NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/rec/audio/11040

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-30 | 11.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!darwin.sura.net!dtix!mimsy!lhc!lhc!hunter
From: [e-mail] (Larry Hunter)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Piercisms of the past
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 30 Jul 92 02:19:34 GMT
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Organization: National Library of Medicine
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Dick Pierce has posted some wonderful audio stories here in the past, and
claims that he has "so many news ones," but with "ABSOLUTELY no time to type
'em up."  With Dick's permission, I'll post a few of the old classics.  If you
like these, maybe we can encourage him to write up some of the new ones.  Now,
without further ado, it's time for...

            Episode of the <<interval>> !!

Today's Episode: Crank, Charlatan and Dilettante (a Famous Design Firm)

First, a glossary:

     char-la-tan n [It., lit. inhabitant of Cerreto] 1: QUACK <~s
     killing their patients with empirical knowledge> 2: one mak-
     ing usu. noisy or showy pretenses to knowledge or ability  :
     FRAUD, FAKER

     crank n [ME cranke] ... (2) c: an  eccentric  person;  also:
     one  that  is overly enthusiastic about a particular subject
     or activity d: a bad tempered person: GROUCH

     dil-et-tante n [It. fr. prp. of dilettare to delight] ... 2:
     a  person  having superficial interest in art or a branch of
     knowledge

     During my public involvement (do I really mean to  say  penance?)
in  the consumer audio field, I came across more than my share of self
appointed experts; people who knew more than anybody. They usually got
that way by one of two routes: first, they knew more than anybody sim-
ply because  of  their  own  estimation  of  the  tremendous  bulk  of
knowledge  they had acquired (actually made up themselves), or second,
even if they didn't know much of anything, everybody else  was  simply
too stupid to keep up with them.

     Our store was located for a time between Harvard Square  and  MIT
in  Camdridge,  MA.  For  those not familiar with the area, Bostonians
consider their town to be the hub of the universe, an  arguably  paro-
chial  view at best. The crazies, the obnoxious and the professionally
wierd consider the territory we unwittingly occupied to be the hub  of
their universe, unfortunately.

     Saturday was show and tell day. This is  when  all  the  freshman
EE's  from  MIT  came in waving their Maxwell's equations and bandying
their calculators about like  so  many  highly-polished  sponge-rubber
sabers.  They came in droves to show us how much they knew and tell us
how stupid we were. There were many other stores  in  the  area,  but,
given  that  we  had  established  ourselves as the most knowledgeable
audio store around, we were especially vulnerable to, as it turns out,
these kamikaze attacks.

     Let me present to you a typical conversation that might have hap-
pened.  Let  me further embellish the tale by showing you how we would
respond and how  a  salesman  at  another,  less  expert  store  might
respond. Note that I see a valid case for both approaches:

Our approach:
     "May I help you?"

Other approach:
     "May I help you?"

MIT student:
     "Those speakers can't possibly work the way you claim  them  they
     do!"

Our approach:
     "Well, are you contemplating purchasing a pair, or some  alterna-
     tive?"

Other approach:
     "Well, are you contemplating purchasing a pair, or some  alterna-
     tive?"

MIT student:
     "Look, I go to MIT, and I know so much more  than  you  do,  it's
     ridiculous"

Our approach:
     "Well, if you have some information you would like to share  with
     us, and someone has a moment, OK."

Other approach:
     "Get out of here before I call the police!"

MIT Student:
     "Yeah, that's just typical for some stupid salesman to say  some-
     thing like that."

     It is important to note that at this point, no  matter  what  was
said  to  the guy, there seemed to always be a fixed set of responses.
We could even sometimes say the guy's lines right along  with  him.  I
have  always wondered if one of the EE fraternities brainwashed fresh-
men and sent them out on these hi-fi suicide missions.  But,  back  to
our movie:

Our Approach:
     "Well, I don't recall making any claims to you  about  how  those
     did  or  did  not  work.  And, by the way, those aren't speakers,
     they're a pair of broken dehumidifiers, so maybe you  might  want
     to  direct  your  attention to our showroom, where you might find
     something more interesting."

Other Approach:
     "Where's the damn phone? I'm tired of these nuts!"

MIT Student:
     "AHA! See, you've already proved my point!"

     Now, there are some mumblings while, in our store, the  MIT  stu-
dent  looks over our line of speakers like someone casually and indif-
ferently chosing some lamb chops, while we flip a coin to see  who  is
going  to  have  to  deal with this nerd. In the other store,  the MIT
student looks over their line of speakers like  someone  casually  and
indifferently  chosing some lamb chops, while someone is trying to get
911 to answer and the others are flipping coins trying to  decide  who
is going to have to throw this nerd out.

Our Approach:
     "Is there something that you might like to listen to?"

Other Approach:
     "Is there something that you might like to say before we  finally
     boot your tail out?"

MIT Student:
     "I want to listen to the frazemblat gegaugger 3's."

Our Approach:
     "We don't carry those, try something else."

Other Approach:
     "We don't carry those, go play in traffic."

     Now, the MIT student unleashes his most  powerful  weapon,  fully
expecting us to reel back in abject fear of being smitten by the audio
gods:

MIT Student:
     "I am taking an acoustics class with Dr. Amar Bose."

Our Approach:
     "So what?"

Other Approach:
     "So what?"

MIT Student:
     "Well, he said ... blah blah ... and then when it  comes  to  the
     low  end  ...   blah  blah ... and of course, anyone who is not a
     complete fool would realize that Maxwells equations  for  charges
     moving in a constant frobenser states that the conditions of zero
     source resistance at absolute zero then, but always
      ... blah blah ..."

     This goes on for some ten minutes, complete with seemingly uncon-
trolled  hand-waving and scribbling of very cryptic equations on scrap
sheets of papers that might have once been a set  of  class  notes  or
behaviour  rules for the halls or the cardboard back from a package of
twinkies. After his little speech, our invader stands there exhausted,
dripping  in  sweat,  barely able to shape his face into the smug grin
that is the hallmark of self-appointed audio experts everywhere.

     Now, it is our turn.

Our Approach:
     "Well, what you've said is most interesting and entertaining how-
     ever,  I  would  like to point out a few small technical flaws in
     your assertions. Take for example the point where you were  talk-
     ing  about the interaction of a second-order mechanical resonance
     and the reduction in radiation resistance below the  point  where
     the  wavelength  being  produced  is  comparable to the diaphragm
     size. If your assertion there is true, then ...."

     At this point, it is so trivially easy to find some  gross  error
in  his little equations. Going through his same derivation, only mak-
ing sure that you carry and borrow correctly:

     "... it seems that, by your own equations, that 1 equals  5.  Now
     that  seems  to  be just a might impossible to me. Does it seem a
     might impossible to you, too?"

MIT Student:
     "Uh..."

     The Other Approach is structurally  similar,  differing  only  in
details:

Other Approach:
     "Well, what you've said is  most  interesting  and  entertaining,
     however  I would like to point out that you have shit for brains.
     Did I just see a Cambridge Police cruiser?"

MIT Student:
     "Uh..."

     This would happen every Saturday, rain or shine (it  would  seem,
though,  that the worse the weather, the more of these kind would show
up).

     The other kind of self-appointed expert was often a  professional
of  some  sort  or another, often in his 50's, and usually dripping in
affluence. These encounters went something like:

Our Approach:
     "May I help you?"

Other Approach:
     "May I help you?"

Lawyer-type:
     "I'm here to buy a system and let me tell you that I've been dab-
     bling  in  hi-fi, even with two speakers, mind you, for well over
     (10, 25, 50, 12,000) years now!"

Other Approach:
     "Well, I guess it takes some people a lot longer than others!"

Our Approach:
     "Well, I guess it takes some people a lot longer than others!"

     The guy wants to buy something like  a  huge  pile  of  Macintosh
equipment  or  a BeoCenter, but invariably ends up buying the cheapest
receiver, turntable and speakers possible, claiming, "It's really  for
my  son  who's  studying engineering at MIT, you know." Damn, that MIT
nerd has a family!

     I had several occasions to give talks before audio  organizations
such  as  the Boston Audio Society. In one lecture, way back in '74 or
thereabouts, I and one of my partners gave a talk on the incompatabil-
ity  of  otherwise  high-quality components. This one one of the first
times that this issue was addressed  in  the  detail  that  we  talked
about.  The  talk had two basic areas: first, the interaction of phono
cartridges,  turntables  and  tone  arms  and  second,  the  sometimes
surprising interactions between electronic components. We were able to
demonstrate that an otherwise  fine  high-compliance  cartridge,  when
placed  in  an  otherwise  fine  high-mass tone arm, led to absolutely
dismal results.

     On the second topic, I was able to show that to otherwise reason-
able  components,  a  preamp and a power amp, together made for a very
unstable combination. The preamp showed an otherwise normal 2nd  order
Butterworth  rolloff at about 85 Khz, while the power amp showed simi-
lar characteristics, only at about 40 Khz. The combination showed  all
sorts  of  bizarre  ripples in the response, along with the associated
phase and group delay problems, and the whole mess was on the verge of
breaking  into  uncontrolled  oscillations.   I made the remark, "It's
almost as if we had somehow managed to synthesize a poorly aligned 4th
order Chebychev filter, but...". Before I could say that this might be
due to instability because of incompatible grounding, one  Mark  Davis
(later  of  Davis-Brinton preamp fame) literally flew out of his seat,
waving his hands uncontrollably, shouting, "There is  no  way  in  the
universe  that cascading two 2nd order Butterworth filters can produce
a Chebychev response, because ... blah blah blah blah ... and any fool
knows  that  ... blah blah ... and if you think that ... blah blah ...
then you are, of course, stupid!" My partner leans over and  whispers,
"Ten bucks says he goes to MIT."

     After Mark was all done, sitting in his chair panting and  sweat-
ing,  barely  able to wear the smug grin that is the hallmark of self-
proclaimed audio experts everywhere, I said, "But Mark, I  never  said
that. If you had been kind enough to let me finish, I was going to say
that any fool knows that without something else going  on,  you  can't
get  a  4th  order Chebechev from two 2nd order Butterworth filters. I
was going to say that there appeared to be  a  strange  feedback  loop
going  through  the  isolated grounds of the preamp-power amp cables."
Mark's response was, "Well, if you had said that, you would have  been
wrong."  I  said,  "But  I didn't say that." Mark replied, "Well, your
damn lucky you didn't!"

     I felt like replying, "Get out of here before I call the police."

Dick Pierce

-------------------

--
Lawrence Hunter, PhD.
National Library of Medicine
Bldg. 38A, MS-54
Bethesda. MD 20894
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