In rec.audio.tech Len Moskowitz wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:

http://www.stereophile.com/features/69/index2.html

This was published back in 1994, written by Jonathan Scull.

I don't have a problem with a writer talking about how something that
seems patently irrational to many of us affects their perception of
music played back over their audio systems.

The whole article is clearly subjective. I can't argue with what people
say that they perceive.

I don't see a single measurement there, and nothing that I would call
misleading.

So, let's see, he said that putting a Mpingo disc on gear makes
it sound better than before.

If he'd written instead that painting a car red made it
go faster than before, you wouldn't find anything wrong about
that either?

You wouldn't want, say, some sort of independent evidence that
it actually did what it was claimed to do?

Personally, I don't believe that the Mpingo disks do anything at all,
but I don't have any problems with folks who don't agree with me. If
they want to spend their money, God bless 'em.

But that's a different issue. If people want to spend their money,
they're free to. If they want to claim that they've jsut bought
a perpetual motion machine, they're free to do that too. But they
can't demand , or even expect, that their claims go unchallenged.

For a magazine devoted to consumer audio to publish rather far-fetched
claims for a product without any attempt to substantiate them
other than by patently flawed methods -- should that be of concern to
people interested in consumer audio?


I particularly liked the last two sentences:

"Beware of imitations that won't stand an A/B test!" intoned
Mr. Ying. Bill usually doesn't say much, but when he does talk, he
roars.

That was perhaps the most amusing part of the article, yes -- the idea
that an 'A/B' as performed by these clowns would reveal any
accurate information.


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-S