Hi Bill:
I remember reading an outraged letter in a stereo magazine back in the 80’s, right after CD’s came out. The writer had condemned a particular CD player for having a single digtal-to-analog converter that was time-shared between the two channels, consequently inducing an “unlistenable” phase error in the audio.
An engineer (and I hope a ham!) wrote in to observe that this was indeed correct, but helpfully noted that the phase error could be corrected by moving one of the speakers about a half inch farther away from the listener. That’s noodling! 🙂
An engineer (and I hope a ham!) wrote in to observe that this was indeed correct, but helpfully noted that the phase error could be corrected by moving one of the speakers about a half inch farther away from the listener. That’s noodling! 🙂
And you might enjoy this article:
…Some audio scams are so blatant you wonder how anyone could fall for them, like a replacement volume control knob that sells for $485. The ad copy proclaims, “The new knobs are custom made with beech wood and bronze … How can this make a difference??? Well, hearing is believing as we always say. The sound becomes much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution. Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved.” …
James Randi, magician and hoax-buster, had a standing offer of $1M to some makers of “paranormal” audio equipment, like $700/foot cable, if they could prove it was better in blind A/B testing. Nobody took him up on it.
73,
Bob
Here’s the link to the XKCD comic. It’s Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial, so you’re all set. http://xkcd.com/841/ 73!