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Re: Words of wisdom from the past?

>Does that mean that Stereophile has now joined the "cant of
>orthodoxy"? http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/787/index1.html

If you read the "As We See It" essay that was triggered by this
reader's letter, Charlie, you will see that I address this concern.
I wrote "Let me say in my defense that I haven't so much closed my
mind as put up a lightweight semantic curtain at its gate. Things of
real worth can still easily push that curtain aside...my semantic
curtain (modestly dubbed "Atkinson's Law of Effective Tweaking") is
based on the relationship between how much the tweak costs and how
much it runs counter to accepted knowledge. (A clue is when the
manufacturer claims to have discovered a hitherto unknown form of
energy or phenomenon or bandies words about with scant regard to
their established meanings.)"

I summed up my attitude to tweaks, given the lack of time anyone has
to try _everything_, in this 1991 essay thusly:

a) The best tweaks to try are those which seem to have good
explanations for how they work and cost very little.

b) If a tweak sounds unlikely but still costs very little, then try
it. The price of admission is low enough that even if the effect is
small, the sonic return on the financial investment is high. You can
enjoy the improvement while reserving judgment on the reasons why.

c)If the price is high but the explanation offered for any sonic
improvement fits in with your world view, then try it. Your
intelligence is not being insulted and you can still decide that the
improvement in sound quality is not worth the number of hours you
have to work to earn the money to pay for it.

And d) when the price is high and the explanation is bullshit, life's
too short! File it away in your pending tray until someone else you
trust tries it out.

My attitude to both the GSIC and the Ayre Myrtle Blocks is exactly
what I described in "d" 15 years ago. And in response to your
question in another posting that my _not_ trying out the GSIC
necessarily means that no-one I trust has yet tried it out, it's
more a case that the level of bullshit involved with this product is
_so_ high that it is going to take more than John Curl's and Ken
Kessler's advocacy to get me off my butt!

You also raised the point that 99% of high-end products involve
questionable claims, so it seems odd that I am picking on the GSIC
when I point out that all the scientific claims made for its
operation are nonsense. I have been thinking about this, and I think
my position comes down to the fact that regardless of the BS claims
made, a cable, an amplifier, a loudspeaker, etc, still performs its
basic function. That cannot be said for the Tice Clock, the Belt
Devices, and the GSIC (at least in an audio context - I note that the Tice Clock kept pretty good time).

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


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