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Topic: Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS! (Read 305249 times) previous topic - next topic
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Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #125
Paragraph 1, righteous indignation. Check.
Paragraph 2, Argument from having spent a lot of money. Check.
Paragraph 3, "I used to be like you", with a side of concern trolling. Check.
Paragraphs 4 and 5, personal anecdote with a TOS8 cherry on top. Check.
Paragraph 6, "don't criticize unless you have tried it yourself". Check.
Paragraph 7, argumentum ad verecundiam. Check.
Paragraph 8, straw man. Check.
Paragraph 9, "I look down on you." Check.
Paragraph 10, irrelevancy. Check.
Going for the record in fallacy density?

Your words have certainly contributed to more meaningful discussions. What an intellect! Latin, even. So articulate. So persuasive.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #126
Quote
But if my hardware is contributing to our subjective conclusions, what can I publish that is worthwhile?


you are not comparing different hardware, you are comparing different software within that hardware, so that parameter is constant and of no concern.
If you had taken the effort to tread through the posting instead of shilling uncritically with suspicious methodology for jplay you would have noticed the link to testing methods that are admissible as evidence.

Quote
Your words have certainly contributed to more meaningful discussions. What an intellect! Latin, even. So articulate. So persuasive.


Yes, very meaningful indeed as it points out the collection of straw men, fallacies etc. you put up and committed in your posting, which certainly makes your contribution useless unless you have to offer anything more substantial than vague hints about the uniqueness of your system and unsubstantiated claims typical of the audiophile bull one has to endure on so called audio forums that are usually nothing else than masturbatory fantasy sites for those with more money than reason.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #127
I have realized that this forum lacks a good moderator who can take action against those who are abusive (words like fraudster spring to mind).
I can't speak for the other members of the mod staff, but in general, we do not take action regarding posts that we view as true. There are plenty of fraudsters out there, and these fuckwits need to be called out on their bullshit. There is no other way to deal with purveyors of misinformation than to label them as such.

Does that offend you? Does it bother you that I'm speaking the truth exactly as I see it without filter? If you want somewhere that's going to cater to your sensibilities, this is the wrong place for you. If you want somewhere that's going to aggressively defend scientific truth insofar as it can be known, you're among friends.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #128
...a quantum leap forward...


Always with the quantum leaps.

Thing is, contributions like yours are commonplace and the points made are merely repetitions of logical fallacies that fall into easily recognisable categories, despite being raised in defence of disparate products. It gets tiresome to deal with these over and over again, considering that they are fallacies, and that the people who post them blithely imagine that they're unique inventions replete with originality, reason and exemplary scientific curiosity. I'm surprised you missed the one about 'closed minds'.

Take the time to read around a few forums and you will see, not tens, but tens of thousands of posts such as yours full of the same clichéd, bankrupt illogic masquerading as liberal, enlightened, tolerant, open-minded observation of simple truth made by people who have no idea of the true difficulty involved in winnowing what is real from the chaff of the apparently obvious.

Next time try to make a real contribution instead of just adding to the torrent of undistinguished, undifferentiated and hackneyed platitudes to which we are constantly exposed. Please.

w
wakibaki.com

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #129
@hugson

I'm probably feeding a troll, but still. I have no problem believing that one day you enjoy music more than another day; happens to us all. The issue is locating where that difference comes from. Since psychological factors are so powerful (commonly called the placebo effect), and affect everyone, including hard-minded sciency types, it is necessary to set up carefully controlled circumstances to test whether the difference lies in the hardware, software, room, time of day, grape variety, whatever. Part of this careful control is to ensure that no-one knows which of two alternatives under test is operating at the time. Has to be nobody in the room who knows which is which, otherwise you can have (quite involuntarily, sometimes) influence by the investigator. As in Clever Hans. This is known as a double blind test: neither the subject nor the administrator knows which is the control and which the test item. A double blind test won't say which of two alternatives is better, it will just ensure that a difference in experience is due to the item under test: that is, that you can really hear a difference between jplay and something else, rather than enjoying the music more because you've done something special (which would, of course, be a perfectly legitimate thing to do: if someone enjoys music more with a disco ball going, good luck, as long as they don't claim it affects the sound.)

Of course, I find it very hard to believe that someone with enough money to buy super fancy equipment does NOT know what double blind tests are, since they have been standard in medicine for decades. There is also a discrepancy between your claim that your special equipment is particularly relevant to the difference jplay makes, and the earlier claim that the difference is unmistakable.

One of the things audiotrolls do is to persist in an unctuous and false display of good manners, which is normally a sign that they are in bad faith, and believe they have won if they provoke into anger people who care about trivia like truth. Since you are not like that, I am sure you will read up a bit on double blind tests, and implement one so that you can share the with the world the virtues of jplay, with undeniable evidence. Wouldn't that be good?

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #130
If you want somewhere that's going to cater to your sensibilities, this is the wrong place for you.

I really tend to disagree. People have "sensibilities" because they feel it makes a difference in their lives.

If they really want to know if something makes a difference, there is no better place than here at HA.

If they want to continue to suffer the delusion that specific things we know we can test cannot be tested, then this probably isn't the place for them.
elevatorladylevitateme

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #131
That testing really didn't take long, as it was immediately obvious to me that jplay represented a quantum leap forward in anything I had ever heard on a computer. I enlisted the help of a friend, and we did some blind tests together. Nothing scientific, we weren't measuring dbs or noise levels or anything else - we were simply listening to the music (predominantly classical, flac format, 16-bit 44k and 24-bit 96k - which is the best quality output my USB DAC can handle). In 100% of the samples we tested, we always successfully identified the jplay sound, and always found it to be the most appealing.

How was your test double blind? I'm interested in your software setup (your hardware setup is irrelevant here). To be honest, I can't think of an easy way of conducting such a test without some additional, specially made software (a foobar2000 plugin for instance), giving you the ability to switch between playback engines seemlessly without knowing what you're switching to. Playing devil's advocate here, I'm worried we're asking you to provide proof that you don't currently have the means to produce in the first place.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #132
I infer from what you and others write about double blind tests that you believe any differences experienced while listening (subjective) can be determined by measurable results (objective) from a double blind test. I wonder if that is really true?


There is a subtle misunderstanding apparent from this quote.

A test, in this case, doe not measure which one you like best. It cannot. An ABX does not tell you which one you prefer. What it tests for is a difference. IT tests whether you can identify both pieces. Logically, if you are unable to tell a difference, then the question whether one sounds better is completely off the table and can be safely ignored.

Suppose I listen to music sample A on day 1 using equipment X, and enjoy it very much. I can then listen again to music sample A on day 2 using equipment X, and not enjoy it at all. The only thing that has apparently changed from one listen to the next is me - [...] Now I'm sure this can't be measured in any double blind test.


Again, you mention measuring "enjoyment". This is not relevant. It doesn't matter whether you enjoy a given piece on a given day in a given mood. All that matters is whether you can tell the difference. Granted, mood and bodily state can affect what you hear or think you hear, but you compensate for this by doing multiple sessions across a larger time frame. Do a test today, then do one tomorrow, then again next week. This should smooth out irregularities. Given the 100% obvious result you quote, I don't think subtle changes such as your mood will influence your ability to tell jplay from not-jplay.

Quote
What does the word double signify?


I means that:
1) You don't know what's playing. Your desire to prefer one playback method over another can and most definitely will influence the outcome. In the interest of completeness and honesty, I sometimes think my time on HA has predisposed me to not hear a difference even when there may be one if I listened closely. But a double-blind test will weed out that bias regardless of its nature!

2) The person or apparatus choosing the A or B must do so randomly, and you must not be able to communicate with that person in any way. Recall the tale of the counting horse! The horse was believed to be capable of doing simple arithmetic, but the reality is that its owner unintentionally and subconsciously gave it hints when to stop beating its hoof, thus always providing the right answer. There was no malice involved, but the owner of the horse should have left the room.

Additions or corrections to the above are welcomed.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #133
One of the things audiotrolls do is to persist in an unctuous and false display of good manners, which is normally a sign that they are in bad faith


That's a style of communication, developed after being in the company of like-minded people. Stick with what people actually say, not how they say it.

Since Hugson, as I see it, has already made the transition – in a single page, even! – from spouting claims to asking "how to" questions, there's no need for further, um, analysis of his person.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #134
There are plenty of fraudsters out there, and these fuckwits need to be called out on their bullshit. There is no other way to deal with purveyors of misinformation than to label them as such.

I don't recall ever seeing language like "fuckwit" and "bullshit" in a science journal.

 

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #135
Quote
But if my hardware is contributing to our subjective conclusions, what can I publish that is worthwhile?


you are not comparing different hardware, you are comparing different software within that hardware, so that parameter is constant and of no concern.


I don't think that argument is valid: computer operation involves software that tells hardware what to do.

As I have linked to earlier, I've had issues with fairly loud noise occurring when I scrolled the screen using my mouse wheel. Now is this a hardware or a software issue? Someone (active in this thread) made the hypothesis that it was due to bad ground on mobo, and let us for the sake of the discussion assume that this was the case. Then it is a hardware issue. But as long as software does not tell the graphics card to do any work, then the problem will not manifest itself. Is it then a software issue? Not really, as the software is doing what it is supposed to do. Nevertheless, if a piece of software would indeed idle the troublesome hardware component, it would mitigate hardware issues.

Actually, this is not that far from what Jplay claims to do (in addition to obvious nonsense claims like the fits-in-cache, where Josef has admitted that he has indeed not made a cache-resident application). When the 'quit scrolling' operation improves sound – on bad hardware – then 'tell computer to ingore such instructions' can (again, on bad hardware).

Of course, the right way to do this, would be to stay away from computer components which spit noise on everything else (but in my case, Dell couldn't be trusted on that ...).  Ironically, there are lots of 'audiophiles' who would buy just those particular pieces of hardware which have improper noise insulation, or inappropriate buffering, or otherwise fallacious in signal processing – just because it enables them to hear differences in other equipment. Obviously a DAC which cannot be trusted to correctly filter a '0.99' into a digital '1', could more often than a properly constructed one, reveal noise to the user, and there are always those which mistake this malfunctioning for 'analytic quality' or whatever.



Now as I'm digressing way out of the posting I am replying to ... :

I don't recall ever seeing language like "fuckwit" and "bullshit" in a science journal.


Google Scholar is your friend. While you're at it, feel free to test the validity of rule 34

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #136
I don't recall ever seeing language like "fuckwit" and "bullshit" in a science journal.


They might get more subscriptions if they did however.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #137
There are plenty of fraudsters out there, and these fuckwits need to be called out on their bullshit. There is no other way to deal with purveyors of misinformation than to label them as such.
I don't recall ever seeing language like "fuckwit" and "bullshit" in a science journal.

Good thing this is not a science journal then, eh?

See also:
Stick with what people actually say, not how they say it.

People’s quibbling over tone and whatnot would be less tiresome and possibly perfectly reasonable if they were to address the points in the message to which they are replying before doing so. That so many of those who are challenged about a given claim respond with indignation over less-cuddly wording and/or perceived personal persecution, rather than with any actual substance in favour of said claim, is very revealing of a lack of tenability.

Also, I liked wakibaki’s post.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #138
And in this particular example, the tone troll didn't even realize that his post was very rude to begin with. Who cares about some loose words like "fraudster" or "fuckwit" when you're passively and politely calling everyone else an ignorant idiot who should be ashamed.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #139
That’s true.

I was going to request ABX results, in line with ToS8; but then again, we have this:
As someone said recently on a jplay forum:
  "...but hell, I'd rather just listen to music than spend my time testing."
This comment speaks of an attitude to listening that is very different to what seems to prevail here.

Shame on you.

Reading the ToS would have warned you away from here if objective evidence offends you in comparison to a pleasant placebo.

Feel free to refrain from posting here if you find it distasteful to comply with the rules to which you verified your assent during registration.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #140
Hugson's posting history suggests he/she/it joined HA last summer to get help with a foobar2k playlist issue.  There's one post about that, then the recent spate on this thread.  That's it.

Possibly hugson hasn't read much on HA and isn't very familiar at all with HA rules and 'culture'.


(shame on him ;> )


Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #141
I am now pretty happy that:

1) JPlay authors and users are not that bothered about telling the rest of us why they think it is a great piece of s/w

2) If they can hear a difference it probably is using some change to EQ to do it, as most of their descriptors would not come of digital processing or D/A conversion

Given I could stick a probe a measure anything from the soundcard onwards and given anything before that has been perfectly handled (ie bitperfect processed) it would be easy for them to show us differences in the PCM stream. It is only this stream that their s/w can have a meaningful influence over (I think).

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #142
Cross posting a jplay thread on the computeraudiophile forum.  I finally had to say something last night.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/...#comment-127258

I used the M word.

I just did read over the thread at computeraudiophile.
Seems like all comes down to the better RAM handling changing the sound to the positive. So the claim is that inside the same plattform using jplay changes the way even a asynchronous attached device gets its buffer filled.
This at least should be to measure but isn´t for some reason.
My understaning of this implies that every single processor/RAM/platform implementation must sound different which is a problem.

This of cause has to lead to only one possible conclusion: PC based sound playback doesn´t work and should be considered a dead end, there are to many variables at play

When i imagine myself to be a software developer like you JimH, that did spend endless hours of his life to develop a complete suite that grew over many years i´d really had to wonder. Isn´t it much easier to code some esotheric code that prevents bit-rot* and demanding twice the money for it?

When you have some time and read over the forum there are several threads that have strange reasoning. This one for example:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Why-2496-not-24192
They even use scientific pictures
It must be said there are of course several people knowing their stuff.

* bit-rot is a term i learned lately and describes the audiophile problem that happens on computer playback all the time
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #143
well, since what they promise is:

"Puristic design provides transcendent quality"

that could qualify as:

1. there is only one knob (on/off maybe), i did not try this, so this is an educated guess
2. Visual + Audio + Unknown vibrations produce some sort of "mass" (This is well known in video editing, for example it is very hard to follow two people talking at the same time and watching some really fast driving video at the same time)
3. So in this case all the visual mass is taken away (due to one knob), they do support the one-knob theory with their site as well (looks like apple)
4.  + That feeling of importance when you think you found holly grail (religion?)
5. So the overall mass is low, all is there for audio consumption, since you were trained to that state from the beginning = vinyl sounds better (of course it does, you can "see" the music)

makes sense.

p.s. this is the wallpaper that will improve the sound stage and deepen the bass as well;
http://wallpaperstock.net/volume-knob_wall...560x1920_1.html
p.s.2. music with this wallpaper sounds better than jplay (works just fine with foobar, but we are testing itunes as well)

edit: actually someone could make some sort of template page/letter explaining the "delusion" and the link to that could then be just poped onto a replay of such threads/topics, otherwise the danger of HA pollution is rising.
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung


Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #145
Thanks for letting us know. I like this Diffmaker application a while now. Nice that one member there took some time and effort.
Nonetheless it is a bit terrifying to read the first response to his post.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #146
Thanks for letting us know. I like this Diffmaker application a while now. Nice that one member there took some time and effort.
Nonetheless it is a bit terrifying to read the first response to his post.


I had to force myself to stop reading after the first response as I felt the presence of my anus becoming tighter, more focused, and lively. 

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #147
I'm guessing you guys mean this one:
Quote
great effort.
JPLAY, to me, does sound marginally more focused with a bit more presence and tighter.
WAV vs FLAC, WAV always wins out for me being more focused, tighter and alive.

I don't think this person knows what "effort" means. It seems to be a theme that many of these guys don't know what words mean.

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #148
User mitchco spent some time testing.  This looks like hard evidence, not opinion.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/blogs/JR...AY-Test-Results


Note that anybody well-schooled in the TAS school of audio consumption can easily immediately dismiss these obviously highly credible results.

Einstein is said to have defined insanity of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. If you listen to the same audio data over and over again and expect a different result that makes you what... insane?

Jplay - just another scam? YES IT IS!

Reply #149
It is almost worth signing up to their site just to thank him! That really is quite interesting.
BTW, I we saying that a async DAC would have removed even the tiny measured difference?