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Topic: Fool's Gold (Read 39654 times) previous topic - next topic
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Fool's Gold

Reply #101
That would be correct, as the author of the article is the very same person that started this thread Steve Eddy who has been on my case from the very first day my company was mentioned on a forum, from my wires are too big, too my pins on plugs are not suitable and will break and when he does not get a response i can look forward to rude foul mouthed, abusive emails.


I don't recall saying anything about wire being too big. However the "pins on plugs are not suitable and will break" I distinctly remember as this relates to the first contact I ever had with Frank.

It concerned something Frank had said in a thread over on HeadFi. It was a thread about a UK meet and in it, Frank said that Toxic Cables had produced the world's first cable made of solid silver, including all of the contacts. Since this was a cable for the Audeze LCD series of headphones, this would have had to have included the female contacts in the 4-pin mini XLRs (Audeze uses the male recepticle in their headphones).

Since I know a bit about connectors and contacts, and that no reputable manufacturer of connectors would use a pure metal for their female contacts (which are typically formed from sheet material and not machined from solid stock) I found the claim rather curious.

The inventor of the mini XLR is Switchcraft, a company I am very familiar with.

On their website, their short description for their female mini XLRs reads:

"TinI-QG "Mini XLR 4 Pin Female Cable Mount, Silver Pins..."

Before I go any further, I just want to say that I am friends with many in the industry, including those who are competitors, and we all help each other out when we can. And again, this was my first contact with Frank who at the time I had no beef with nor bore any malice.

From my perspective, it looked like Frank may have taken the bit on Switchcraft's website a bit too seriously, so I wanted to clarify it with him so he could avoid getting caught making false claims. I further wanted to tell him that you wouldn't want the female contacts made of pure silver anyway, as the female contacts rely on maintaining spring pressure to maintain proper contact and that pure metals make for very poor springs, which is why connector manufacturers use various alloys for female contacts, commonly a phosphor bronze, for just this purpose.

I still had my old printed a Switchcraft catalog (which they no longer produce) so I knew that the female contacts were not made of pure silver. The printed catalog said:

"Pin and Socket Contacts: Copper alloy, silver plated"

I had made a couple of queries to Frank on the thread, and when he hadn't responded, I assumed he hadn't seen them, so I decided to send him a PM on HeadFi. My PM was polite, respectful and with no other intention than to inform.

Here is the exact text of that PM that I sent to Frank on April 22nd, 2012:

Hello, Frank.

You were quoted over in the UK meet thread as saying:

"This cable has the same specs as the Silver Poison but instead of the mini XLR used on the Silver Poison this uses a higher quality Switchcraft shielded mini XLR. The largest difference in this cable is that the cable is Full Silver tip to tip, the first ever cable to be released that uses solid Silver for all the contacts, not silver plated. All contacts are machined from solid Silver."

Did you have Switchcraft make you some custom TA4F's with solid silver contacts? If not, then your statement above is incorrect. The female contacts on the female Switchcraft connectors are silver plated, not solid silver. Nor would you want them to be solid silver as solid silver doesn't make very good springs and female contacts would soon lose their contact pressure and fail, which is why the "copper alloy" Switchcraft is using is likely phosphpor bronze.

See underlined in red below:


The "underlined in red below" was a scan I had taken the time to make from a page in my printed Switchcraft catalog.

That's it. Nothing rude, foul-mouthed, abusive or in any way disrespectful. I even allowed for the possibility that he had had some custom female contacts made out of pure silver.

This is the very terse reply I received from Frank:

Post replied to and i suggest you refer to the MOT rules.

The post he replied to in the thread seems to have been deleted, but I seem to recall that he said he bought the shells from Switchcraft, but had the inserts made in China with solid silver female contacts.

Yes, deleted by moderators as you had accused us of fraud, claiming pins to be solid silver when they were only plated according to you

This made absolutely no sense at all. Why would you buy expensive shells from Switchcraft, and then have contact inserts made in China, when there were already a number of companies in China making exact copies of the entire plug for a whole lot less than Switchcraft, who were still making them here in Chicago?

When was it ever said that we had anything made in China? Why would we not use expensive shells, you expect us to go the cheap route as you always do. There might be a number of companies in China making copies, but we don't wish to use copies

This seemed to have confirmed my suspicion that Frank had indeed made an erroneous conclusion based on what he saw on Switchcraft's website and that his reply in the thread saying he had inserts made in China (he'd already boxed himself in when he specifically said he was using Switchcraft's connectors) was just a desperate attempt to try and cover his ass.

Combined with his terse and confrontational reply to my PM, it was pretty clear that Frank just was a rather foul human being who would do or say anything to try and make a buck. And that's the day that I lost all respect for Frank. My reply to his PM was:

My reply on MOT rules was in regards to the posts you were making on the thread

Nothing in the MOT rules against asking questions.

Oh well. At least now I know that all you care about is meaningless marketing ******** and not the reliability of the constituent components you use to make your cables.


So that, ladies and gentleman, is how all of this got started. I tried being friendly and helpful to someone I didn't even know, which has always been my nature, and found that I was dealing with a paranoid psychopath.

Friendly and helpful after you accused me of deception and fraud on the thread before your PM

Quote
I will also mention that i have only ever once said that Silver/gold is still more conductive then copper, this was after doing my own tests with my Sigma Check unit which i have since sold and do not have the available/spare funds right now to buy another.


As if saying it only once (in a post that still exists and has been read my many and can still be read by many more) makes it any less a fraud?

And if you based your claim that 1% gold barely effected conductivity and that with 1% gold it was still more conductive than copper on your Sigma Check meter, then given the facts about silver-gold alloys, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that your wire doesn't contain any appreciable amount of gold, let alone the 1%+ that you claim it does.

So even if your conductivity claims were true, that just makes your 1%+ gold claim the fraud instead.

Over on the audiotruth blog, you offered to provide a sample of your wire so that the conductivity claims could be tested. Poster Mel Famey took you up on that offer but there was no further response from you on that subject.

Would this be the same Mel Famey you seem to be friends you, the same one that posted on my Facebook page with a link to your blog and calling me a fraud, you are having a laugh right

Now that the gold content of your wire is in serious question, Mr. Famey would also be able to do a chemical analysis of your wire to determine just how much gold it contains, to an accuracy of +/- 0.001%.

Will you provide a sample of your wire for analysis? Or will you continue to run and hide behind a smoke screen of ad hominem attacks?

You are more then welcome to buy a cable from me and do as you wish, just like your friend, another manufacturer did when he accused me of falsely advertising my cables and saying he would be having it tested, that was 3 years ago and never heard back from him on the matter

Quote
The response at the time was to a friend of his, another cable manufacturer that was posting that silver/gold was 80% less conductive then copper...


And he was right. And all you've done since then is shuck and jive.

Quote
This will be my only post on the subject.


It may as well be, as you haven't had anything meaningful to say on the issue throughout all of this.

As I've said before, you're nothing but an unimaginative hack with a soldering iron who props himself up with BS marketing claims, buzzwords and numbers games. You're an embarrassment to those who actually know what they're doing who are not just DIY cable cobblers looking to make a buck.

Seems my customers don't agree with you on this

se


As people have already said, if you feel anything about my company is a fraud, take it to the authorities and stop talking out your arse.

Fool's Gold

Reply #102
Don't forget to mention that you are the author.


What does it matter who the author is?

To date, you haven't been able to refute a single word of it.

se


Maybe you failed to see my post regarding the article you referred to being written before the Radio was even invented. You expect anyone to believe they had the technology then to properly analyze the exact conductivity of metals, let along metals when it has a single percentage of another added to it.

Why don't you come up with something that was written within the last decade maybe, rather then a 130 year old one.

Could you even point me to the equipment that was used those 130 years ago for conductivity tests?

Fool's Gold

Reply #103
Thanks for commenting, Frank. Steve does seem like he may be on a personal crusade to tarnish your reputation, here. It can be entertaining when one vulture goes after another.


Hey, I'm a nice guy. The first contact I ever made with Frank I was reaching out to be helpful, and ended up pulling back a bloody stump, and have since lost all respect for him.

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...rt=#entry895104

se


Helpful, after accusing me of deception and fraud earlier in a thread, why all your posts on the matter were deleted by moderators. I am not the first company you have tried to tarnish and very much doubt i will be the last.

Fool's Gold

Reply #104
Hmm, Steve you missed the logical connection between the two.

I'll spell it out this time.

If a person reliably hears a difference in an ABX (strong evidence that the two sounds are audibly different) test then any claim they make that it sounds different to them would seem to have indisputable evidence backing it up.


And you're confusing the issue. There's no assumption that they have performed ABX testing prior to saying something sounds different to them. You keep injecting that in.

It's really very simple.

Let's say someone listens to say, two different cables. And they say that one cable sounds different from the other.

Are you saying that in their subjective experience that they didn't sound different to that particular individual?

Or let's take a better example of the point I am trying to make. Watch this video on the McGurk Effect:

http://youtu.be/G-lN8vWm3m0

Are you trying to tell me that when they switch the video of his face forming his lips to say "fa" instead of "ba," that it DOESN'T "sound different" to the listener? What does it "sound like" he's saying when you watch it? Does it "sound like" he's saying "ba" the whole time? Or does it "sound different" when they switch the video of his face?

se

Fool's Gold

Reply #105

Quote from: Steve Eddy link=msg=0 date=

How does one prove that something "sounds different" to them? Take a lie detector test or something?

Do well in a relevant ABX test and there is no logical reason to question  their claim  that something "sounds different" to them.


That would prove nothing with regard to whether or not something sounded different to the listener.

As I clesrly stated previously, I distinguish "sounds different" from "audibly different."


Hmm, Steve you missed the logical connection between the two.

I'll spell it out this time.

If a person reliably hears a difference in an ABX (strong evidence that the two sounds are audibly different) test then any claim they make that it sounds different to them would seem to have indisputable evidence backing it up.


Crap. I wrote a bit of a lengthy reply, but I think I hit preview thinking I'd hit reply and lost it.

I'll shorten it a bit and make the most salient point.

Watch this video on the McGurk Effect.

http://youtu.be/G-lN8vWm3m0

Are you telling me that someone watching this video, that when they switch to him mouthing the sound "fa" instead of "ba," that it doesn't "sound like" he's actually saying "fa"?

And if that someone said that it "sounds different" to them when the video is switched that they would not be giving a true and accurate account of their subjective experience?

And would you not concede that it does indeed "sound different" to the listener and that no ABX test is going to refute that that was the listener's subjective experience?

se





Fool's Gold

Reply #106
Maybe you failed to see my post regarding the article you referred to being written before the Radio was even invented. You expect anyone to believe they had the technology then to properly analyze the exact conductivity of metals, let along metals when it has a single percentage of another added to it.

Why don't you come up with something that was written within the last decade maybe, rather then a 130 year old one.


If you had actually bothered to read the article, including the references at the end, you would have found that the article wasn't suppoted solely by the conductivity article published in the 1800s, but also an ARPANET-funded research project in 1966. Top wit:

In 1966, researchers at the University of Maryland, under contract with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, the civilian version of DARPA), revisited this issue, but within a broader range of temperatures. This research was published in the Journal of the Less-Common Metals.

Taking from original work by Augustus Mathiessen in 1860, they produced equations to plot the curve of resistivity (which is simply the reciprocal of conductivity) for silver-gold alloys ranging from 100% silver to 100% gold. They then produced a number of specific alloy samples and compared their resistivities to what was predicted by the curve. All of the samples fit perfectly to the curve (represented by the dots on the curve).


Here's the specific reference cited in the article:

V. K. Iyer and R. M. Asimow, J. Less-Common Metals, 13 (1967), pp. 18-23

This is the second time I have pointed this out to you.

se

Fool's Gold

Reply #107
As people have already said, if you feel anything about my company is a fraud, take it to the authorities and stop talking out your arse.


More obfuscation and ad hominem. Still not a singe refutation of the article.

se

Fool's Gold

Reply #108
Could you even point me to the equipment that was used those 130 years ago for conductivity tests?


Although it's irrelevant given that the article's support was from research carried out in 1967 that you somehow managed to completely overlook, here is the response to your request about the conductivity testing that was carried out 130 years ago. This is a page from the 1885 piece cited in the article:



Of course you won't understand any of it, but this is the answer to your question none the less.

se

Fool's Gold

Reply #109
That's funny. Seems I'd created an account here under The Audio Guild back in February. Don't recall why I did. But I must have done it on my iPad because when I logged back in on my iPad, I used the auto fill password and didn't notice that the user name wasn't Steve Eddy. Sorry about that. The Audio Guld posts are mine. I noticed when I saw that The Audio Guild was the only user viewing this thread. Thought somebody was trying something funny then realized it was me. 

se

 

Fool's Gold

Reply #110
I'll close this topic now, because i get the impression that this has become more of a bad blood situation between two people rather than a factual debate. Both parties had their say, and i doubt that it will come any closer to a conclusion.

Steve Eddy, please note that i had to disable your "The Audio Guild" account and give you a warning for multiple accounts, which is against our TOS #12.