Here's a post rejection that one of the RAHE moderators just bragged about:

************* the rejection letter*************


----- Original Message -----
From: "Renaud Dreyer"
To: "Arny Krueger"
Cc: "Bath David"
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 2:23 PM
Subject: THE AUDIOPHILE PRESS



Le dimanche, 7 sep 2003, à 03:55 US/Pacific, Arny Krueger a écrit :


"Dennis Moore" wrote in message
...

If you wish to buy a CD/SACD/DVD player, are any of them
sonically accurate?

IME just about all of them.

Which don't make the cut, and how do you figure that out?

If I found that every optical disc player that sells for over $100
retail
was sonically accurate, I wouldn't be surprised. Indeed I'm kinda curious
whether the $59 ($39 on sale) DVD players made by Apex are sonically
accurate.

How much even roughly gets you enough
quality not to worry about the quality or accuracy of the signal
the disc player will provide?

The last player I did DBTs on was a Tredex DVD player that I paid $130
for
about 18 months ago. It was sonically accurate - measured pretty good,
too.
A certain high end editor was telling scare stories about DVD players
whose
audio outputs were degraded by the video circuits, at the time.
Ironically,
that problem was found in a high end optical player, not one from the
mid-fi
market. I found from these tests that even cheap mid-fi optical
players can
actually be quite clean, both from the standpoint of listening tests
and
measurements.

Generalizing, what DBT advocates like Tom and I have found is not that
one
needs to do DBTs to choose components, but that since so many of them
in
certain classes (examples optical players, amplifiers) are sonically
accurate, there's no need to do listening tests to choose components in
those classes, once fairly minimal quality levels have been met.

OTOH in other classes of components (say speakers), the general rule
is that
they all sound different, and none of them are sonically accurate.

I believe that Julian Hirsch was one of, or the first person to
publish the
idea that all sonically accurate components must sound alike. This was
back
in the 60s, I think. At this point, it seems pretty obvious.

BTW, I think I've found a new low-water price mark for an active audio
component that is sonically transparent. It is the Radio Shack part
number
330-1109 3-Way Headphone Volume Booster (a kind of power amplifier).
This
device runs off of 2 AA cells and provides 3 amplifier headphone
jacks. I
ran some measurements on it and find that it has approximately 6 dB
gain,
0.003% THD @ 1 KHz full output, approximately 90 dB SNR and frequency
response 20-20 KHz +0, - 0.3 dB. In PCABX testing it appears to be
sonically
accurate when its output is level-matched and drives a resistive load.
It
sells for the princely sum of $22.95. Good for people with iPods that
find
their output on the low side with the third-party headphones they
chose.




Dear r.a.h-e contributor,

Thank you for submitting your post to the newsgroup. However, it
violates the Posting Guidelines, since it contains language that could
be interpreted as inflammatory (introducing blind tests in a non blind
test thread). We will be glad to reconsider your
article if you resubmit it while keeping this in mind. Best regards,

Renaud Dreyer
r-a.h-e moderating team

************* end of the rejection letter*************

The post I was responding to is titled "THE AUDIOPHILE PRESS" and can be
found in google starting with this post:

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=NJ...99%40sccrnsc04

Remember that the RAHE moderator specifically claimed that I introduced
blind tests in a non-blind test thread.


Now, here are just a few of the posts in the same thread (according to
google) that mention blind tests:

Notably, the first post in the thread says:

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=NJ...99%40sccrnsc04

"What does this mean - DBTs. Audiophiles don't care."

and then...

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=2E...nsc52.op s.as
p.att.net

"With respect to DBTs, I have closely followed discussions about this
topic in this forum for more than 4 years. I believe that all but a
fraction of audiophiles don't care one way or another about DBTs.
Certainly there is nothing wrong at all about being in the minority.
But I have come to the conclusion (for me) that while there may be
useful purposes for DBTs in research and other esoteric applications I
have never seen any illustration in this forum or elsewhere how DBTs
can be of *practical* use to mainstream audiophiles. Audiophiles seem
to love to talk about DBts but won't or can't apply them to the real
world of buying/comparing audio equipment for the purposes of
listening to real music. Even staunch disciples of DBTs that I have
quizzed in this forum over the years don't use DBTs in there audio
equipment purchases even though they may lambast those who believe
DBts to be irrevocably flawed. It's not that they are not principled
with respect to their belief in DBTs. It's that DBTs are not a
practical tool for even zealots who care about them."

and then...

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=V5...49%40rwcrnsc53

"How about the fact that no one has passed a properly conducted DBT on
two cables with similar measurements? I would think that every
mainstream audiophile should find this result very practical."

"Or how about reading that a well-known high-end salesman could not tell,
in a DBT, a Pass amp from a Yamaha integrated amp, even though the the
former costs more than 10 times the latter? Why wouldn't you, as an
audiophile, find that result very interesting and practical?"

"Now you are contradicting yourself. You said that "all but a
fraction of audiophiles don't care one way or another about DBTs", and
then you said audiophiles love to talk about DBT's. Which is it?"

"Why is that strange? There is a difference between not doing a test for
practical reasons, and saying that the test is flawed. No one has been
lambasted for not doing a DBT. One does not have to do a DBT to
understand the principles behind the DBT."

"No one has said that you have to do a DBT to choose equipment."

and then...

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=JH...16%40sccrnsc03

"The reason for Robert Lang's attitude is quite simple.
You assume an unproven hypothesis: ' DBT/ABX is THE proven test for
testing differences in music reproduction between audio components' "

"ABX does not work for me. It does not mean that it does not
work for you. We are all different- we're all "subjective subjects"

"P.S. The remainder of your text quoted below validates that
DBT as a universally applicable audiophile "test"is a belief not a
fact"


--- and many more ----

But, you read it here, according to our friendly neighborhood RAHE modertor,
I'm paranoid and the dozens of other references to DBTs in the thread I
posted to are simply figments of my imagination.