Gonk wrote:
As I wondered what reason you might offer for declaring the L-shape worthless.


As, in fact, I had a suspicion you would not believe me on that either, and argue with me about your listening skills. And about that, there are some more facts that need to be considered. As I later learned, you boys here are not even audiophiles. You're home theatre nuts. For one thing, that means that so long as y'all are totally surrounded by speakers, you're happier than pigs in a poke. And by your own accounts here, you're all more interested in getting sloshed and stoned than improving the quality of your sound. In fact, the few that are interested in improving their sound are convinced that being inebriated -does-. Well that says all anyone needs to know about how experienced you all are at acute listening to subtle refinements in sound quality. That's why I suggested in your case, you'd need at least 20 to have any hope of hearing differences. And I mean -before- you start pulling out the rolling papers.


I already told you that you were incorrect in making that assumption. Why do you KEEP INSISTING on claiming that you know better than I do what is and isn't a fair test of Belt techniques? Between the two of us, which of us would know more about that? You who's only experience with Beltism is doing a half-assed test of a couple of mp3's I made and sticking two L-shapes on your gear, or me with 20 years of experience with Belt techniques?


I already told you Gonk, you are wrong about that. Decent quality headphones provide the best means for this type of test, they reveal subtle details easily lost in speaker sound. And since you want to argue about everything, I'm not gonna argue with you about that if you insist on contradicting me. I will repeat the fact that you present yourself as a "man of science". You can not claim the right to make valid conclusions from a test, if you will not repeat the experiment according to the author's design parameters.

And then you wonder why you couldn't hear differences, but nevertheless, claim you should have if the phenomenon existed. How very "scientific".


There it is again. I will repeat what I told you twice now, and what you ignored twice now: "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE". The signal level couldn't have changed, what you heard was a qualitative difference. I'm sorry that you can't tell the difference, but you could if you did more listening tests like this. It won't hurt you to learn how to listen, Gonk! But you gotta take the time to do it -right-, otherwise you will never learn how to do that, and all conclusions from all your audio tests will be inconclusive.


Stop playing with my words already! "Tangible means of demonstrating effects of a phenomenon" was NEVER meant to infer this is the same as testing the actual devices! It simply means I believe I may have come up with a way to help people understand the sonic characteristics of the Belt effect. It was not meant to be a substitute for a proper test of belt products or techniques!!!!

I'm putting that in bold because I see that you're still too slow to understand this the first few times I told you this, and you keep repeating this same mantra of yours about what my tests were designed to do. So just in case the problem is that you can't hear what I'm saying to you, I hope that blinding you with bold txt will finally get you to understand my point. Now if you can't hear that in the mp3's or the L-shapes and your goal is to test the Belt effect, you were meant to go on to the next step, which could be samples of the Rainbow Foil.

Again, I find it insulting that you're trying to argue with me about the characteristics of my own test, as though you would know better. Geez, you don't even know what I did to the burner that might make a difference in the first place! I can only conclude that you are being insincere here, and never had any intention to conduct a proper, objective series of trials. You only want to be able to say to your group "Look, there's proof now that we should dismiss all these crazy clocks and creams and silver foils, just like we already knew it all along!! Now enough of this quantum audio nonsense, who brought the beers!".


I don't know if anyone can mangle my words as well as you do, but if people are going to adopt your misguided attitude that those mp3's are a substitute for actually trying Belt products or techniques, then yes, I will take that under advisement.

I tried that. It doesn't compress that much. Geocities has a 5mb filesize limit, and even the Jingle in WAV format is just over that compressed. And even if I do manage to find a way to upload the originals, now I see I have to deal with people thinking that it's still a perfectly fair test if they take my test files, season it with cajun spices, bake it in the oven at 500F, then put it through a ringer washing machine and dust it with flour, and then come back to me and tell me its the exact same thing it was starting out. And they would know, because they listened to it on speakers (not headphones, as advised), which they couldn't play too loud because their daughter was sleeping.

With the mindset of people like you believing that my little mp3 snippets are a fair test of everything Belt has been doing this past 30 years, I'm figuring maybe its better I just don't mention that site to people like you. Scuse me, I mean "objective scientists" like you.

Why would it be, you didn't even follow the instructions I gave in the L-shapes file? Since you like to quote things to use as arguments for a non-arguable case, here's what I'm referring to:

In your case, I should perhaps have said you'd need to apply at least 20 such shapes, before you could have a hope of discerning a difference.

Well it's nice to see you finally read my instructions and tried to do a proper test. But again, as with the MP3 files, I'm disturbed about the type of tests you were doing on the L-shapes. Here you're saying you applied 12 shapes and played something for the course of a day now, and the last time you said you had applied just 2 and played something for the course of a week. What exactly did you expect should happen? At some point during the course of a day, or a week, while you were busy with other things, that the sound would magically improve all of a sudden to where it jumped out at you and said "Here I am, guys! Love me for all I'm worth!"?

And you're concluding that because this didn't happen for you, and your wife didn't happen to notice this extraordinary magical hyperdrive jump in sound quality during the course of her daily affairs, despite the fact that she was never even asked to listen to the system with and without the L-shapes under what is known as a "proper listening test", then the L-shapes did nothing? I'm sorry to have to say this, but ANY audio product you test under such conditions will be a waste of time. If you were able to read my instructions telling you how many shapes to apply, then you should have been able to follow the part of the instructions where I lay out exactly how to listen. It's easy to find, it's in the section of the instructions entitled "HOW TO LISTEN".

Sound advice. But I didn't "back off" the MP3 files, and you know it. You're the one who decided you would add your own interpretation for that site, and I didn't agree with you, and in a display of that same arrogance that all other "audio bigots" display, you didn't accept my interpretation of my own mp3 site. What you fail to understand in all of this Gonk, is that there are a lot of free and easy techniques that people can try themselves, to apply Belt concepts, and perhaps overcome their incredibly stupid and narrow-minded prejudices, enough to understand that the Belt phenomenon is very much a real one. They each have different levels of effectiveness, much like cables might. Which is why its unscientific and incorrect of you to judge what you saw on my sites against all Belt products, particularly since the tests you conducted were highly irregular.

There is no way that any of these free techniques is going to be equal in effectiveness to the PWB products. If it was, they wouldn't be free. A more fair test of Belt products is the rainbow foil samples, which as I said, requires making a polite request to the company to see if they are still being made available. But even that is NOT a test of all Belt products, its only a test of one of Belt's least effective (but cheapest and most popular) ones.


True, but then, as you didn't carefully follow the procedures as I outlined them (no matter how many times you tried), you can't say whether the technique you tried is effectual or not. It is also true to say that many have found Belt's techniques effectual (including the L-shapes I posted), regardless of whether they could explain why. Some are audio journalists who have evaluated Belt's products, such as Thorsten Loesch (TNT Audio Online).

Those who haven't found the products (or techniques) effective, are usually no different than you. They go into it with a huge amount of prejudice, believing that its all nonsense, they conduct some tests in a truly half-assed manner like you did, they probably have very little experience conducting similar audio experiments, which given what you described of your experiments proved to be the case with you (which means they have no idea how to listen properly to subtle differences), and in the case of the peculiar Belt phenomenon, they have no idea what to listen for. Having never heard an audio product effect this sort of change.

Sorry, that's not gonna wash. I've had several people admit publically that they felt stupid and silly for having even considered trying such techniques. The truly stupid people are the ones who "know" they don't work, before having applied them. I can always spot them coming from a mile away. What you have in common with those people, is that you think you're smarter than you actually are. Take your perceived "logical argument" that you wouldn't have told anyone that you tried the shapes, if you felt stupid for having done so. That's a (provable) fallacy, and no less a fallacy than all the other assumptions you and others here keep making, whether they are related to the Belt/MD products, or me.

All something has to do is sound "logical" or "make sense" to you and your gang of armchair gunslingers, and it "becomes real". Even if, in reality, it isn't. So you keep fooling yourselves into believing that you "own the truth", and those few who might disagree with you are fooling themselves... or simply trying to fool others. Some of those who were smart enough to question what might or might not be real, based on whatever may have prompted them to do so, later thanked me for sharing my knowledge on audio. And in that moment, they already leapt tens of years ahead of you, and God knows how many years ahead of the rest of the trailer park boys of Outlaw, in terms of what is and isn't known about audio.


They're not supposed to alter the sound of your system. But they did alter your sound.


I'm glad you got to listen to some of your favourite music!

You'd be a little more convincing if you put the gun down while you were speaking, Gonk...... Now we don't want to have thing that go off unnecessarily, do we?

What a coincidence. All of my messages are meant to be light hearted as well. But now seriously Mr. Gonk.... Intelligence? Courtesy?? Civility??!! Are you trying for the "Hypocrite Of The Year" award, here? A quick dip into the archives says, you just might get it....


INTELLIGENCE:

There's been NO displays of intelligence in this thread, apart from my writings. EVERY single message not from me, is a condemnation of all of those who believe in products that no one here has tried, and a blind condemnation of those products. And stupid condmenations at that. No sign of wit or originality in any of the condemnations I've seen of me or my audio observations. NO intelligent arguments were ever made to me or anyone else, to support those condemnations that you and the other members here attacked me and other believers with.

As the record shows, I offered everyone ample opportunity. Very minor attempts were made to pretend to be serious about the issues, and approach the subject with a modicum of intellgent reason. I responded to every one of those in great detail, no one was able to logically refute anything I said, and indeed, didn't even try! Here's the first response I got on this forum, when I wrote my first detailed and intelligent post on the subject of these advanced audio devices:

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Sluggo wrote:

Seriously, who wants to read all of that? Do you really think yourself that interesting? I think you may be in for an awakening, rude-style. This is less interesting than your average white paper


and the second intelligent thing El Sluggo said:

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Oh yeah, and as a "producer of [your] own alternative audio products," I was wondering how long it'd take to put your website out there. I'm soooo there.
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...implying that I am a commercial merchant of such products, and that I am here to "shill" for my own audio company. Except that the fool never bothered to actually VISIT the site in question before making that accusation against me, where if he did he would have found out that it isn't a commercial site. Nor did he bother to ask me if I was a commercial producer of such products, before making that assumption.

That perfectly exemplfies everyone's attitude around here. Which is: 1) no need to verify what you believe, just make dumb assumptions based on your blind prejudices, that will represent the truth and the falsehoods that you will believe. 2) Any intelligent response that even attempts to delve deep into the issues at hand is going to be longer than three lines. But anything longer than three lines, especially one that isn't a mocking quip, is too much of a strain on the collective intelligence of the members of this forum. So don't talk to me about how you and your friends are capable of intelligent debate, Gonk. You're capable of running away from intelligent debate, ducking it and hiding behind trees. That, you're capable of.

Now from all I've read, you sir Gonk have showed more intelligence, courtesy and civility than anyone here. But on the whole, that's not saying much, given how much all these three qualities have been lacking on this forum. It's all too easy for me to give examples of this after I came, where you'd just say that I was responsible for everyone's extremely uncivil, discourteous, vile, obnoxious, confrontational and insulting behavior. And if I gave examples from others, well then you'd say you're not responsible for their behaviour (however, of course I am responsible for everyone's behaviour, as you and everyone continually imply to me). So these are examples from before I came, and they are all quotes coming form you:


STATEMENTS MADE BY GONK ON THIS FORUM WHO HAS NEVER TRIED ANY OF THE PRODUCTS HE HAS BASHED:

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Gonk the Audio God, declaring to all what is and isn't effective in audio, not by trying it, but by how well it appeals to his prejudices of what is and isn't real:

Gonk making libelous accusations of fraud without any supporting evidence:

Gonk engaging in that "courteous and civil discourse" he is so fond of, on the subject of the Clever Little Clock, which he has never tried. Which to some others might look a lot like that oh-so-droll and original sport of dumb mockery of things that intellectually threaten ignorant people:

Gonk offering more of his brilliant observations on audio, via attempts to apply "logic" to explain to everyone what is and isn't real or "credible" in audio. It fools most of the sheep most of the time, until someone comes along and says "Uh no Mr. Gonk. The CD pen doesn't make any attempt at direct interaction with the signal path.... and that's an easily proven fact...":