The Amazing Randi & Golden Ears

I was on the Sonic Transfer site and saw a name I never though I would see on a music site. It was the name of one of my hero’s The Amazing Randi. He is most famous for is exposing Uri Gellar & Peter Popov as frauds & is million dollar prize he offers if you can prove psychic powers. You can find out more if you visit James Randy Educational Foundation. As suggested by Sonic Transfer do a search for Stereophile. That million dollar prize was extended to them to prove some of there claims. You should also check out AudioCritic another critic of Stereophile and some of there pure nonsense like $10,000 dollar cables. I have often wonder but this kind of thing. Now, I am not even close to being an expert or even knowledgeable but now that I have built a few of my own gadgets and gain more of electronics applied as applied to audio applications things just seem more and more silly. Electronic is of course a well understood science and so is acoustics. It is not magic and think everyone should be skeptical when there is no scientific reason for it. It is not magic and there is not “mojo.” Provide a valid reason why a device is better. And conduct double blind tests to prove people think it sounds better. You almost never see them and I think there is a reason for that.

This of course does not just affect people with way to much money to spend on stereo equipment. It effects musicians as much if not more. Guitarist have it the worst. There is all those guitar idols that we aspire to sound like. We we take that fools errand and try and sound like them and fail it is all to easy to attribute their sound to that obscure magical piece of gear. When of course Jimmy Page sounds like that because he is well Jimmy page. It is not magical cap or this pickup wiring etc. It is all of them together combine with the man himself. The complication with guitar is the signal chain is complex with pickups to pot and caps to pedal to amp and back through mics into the mixing environment. They all have to play nice to get great sound. And there is not a single magical ingredient. And the is no “holy grail” of guitar gear. Combine with the fat that electronic is somewhat mysterious to most operating invisible.

Don’t get me wrong I think some product are great. I think there are both new and old products that are wonderful and worth the hype. I just think here need s to be a lot more skepticism and we need to use our “non-golden” ears with as much detached objectivity as possible. And demand more form the supposed experts. It to easy to let your gear lust and want of a magic bullet to cloud our judgement.

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