The end of R.A.H-E

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 9:51:23 AM UTC-4, Peter Wieck wrote:
> p.s.: Every device in the inventory that once used 3055s is now
> using 3772s with the 'proper' bias adjustments. Much better, thank you!

Yeah, well not really.

Way, WAY back, when my father was getting his PhD in Physical Chemistry
at Columbia, he filed and was granted a patent having to do with
epitaxial deposition of compounds on silicon substrates.

A year or so after the patent expired, the world decided THE way
to make a lot of semiconducting devices was via the epitaxial
method. Had he the foresight to wait a few years or to renew the
patent with some appropriate variation, and had managed to get
people like TI to give him a piddling royalty of something like
$0.001 per device*, I'd be a quadrabazillionaire. I'd have the
likes of Bill Gates cleaning my toilets. I'd be able to hire and
fire Trump twice a day just for the fun of it.

* Perhaps the better way, back in the '60's, would have been to
charge $0.00001 per junction, not $0.001 per device. Back then,
the licensees would have jumped at the opportunity, but by
the late '70's royalties would have amounted to a buck a chip,
only to increase exponentially, according to Moore's law, from
that point forward.

Sigh, missed opportunities...

Dick Pierce.

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 5:37:53 PM UTC-4,
>>. I'd have the
> likes of Bill Gates cleaning my toilets. I'd be able to hire and
> fire Trump twice a day just for the fun of it.
>
> * Perhaps the better way, back in the '60's, would have been to
> charge $0.00001 per junction, not $0.001 per device. Back then,
> the licensees would have jumped at the opportunity, but by
> the late '70's royalties would have amounted to a buck a chip,
> only to increase exponentially, according to Moore's law, from
> that point forward.
>
> Sigh, missed opportunities...
>
Snippage

Be careful what you wish for - and you are not the first!

https://dailyoddsandends.wordpress.c...ied-penniless/

On 2/10/2017 5:39 PM, RAHE Moderator wrote:

>
> 2. Open the newsgroup.
>
> In this proposal, rec.audio.high-end becomes unmoderated. Anyone
> can post at any time on any subject. Spammers will likely run rampant,
> and frequent flamewars between people who believe that they can hear
> differences between certain things and people who believe that nobody
> can hear those differences will dominate the non-spam content. (That's
> just my opinion.)
>

At this point usenet is sufficiently depopulated that a couple of spam
filters seems to work pretty well. I don't read all that many usenet
groups these days, but the few I do are unmoderated and are still usable
(with a few entries in the killfile, of course)

I can't say I'll be heartbroken if RAHE goes away, but leaving it up and
running seems to be the best option.

Thanks a bunch to David for moderating all these years; I understand why
you are ready to move on.

I say set the group free and let it live or die on it's own rather than
killing it.

-Walt

//Walt

On 2017-02-10, RAHE Moderator > wrote:
> Today is February 10, 2017. There have been no posts in the
> rec.audio.high-end newsgroup since December 2016.
>
> We have a few options, and I will lay them out.
>
> 1. Close the newsgroup.
>
> 2. Open the newsgroup.
>
> 3. Self-moderate the newsgroup.
>
> 4. Find a new moderator.
>
>
> Please let me know what you all think. Suggestions, comments, theorizing,
> whatever: This thread is open to everyone, and is constrained to the
> topic of "the fate of rec.audio.high-end", rather than the general
> purpose of the newsgroup. The thread will close April 1, 2017, unless
> there is an active discussion going on.

There is no longer an active discussion on this thread.

However, there is substantially more traffic in the newsgroup.

Here is my decision for the next period of r.a.h-e:

1. The newsgroup will remain moderated.

2. The Guidelines are suspended.

3. I shall generally approve any message that is sent, unless it
appears to be obviously spam or gratuitously objectionable.
In particular, I won't be checking for proper quoting format,
or asking people to edit overly-long messages, or calming
flames.

4. When I get too tired of it, or someone else wants to do it,
we'll talk.

Your humble obedient overlord,

-dsr-

thank you for having stuck with this newsgroup as long as you have. I came here to learn from you all and hope that somehow this will continue.

-dsr- > wrote:
> Here is my decision for the next period of r.a.h-e:
>
> 1. The newsgroup will remain moderated.

OK, so we should talk about audio again. Whoopee!

At the Tate Modern (a major art gallery in London) there's an
interesting exhibit. It's a carefully-treated room with a high-end
audio system. The idea was that many people have never had the chance
to hear recorded music played back in the highest quality:

"Wolfgang Tillmans' Playback Room is a space conceived by the artist
specifically for listening to recorded music. While museums are
dedicated to the contemplation of works of visual art and concert
halls allow us to experience live music, no comparable venues exist
where visitors can listen to music in its optimum sound quality."

There's room for about twenty or thirty people to sit. The system is
a pair of B&W 800 D3s and Rotel amplification, and the music is
carefully chosen and very well-recorded. And it sounds wonderful. In
particular, the soundstage is excellent: very broad and deep, and
without any small "sweet spot". I'm guessing that the wide soundstage
is as much due to the acoustic treatment as the speakers.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate...-room-sessions

Andrew.

wish they had something like that in my neck of the woods. nearest high-end audio store is half a day's drive from me. and it is oh so snooty in there.

Once upon a time on usenet -dsr- wrote:
> On 2017-02-10, RAHE Moderator > wrote:
>> Today is February 10, 2017. There have been no posts in the
>> rec.audio.high-end newsgroup since December 2016.
>>
>> We have a few options, and I will lay them out.
>>
>> 1. Close the newsgroup.
>>
>> 2. Open the newsgroup.
>>
>> 3. Self-moderate the newsgroup.
>>
>> 4. Find a new moderator.
>>
>>
>> Please let me know what you all think. Suggestions, comments,
>> theorizing, whatever: This thread is open to everyone, and is
>> constrained to the topic of "the fate of rec.audio.high-end", rather
>> than the general purpose of the newsgroup. The thread will close
>> April 1, 2017, unless there is an active discussion going on.
>
> There is no longer an active discussion on this thread.
>
> However, there is substantially more traffic in the newsgroup.
>
> Here is my decision for the next period of r.a.h-e:
>
> 1. The newsgroup will remain moderated.
>
> 2. The Guidelines are suspended.
>
> 3. I shall generally approve any message that is sent, unless it
> appears to be obviously spam or gratuitously objectionable.
> In particular, I won't be checking for proper quoting format,
> or asking people to edit overly-long messages, or calming
> flames.
>
> 4. When I get too tired of it, or someone else wants to do it,
> we'll talk.
>
> Your humble obedient overlord,
>
> -dsr-

Thanks for the not inconsiderable time that you must spend moderating
R.A.H-E. I appreciate it.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy
little classification in the DSM*."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

On 3/15/2017 11:25 AM, wrote:
> On Monday, February 13, 2017 at 9:13:21 PM UTC-5, Art Shapiro wrote:
>> On 2/10/2017 2:39 PM, RAHE Moderator wrote:
>>
>> > Please let me know what you all think.
>
> First, let me put in my non-vote: do with the group as whatever
> respondents see fit. It's essentially dead as it is.
>
>> RAHE used to be a great and active resource. I personally had RAHE
>> business cards and would fly to the Stereophile Show each year, wherever
>> it happened to be, to talk about the shows and what I heard in this
>> newsgroup. I had the pleasure of meeting the then moderator (prior to
>> David's long tenure) at one of the shows.
>>
>> Then the newsgroup got *stridently* usurped by those of the opinion "if
>> I can't measure it, it must not exist and you can't possibly be hearing
>> any differences", aka "tin-eared objectivists". This would probably be
>> the late 90s.
>
> And this sort of response could be seen as another reason why it went
> down hill, though the moderators did a pretty good job or tempering
> both side of the argument.
>
> But, more to the point, I suppose since the poster has decided to
> indiscriminately wave such a broad brush, clearly using (as was often
> done in the past), the time-dishonored tool of ad hominem attack, I
> suspect I could be one of those splattered with a lot of that paint.
>
> In my particular case, it was rare, if at all, that I ever disparaged
> any opinions proffered by anyone as to whether they liked or disliked
> a particular piece of equipment or sound of technology or anything.
> Rather, I (and MANY others that have been herded into the "tin-eared
> objectivist" camp) considered personal preference to be sacrosanct
> and unimpeachable.
>
> What I often did, however, is go after the many bogus "technical"
> explanations as to why a particular preference was superior. I
> specifically attacked (and I know of no kinder word) explanations
> like:
>
> * Digital is inferior because there is audio "missing" between the
> samples,
>
> * Digital is inferior because the output is a series of stair-steps,
>
> * Digital cannot preserve the phase relationship at higher and higher
> frequencies,
>
> * There is a secret, classified, I musty kill you if I show you Army
> gun-shot study showing that the ear CAN hear well above 20 kHz.
>
> * Vented box (reflex) loudpeakers can't possible produce proper
> bass transients because the vent output is 180 degrees out of phase
> with the woofer.
>
> And on and on and on.
>
> And I have always said that people can like what they like, but to
> attempts to demonstrate the superiority of one's personal preference
> with completely nonsense pseudoscience and expect the world to accept
> it as the TRVTH (tm), sorry, you're out of your league.
>
> If you don't like someone pointing to a turd and stating what it is in
> simple understandable, verifiable terms, then don't poop there.
>
>> The newsgroup never recovered.
>
> No, it was specifically because of the moderators that it never
> suffered from thye extreme stridency of either camp.
>
> Dick Pierce
>
Dick, you are my hero.

Bart