Your conclusions are flawed, based on the fact you clearly didn’t read everything I wrote. I listed the reviewers.
A fiddle and a violin are the same instrument. That is factual and concrete.
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Are you saying speaker positioning is not relevant to what you hear? I’m out
As for studio engineering, have you never heard anything wider than the placement of your speakers, or indeed deeper in a sound stage.
I scrolled through your contributions on this thread, but I can’t find that listing. Would you then kindly list them again?
True, true. But in ceilidh violins are called fiddles. Just a pernickety lexical point, of no great importance.
Of course not. I couldn’t agree more with you on the importance of speaker placement and their interaction with the room. My point was to try to understand what you mean by individual violins. I still don’t get it. Now, either that’s part of the placement of the violinists (left right for example), or they play different notes (as with classical music, think of first and second violins in a string quartet), or the sound engineer has chosen to highlight certain instrumental groups, but that has nothing to do with speaker placement. In all of these cases, it’s part of the recording and speakers should allow you to hear that. If they don’t, your placement is off, and this has nothing to do with individual preferences. You simply don’t allow yourself to hear what’s in the recording.
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Why bring it up then? FYI, a “fiddle” can be called a “violin” even if it’s played in a cèilidh band. This is neither wrong nor uncommon in English. “Fiddle” is just an informal term for the violin. It’s obvious you aren’t a native English speaker, so maybe you should refrain from “(mis-)correcting” other people’s choice of words…
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Just for the edification of non-Scots:
- The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians defines “fiddle” as “a generic term for any chordophone [stringed instrument] played with a bow.” This instrument group includes the violin and many other instruments as diverse as the one-string goge of sub-Saharan Africa, having a gourd sound box covered with iguana or boa skin; the North Indian sarangi, with playing strings stopped by the fingernails and 35 sympathetic strings; and the rebab, a spike fiddle whose quavering song floats on top of the metallophones in the gamelan orchestras of Java and Bali.
BUT in the United States, most often “fiddle” means the violin as used in Irish-Scottish-French traditional music and all the descendant American styles: Appalachian, bluegrass, Cajun, etc. (Learn the Difference Between Violin and Fiddle | Strings Magazine)
MOREOVER, ceilidh groups use the words fiddle rather than violin.
-
There are no synonyms in any language, meaning two words that mean exactly the same thing (question of context and connotations). Basic linguistic truth.
-
“It’s obvious you aren’t a native English speaker, so maybe you should refrain from “(mis-)correcting” other people’s choice of words…”
Assumptions, assumptions. Plus: an ad hominem attack? That’s against the rules. Maybe we can conduct this exchange in another language then, and see how far we get. There are a few I’m quite fluent in.
In any event, the violin-fiddle business is uninteresting in the context of this thread. I’m still waiting for a) a list of reviewers that one can supposedly trust 2) an explanation as to how individual violins (fiddles) sound when they play together (in unison, not different notes, such as in counterpoint or concertante style) as opposed to … well, that’s the problem.
Not a single mention of the word whisky in that wiki! You can’t have a good cèilidh without wetting your taste buds with some fine amber nectar!
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The one thing in this review I did really like was the idea to revive Squeezebox server. I mean it has the bones of everything - if someone would just redesign its web interface that’d be enough of an improvement to make it usable again. There are many other things of course, but it is a great product that is still today receiving build updates that to it being made open source. It may never be Roon, but it’d be better than Plex in my opinion - for those that can’t afford the high price of Roon.
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Hey @Marian
just did the ABX test with Archimagos’ files in Foobar, and it aligns with my assessment in the earlier test without ABX in which my certainty was 1 out of 10, so barely better than guessing …
foo_abx 2.1 report
foobar2000 v2.0
2023-06-26 16:14:31
File A: 01 - Daft Punk - A - Giorgio by Moroder (16-bits or 24-bits).flac
SHA1: 02d9134e168d7946004a9be93e8c4477544e415a
File B: 02 - Daft Punk - B - Giorgio by Moroder (16-bits or 24-bits).flac
SHA1: 66e15b0f33094a4154171759d7acd8c261dd98f8
Output:
Default : Primary Sound Driver
Crossfading: NO
16:14:31 : Test started.
16:16:48 : 00/01
16:17:29 : 01/02
16:18:32 : 02/03
16:19:28 : 03/04
16:20:09 : 04/05
16:20:49 : 04/06
16:21:29 : 04/07
16:22:08 : 05/08
16:22:47 : 05/09
16:23:26 : 06/10
16:23:26 : Test finished.
Total: 6/10
p-value: 0.377 (37.7%)
– signature –
29c9da2cc3a3b7b365a39e9122a21d7f8f329bed
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Transmitting digital data reliably has been a solved problem for many decades. In what way do you think it’s complex?
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It’s indeed more complex. The simple theory of electrons moving through a wire is just a simple model and not right.
Energy transmission is indeed more complex than the conventional simplifications. The electrons flowing through a wire theory cannot explain the function of transformers as was mentioned in the video.
However as @DaveN stated, digital data transmission has been a solved problem for years.
Actually, I think this comment is part and parcel of what this thread is about. This Wilson character just popped into the thread to disparage the expertise and advice of another commenter. (No basis for that, as far as I can see. I spent 20 years in industry designing, debating, implementing, and standardizing various digital networking protocols, with much consideration of the various complexities of transmission of digital signals. So I have some idea, even if perhaps not every idea. 
)
But this drive-by disparagement is a common technique in audiophile marketing. You have to disparage the “competition” in order to justify your own outrageous pricing, even if the disparagement is oblique and completely wrong. Going back to the Stereophile interview with Jenkins, for instance:
“… the maverick idea of figuring how to make switch-mode power supplies work in a music server gave rise to the project name…”
Of course, switch-mode power supplies have worked in music servers from the get-go. That’s just how modern computers regulate their power. But calling it “a maverick idea” implies that the other guys, the competition, were all wrong about it, that their music servers don’t “work”. Clearly, if you use something other than their server, you are buying what Jenkins calls a “sh*tty computer”, because they (the other guys) don’t know how to do it right.
A variant of this disparagement-based reasoning is why the reviewer from Stereophile had to use a $3200 network switch powered by a $2750 power supply over a $340 “DC umbilical interface cable” (power cable). A $20 TP-Link unmanaged switch powered by a wall-wart for no extra charge obviously isn’t good enough. It isn’t price-matched.
And this is why sensible people don’t try to engage directly with the shameless frictionless marketing surfaces of the manufacturers, or the seemingly sycophantic ad-seeking behavior of the audiophile press.
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And, please trust your own ears and if it sounds better, go for it, if not, leave it (or buy it if money is no object 
)…
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The description of the differences between single and multi-mode fibre posted in the closed discussion was also somewhat flawed.
This new audiophile fascination with network switches, digital cables and the like reminds me of the similar fascination with power cords and electrical outlets (receptacles). Here are few things that puzzle me.
What about all the electrical and digital transmission that takes place before the fancy audiophile switches and cables? Do the audiophile switches and cables somehow repair the damage done to the electrical or digital signal by all the non-audiophile wires and switches?
Let’s say that one decides to use a super-duper audiophile power supply or, in the case of digital, a reclocker. Now won’t these devices make the need for audiophile digital cables and power cords moot since they are designed to clean up the power or digital signal?
I could go on but the two above points are fine examples of the flawed thinking that is going on.
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I think the problem here is that there isn’t any real thinking going on. It’s all belief from myths spouted by manufacturers and the audiophile press, retold in online communities to further spread the gospel.
If people were to think and do a little research outside of audiophilia, they would soon realise just how much nonsense is talked in this hobby.
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I received the words in this tweet by email from Mark Manson yesterday. Never have truer words been spoken:
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Like the claim of being able to jitter, remember the jitter monster, especially jitter in the picosecond range. Not only golden ears but absolutely superhuman ears.
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This discussion is much to academic to me, I sit in front of a music system and I like it or not, this is not the job of an expert or an audio magazin. The only difference I make is the duration. Some systems sound great for 30 min or so, the real good ones sound good even after 5-6 hours with different music.
I stopped a long time ago to discuss my system with others, its ok when people don’ like it because of design, sound or price. As long as I am happy I give a s***
Only my to cents
Tom
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