Michael Fremer tours Shunyata Research and talks with Caelin Gabriel.

The guy who never met a Stereophile advertiser who's product he didn't like, especially $10k cables

too bad you don't know what you are talking about.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/richard-grays-power-company-400s-ac-line-conditioner-michael-fremer-november-2004

 

and i'm no Mikey apologist; i many times don't agree with him. i don't agree with his taste in speakers and amps for instance. but if you read all his reviews he get's it right mostly and speaks his mind.

 

Ahh, but I do.  Firstly, note this:

http://www.stereotimes.com/comm0500.shtml

What happened between Stereophile and Richard Gray I can't tell you, but I bet it has NOTHING to do with the behavior of the equipment.  I have heard Richard Gray's products in several high-end set-ups.  There is zero sonic result to my ears, positive or negative.  Distinct sonic signatures of high-end cables is pure fantasy land.  Double blind test have shown it.  Fremer and I got into it on the forums one time when he was trying to entirely dismiss ALL forms of blind testing.  Also, Stereophile provides a copy of its product reviews to the manufacturers for comment BEFORE the deadline to buy advertising in the SAME issue.  I challenged Atkinson about the very obvious opportunity for editorial content to drive revenue and the reviewer's own income- a huge conflict of interest.  He made no response and I canceled my subscription.  But you are free to believe what you like.

 

On his reviews overall I agree that he gets it right most of the time- and so do all the professional reviewers I read.  High-end audio is competitive.  Bad products and the companies that make them tend not to survive for long.  Reviewers like almost everything they review and almost everything that makes it into high-end shops is pretty good these days, IMHO.  Been at this hobby 30 years.  It was not always so...

no, you don't know what you are talking about. you've not made a case that Fremer is swayed by Stereophile advertising. only that you've had run-ins with Fremer and Atkinson and have an agenda.

 

many people don't think blind testing has value, and i agree with Fremer on that issue. if your problem is with Stereophile's policies no problem, you have a right to your own opinion. but that proves nothing.

 

make a real case or get called out when you cheap shot someone. so they kicked sand in your face, so what.

 

Sadly it's just another dog and pony show. Not one bit of meaningful information in the entire piece.

 

se

 

 

 

Real journalists put up a Chinese Wall between the advertising/sales department and those who produce the content.

Standard practice at reputable newpapers, radio networks and TV stations. Go ahead and look it up.

Fremer is as repututable as your local psychic or palm reader.

If you've never experienced a psychic, try it sometime. It is highly entertaining. Somehow, you always have a problem that requires a return visit and - shockingly - more money.

 

Actually, the point on blind testing is foundational to making a case...in this case (haha!). That Fremer discounts blind testing casts doubt on anything he has to say thereafter; it implies he rejects scientific methodology, no?

I was waiting for steve to comment, he has it right. short but right.

 

The graphs are all sorts of pretty, and the designed hardware can be

demo'd and will generate the same, but otherwise useless graphs that

have nothing to do with the real world.

 

AC power is about 1000 times slower than the microseconds time scale on the graph.

 

150+ amperes vertical scale transient is also goofy. Not even the krell master reference

amps are capable of such a thing on the primary side of the transformer. You would need

a 15 ton air conditioner to do such a thing. And maybe that is not even big enough.

And certainly not the 15 microsecond rise time.

 

Yep, dog and pony show. Very carefully designed dog and pony show, used to

beat up on the competition. Cashectomy in progress.

One of the "best" dog and pony shows I recall was for the Richard Gray Power Company. This device was nothing more than a large 5 or 6 Henry inductor that was placed across the AC line. The claim was that it acted as a huge reserve of energy that your system could draw on when it needed it.

 

Of course under AC conditions, a large inductor is anything but a huge reserve of energy as an inductor works to resist any change in the current flowing through it. And to their credit, Stereophile pointed this out in their review of the RGPC in a little sidebar where one of their technical editors ran through the math to demonstrate just how absurd the claims of a huge reserve of energy were.

 

Undaunted, at the next CES, Richard Gray was there with a little "demonstration." It consisted of an RGPC, a battery, a switch, and a lightbulb.

 

The battery was used as a DC voltage source which allowed a significant amount of current to flow through the windings of the inductor which subsequently created a huge magnetic field around the windings. And in this case, under DC conditions, a large amount of energy is stored in the inductor. Or rather in the magnetic field around the windings.

 

Then he'd flip the switch which placed the lightbulb across the inductor. Of course now the magnetic field collapses and creates a huge flyback voltage across the inductor and thence the lightbulb and voila, a big flash of light comes from the lightbulb, thus proving that the RGPC is indeed a huge source of energy.

 

Talk about shameless!

 

The sad thing is that it's nearly impossible to tell whether these people actually know what they're doing, which effectively makes them frauds, or if they're just stubbornly, incuriously ignorant, which simply makes them stupid.

 

se

If you pick a suitable (and very large) capacitor and put it across the inductor, then you

can in fact generate a 60hz  (or 50hz) resonant circuit which will in fact store hundreds

of joules of AC power. The resulting size and weight of the combined device would

be impressive indeed. The heat generated due to the efficiency of the inductor

and capacitor would also be significant and would likely cause tuning issues.

True. But then any competently designed DC power supply will already have sufficient energy storage in the form of its reservoir capacitance, making the whole idea rather moot. And if you don't have sufficient energy storage in your DC power supply, nothing on the AC side is going to help that.

 

And so we end up with yet another "cure" in search of a "disease."

 

se