--would say that.

More mindless drivel.â¦

Amplifiers: the ones I designed for myself, until Hafler introduced the DH-200. I read the specs, immediately ordered a kit, and am still using it. Nothing introduced since has had specs that are superior in any way that matters.

Turntables: well, vinyl is such a terribly poor medium I never was willing to spend too much money on it -- there's only so far you can go towards a silk purse if you start out with a sow's ear. I cannot remember the manufacturer, but the last cartridge I owned was electret-based; I got it because I am convinced that the single most important thing about a tone arm-cartridge assembly is to minimize the angular momentum to the greatest degree possible. That cartridge weighed considerably less than anything else on the market. I had a tape deck for a while (not cassette), and felt that decent tapes were better than anything a vinyl could deliver.

Preamps: Almost all RIAA preamps have pretty poor distortion specs (RIAA-eq preamps are a *lot* more difficult to design properly than most people appreciate), so I wound up doing one to minimize the problem. I was also unhappy with the way most tone controls operated, so after a bunch of computer modeling (on a CP/M Z-80), I built my own control preamp too.

I have a good understanding of the A-to-D and D-to-A processes, so all the erroneous BS that was (and still is) being spread around about "digital sound" didn't bother me; I moved to CDs pretty early on and have never looked back. CD fidelity is flatly superior to anything vinyl can possibly deliver. Period.

Speakers: after doing a lot of studying and listening, I decided that speakers divided into two fundamental groups: "driver(s) in a box" and "others". I don't care for the sound of the former, especially at low levels, so they were out. Of "others", there are a couple of choices: planars like electrostats, and horns. Electrostats have a wonderful sound at low levels, but are unable even to keep up with a good string quartet, much less a symphony. I have a couple of Klipschorn copies that I built after Paul kindly allowed me to photograph the innards of a few units at his place in Hope. I've had them for years. From time to time I go on a listening quest, figuring that if I ever heard anything better I'd trade 'em. Never have.

Yes; precisely. And if Apple were to make two iPods, the only difference being that one of them could not be operated at ear-damaging levels, that one would not sell.

Isaac

They're pure osmium, of course.

And an excellent sound stage, and wonderful low-level openness, and lower doppler distortion, and less IM from nonlinearity in the cone suspension, and better phase coherence, and a considerably larger "sweet spot", and ...

Isaac

Previously, isw wrote:

Almost every vinyl ever made was derived from tape of one speed or another.

I'm glad that you wrote "almost"; I have some vinyl records that were made from direct-to-disk masters.

So New Guy, how many PC cooling products have you designed?

No. The F81 was introduced three years after I left Japan. But I did buy SR5 Earspeakers. I think they're still packed away in a box somewhere in the garage.

That may help the noise a bit, but they still have poorer low frequency response, and phase coherence, and separation, and so on, than tape or CD.

Isaac

Sorry, Not even close to right. A CD can have flat response down to about one cycle per hour; try that with an LP. A CD easily has a noise floor over 90 dB below full output; vinyl does well to show 60, and then only when it's new. A CD has nearly perfect separation; a vinyl barely cracks 30 dB under good conditions and is much worse at both ends. A CD has very close to perfect phase response; a vinyl is a pile of spaghetti by comparison.

Shall I go on? Want to talk about "radial equalization"? How about "bass blending"? Vinyl recordings have both; CDs, neither.

Been there, done that. I'm perfectly happy with digital source, distortion-free electronics (by measurement) and the speakers I picked after a lot of study into what was *really* important for quality sound reproduction.

Isaac

Well, I'd agree with this up to a point. But when you amplify a signal, you amplify the noise and distortion as well. If you're dealing with vinyl, then getting better kit beyond a certain point is a waste of time because you will be limited by the vinyl itself. It's just not going to sound any better.

If however, you switch your input source to, oh, I dunno, a digital master or something, then there's an argument for improving your kit because the quality of the source is much better and the kit is not able to do justice to *that* source.

Both, obviously, if you don't like your listening setup to be fooling your ears.

Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean its true.

Precisely. But when one set of beliefs can be supported by solid theory and good experiments, while another denies theory and can't be demonstrated by experiment, I know which set I'll pick every time.

Isaac

No possible reproduction setup -- period -- can overcome the limitations I mentioned; they were introduced by the recording process. If you like listening to distorted sound, fine, but don't go around saying it's "accurate".

Isaac

Bingo. I think a lot of the reason for the bad-mouthing of digital by some "audiophiles" is because it tends to reveal some of the shortcomings in their gear, which was plenty good enough for vinyl.

Isaac

The New Guy wrote:
[...]

Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean its true. If you're happy with your system, that's great. Enjoy away.

Damn! Can I quote you repeatedly on this? You did say it. Its gonna be on Google for a "long time" you know.

Personally, I'll stick with Isaac's position; "solid theory and good experiments."

You didn't do your research; check out Stax' web site.

Every product you've mentioned here, you knew about only through research, not by any direct previous knowledge. You're a fraud.

When you look at optical illusions, do you believe those things are really happening?

My
ears give my enjoyment, nothing else. I've heard some of the stuff that the audio press gushes over. And guess what - there were no lies. A magazine cannot lie for years and still be valuable.

*cough* Excuse me, but I just spewed coffee on my monitor.

Isaac

They are negligible compared to yours.

On what date did you make that recommendation? Don't just tell me, give me a reference to the message so I can see the headers myself.

BTW, they say the odds of it working are two to one against.

All you have to do is provide the reference to your message.

You have switched mobile carriers many times in the middle of a contract? Yeah, right.

Do it in public and see how long it is before you get arrested!

Xeno

Yes, I did--about a month ago. It doesn't say anything about you, though. I do not believe that you have switched mobile carriers many times in the middle of a contract.

Now if you didn't shop around and get a good contract in the first place, yes, it might be difficult.

Shop around to get a good contract with a wireless carrier? What planet are you on? Each carrier has a standard contract; there's no shopping around. If you want Verizon, you get Verizon's contract, period. Even you should be smart enough to understand that. Well, maybe not, come to think of it.

Ainât she just.

You've really got some personality problems Michelle. You should get help.

Speak for yourself.

XD

Whooosh!!! Straight over the top!!!

Xeno

Well, one good reason is that talk about high-end audio is *off-topic* in this newsgroup.

I never really understood how this thread veered over to audio anyway.

If you thought that brandishing your "elite" knowledge of audio would somehow increase your credibility regarding heat sinks, I think you were badly mistaken.

Do you have anything interesting and relevant to talk about?

BTW, I read Absolute Sound when I was a teenager. Then I grew up...

I do not believe wild claims. If you had said that you had switched a mobile carrier in the middle of a contract, I might have believed you, but to claim that you have done it "many times" is bullshit.

Well that's the problem. Everybody knows there are more generous contracts at times.

In terms of service, maybe, but not as regards cancellation clauses.

That's what we were talking about.

Regardless, if you were smart, you would know that you don't have to cancel a contract to change plans. You can change plans any time you want--if you're smart enough to get the right provider. With Verizon, I changed plans about four times in the nine years I was with them.

I said you TRANSFER the contract to yourself from the previous user.

If it weren't for cancelation clauses, there would be no need to transfer. Oh, and by the way, I have transfered contracts before.

Oh, by the way, by buying the iPhone, I saved the cost of buying a laptop, so I saved money by doing so.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

OK - that only took a couple of minutes. Should have done it before. Original posting:
Subject: iPhone stuff
Date: Monday, June 25, 2007 5:24 pm

Why does google groups show that you posted it on June 26th at 8:47 am?

<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.system/browse_thread/thread/ 91b47630e0d717cf/c3b597074044c9c4?lnk=st&q=&rnum=1#c3b597074044c9c4>

Could it be that you posted that message after reading about trading plans?

I do have to admit, though, that I did lead you along a bit. Y'see, after I found that I would have to wait up to 48 hours if I wanted to keep my phone number, I got a new number and then did try to find someone to take over my Verizon plan, but couldn't find anyone. That's the reason I waited almost a week to cancel the Verizon contract before I canceled it.

Hold it's value? So long as I keep using it, which will be for a very long time, it doesn't matter what its value is.

The real cost of something is not its initial cost. Its the difference between the initial cost and the eventual sale plus maintenance.

Assuming one sells it. I don't plan to sell mine. All I know is that I have a cell phone that also will do everything I want to get from a laptop computer, so now I do not need to buy a laptop computer, which would have cost a lot more than the cell phone cost me. If the iPhone did not have WiFi capabilities, I would not have bought it, period.

Maybe if you thought about things other than money, you wouldn't be such a judgemental and angry person.

On 26-Jul-2007, The New Guy wrote:

22" monitors sell now for under $200.
500 gb hard drives are around $100

Not brand new, they don't and used they might not be worth anything.

Allow me to pop in here and point out the irony of your own post. --
Grandpa

The New Guy wrote:

Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean its true. If you're happy with your system, that's great. Enjoy away.

Previously, The New Guy wrote:

Oh Michelle, I just made that stuff up of course............

Doesn't matter, because it is irrelevant. I have no need for nor any desire to have an external monitor for an iMac.

You are angry because people see through your pretentiousness, pomposity, and your arrogance, right down to your ignorance.

And money was the driving point of this topic as I recall. And you're the one being judgmental, calling me a liar and fabricator. I made a suggestion. You decided to crucify the messenger.

No, I decided to call a lying braggart a lying braggart.

I agree.

And of course those people shouldn't be commenting on the topic.

But you do anyway. You really should take your own advice.

The irony would be lost on him!

Xeno

Would be?

--
Grandpa

The New Guy wrote:

Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean its true. If you're happy with your system, that's great. Enjoy away.

Ok, Ok, Is TOTALLY lost on him.

Xeno

Youâre projecting.

Thatâs a rotten way to get by; deliberately changing from carrier to carrier every couple of years. Which is why I donât believe it.

Michelle Steiner wrote:

Oh, by the way, by buying the iPhone, I saved the cost of buying a laptop, so I saved money by doing so.

Blech. I wonât be buying an iPhone anytime soon.

Michelle Steiner wrote:

How much could you get a new 20" Intel iMac for? I paid $100 less than list, because of my student ID, and got a free iPod Nano in addition. Oh, I forgot to mention that, sorry.

A student, at your age? Whatâre you studying?

Actually, no. âLogic boardâ is an uncommon name for it. Itâs usually called a âmotherboardâ or a âmainboard.â

20" is more than adequate for most people for most jobs. That probably includes Michelle.

âMore knowledgeable peopleâ tend to overlook maintenance and repair costs, which *can* come back and bite them in the ass.

The New Guy wrote:

Wake up! Check the online discounters and Ebay. Since when are the millions of items on Ebay not worth anything because they are used? What planet are you on?

Caveat emptor.

Thereâs only one person whoâs making yourself look ridiculous, and thatâs you. So I guess Iâm doing nothing at all.

The only people that could think I made that stuff up are people that no knowledge of high end audio. And of course those people shouldn't be commenting on the topic.

Of course, because you know everything, and anybody who disagrees with you obviously doesnât know what heâs talking about.

Grandpa wrote:

Allow me to pop in here and point out the irony of your own post.

Forget irony. Give me a 5-iron.

Wouldn't you rather have a woody?

He still misses the point that external monitors are irrelevant to the discussion. The only computers involved are iMacs, and they have built-in monitors. And if he thinks that getting a Mac Mini (even with a DIY processor upgrade) with one of the monitors he mentioned is an adequate substitute, he doesn't know Macs as well as he thinks he does.

Wiki says that Apple started calling them logic boards in the 1980s (presumably with the first Macintosh); that's about a quarter century ago. Within the Macintosh community, it's the more formal name for it, and considering that this is a Macintosh-oriented newsgroup, and that New Guy considers himself a Macintosh hardware expert, I'm still surprised that he was not familiar with the term.

Whatever I feel like. I take courses for "personal growth" (i.e., for the fun of it). My two most recent courses were public speaking and photography. The campus of the junior college is about five miles from my house.

It's not for everyone, but it fits my perceived needs very well. Major problem is that I'm in a fringe area for AT&T wireless, so I don't get good reception in all parts of the house. But I had the same problem with Verizon wireless, so that's really a wash.

Actually I would really rather have a Buick

Kurt (THAT should date me a little bit) Ullman

Yeah, but those of us that recognize that are cheap dates!

--
Grandpa

The New Guy wrote:

Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean its true. If you're happy with your system, that's great. Enjoy away.

I frequently see the term "logic board", as part of manufacturer's and elsewhere. In the mini, as in laptops and the imac, "motherboard" is not appropriate since there is no possiblity of inserting subsidiary boards into it. I suppose the name "mainboard" might make sense, but I can't remember seeing it.

In 1986 I got my first computer. It was an Apple IIc with an internal 5.25 floppy drive.

Some time later I bought a 3.5 floppy drive but could not get it to work so I took it to the local Apple dealer.

He said my IIc was an early model and needed an update so I reluctantly told him to fix it.

When I came back to pick up the computer, he said he had replaced the LOGIC BOARD but not to worry, Apple was providing the upgrade without cost to me.

And sure enough, on the papers from Apple and on his statement marked 'No Charge' the description read: LOGIC BOARD exchange.

Well according to several of Apple's Service Manuals that I have as far back as the 128K Mac, they have always been referred to as "Logic Board," even the one with the "mezzanine" slot. Damn tweekers trying to corrupt us with their slang. Get off my lawn.

--
Grandpa

The New Guy wrote:

Just because someone believes something, doesn't mean its true. If you're happy with your system, that's great. Enjoy away.

Since the subject is Apple computers, that's no excuse. The reason for the "logic board" name goes back to the original Mac, which had two main boards, one primarily containing analog circuitry and the other digital logic. Perhaps Apple stuck with it for political correctness (excuse me "gender neutrality") reasons, I don't know. --
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can result in a fully-depreciated one.

The name mother board refers to any electronic circuit board which can hold daughter boards, i.e. the main board onto which cards are plugged. It doesn't even apply just to computers, but in recent years through ignorance people have been using it as a synonym for a computer's main board.

It makes little sense to use the term for a computer like an iMac since it doesn't have any general purpose expansion slots, which is presumably why Apple uses the more neutral main logic board (MLB) since this works equally well for an iMac, Mac Pro, iPhone or pretty much anything else.

Point.

And in my case, we donât even have AT&T in Canada. So for now, we donât have the iPhone. Iâd have to wait months for Apple to hammer out a deal with a canadian carrier.

Not that Iâd switch anyway.

With my current setup, Iâm only paying $10cdn a month.

No offense Michelle, but you wouldnât give me one.

No offense, but I wasn't offering to give you one.

No offense, but I wasnât really expecting one.