Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

Ok wow digging into my memory banks now - yeah maybe it was the 4AD-L mailing list rather than a Usenet newsgroup, because regarding Usenet I think I only religiously checked alt.music.alternative (?) and rec.music.gaffa (Kate Bush board) back then. Good times.

For what it's worth a bit of googling suggests that the group was alt.music.4ad rather than rec.etc:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.music.4ad

Searching for "the curse sounds terrible" is unhelpful. Google Groups is pretty poor. It'd be great if you could sort the messages by reverse chronological order, for example. But you can't. I remember posting on Usenet but I can't find my own messages, although I remember that I could in the past.

You'd think that the total contents of Usenet wouldn't be too hard to archive. It was text, which compresses well. If you ignore the binaries groups the entire contents of Usenet from the 1980s to the early 2000s can't have been that large.

The 4AD-L mailing list was different from the rec.music.4ad Usenet group. The listservs generally had a moderator somewhere who could rein in the spammers/bad actors, not so for Usenet. Looking back over the last 25% of the Google Groups archive of r.m.4ad, you can see the spam/off-topic posts/noise increasing until everyone just gives up.

tbh the same thing happened to 4ad-l, at least for me in 1997

You'd think that the total contents of Usenet wouldn't be too hard to archive. It was text, which compresses well. If you ignore the binaries groups the entire contents of Usenet from the 1980s to the early 2000s can't have been that large.

:(

This whole MoFi DSD-to-vinyl thing isn't blowing over.

is it schadenfreude if i laugh at that? am i a bad person?

rhetorical questions, of course. i'm howling either way.

Expected something like that the minute the story broke.

It would be hilarious if the litigation resulted in MoFi hiring an expert to opine that you can't actually tell the difference between digital and analog.

That's basically what people are suing about: "holden ears" suing because MoFi made them disprove, via a years-long blind test, the very golden-eared nonsense they so afamantly espoused about analog's intrinsic superiority and digital's innate shittiness.

They're suing because they're embarassed, rather than admit they were full of shit; lashing out, rather than rethinking their expensive obsessions with gear. I hope they lose, for further embarrassment.

All more proof, to me, that audiophiles don't care about music.

Golden ears, that is.

Pretty hard to show “damages” you’d think. Paid too much for a record! Oh my.

"holden ears"

They think MoFi is just a bunch of phony crumbums.

https://i.discogs.com/_TTjndJ1BpdA3MFU7EVZJdf_BFTihaHPpN4xoyuTU1c/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:500/w:500/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTM0OTk4/MDEtMTQzOTAwNTkx/NS02NDMxLmpwZWc.jpeg

Holden's mumbles fill your ears
'Philes express their vinyl fears
Weep, pretty darlings, for MoFi
Their signal chain's been compromised

lol

good idea for audiophiles to sue one of the best vinyl reissue companies out of existence, that'll make their hobby more fun

unironic agree.

An opportunity for whomever brings the first 4x DSD player to the domestic market!

"So good, even these assholes couldn't tell it was used to cut their vinyl."

well, technically most of them couldn't before either, but uhh . . .

Is this also the thread for musician snake oil?

https://www.tonerite.com/

Vintage Tone, Now!
It’s no secret that vintage instruments sound better. Tens of thousands of hours of play time alter the molecular structure of the wood fibers, aging the instrument and creating a richer, sweeter, and louder tone.
The ToneRite accelerates this same play-in process by using a set of sub-sonic frequencies to simulate long term play.
Simply attach the ToneRite whenever you are not playing, and expect to hear a dramatic increase in resonance, balance, and range after only a week of use.

“The difference is amazing. It holds notes MUCH better and, I may be crazy, but it feels better. It's more of an inspiring guitar now. “

Ed King
Guitarist
Lynyrd Skynyrd

100% belongs in this thread.

Some crossover with ums thread of craigslist ads for tone lawyer gear.

lol I'm a big believer in instrument mojo and will absolutely spend money on "the '73 Guilds are just nicer" vintage & what of it, but all this has been fully debunked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE

TBF, this seems to be intended for acoustic instruments, where the wood obviously does make a significant difference to the tone

What I've never understood about that pitch is that it you want to capture the molecular decay that made the tone on a Zepplin album, you wouldn't a 1950s Les Paul, but one around 15 years old, the age those guitars were in the 70s.

ha, true

bendy that's not how any of this works. these people would buy jimmy page himself and treat him like a jukebox if it were allowed. all for the sake of bragging to their friend (who may or not have the surname lefsetz).

but for real, i thought it was rad that even the "professional musician" testimonial shows up with some self-doubt in it. they must really have faith in their product.

“I may be crazy. “

Ed King
Guitarist
Lynyrd Skynyrd

same, ed. same.

it just might be a Rickenbacker you’re lookin for

":("

Incidentally that brought me to this, which is a chap's thesis from 2001 about Usenet:
https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/8992/thesis.pdf

There are a bunch of tables near the beginning that suggest that all of Usenet's first decade, from 1979 to 1989, took up less than 4gb of storage space, but that by 2000 Usenet was growing by 42 terabytes per day. Admittedly that was twenty years ago, so presumably the figure went on to be much higher, but the vast majority of that would have been binaries. Something something Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs.

Now here's one that has passed me by. Anyone heard of CD shaving?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-QxLAxwxkM

The segment about the hype and reviews is just wild.

What I can't grasp about any of the fancy CD transport business is like.. if it's so error prone, shouldn't a good rip to a hard disk be the gold standard? But no one ever says, oh this album really opened up when I ripped it to FLAC.

Exactly. The engineers understood the problems with errors in digital music and compact discs when they were still figuring out the whole concept. Addressing that problem is baked into the design, and it's far more than adequate.

i love Techmoan's videos but haven't checked in for quite a while. thanks for posting that

ruined it by using a black sharpie. everyone knows you have to use a green one

sharpie trick I have heard of, shaving I had not

i love how techmoan goes about proving/disproving it in the most roundabout way when it could've easily been proven by extracting the data from the disc and checksumming the data. by treating the data on the disc as 'analog' by recording the sounds off the disc, i think he actually provides a stronger argument against audiophile dorks who don't understand how digital audio works

also my digital signal processing expert buddy says the device could in theory help unbalanced discs (as mentioned in the video) but that it would only help with read errors (which manifest themselves as clicks and pops rather than a shallow soundstage and lesser clarity)

Little known added benefit of CD-shaving: If you add the leftover shavings to a stir-fry, it adds depth and clarity to the meal's eatstage.

When I worked at a record store I rejected a collection of hundreds of CDs because they were all shaved and green-markered. The guy must have sold them privately because one of our regulars later brought in a bunch of them to sell and I had to reject them all over again.

I guess if they play fine who care, but those are damaged, and the real possibility is they actually shaved into the part that can oxidize

Still a devalued green shaved product, hah

never heard of shaving - sounds fun - but lots of delamination of cd-r's blue 90's gold

tfw when you find out the new belt you need for your turntable is going to cost $50

ADVANCED EBLT UPGRADE DRIVE BELT

The advanced EBLT drive belt is fitted as standard to all Planar 1, Planar 1 Plus, Planar 2, Planar 3 and Planar 6 models.

Each belt is moulded on our highly accurate custom tooling using a unique secret blend. Once moulded, the belts are cryogenically frozen and barrelled to remove any excess flash in order to create perfect cross-sectional roundness which is critical for accurate speed and stability. In normal use and conditions, the lifespan of the EBLT drive belt is 50% longer than the previous model.

Below you can see a direct comparison taken from our custom test software. You can compare the old belt (top) versus the latest EBLT reference belt (bottom). We have used the same Planar 1 turntable. The only part that has changed is the drive belt. You can clearly see a notable reduction in weighted peak Wow / Flutter measurements produced by the increased accuracy and cross-sectional roundness of the EBLT belt. The standard belt measures 0.253% / the Advanced EBLT measures 0.162% and the Reference EBLT measures 0.075%

tbh just get a large rubber band

unique secret blend = usb

DON'T DO IT UMS THEY'RE TRYING TO COVER UP THE DIGITIZATION

Austin otm. I recently replaced a 20-year-old belt and honestly can't tell the difference. I'm sure even twine would do the trick.

Sadly the way Regas are made it needs to be very specific as you take the turntable off and switch the belt from 33 to 45 manually by placing the belt on a different gear and I haven't found anyone making generic equivalent :/

can't tell if you're joking. . .

thread delivers!