Bits are not bits

[haraldo]

I just read on another forum that Hegel gear is made in China, and that they are very secretive about this (to the point of being downright misleading about it).

I know very little about Hegel or the gear they make. Is there truth to what I read?

I previously stated that Hegel is made in Norway, sorry it may be wong... I heard from other sources now that Hegel is made in China and that it took them more than a year to admit... but surely there are some guys working in Norway

Also said that Raidho, made in Denmark is assembled in China, some of the Piega speakers too... and that Raidho and Piega is made in same factory and that it is trade secret trying to be hidden as much as possible... I do not have this in writing....

Maybe it provides some room of reflection for price points

Funny enough, the most definitive statement I see comes from Darko:

"What I didn’t know before arriving at Hegel’s HQ is that they produce nothing but prototypes here. Manufacturing takes place in China, leaving the Norway HQ for product development, circuit design, parts sourcing, testing, repairs and software coding. "

https://darko.audio/2018/03/hit-the-north-a-visit-to-hegels-headquarters/

For what it's worth, I don't care where they're made. I do find it a bit misleading they way the put Oslo Norway on the back of their gear, with no mention of it being made in China.

Hmm, is Hegel cheating the customers?
How do we know then that final products live up to the standard of the prototypes?

 

[haraldo]

Abo

I did not mean to imply in the least that you are prone to buying snake oil products. Rather that the salesman may have involved "snake-oil style trickery" by getting the sound to improve through something that is going on which you cannot see.
Generally, if I (as the salesman) can convince a customer that something sounds better in my shop, that customer will believe it is an improvement in their home. If they don't perceive as dramatic of a difference at home, they might think their system (or room) is not so revealing of the improvement as the gear in the shop (which is often high end). We are, indeed prone to expectation bias - I know I am!
I guess the thing that makes me suspicious is that you walked into the shop and listened to the set up and it sounded decidedly bad! Why is that? What audio store prominently displays gear that would make you want to stop listening to it? What is it about their products in that system that gave it a bad sound until these four maintenance steps were performed? And, if each of the four steps provided clear improvement, we would expect the aggregate of the 4 steps to be huge!
As you described it, I gather that the gear in their shop sounded noticeably worse than your system at home (ever) does! You would assume that they must have used these devices within the last few days since the owner presented it as one of the steps in preparing for a demonstration. However, if you have never used these devices, why doesn't your system at home sound like total crap?
Because this type of decay of sound quality is so foreign to my experience, I am suspicious that they deliberately compromised the sound quality so they could make incremental improvements which they could present as being associated with the anti-stat, demagnetizer, etc.
There is nothing like step-wise making bad sound into good sound quality to lead a person to believe they are hearing especially great sound!

I do believe the USA is more conducive to greed and deceit (for money) than many countries, but unless you can prove to me there are no sales of AudioQuest Cables in your country, I am slow to believe there is no room for deceit among businesses in your country!

hi Kurt

These are very good points indeed, and very good points of thought.....

I will be contradicting myself now, there is deceit...
I know in the case of this exact person that I am referring to have been overselling products by wow'ing what kind of drivers are in his speakers, (speakers only available in his shop)
It is said the drivers cost the same amount as the drivers in the upscale Martin logan subwoofers... I had an owner of these speakers remove the drivers and inside were some Peerless off-the-shelf drivers you can buy at parts express for $15,- as of today. And these are the drivers in a $23.000 set of speakers. (it's a line source with 18 of these drivers and a ribbon tweeter)

I know I am now contradicting myself saying there is no scam going on here, because the above statement I consider a real scam; People know it, they will still get away with it because the products is made sounding incredibly well, also at people's homes. At the other side there are people who see that there are some way overpriced products and in no way will trust such people.

I am somewhat ambivalent, I don't trust..... and I see some extremely clever people that make the systems work very well... and so I want to understand how they make the systems sound so well.
So with the above in mind I will always be somehow suspicious and look for things being wrong, but I really trust my ears and to some extent believe I can really ignore what my eyes tell me...

I want to improve, without it costing an arm and a leg, but ignoring what I can obviously hear by pointing at the "scam flag" will not get me further. In this case referred to in this thread there was so distinct changes in the performance from the system that I just have to get to the bottom of this...

Two principles that I try to follow, I think these are good ones:
- I will not buy an overpriced product no matter how good it is, some people do that in this country but I won't
- I don't buy audio gear assembled in South Korea or China, for any reason.... There goes Hegel out the window

In my home now, I don't play CD's but mainly streamed music from a NAS, where CD's have been ripped to FLAC via a windows computer and exact audio copy... it does not sound ike crap at all but really enjoyable.
So would the same thing apply, if I de magnetize CD's and use antistatic spray before ripping them.

So I guess the only way to get to the bottom of this is a further scientific test showing a proof / no-proof og this, involving a double blind test and/or some credible metrics showing there is a real difference. One person's word is not good enough even if it's the word of Queen Elisabeth.

I started to try to get the tech backgrounders at hand.....

 

[KEW]

What I might envision is that there could be a miniDSP in the signal chain and the store owner/manager has established 5 settings files to provide different degrees of sound quality and as you are watching the process of using the demagnetizer (etc) on the CD player, the settings file is being changed on the miniDSP to provide an improvement in sound quality. The deception could be activated from a computer in the back room, so you would not see anything happening.
In this case, everything you have described would be very much true - a clear improvement in sound quality after each process. It is just that they are presenting you a false explanation as it happens.
The owner would indeed be engaging in blatant deception, but as long as his employees won't "rat him out", he has nothing to lose, and is likely to gain a couple of hundred dollars in sales from most of "those guys who come to listen, but hardly ever buy" (like you and I).
It is good strategy because the customer is presented with a compelling "impulse buy". The success of an impulse buy is usually determined by whether it is too expensive to be an impulse decision, but in this case the customer has a choice of only buying one item today, or all 4, or any combination of these products, depending on his level of "loose cash"!

On the topic of trusting your ears over your eyes, for most of us humans, it seems that is simply impossible! We are hardwired to believe what we see over what we hear!

I never tire of watching this video! I know it is not the same, but the video brings home the idea that we cannot give full confidence to our ears. This would be just another parlor trick, but the fact that even after you know exactly what is happening, what you hear is still over ridden by what you see makes it more compelling. Obviously, from this, our perception of sound can be influenced by things other than sound!

 

[Irvrobinson]

Nothing wrong with PS Audio, is there?

Not if you think this is a reasonable product with a believable description of its capabilities:

https://www.psaudio.com/products/ac12-power-cable/

Or perhaps their $49 electrical outlet...

https://www.psaudio.com/products/power-port-classic/

If it looks like I am trying to stick to a certain point that’s not the purpose....
I want to get to the bottom of this, if my initial point is right or wrong .... doesn’t matter, but I am incredibly stubborn

I want the truth

So I directly contacted Furutech and Nordost to get tech papers supporting the claims of the performance of the demagnetizer and the antistatic spray. Let’s see what they can come up with

Your initial assertions, that bits aren't bits, and that demagnetization must be affecting CD playback, are silly. It does not take very much technical knowledge to see why. This thread is, IMO, as they would say in the US military, conduct unbecoming...

 

[Verdinut]

I would never buy a product that PS Audio sells with all their bullshit advertising. Anybody has to wonder how much bullshit and overpriced components are contained in their electronic products.
I consider all that false information in advertising as misrepresentation and, in my opinion, it would be desirable that enforceable laws be enacted to protect the consumer against all that nonsense for good.

 

[haraldo]

What I might envision is that there could be a miniDSP in the signal chain and the store owner/manager has established 5 settings files to provide different degrees of sound quality and as you are watching the process of using the demagnetizer (etc) on the CD player, the settings file is being changed on the miniDSP to provide an improvement in sound quality. The deception could be activated from a computer in the back room, so you would not see anything happening.
In this case, everything you have described would be very much true - a clear improvement in sound quality after each process. It is just that they are presenting you a false explanation as it happens.
The owner would indeed be engaging in blatant deception, but as long as his employees won't "rat him out", he has nothing to lose, and is likely to gain a couple of hundred dollars in sales from most of "those guys who come to listen, but hardly ever buy" (like you and I).
It is good strategy because the customer is presented with a compelling "impulse buy". The success of an impulse buy is usually determined by whether it is too expensive to be an impulse decision, but in this case the customer has a choice of only buying one item today, or all 4, or any combination of these products, depending on his level of "loose cash"!

On the topic of trusting your ears over your eyes, for most of us humans, it seems that is simply impossible! We are hardwired to believe what we see over what we hear!

I never tire of watching this video! I know it is not the same, but the video brings home the idea that we cannot give full confidence to our ears. This would be just another parlor trick, but the fact that even after you know exactly what is happening, what you hear is still over ridden by what you see makes it more compelling. Obviously, from this, our perception of sound can be influenced by things other than sound!

Interesting idea about the MiniDSP, never thought about it, but it's not what was going on here

I need to watch that video a few more times, first time it didn't make a difference with me...

There is a reason why two specific hifi dealers consistently make equipment sound better than all the others and calling them idiots is not the answer. There is definitely a difference somewhere here and calling that stupid as some others are doing her is certainly not pursuing the truth.

I understand this is the wrong arena about looking for answers to the truth of improving digital playback .....

 

[haraldo]

Not if you think this is a reasonable product with a believable description of its capabilities:

https://www.psaudio.com/products/ac12-power-cable/

Or perhaps their $49 electrical outlet...

https://www.psaudio.com/products/power-port-classic/



Your initial assertions, that bits aren't bits, and that demagnetization must be affecting CD playback, are silly. It does not take very much technical knowledge to see why. This thread is, IMO, as they would say in the US military, conduct unbecoming...

Telephone and electricity was an incredibly silly idea too...
We are lead to believe the digital stream is perfect, but I don't believe it and noone here has proven me otherwise
Maybe something happens with the timing that introduces audible jitter..... there is an explanation somewhere why there is an audible difference

 

[Irvrobinson]

Telephone and electricity was an incredibly silly idea too...
We are lead to believe the digital stream is perfect, but I don't believe it and noone here has proven me otherwise
Something happens with the timing that introduces audible jitter..... there is an explanation somewhere why there is an audible difference

Now you've earned a dumb rating. I've already told you that digital media streams are buffered, so within their specifications they are "perfect". With network streaming there can be interruptions in the bit stream, but that results in a drop-out, not distortion.

And comparing the discoveries that led to electricity with this nonsense about static electricity and CD playback quality is dumb too.

 

[shadyJ]

At the request of the OP, closing this thread, and I don't know where this is going that will be constructive or change anyone's mind about anything at this point anyway.