First up, this is the company:
http://www.phonosophie.de/International/
This is the Room-Animator
And this is the Audio-Animator
There has been quite a debate on the Room-Animator in Another Forum, where people claimed to hear differences (“even my wife heard it and she’s deaf/dead/I’m not marriedâ€). To me, this is sheer hokum, but the discovery that the only Swiss dealer is just over the Jura from me prompted me to try it. The dealer begged me to try the Audio-Animator as well – he’d never before been confronted with someone with background in chemistry/materials science.
So, what are they?
The Room-Animator is a sealed flat cylinder of brushed aluminium, about 120mm diam. and 35mm high. There is a single blue LED in the centre of the upper face and a power input for the 6V power supply in the side. It’s quite heavy, and there is the sound of a smallish amount of light granular material (such as sand) moving inside when it’s shaken. In operation, the device should be placed such that the light path to the ceiling is unimpeded. It cost a heart-stopping CHF1198 (about £492).
The Audio-Animator is a 140mm long, 38mm diam gold-coloured cylinder with silver-coloured end caps. It is quite heavy and when shaken it makes the same moving granules sound (only more so). The mode of operation is that you pass this over whatever you want to enhance - recorded medium prior to playing, tonearm/cartridge, speakers. It cost a mild coronary-inducing CHF648 (about £266).
Both come in nice wooden boxes. With them came a booklet reviewing both in glowing terms. Both reviews were by a Marco Kolks, apparently a writer for a German magazine called Hörerlebnis, who was apparently determined to prove that German hi-fi journalists are not to be outdone in sheer unadulterated nuttiness by their British and US counterparts.
Executive Summary: I tried them. They didn’t work. Read further at your own risk.
These are part of a family of products. Within the last few weeks has come a Cable Animator, which is adapted to be clipped to a cable to do – whatever it’s supposed to do. This has the form of an aluminium cylinder, about 5 cm long and 1 cm diam. Finally, there is coming a power board for your hi-fi. All of these work on the same principle.
Which is what? Here the confusion starts, as no explanation is ever offered. The literature that comes with the Room-Animator states in large capitals
DER ARTKUSTIK RAUM AUDIO ANIMATOR IST KEIN “ESOTERIK†PRODUKE SONDERN ARBEITET NACH REIN PHYSICALISCHEN GESETZMÄSSIGKEITEN
(The Artkustik Room Audio Animator is not an “esoteric†product, but one that works according to pure physical regularities).
The use of the word “Gesetzmässigkeit†(regularity) seems odd – AFAIK it is not the German word for physical law. On the English language website, however, Phonosophie does use “lawsâ€, even though what’s written is nonsense (electrons only move in matter during chemical reactions and when passing an electrical current – the whole physical universe relies on electrons otherwise staying exactly where they are). Glad also that they found a naturally-occurring blue LED…
The Room Animator works purely according to the laws of Physics (the ordered movement of electrons in matter) and depends on the use of natural matter. It contains only naturally-occurring materials.
Whenever we listen to the music from a HiFi system, we need air in our room to transmit the sound. The more evenly arranged is the “sound conductivity†of the air, the better the acoustic behaviour of the room.
In practice this means: increased dynamics, high resolution, more detail and improved spatial definition, a more accurate bass rendition, and a more live feel to the musical rendition.
The piece on the Audio-Animator is bigger, and even more nonsensical:
The performance shows more energy, no matter how loud you listen. Also reveals more width in the sound stage, which is no longer restricted in scale.
The bass has more swing and more rhythm ...the brushed hi-hats seem to be more subtle.
Hands on piano sound
Guitar strings are enunciated, have more context...
Seems to take on increased air and precision.
In total an easier, airier, lighter and smoother sound has been attained.
Hörerlebnis / Marco Kolks
Music pulses with animation, is livelier and fresher…
The triangle in Liszts first piano concerto (Katchen, Decca) attained almost 3D room qualities, the piano stood out with a more contoured sound.
… allowed the individual instruments of the string section to be show themselves much more clearly.
hifi & records / Ludwig Flich
The ARTKUSTIK AUDIO ANIMATOR is used to reduce material stress. Using the regularities of physics. It transfers the structural order of crystals to each object, in its proximity. Regardless of which material it is made of plastic, wood or metal.
All that needs to done is to pass the AUDIO ANIMATOR just over the surface of both sides of the CD.
The same applies to records, tone arms and system components.
Its even worth leaving the AUDIO ANIMATOR on top of the CD player the whole time.
Cables and speakers can also benefit from `treatment´.
Was there ever a better specimen of spherical equine waste product than this?
Using the regularities of physics. It transfers the structural order of crystals to each object, in its proximity.
The word “Quarz†(quartz) proudly features on the Audio-Animator. Quartz, crystalline silicon dioxide, is the most common of minerals – sand is mainly fine quartz. Bigger SiO2 crystals are much desired for their aesthetic appeal and also by New Age believers for their alleged healing ability – here’s a piece from Wikipedia that describes it well:
The contemporary usage of the term New Age was popularised by the American mass media during the late 1980s, to describe the alternative spiritual subculture, including activities all the way from meditation, channelling, reincarnation, crystals, psychic experience, to holistic health or environmentalism, or belief in anomalous phenomena, or for others “unsolved mysteries†such as UFOs, Earth mysteries and crop circles.
…
Many people with a New Age perspective also adopt complementary and alternative medicine. Some rely on New Age treatments exclusively, while others use them in combination with conventional medicine. This approach is regarded as completely compatible with New age belief in the unity of mind, body, spirit, and the emphasis on things of a natural origin. Some noteworthy New Age techniques are , Ayurveda, homeopathy, rebirthing, reparenting, Past life regression, Primal therapy, neurolinguistic programming, the Feldenkrais method, iridology, auras, and the use of crystals in healing therapy
So, it sounds as if this stuff is the extension of New Age to hi-fi. The dealer described to me that the use of the Audio-Animator caused the materials to “relaxâ€. I was very proud of myself that I didn’t burst out laughing in his face. Your tonearm should ideally be infinitely rigid – do you want it to relax in any way? Ditto the grooves in your record – I had this mental image of the PVC relaxing so much that it all sags into the grooves, filling them up. It ties in with the advice given to the user of the device. To paraphrase the original German:
There are several parameters why an effect isn’t immediately evident: one is tense and doesn’t follow the music [Are you listening, Ivor?] When you are inwardly calm and the equipment and music carrier are to some extent decorous[don’t look at me, I didn’t write it!] and stable, a comfortable atmosphere occurs and the positive effect of the Room-Animator is clearly perceptible .
You are even told to test it with a “melodic piece of musicâ€! The message appears to be that both you and the material, be it the record/CD, the equipment or, in the case of the Room-Animator, the atmosphere itself, must not be “tenseâ€, but relaxed. You are invited to buy the analogy that, as you hear better when you are relaxed, so your equipment/recordings/atmosphere perform better in this state. This is total piffle, but then the accessories end of the hi-fi industry runs on total piffle.
One of the oddest suggestions seems to indicate some sort of electromagnetic effect. You listen to a piece of music. You then pause the music, ring a number on your mobile telephone and set the phone on the Room-Animator (without covering the LED), leaving it there for 5-10 seconds. You then turn off the phone and unplug the Room-Animator and play the music. According to the literature, most of the positive “effect†will have been destroyed. At this point, I was watching nervously for the arrival of the three witches from “Macbethâ€...
New Age believers believe in strange individual electromagnetic fields, auras and whatnot. So, putting it all together, it seems to me that what we have here is New Age applied to hi-fi. To any Ozs reading, it’s reminiscent of Peter Brock’s infamous “energy polariserâ€, fitted to his modified Holdens and claiming to make the car run quieter and more economically.
When I got home, I fired up the ESL57s as I usually do, ready for an evening’s listening, and at the same time I turned on the Room-Animator. I then left it for about 4 hours while I went about my usual Saturday afternoon activity of molesting innocent pieces of wood in the garage. So, back for the test, using my standard test disc, the marvellous Pinnock recording of Handel’s “Water Musicâ€, the CD and LP of which I’ve owned for over 20 years and every nuance of which performance I know. It sounded great. I unplugged the Room-Animator. It sounded just as great. In fact, it sounded just the same. No nuances that I could even use as the basis for an imagination that something had changed. It was just the same.
I tried the mobile phone trick. Also no change.
I then tried waving the Audio-Animator over the CD in the tray (feeling very grateful that the wife was in the garden and the younger ladies were out and about). And it made precisely no difference.
The advice on the instructions is “if you don’t hear a difference, try again.†I guess you are expected to wear yourself into acquiescence, possibly aided by the fact that you’d spent a bomb on this thing.
So, the only conclusion to which I can come is that this is yet another example of snake oil. I’m sure that Herr Phonosophie believes in it and that it’s the real deal (well, I hope he does…), but I’m not.
When I reported this on That Other Forum, the main protagonist went slightly bananas (admittedly he's usually within easy walking distance thereof) and accused me of not following the test instructions exactly (I had), resorting finally to trying to distort the words of the German language instructions (a language he doesn't read).
So why did folk at ZG hear a difference? The usual mixture of things interacting:
1.The manufacturers and magazines have generated a hi-fi world in which unscientific piffle is treated as fact, and which is lapped up by, in the famous words of J. Gordon Holt, founding editor of “Stereovileâ€, a generation of scientific illiterates (reproduced at the end of this piece for those who have never seen them). As Holt says, “Where knowledge ends, superstition begins.â€
Thus, people who are audiophiles generally come pre-conditioned to believe that things such as cables and green pens can make a difference, instead of immediately rejecting it as unscientific codswallop. Thus, when someone comes along with a new gizmo, they are looking for a difference, and their imagination and/or desire often supplies it.
2. Pride – aka “The Emperor’s New Clothes Syndromeâ€. Audiophiles might not claim to be golden-eared, but they see themselves as more discriminating than the hoi polloi. And when one expects to hear more, one often does.
My personal belief is that this Phonosophie stuff is pure New Age and therefore total hooey. However, for folk who heard a difference, if it enhances their listening pleasure to use such devices – for whatever reason – good for them. However, this is one expensive difference. At that price I’d demand the orchestra to magically appear before me in person.
And so, let’s all stand and sing The Phonosophie Song:
Blue, blue, my light is blue
Cost me a bomb, but what could I do?
Red, red, my account’s dead
But better sound, what more need be said?
Ray, ray, forget naysay-
Ers, diff’rence great, indeed night and day,
Quartz, quartz, it takes the warts
And all from music, cannot be rort
How it works, we have not a clue
But work it does, we have heard and it’s true.
Beam, beam, it makes eyes gleam
Blue LED, kit sounds like a dream
Sound, sound, that, pound for pound
Makes for an upgrade really profound
Those who say, it can’t go this way
Don’t want to hear what’s plain as day.
Green, green, and quite obscene
With envy are those sceptic has-beens
Black, black, s’not goin’ back
When it’s switched off, apparent’s the lack.
It’s heard by all, not just in the head
Even my wife, who is both deaf and dead.
Blue, blue, next comes a new
Gold magic wand and cable ones too
Grey, grey, I’ll hear all day,
New Age of sound, don’t care what folk say!
Mind you, my personal song would be:
Well ma baby caught me list’nin',
To a weird blue light today,
Well ma baby caught me list’nin',
To a weird blue light today,
So she tossed both it an’ me out
An’ as I landed, heard her say.
Chorus:
See ya later, Animator,
It’s so vile, such a pile
Of a fluid whose creator
Was a legless long reptile.
There’s no way ah’m gonna share life
With a crazy audiophile!
So ah begged her for forgiveness
An’ ah said ah’d seen the light
So ah begged her for forgiveness
An’ ah said ah’d seen the light
An’ she said, “Ah’ll forgive this time
Long as the light yo’ saw was white!â€
Chorus:
Donna what ah’m gonna do now
With all these crystals that I got
Donna what ah’m gonna do now
With all these crystals that I got
An’ they don’ seem to be healin’
Where ah landed on mah bot!
Chorus:
The wise words of J. Gordon Holt (specifically on the subject of Beltism) that cannot be repeated often enough:
Psychological tests in other areas of human perception—vision, touch, taste, smell—have proven how unreliable they are, and how much they can be influenced by expectation or suggestion. There's no reason to believe aural perception is the sole exception to this. I am sure this is why so many audiophiles still hear brashness and stridency in Japanese audio products five years after nearly all of them ceased to sound that way.
For self-styled golden ears to be claiming, and trying, to be "objective" is to deny reality, because perception is not like instrumentation. Everything we perceive is filtered through a judgmental process which embodies all of our previous related experiences, and the resulting judgment is as much beyond conscious control as a preference for chocolate over vanilla. We cannot will ourselves to feel what we do not feel. Thus, when perceptions are so indistinct as to be wide open to interpretation, we will tend to perceive what we want to perceive or expect to perceive or have been told that we should perceive. This, I believe, explains the reports that Peter Belt's devices work as claimed.
Perhaps what bothers me so much about the Belt affair is the alacrity with which supposedly rational, technically savvy individuals have accepted, on the basis of subjective observation alone, something which all their scientific and journalistic background should tell them warrants a great deal of skepticism. But then, perhaps I shouldn't be that surprised.
Despite heroic efforts to educate our population, the US (and, apparently, the UK) has been graduating scientific illiterates for more than 40 years. And where knowledge ends, superstition begins. Without any concepts of how scientific knowledge is gleaned from intuition, hypothesis, and meticulous investigation, or what it accepts today as truth, anything is possible. Without the anchor of science, we are free to drift from one idea to another, accepting or "keeping an open mind about" as many outrageous tenets as did the "superstitious natives" we used to scorn 50 years ago. (We still do, but it's unfashionable to admit it.) Many of our beliefs are based on nothing more than a very questionable personal conviction that, because something should be true, then it must be. (Traditional religion is the best example of this.) The notion that a belief should have at least some objective support is scorned as being "closed-minded," which has become a new epithet. In order to avoid that dread appellation, we are expected to pretend to be open to the possibility that today's flight of technofantasy may prove to be tomorrow's truth, no matter how unlikely. Well, I don't buy that.
http://www.phonosophie.de/International/
This is the Room-Animator
And this is the Audio-Animator
There has been quite a debate on the Room-Animator in Another Forum, where people claimed to hear differences (“even my wife heard it and she’s deaf/dead/I’m not marriedâ€). To me, this is sheer hokum, but the discovery that the only Swiss dealer is just over the Jura from me prompted me to try it. The dealer begged me to try the Audio-Animator as well – he’d never before been confronted with someone with background in chemistry/materials science.
So, what are they?
The Room-Animator is a sealed flat cylinder of brushed aluminium, about 120mm diam. and 35mm high. There is a single blue LED in the centre of the upper face and a power input for the 6V power supply in the side. It’s quite heavy, and there is the sound of a smallish amount of light granular material (such as sand) moving inside when it’s shaken. In operation, the device should be placed such that the light path to the ceiling is unimpeded. It cost a heart-stopping CHF1198 (about £492).
The Audio-Animator is a 140mm long, 38mm diam gold-coloured cylinder with silver-coloured end caps. It is quite heavy and when shaken it makes the same moving granules sound (only more so). The mode of operation is that you pass this over whatever you want to enhance - recorded medium prior to playing, tonearm/cartridge, speakers. It cost a mild coronary-inducing CHF648 (about £266).
Both come in nice wooden boxes. With them came a booklet reviewing both in glowing terms. Both reviews were by a Marco Kolks, apparently a writer for a German magazine called Hörerlebnis, who was apparently determined to prove that German hi-fi journalists are not to be outdone in sheer unadulterated nuttiness by their British and US counterparts.
Executive Summary: I tried them. They didn’t work. Read further at your own risk.
These are part of a family of products. Within the last few weeks has come a Cable Animator, which is adapted to be clipped to a cable to do – whatever it’s supposed to do. This has the form of an aluminium cylinder, about 5 cm long and 1 cm diam. Finally, there is coming a power board for your hi-fi. All of these work on the same principle.
Which is what? Here the confusion starts, as no explanation is ever offered. The literature that comes with the Room-Animator states in large capitals
DER ARTKUSTIK RAUM AUDIO ANIMATOR IST KEIN “ESOTERIK†PRODUKE SONDERN ARBEITET NACH REIN PHYSICALISCHEN GESETZMÄSSIGKEITEN
(The Artkustik Room Audio Animator is not an “esoteric†product, but one that works according to pure physical regularities).
The use of the word “Gesetzmässigkeit†(regularity) seems odd – AFAIK it is not the German word for physical law. On the English language website, however, Phonosophie does use “lawsâ€, even though what’s written is nonsense (electrons only move in matter during chemical reactions and when passing an electrical current – the whole physical universe relies on electrons otherwise staying exactly where they are). Glad also that they found a naturally-occurring blue LED…
The Room Animator works purely according to the laws of Physics (the ordered movement of electrons in matter) and depends on the use of natural matter. It contains only naturally-occurring materials.
Whenever we listen to the music from a HiFi system, we need air in our room to transmit the sound. The more evenly arranged is the “sound conductivity†of the air, the better the acoustic behaviour of the room.
In practice this means: increased dynamics, high resolution, more detail and improved spatial definition, a more accurate bass rendition, and a more live feel to the musical rendition.
The piece on the Audio-Animator is bigger, and even more nonsensical:
The performance shows more energy, no matter how loud you listen. Also reveals more width in the sound stage, which is no longer restricted in scale.
The bass has more swing and more rhythm ...the brushed hi-hats seem to be more subtle.
Hands on piano sound
Guitar strings are enunciated, have more context...
Seems to take on increased air and precision.
In total an easier, airier, lighter and smoother sound has been attained.
Hörerlebnis / Marco Kolks
Music pulses with animation, is livelier and fresher…
The triangle in Liszts first piano concerto (Katchen, Decca) attained almost 3D room qualities, the piano stood out with a more contoured sound.
… allowed the individual instruments of the string section to be show themselves much more clearly.
hifi & records / Ludwig Flich
The ARTKUSTIK AUDIO ANIMATOR is used to reduce material stress. Using the regularities of physics. It transfers the structural order of crystals to each object, in its proximity. Regardless of which material it is made of plastic, wood or metal.
All that needs to done is to pass the AUDIO ANIMATOR just over the surface of both sides of the CD.
The same applies to records, tone arms and system components.
Its even worth leaving the AUDIO ANIMATOR on top of the CD player the whole time.
Cables and speakers can also benefit from `treatment´.
Was there ever a better specimen of spherical equine waste product than this?
Using the regularities of physics. It transfers the structural order of crystals to each object, in its proximity.
The word “Quarz†(quartz) proudly features on the Audio-Animator. Quartz, crystalline silicon dioxide, is the most common of minerals – sand is mainly fine quartz. Bigger SiO2 crystals are much desired for their aesthetic appeal and also by New Age believers for their alleged healing ability – here’s a piece from Wikipedia that describes it well:
The contemporary usage of the term New Age was popularised by the American mass media during the late 1980s, to describe the alternative spiritual subculture, including activities all the way from meditation, channelling, reincarnation, crystals, psychic experience, to holistic health or environmentalism, or belief in anomalous phenomena, or for others “unsolved mysteries†such as UFOs, Earth mysteries and crop circles.
…
Many people with a New Age perspective also adopt complementary and alternative medicine. Some rely on New Age treatments exclusively, while others use them in combination with conventional medicine. This approach is regarded as completely compatible with New age belief in the unity of mind, body, spirit, and the emphasis on things of a natural origin. Some noteworthy New Age techniques are , Ayurveda, homeopathy, rebirthing, reparenting, Past life regression, Primal therapy, neurolinguistic programming, the Feldenkrais method, iridology, auras, and the use of crystals in healing therapy
So, it sounds as if this stuff is the extension of New Age to hi-fi. The dealer described to me that the use of the Audio-Animator caused the materials to “relaxâ€. I was very proud of myself that I didn’t burst out laughing in his face. Your tonearm should ideally be infinitely rigid – do you want it to relax in any way? Ditto the grooves in your record – I had this mental image of the PVC relaxing so much that it all sags into the grooves, filling them up. It ties in with the advice given to the user of the device. To paraphrase the original German:
There are several parameters why an effect isn’t immediately evident: one is tense and doesn’t follow the music [Are you listening, Ivor?] When you are inwardly calm and the equipment and music carrier are to some extent decorous[don’t look at me, I didn’t write it!] and stable, a comfortable atmosphere occurs and the positive effect of the Room-Animator is clearly perceptible .
You are even told to test it with a “melodic piece of musicâ€! The message appears to be that both you and the material, be it the record/CD, the equipment or, in the case of the Room-Animator, the atmosphere itself, must not be “tenseâ€, but relaxed. You are invited to buy the analogy that, as you hear better when you are relaxed, so your equipment/recordings/atmosphere perform better in this state. This is total piffle, but then the accessories end of the hi-fi industry runs on total piffle.
One of the oddest suggestions seems to indicate some sort of electromagnetic effect. You listen to a piece of music. You then pause the music, ring a number on your mobile telephone and set the phone on the Room-Animator (without covering the LED), leaving it there for 5-10 seconds. You then turn off the phone and unplug the Room-Animator and play the music. According to the literature, most of the positive “effect†will have been destroyed. At this point, I was watching nervously for the arrival of the three witches from “Macbethâ€...
New Age believers believe in strange individual electromagnetic fields, auras and whatnot. So, putting it all together, it seems to me that what we have here is New Age applied to hi-fi. To any Ozs reading, it’s reminiscent of Peter Brock’s infamous “energy polariserâ€, fitted to his modified Holdens and claiming to make the car run quieter and more economically.
When I got home, I fired up the ESL57s as I usually do, ready for an evening’s listening, and at the same time I turned on the Room-Animator. I then left it for about 4 hours while I went about my usual Saturday afternoon activity of molesting innocent pieces of wood in the garage. So, back for the test, using my standard test disc, the marvellous Pinnock recording of Handel’s “Water Musicâ€, the CD and LP of which I’ve owned for over 20 years and every nuance of which performance I know. It sounded great. I unplugged the Room-Animator. It sounded just as great. In fact, it sounded just the same. No nuances that I could even use as the basis for an imagination that something had changed. It was just the same.
I tried the mobile phone trick. Also no change.
I then tried waving the Audio-Animator over the CD in the tray (feeling very grateful that the wife was in the garden and the younger ladies were out and about). And it made precisely no difference.
The advice on the instructions is “if you don’t hear a difference, try again.†I guess you are expected to wear yourself into acquiescence, possibly aided by the fact that you’d spent a bomb on this thing.
So, the only conclusion to which I can come is that this is yet another example of snake oil. I’m sure that Herr Phonosophie believes in it and that it’s the real deal (well, I hope he does…), but I’m not.
When I reported this on That Other Forum, the main protagonist went slightly bananas (admittedly he's usually within easy walking distance thereof) and accused me of not following the test instructions exactly (I had), resorting finally to trying to distort the words of the German language instructions (a language he doesn't read).
So why did folk at ZG hear a difference? The usual mixture of things interacting:
1.The manufacturers and magazines have generated a hi-fi world in which unscientific piffle is treated as fact, and which is lapped up by, in the famous words of J. Gordon Holt, founding editor of “Stereovileâ€, a generation of scientific illiterates (reproduced at the end of this piece for those who have never seen them). As Holt says, “Where knowledge ends, superstition begins.â€
Thus, people who are audiophiles generally come pre-conditioned to believe that things such as cables and green pens can make a difference, instead of immediately rejecting it as unscientific codswallop. Thus, when someone comes along with a new gizmo, they are looking for a difference, and their imagination and/or desire often supplies it.
2. Pride – aka “The Emperor’s New Clothes Syndromeâ€. Audiophiles might not claim to be golden-eared, but they see themselves as more discriminating than the hoi polloi. And when one expects to hear more, one often does.
My personal belief is that this Phonosophie stuff is pure New Age and therefore total hooey. However, for folk who heard a difference, if it enhances their listening pleasure to use such devices – for whatever reason – good for them. However, this is one expensive difference. At that price I’d demand the orchestra to magically appear before me in person.
And so, let’s all stand and sing The Phonosophie Song:
Blue, blue, my light is blue
Cost me a bomb, but what could I do?
Red, red, my account’s dead
But better sound, what more need be said?
Ray, ray, forget naysay-
Ers, diff’rence great, indeed night and day,
Quartz, quartz, it takes the warts
And all from music, cannot be rort
How it works, we have not a clue
But work it does, we have heard and it’s true.
Beam, beam, it makes eyes gleam
Blue LED, kit sounds like a dream
Sound, sound, that, pound for pound
Makes for an upgrade really profound
Those who say, it can’t go this way
Don’t want to hear what’s plain as day.
Green, green, and quite obscene
With envy are those sceptic has-beens
Black, black, s’not goin’ back
When it’s switched off, apparent’s the lack.
It’s heard by all, not just in the head
Even my wife, who is both deaf and dead.
Blue, blue, next comes a new
Gold magic wand and cable ones too
Grey, grey, I’ll hear all day,
New Age of sound, don’t care what folk say!
Mind you, my personal song would be:
Well ma baby caught me list’nin',
To a weird blue light today,
Well ma baby caught me list’nin',
To a weird blue light today,
So she tossed both it an’ me out
An’ as I landed, heard her say.
Chorus:
See ya later, Animator,
It’s so vile, such a pile
Of a fluid whose creator
Was a legless long reptile.
There’s no way ah’m gonna share life
With a crazy audiophile!
So ah begged her for forgiveness
An’ ah said ah’d seen the light
So ah begged her for forgiveness
An’ ah said ah’d seen the light
An’ she said, “Ah’ll forgive this time
Long as the light yo’ saw was white!â€
Chorus:
Donna what ah’m gonna do now
With all these crystals that I got
Donna what ah’m gonna do now
With all these crystals that I got
An’ they don’ seem to be healin’
Where ah landed on mah bot!
Chorus:
The wise words of J. Gordon Holt (specifically on the subject of Beltism) that cannot be repeated often enough:
Psychological tests in other areas of human perception—vision, touch, taste, smell—have proven how unreliable they are, and how much they can be influenced by expectation or suggestion. There's no reason to believe aural perception is the sole exception to this. I am sure this is why so many audiophiles still hear brashness and stridency in Japanese audio products five years after nearly all of them ceased to sound that way.
For self-styled golden ears to be claiming, and trying, to be "objective" is to deny reality, because perception is not like instrumentation. Everything we perceive is filtered through a judgmental process which embodies all of our previous related experiences, and the resulting judgment is as much beyond conscious control as a preference for chocolate over vanilla. We cannot will ourselves to feel what we do not feel. Thus, when perceptions are so indistinct as to be wide open to interpretation, we will tend to perceive what we want to perceive or expect to perceive or have been told that we should perceive. This, I believe, explains the reports that Peter Belt's devices work as claimed.
Perhaps what bothers me so much about the Belt affair is the alacrity with which supposedly rational, technically savvy individuals have accepted, on the basis of subjective observation alone, something which all their scientific and journalistic background should tell them warrants a great deal of skepticism. But then, perhaps I shouldn't be that surprised.
Despite heroic efforts to educate our population, the US (and, apparently, the UK) has been graduating scientific illiterates for more than 40 years. And where knowledge ends, superstition begins. Without any concepts of how scientific knowledge is gleaned from intuition, hypothesis, and meticulous investigation, or what it accepts today as truth, anything is possible. Without the anchor of science, we are free to drift from one idea to another, accepting or "keeping an open mind about" as many outrageous tenets as did the "superstitious natives" we used to scorn 50 years ago. (We still do, but it's unfashionable to admit it.) Many of our beliefs are based on nothing more than a very questionable personal conviction that, because something should be true, then it must be. (Traditional religion is the best example of this.) The notion that a belief should have at least some objective support is scorned as being "closed-minded," which has become a new epithet. In order to avoid that dread appellation, we are expected to pretend to be open to the possibility that today's flight of technofantasy may prove to be tomorrow's truth, no matter how unlikely. Well, I don't buy that.
