[jaddie]

All of this stuff about rigging the demo could be true, but they didn't have to go that far.  There were two elements to the demo that could make it work without any physical rigging.  First, there's no way to quickly compare the standard table vs the fancy rack.  The move took time, and that time is quite sufficient to extend beyond anyone's short -term auditory memory.  Second, there was no doubt some way of implanting an expectation, or anticipated result.  Perhaps it was printed material, graphics, verbal suggestion, or some combination.  That's all it would take, though, and a clear audible difference would have been "heard" by a great number of people, and the rest would question their observations enough to agree with them.  Some of the audience could have been shills or plants, and just behaving enthusiastically. That kind of thing is easy, doesn't require any faking of wiring or connection, which might be easily exposed, and doesn't require special demo material, which also could easily be exposed by anyone with their own CD.
 

 

[Audio-Omega]

Does CD mat reduce vibration ?

 

[PleasantSounds]

Quote:

Another simple way of faking a demo like this to use a CD with two copies of the same track - one standard issue, the other poorly recorded. Whenever you watch a demo from anyone trying to sell you something ask yourself if you have seen a professional magician pull off a better trick! Demos are not to be trusted.

 
If anything I suspect they could have been playing with the amplifier, changing it's settings via remote. Every time the CD player was moved the playback was paused, so it would be relatively easy to switch between two playback presets without anyone noticing. But they played a CD received from the audience so that idea is for another day.
 
I'm not too sure about the benefits of rigging this presentation though: even if anyone would be tempted to get this magic table, I'm sure it would be back to the vendor very quickly if the demo could not be repeated in their own environment.
 
I was more interested in finding out whether there are any scientific explanations of this phenomenon assuming it was genuine, as that goes beyond my knowledge and experience. 

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

I'm not too sure about the benefits of rigging this presentation though: even if anyone would be tempted to get this magic table, I'm sure it would be back to the vendor very quickly if the demo could not be repeated in their own environment.
 

Then why don't $2000 DACs that don't provide audible over the DAC in a Clip get returned? How about crippled class A valve amp designs? Or $6000 CD players that can't be blindtested apart from a Sony Playstation, $50 CD player, or an iPod?

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

 Some of the audience could have been shills or plants, and just behaving enthusiastically. That kind of thing is easy, doesn't require any faking of wiring or connection, which might be easily exposed, and doesn't require special demo material, which also could easily be exposed by anyone with their own CD.
 

 
Shills especially will have a big effect. But personally I wouldn't risk a psych only demo - all it takes is one mouthy guy to say "I can't hear a difference!" at the beginning and the placebo effect is disrupted. And there so many physical ways to fake a demo that are almost impossible to catch, unless you are going to let people dismantle your hardware.

 

[Audio-Omega]

 
 
I got fuller sound with resonated bass.  The best thing is that it tames the brightness of Sennheiser HD800 in pop music.  

 

[streetdragon]

Quote:

 
 
I got fuller sound with resonated bass.  The best thing is that it tames the brightness of Sennheiser HD800 in pop music.  

fantastic! i should get one for myself, how much does it cost?

 

[mich41]

Good one

Does this thing seriously exist or is it just photoshop?

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

 
 
I got fuller sound with resonated bass.  The best thing is that it tames the brightness of Sennheiser HD800 in pop music.  

 
 
Have you tried measuring the effect. It would be relatively easy to do and would be highly informative !

 

[musical-kage]

Impossible.
 
Is it possible they could have veiled the sound themselves for the effect to happen? I mean, it must have been connected to an amp.
 
Mabe that CD player isn't all that good in reality?
 
Heck, even the placement could have caused some reverberations in the speakers that just weren't occuring when it was put on the rack (further away from any other object, etc)

 

[Speedskater]

I can't imagine adding a flywheel to a CD platter doing anything good!  It would just make it harder for the motor to adjust speed.  CD's are not like TT's, they don't run at a constant speed.

 

[jaddie]

....holding....
 
....back....
 
.....aarrrghh.....<choke-hack-spit>
 
Ok...I'll be ok.  
 
Look, what's on a CD cannot be altered during play such that a spectral difference occurs.  It's data.  The data represents the entire wave form, and the laser, demodulator, decoding, error correction/concealment, etc., is spectrum blind and dumb.  If vibration of any kind has a negative impact on a CD player, the noise floor will rise, then once the error correction ability of the system is swamped, it goes to crap, mutes, glitches, whatever.   It's on there as a data stream with blocks of interleaved bytes that are arranged so that it all has to be reconstructed.  It's not even a straight continuous data stream!  Nope. This is complete fiction. 
 
This thing is another "Audio Brick", "CD Green Pen", and the rest of the boring and irritation lot.

 

[streetdragon]

I hope everyone here knows this is a that was joke post

 

[jaddie]

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Red-Book
 
From the above:
 
"CD data is not arranged in distinct physical units; data is organized into frames (consisting of 24 bytes of user data, plus synchronization, error correction, and control and display bits) which are intricately interleaved so that damage to the disc will not destroy any single frame, but only small parts of many frames."
 
Oh.  A joke post.  Funny.

 

[streetdragon]

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Red-Book

From the above:

"CD data is not arranged in distinct physical units; data is organized into frames (consisting of 24 bytes of user data, plus synchronization, error correction, and control and display bits) which are intricately interleaved so that damage to the disc will not destroy any single frame, but only small parts of many frames."


Oh.  A joke post.  Funny.

I was actually referring to post 39, not yours.
Sorry bout the misunderstanding, have a nice day.