Ray Garrison

I have a pair of CF-4s. They are nice. I really like the La Scala / KHorn series a lot more, but circumstances intervene. If you can't get *real* (KHorn / La Scala / Belle) Klipsch, the CF-4 are a close approximation...

I believe for this to be a placebo effect you'd have to be using a non-alchoholic beer...

Jeez, Duke, *I* missed you, but with that avatar I was afraid to say anything...

The only problem with an open mind is it collects dirt. The folks at Positive Feedback are not thieves, crooks, or delusional idiots. They are people who love music, who enjoy good sounding audio, and (IMHO) tend to be much too willing to suspend disbelief on seemingly obviously impossible claims in order to find that every once in a while tweek that actually does work, for whatever reason. I consider Clark Johnsen, who writes for them regularly, a friend of mine. Rarely see him these days, but I spent quite a bit of time listening to his setup at the Listening Studio in Boston. What do you say when someone has a collection of tweeks that logic and basic science clearly classify as, well, stupid (Shakti Stones? Green felt pens for CD's? Expensive power cords, different types for digital and analogue components?) but whose system sounds not only better than anything else you've ever heard, but better in a qualitatively different way. Not simply more "air" or better soundstaging or better timber or better anything else... it just sounded so much more like real people playing real music in that room than anything I've ever heard. Big VMPS Supertower speakers, VTL tube amps (I think), unsure of CD transport and converter. Clark worked in the space program as a digital signal processing engineer. He knows more about how digital signal processing works than anyone else I've spoken with. But he believes in a lot of tweeks that, I believe, most of us would find totally absurd. Does his system sound so good because of these, or in spite of them? I tend to think in spite of them. But, his basic nature of trying to get the best possible sound, and being willing to try anything, no matter how ridiculous it might seem, to get that sound means he may try and accept things that (on face value) can't possibly be doing anything... at least, nothing good. But his system sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. He's also a big believer (and probably the single biggest promoter of) the difference that absolute polarity (the "wood effect") makes. He wrote the damn book, in fact. Me, I've never been able to hear any difference at all on my home system when I reverse the polarity of the source, but Clark swears it's a night and day difference. His system sounds a hell of a lot better than mine. who ya gonna believe?

That's not a picture, it's a link... a little smiley face emoticon linking to my website (the six year old...)... uh, subtle attempt at humor... maybe I should take another 8 months off or so...

Thanks for the thoughts. It's amazing what an 6 year old with ODD / ADHD will do to your free time... not to mention the time taken up by my son Nick... Here's the 6 year old, by the way:

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't...

Ah yes, I forgot all about the ole frictionless wheel invention. Who was that again that invent those? I think it was PT Bar...something or other. ;-) , HOWEVER, I would like to see pictures of your speakers. Mr. Macho Nacho, THAT! is what I call some serious friction..... Just imagine, if that pilot could have landed on a conveyor belt supported with frictionless pullies/wheels, then all emergency landings would be a thing of the past. Well, yes, of course, in the real world there will be bearing friction, the wheels don't rotate completely freely, and there is the initial inertia resisting the rotation of the wheels... exactly how those forces get transferred to the airframe, and to what degree, is math that is beyond me right now, but it does exist, and clearly if the belt is moving fast enough beneath the plane the friction resisting the rotation of the wheels is going to overcome whatever thrust the engine is capable of generating and the plane will be dragged backwards against the thrust of the engine. My feeling is the belt would have to be moving P.D.F. (uh, pretty dam fast) for that to happen, but it would happen, eventually, no matter how powerful the engines are. but I think that's kind of missing the point. As a thought problem, the point is that the airplane's forward motion is due to the action of the engines on the air, and not related to the contact between the wheels and the ground. If the wheels were frictionless the plane would take off no matter what the belt does... unless the belt is moving so fast that the boundry layer of air at its surface is pulled backwards so fast that it... uh, screws everything up. And to everyone who keeps harping on Bernoulli (?Spell?) as the reason planes fly, it's not that complicated. Planes fly because the wing pushes the air down. Lift is a force acting against gravity. Force is mass times acceleration. The lift force must be offset by an equal and opposite force. That opposite force is the mass of air being accelerated downward. Whether that downward acceleration happens because of the Bernoulli principle, the curve of the wing, the angle of attack or whatever is not really important. You could fly a plane using a (very strong) sheet of flat plywood if you had sufficient power by setting the proper angle of attack. If the Bernoulli principle was only thing going on, no plane could fly upside down unless it could change the shape of the airfoil. This immence mass of air accelerating downwards is easiest to experience if you stand close to a rotaty winged aircraft when it takes off. It'll about knock you over. really cool.

Work stress... How many of the people who post here have the ability / responsibility to take actions that truly impact the other people they work with, their company, or their customers? Kind of curious... seems like the affinity to Klipsch speakers and the willingness to assume a position where your actions affect (effect?) many other people outside your immediate sphere of influence seem to go hand in hand... Hey Coulter, what do you think of Sony's entry into the DSLR market?

It's funny... I own a business, me and my partner. Employee a few people. I'm the software guy. Always on line to the office, just making sure everything is working okay. Just checked before that last sentence, in fact... at 11:30 on Thursday night. I'll check in a few more times before I go to bed. Those of you that have read anything I've posted over the past 8 years know that audio is a big part of my life, and I've been a Klipsch devotee for, like, 25 years. Found this board back in '99 and have enjoyed posting. Breaks up the otherwise shear insanity that every day of beating computers into submission brings. Feel like many of you are friends, in one form or another... would like to meet you some day. My mom, brother and sister chipped in a bought me a Sony a100 digital SLR camera for Christmas this year. I haven't had a camera since my Nikon was stolen by a crackhead I gave a lift to back in, uh, '93 or so. Tell ya, once you try a digital camera, there's no going back. You can take hundreds and hundreds of shots at your son's birthday party, dump them onto the computer, weed out the 98% that aren't worth keeping, and have the remaining 10 or 20 printed for a couple of bucks at the local Walgreens. So different than film... So I've been spending time at the dpreview website on the Sony SLR forum, and haven't really been here in a while. Stopped in today to see what's going on, and it feels like I was just here yesterday. Same folks, few new, familiar topics... Amy is still moderating... Clu seems to have gone MIA and returned... but I haven't been listening to music. Don't know why. Just kind of dropped out of the habit. Still have the CF-4s, but I haven't spent more than, maybe, an hour listening to music in the past 8 or 9 months. Weird. First time I've been away from it for that long since I was a freshman at RPI back in '73. Why? Does this happen to any one of you? Have something that is such a big part of your life, something that almost defines a part of what you are, something you've been zealously immersing yourself in for years, and suddenly you look around one day and find you've stepped away and not really missed it? The downstairs has a big screen TeeVee (well, big-ish), the CF-4s, couch, acoustic treatments... and I find myself sitting in the kitchen at the table, watching a 12" color tv sitting on the counter, waiting for Amanda Tapping to take charge of Atlantis tomorrow, wondering if the chief is really a Cylon, listening to Mike talk to a guy who collects owl droppings for a living, and the equipment downstairs is dark and cold. Has been for a while. Am I so burned out that I don't have room for that passion anymore? Is this normal? Do we all go through phases where we retreat from those parts of our lives that consume us for so long, sitting quietly in a still room, wondering what happened? I haven't posted here in 9 months, and I've been posting almost every day since '99. What happened? Maybe I'm just a little tired...

Oh. My. God. I took a brief (well, 9 month) hiatus (got a Sony a100 DSLR, have been hanging out at dpreview.com), come back here, and find: 1. This thread is still alive? 2. There are still some people who don't get this? 3. Oldtimer is channeling Julian Hirsch? It *DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE SURFACE UNDER THE WHEELS IS DOING*. Whether the conveyor belt is moving forward, stationary, or backward, at whatever velocity, has no bearing (yuk yuk) on what the plane does. Suppose the plane was magnetically levitated above the belt, not touching it. Obviously, if the belt begins moving backwards while the plane taxies forward, the plane doesn't care. It'll move forward, gain airspeed, and take off. now, let it sit on its wheels. the only difference is the wheels rotate, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the plane's forward motion. Whether the belt is moving beneath the plane at a slow speed, the same speed but opposite in direction to the plane, or traveling backwards at Warp 9 the plane still moves forwards and takes off when the airspeed is sufficient. (Assuming the wheel bearings have negligable friction.) Geez. I gonna go take some pictures of my speakers.

How's everybody been?

...no matter what your friend wants to borrow, you've got a spare one lying around somewhere.... (Patch cord? Oh sure, wait a sec, here's a box of them... Yeah, I can lend you one of my other CD players until yours comes back from the shop... Power cord? Uh, look behind the box of patch cords... Amp? Oh, I've got an old TEAC on the top shelf over there, under the Vibraplane I swapped out - no, not that, that's a tape deck, to left there next to the VCR - no, that's the NAD preamp, the TEAC is under that, sitting on the laserdisc player... COAX cable? Look in the patch cord box...)

maybe it's my speakers (cheapies that came with system, not even a name) or my 52 year old ears, but I hear absolutely nothing at all.

Actually, now that I think about it, this was the coolest car I ever had... 1974 Fiat 128 SL Coupe. Picture's not my car, but mine looked just like this. Little tiny engine (1200 CC's), front wheel drive, 4 speed... you could park it in the snow by driving past the parking spot you wanted, pulling up the handbrake, turning the wheel sharp left and gunning it. Back end would pivot out to the right perfectly controlably, and you'd wind up going backwards pointing straight at the spot you wanted. Wait a second for the wheels to bite, stop going backwards and move forwards, pull right into spot. Never had another car that could dance like this one. Unfortunately car's abilities outstripped my youthful enthusiasm, and I would up in odd situations too many times... stuck on top of a snow drift pointing in the wrong direction when my Mom drove by... spun out right in front of a cop by going into a corner a bit too enthusiastically and trying to drift through it... stuck on top of rock with all four wheels off the ground because my buddy new a shortcut home late at night through the woods... plus, the front wheel bearings self-destructed every 6 or 8 thousand miles like clockwork, and I must have gone through a dozen alternators in the 4 years I owned the car... eventually traded "up" to a 1976 Ford Capri II V6 4 speed...

I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to do, but if you drop an email to ray@periship.com I'd be happy to open a dialogue. Ray http://www.periship.com guy

Have you heard a song - you didn't know who it was, never heard anything like it before, found yourself different, somehow, after hearing it... I know for many people on this forum, the answer's going to be something from the classical library, or possibly a jazz recording never heard before, or the first "real" rock n' roll or heavy metal or something... I was reminded of this today, for some reason... 1987. I was at a club called The Grotto in New Haven (sadly long gone now.) Dark place, converted warehouse, local bands and ecclectic weirdos (and me) favorite hang out late at night after work. I was there one night drinking a Bombay Martini and I heard, uh, this

Welcome to the wonderful world of IT. Whenever one of my systems is down, I have a collection of helpful, thoughtful partners and employees who all know exactly what happened, why it happened, what I should have done in the first place to keep if from happening and can't understand why someone as clueless as I obviously am is running the thing anyway. And people think I'm kidding when I tell them I hate computers...

Everybody seems to be missing my point... to quote the original review I pointed to: The Zero: Air-dielectric, evacuated interconnect with Rectangular Solid-Core conductors (available in analog, digital S/PDIF and AES/EBU forms) and Floating Ground System. Capacitance: 3.4pF/foot. Inductance: 0.018µH/foot. Price: *** $14,900/pair *** in lengths of 1m, 2m, or 3m. Other lengths, prices vary. Approximate number of dealers: 8. Warranty: 5 years, nontransferable. Under separate warranty program, the cable is guaranteed to maintain its vacuum condition. The original purchaser may at his option send the cable to TARA Labs for a free diagnostic service, including an evaluation of the vacuum condition at any time during the first 3 years; thereafter, a service fee will apply. Manufacturer: TARA Labs, 550 Clover Lane, Ashland, OR 97520. Tel: (541) 488-6465. Fax: (541) 488-6463. Web: www.taralabs.com.

[:S] Geez, how much more difficult can the webmaster make it to insert a damn link... used to just type anchor ref and url, now I can't figure out how to do it... I was trying to point you guys to this review... cut and paste into browser until I figure this out... http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1206tara/

My non-legal layperson's perspective... I have no idea. It seems like I should be entitled to the agreed upon price of $1,000 plus the return shipping, for a total of $1,040. But then, I sold them for $900. Maybe XYZ only owes me $140. Wait a minute, they're fungible. If P Corp hadn't bought these widgets, they'd've bought some other widgets, and I'm still out the $1,000 XYZ promised to give me. Plus, I had to re-stock them, typically 15%. I'd ask for the $1,000 contract price, the $40 return shipping, and charge a restocking fee of 15%, total $1,190.

Real. Went with wife, daughter, son and trusty dog to local tree farm to select, cut and transport. End result:

Your example of a fly bumping a plane is not only correct, but actually has a real-world counterpart, surprizingly enough. Ever heard of a light sail? Idea is if you have a spacecraft far enough out from the atmosphere that there's no drag to speak of, in other words your ideal frictionless environment, then any force applied to the spacecraft, however slight, will accelerate it. Slowly, but constantly. Okay, so build a big parachute-like sail. Reflectorized mylar. Deploy it in front of the spacecraft. Photons, which are practically massless but moving really damn fast, will hit the sail, bounce off, and impart some portion of their kinetic energy to it. This will accelerate the spacecraft away from the sun, toward intersteller space. Away we go, slowly but surely. Here's what the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA has to say about it.

Yeah, Oldie, I really want to know. It may be a literally ridiculous statement, but I saw a similar statement while researching this jet issue. I recall when I took physics many years ago that there were alot of seemingly absurd nuances in physics that you don't think about - such as the ground pushes against a car. I took the statement at face value with the idea being that if there is no friction to stop an object once it starts in motion, it will move forever. I know that is not exactly the statement made, so I'd like to know what happens in the example I posted. Somebody here who recalls all those formulas might certainly be able to show the math. Relatavistic effects aside, it's pretty simple. An object's velocity is defined as a change in position over time. Changes in velocity result from acceleration. Specifically, an object's velocity at any time "T" is given by the sum of its initial velocity plus the rate of acceleration times the time during which it has been accelerating. That is, Vt = Vo + aT. An object with an initial velocity of 0 m/s accelerating at 10 m/s for 5 seconds will be traveling at 50 m/s at the end of that time. If the acceleration is removed at that point (we run out of gas) and we are in a frictionless environment (as you stated) the object will continue to move at 50 m/s indefinately. The rate of acceleration is determined by the formula Force = Mass X Acceleration, or Force / Mass = Acceleration. If we apply a force of 1 Newton (one kilogram meter per second per second) to a 2 kilogram mass, it will begin to accelerate at a rate of 0.5 meters per second per second. If relativity were not a factor, any acceleration applied continuously to a mass would continue to accelerate that mass without bound. Given a sufficient amount of time during which the acceleration was applied, the mass could attain any specific finite velocity. This is pretty much true for most things we interact with (planes, cars, guns, baseballs) because the velocities are so low compared to the velocity of light ©. The proportional amount of relativistic effects can be approximated by dividing something (mass, in this case) by the term (1 - (v^2 / c^2)) (that is, one minus (velocity squared divided by the speed of light squared)). At any speed far below the speed of light, the v^2 / c^2 term approaches zero, so the mass is divided by (1-0), or 1. As velocity begins to approach c, this term begins to take on a value that impacts the mass, increasing it. As velocity begins to approach c, mass begins to increase rapidly. This is important in things like partical accelerators, where the partical streams are moving at a significant portion of the velocity of light.

The question doesn't say "The belt moves fast enough to hold the plane stationary relative to its surroundings." It says the belt moves as fast as the plane, in the other direction. So if the plane is moving right to left at 50 mph, relative to everything else in the picture, the belt is moving left to right at 50 mph, relative to everything else. Relative to each other, the plane and the belt are moving past each other at 100 mph. If the plane could take off at 50 mph (a Piper Cub?) it would fly away.