Author Topic: Monster Cables- The World should know! (Read 72,695 times)

oldfart · « **Reply #25 on:** March 23, 2008, 08:22 PM »

This conversation reminds me of my days around wine connoisseurs. An old line French winery ran into difficulties and lost a bunch of grape vines. For the three years it took them to grow new vines they simply bought bulk wine from wholesalers and bottled it under their label.
The truth came out finally and there was a great deal of trouble about it. It seems that the winery had won a number of awards and high praise for their vintage when they were bottling the bulk stuff. The funny thing about this is that even though this experience proved that the so called ''experts'' couldn't tell bulk wine from vintage wine, the experts continued grading wines and the connoisseurs kept listening to them.

Armando · « **Reply #26 on:** March 24, 2008, 06:17 AM »

Quote from: Lashiec on March 23, 2008, 05:34 PM

Er, because it's easier for everyone and provides definitive answers, as audiophiles tend to base their ideas on audio quality on what they "hear" (and they spend and read and... well, you get the point), setting aside any possible technical explanation.

I agree, and BTW there have been some double blind tests in past. No one has ever been able to prove the superiority of these super high end cables (or even super high end amps, for that matter... but that's another story) whether for digital OR analog signal. See my earlier post

Rover · « **Reply #27 on:** March 25, 2008, 07:52 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on March 22, 2008, 06:27 PM

Hirudin: please don't bring spinrite into this, it's snake-oil , and mr. Gibson only has buzzwords and "it's super secret advanced tech!" to say, nothing quantitative.

Slightly off Topic. Just wanted to call BS on your snake-oil comment. Spinerite actually does work in some cases. I have used it to recover 1 or 2 drives. See the article here:PC World Mag

Quote

Fortunately, SpinRite 6 is less ambiguous when it encounters a distressed drive. I put the app to work on four magnetically damaged floppy disks, and it lit up the screen with flashing graphics as it worked to recover my data. It saved three of the four.

SpinRite 6 is no substitute for regular backups. Still, having the software around for maintenance--and knowing it's there in an emergency--makes it worth the price.

f0dder · « **Reply #28 on:** March 26, 2008, 12:43 AM »

Rover: did you write that article?

The problem with SpinRite is all the techy mumbo-jumbo and "quire of believers" "real life stories" presented, and the pretty complete lack of any technical information. Steve Gibson also has a tendency to make it seem like he's doing really amazing stuff (like mentioning a big list of filesystems supported, instead of simply stating that SpinRite accesses the disk directly and thus doesn't care about filesystems).

Documentation is sparse (even though SpinRite 6.0 is... how many years? old, there's still only 5.0 docs available), and Steve Gibson has no interest in informing people what his application is actually doing, but instead uses made-up words like "data scrubbing", claims that SR can detect bits that are "between" 0 and 1 state, et cetera.

Oh, and if SR "magically repairs a drive", well sorry, it's simply the sector reallocation that all drives have incorporated the last many years that kicks in. So why does it kick in on SR and not windows chkdsk? Because drives only reallocates sectors that are written to - chkdsk doesn't re-write bad sectors, it notes down the bad sector in the NTFS $BadClus file.

Add to the mix that SR is pretty aggressive at trying to re-read bad sectors... this is obviously a good idea so you can retrieve the data, right? Yeah well, just how smart is it to stress a disk that's dying? You risk going from "I lost a few sectors of data" to "the read/write head crashed and now I have to pay OnTrack systems $insane to get physical reconstruction".

Instead of spending $89 on snake oil, the sane thing to do with a dying drive is creating an image file of the sectors you can read, as fast as possible. Then you can do aggressive re-read of the problem sectors, because with a partial image file, at least you don't lose the entire drive. Once the remaining sectors have been read/given up upon, you re-write the bad sectors to have the drive reallocation kick in.

Presto, $89 saved. And obviously, whether you used SpinRite or just did a sane image + format, as soon as S.M.A.R.T reports a non-zero reallocated sector count, you should consider the drive dead, and never use it for anything but scratchpad. It might last months or years before dying, but it could just as easily be a matter of weeks.

CWuestefeld · « **Reply #29 on:** March 26, 2008, 01:27 AM »

At the risk of going off on a snake-oil tangent...

If you have a hard read error on a hard disk, there's one free, easy remedy that I've seen work on several occasions: take the drive out and put it in the freezer for an hour or two. Then take it out and copy whatever you can before it warms up.

I've heard various explanations: electronics work better cooled, or physical tolerances of moving parts match better at low temperatures, etc. Whatever, I have personally witnessed drives that were physically unreadable give one last effort, enabling desperate workers the chance to get their dying data.

f0dder · « **Reply #30 on:** March 26, 2008, 01:34 AM »

CWuestefeld: it's a desperate-last-measure thing, though. I've used it once in the past, and it did work (though what made it work might as easily be a slight bump to the drive or whatever)... after a while, the drive short-circuited because of condensated water though, and I guess I'm lucky it was only the drive the shorted

Another desperate thing I've done has been knocking the drive lightly with the heavy end of a screwdriver. The drive sounded like the read/write heads were getting stuck, and it didn't even show up on the BIOS POST (try to rescue that Mr. Gibson!). Knocking got the heads unstuck, and then I sat there watching the imaging/copy progress, tapping on the disk whenever the progress bar got stuck. Obviously, the drive was thrown into the litter afterwards.

I'm sorry for the people who fall for the SpinRite propaganda, but that really is what it is.

Lashiec · « **Reply #31 on:** March 26, 2008, 01:43 AM »

Quote from: f0dder on March 26, 2008, 01:34 AM

CWuestefeld: it's a desperate-last-measure thing, though. I've used it once in the past, and it did work (though what made it work might as easily be a slight bump to the drive or whatever)... after a while, the drive short-circuited because of condensated water though, and I guess I'm lucky it was only the drive the shorted

Don't they recommend to put the HDD into one of those plastic bags with the zip lock used to freeze food to avoid things like that?

f0dder · « **Reply #32 on:** March 26, 2008, 01:45 AM »

I dunno if that would help any - the drive is still getting cold (which is the point of putting it in the freezer), so when it heats up it will cause condensation. And some drives (*cough* maxtor *cough*) heat up pretty quickly, so it's a dangerous game to play.

Rover · « **Reply #33 on:** March 26, 2008, 03:03 PM »

Quote from: Rover on March 25, 2008, 07:52 PM

Quote from: f0dder on March 22, 2008, 06:27 PM
Hirudin: please don't bring spinrite into this, it's snake-oil , and mr. Gibson only has buzzwords and "it's super secret advanced tech!" to say, nothing quantitative.

Slightly off Topic. Just wanted to call BS on your snake-oil comment. Spinerite actually does work in some cases. I have used it to recover 1 or 2 drives. See the article here:PC World Mag

Quote
Fortunately, SpinRite 6 is less ambiguous when it encounters a distressed drive. I put the app to work on four magnetically damaged floppy disks, and it lit up the screen with flashing graphics as it worked to recover my data. It saved three of the four.

SpinRite 6 is no substitute for regular backups. Still, having the software around for maintenance--and knowing it's there in an emergency--makes it worth the price.

heh.. no I didn't write the article. Look, I never claimed Spinrite is the world's greatest software. I am familiar with SMART and I know that new drives should be able to deal with things much better than my old ESDI & MFM drives did. And I never suggested Spinrite in lieu of backups; that'd be freakin' nuts.

I'm just saying that it has saved a few "near death" drives that I know of and I seriously doubt it's total BS. You may think $89 is too much for what it does (or doens't) do, but that's a different issue.

In a perfect world, we'd all near instant backups of all our data and a dead drive would be a trivial issue; Replace drive, restore data, resume work.

mwb1100 · « **Reply #34 on:** March 26, 2008, 03:49 PM »

Quote from: Rover on March 26, 2008, 03:03 PM

I am familiar with SMART and I know that new drives should be able to deal with things much better than my old ESDI & MFM drives did.

I think that this is one of the keys - SpinRite was originally developed back when drives did not have controllers embedded on them - they were more or less dumb heads and platters. Back then, SpinRite could know exactly what MFM or RLL magnetic flux patterns were being written and where. There were certain bit patterns that were more magnetically 'difficult' than others, and it was this information that SpinRite would use to determine which sectors were going bad. (Gibson calls this 'Defect Detection Magnetodynamics').

Gibson certainly has a flair for describing that type of technology in mumbo-jumbo, but it wasn't snake oil. However, since drive technology has changed immensely since the early nineties, SpinRite's techniques are no longer as powerful as they used to be. While I personally think that SpinRite is no longer a worthwhile purchase, I also don't consider it to be 'snake-oil'. If nothing else, using it may cause the drive to move a marginal sector to a spare sector sooner than it otherwise would. Then again, as mentioned, it could cause a failing drive to actually get worse, but I think this true of most any low-level drive utility. And speaking from experience - it's much nicer (although never really nice) to have a drive fail on your schedule (you've usually taken some preparation for it) than just out of the blue.

But boy, there sure is something in the way that Gibson writes about his stuff that really sets some people off.

f0dder · « **Reply #35 on:** March 26, 2008, 04:16 PM »

Quote

Back then, SpinRite could know exactly what MFM or RLL magnetic flux patterns were being written and where.

And there were no subtle differences between different models?

Quote

There were certain bit patterns that were more magnetically 'difficult' than others, and it was this information that SpinRite would use to determine which sectors were going bad.

And did SpinRite ever "use that information"? I really doubt it, considering the mumbo-jumbo non-tech way Gibson writes... you might want to use buzzwords, but if you have something that works, you'll also want to throw in a few existing words from the terminology.

Quote

But boy, there sure is something in the way that Gibson writes about his stuff that really sets some people off.

Yes, the way he writes... the way he sometimes claim to have invented new stuff... his self-importance... and the way the whole choir of believers just swallow the whole load without questioning.

Rover · « **Reply #36 on:** March 27, 2008, 05:51 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on March 26, 2008, 04:16 PM

Quote
But boy, there sure is something in the way that Gibson writes about his stuff that really sets some people off.
Yes, the way he writes... the way he sometimes claim to have invented new stuff... his self-importance... and the way the whole choir of believers just swallow the whole load without questioning.

I suppose so. I think some of that is how you read it. It is advertising ya know.

I just went and looked at the SpinRite 6 FAQ's. They seem to be fairly up front. Works with SMART, won't low-level format. 30-Day NQA $ back. *shurg*

f0dder · « **Reply #37 on:** March 28, 2008, 04:52 AM »

So, you picked a couple of the least offensive bits from the FAQ

See what I found (or rather, what somebody posted somewhere so late last night that I forgot how I stumbled upon it).

Quote from: "John Navas"

Worse, Steve encouraged people to use SpinRite to "recover" areas that had
been detected and marked as defective at the factory, a bad idea that
leads to more failures in the long run, since end user controllers are not
as sensitive as factory test equipment -- they are simply incapable of the
kind of thorough testing done at the factory. Then of course SpinRite
would be "needed" again to "fix" those failures, a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

As for the people that swear by SpinRite, there are lots of people that
believe in astrology, but that doesn't make it any more valid.

Hirudin · « **Reply #38 on:** March 28, 2008, 01:27 PM »

Heh... I didn't intend to open this can of worms... I mostly said it was good so that I could post that image with a clear conscience. Now we can leave it up because we're commenting on it (which I think circumvents copyright or something)...
To be honest, I can't remember if I've ever used it to actually recover any files on any drives. Actually, I think I gave up on it when I couldn't make it read a SATA drive.

To get slightly more on topic...

Quote from: oldfart on March 23, 2008, 08:22 PM

This conversation reminds me of my days around wine connoisseurs. An old line French winery ran into difficulties and lost a bunch of grape vines. For the three years it took them to grow new vines they simply bought bulk wine from wholesalers and bottled it under their label.
The truth came out finally and there was a great deal of trouble about it. It seems that the winery had won a number of awards and high praise for their vintage when they were bottling the bulk stuff. The funny thing about this is that even though this experience proved that the so called ''experts'' couldn't tell bulk wine from vintage wine, the experts continued grading wines and the connoisseurs kept listening to them.

HAHAHA!! If this isn't an urban legend I'd love to get more information on this... Do you have any links about this story?

Did anyone see the "Bullshit" (a TV show on Showtime) where Penn and Teller told people they were getting all kinds of different water from around the world and recorded their reactions? Of course all the water had the same source: a garden hose behind the restaurant.
Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0fZK3m7bDc

Cuffy · « **Reply #39 on:** March 28, 2008, 05:41 PM »

Wine, water and now........
POPCORN!
About 40 years ago when cable TV came along and then Showtime, we signed on for the service.
We got the movie channel connected and a program guide. My wife was all excited and wanted to invite her folks over to watch our first movie.
I told my father-in-law that I would buy the movie tickets if he bought the popcorn.
They showed up at the appointed hour and my FIL had a jar of Orville Redenbacher popcorn. We popped the corn in my electric popper and enjoyed the movie. My FIL bragged about the quality and flavor of Orville Redenbacher's finest the entire time they were here.
I had to replenish my popcorn supply before the next movie so added it to the grocery list. When I checked the popcorn isle at the supermarket I discovered that a bottle of Orville Redenbacher's finest cost about the same as four movie tickets. On the same shelf was a one pound plastic bag of JollyTime popcorn for 29 cents.
I opted for the JollyTime, came home, refilled the Orville Redenbacher jar with the JollyTime, hid the bag in a lower drawer, and placed the jar in the cabinet where it was usually kept.
Showtime came around and the folks showed up as usual. And as usual, we broke out the popcorn popper, which I dutifily charged with a shot of fresh kernals from the Orville Redenbacher jar. We watched the movie and enjoyed hot popcorn, Redenbacher's finast from the JollyTime bag. Everyone commented that you could really tell the difference when you bought the best. I agreed!
Until the day he died my father-in-law ate JollyTime popcorn from an Orville Redenbacher jar, raved about it's flavor, and enjoyed every kernal.
I buy nothing but the finast! <G>

That's how legends are made!

Armando · « **Reply #40 on:** March 28, 2008, 10:06 PM »

The philosopher Nelson Goodman had some ideas that are relevant to the audiophile/wine specialist/Orville Redenbacher popcorn (and to some extent... Spinrite

). Here's an excerpt from "Goodman's Aesthetics" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) :

Quote

With regard to two visually indiscernible paintings, an original and a copy, Goodman addresses the question whether there is any aesthetic difference between the two pictures (1976, 99-102). Notice that, if there is a difference, it must not depend on what one can visually discern at the present time, for ex hypothesis, there is no such visual difference that can currently be detected. Goodman's answer is that there is an aesthetic difference between the two paintings even now, when we are unable to tell one painting from the other, for an awareness that one is the original and the other a copy informs us that a difference may be perceived, and indeed modifies our present perception of the two paintings: now, for instance, we look for differences between the two paintings, we train our eyes and minds to discriminate differences that are currently indiscernible (1976, 103-105). Goodman's takes his claims to be general and as granting the conclusion that “the aesthetic properties of a picture include not only those found by looking at it but also those the determine how it is to be looked at” (1976, 111-112). Hence, even with pictures that are not “perfect” copies of other pictures, indeed with any picture, knowing how it should be classified—including its classification by authorship, as a Rembrandt, a Vermeer, or a Van Meegeren—makes a difference to how the picture may be perceived. For perceiving is, after all, determined by the labels that one projects over what is presented in front of one's eyes. It must be noticed, then, that this claim is all within a theory of perception and, while claiming that non-perceptible features are relevant to perception, hence are relevant to aesthetic experience, it does not claim that non-perceptible features as such are relevant to aesthetic experience.

Context is everything... Or almost.

oldfart · « **Reply #41 on:** March 29, 2008, 10:54 AM »

In response to Hirudin: The wine fiasco happened some time back in the Seventies. Sadly, my memory is like a mirror and I cannot recall the label that used bulk wine but it was a major scandal in France and I suspect there would me a mention of it if I could figure out what to look for where.
It reminds me of a story my dad told. In the late Thirties he worked at a grocery during high school. There were two milk suppliers in the area, Amboy Milk and Lawton Milk. The two companies had a marketing agreement and while the grocery got all it's milk from the Amboy dairy, the store had two rubber stamps, one for each dairy. People would come in and order the brand of milk they wanted and dad would go back to the cooler, grab a bottle of milk and stamp the cork with either Amboy's or Lawton's logo. People swore by one brand or the other and wouldn't drink the opposite brand. They never knew that it all came out of the same cows.

oldfart · « **Reply #42 on:** March 29, 2008, 03:16 PM »

I just found this reference in a news story about a new wine scandal: "Citing the Giscours affair, several French wine commentators noted that when one property is accused of fraud, suspicion quickly falls on the entire region. They recalled the scandals of 1972 and 1973 in which one of the most famous exporters, the Cruse firm, was found guilty of offenses similar to those with which Giscours is charged. In the aftermath, the entire Bordeaux market collapsed. Chateaus were shuttered or sold, and the wine business did not recover until the end of the decade." It is from an article in the NY Times. Here's the headline: " Bordeaux Winemaker Is Charged With Fraud Over Contents of Its Products"

Deozaan · « **Reply #43 on:** March 29, 2008, 06:34 PM »

This topic is kind of funny because just in the past week or two was a Law and Order show where some guy who owned a winery was labeling his wine as being really old but it was actually very young. One of the ways the police became suspicious of it was to bring in a wine connoisseur and he "tasted" the difference. Said it was too sour, had a particular flavor, etc.

I've never had a drop of alcohol, so I don't know if that's realistic, but all these anecdotes about water, wine, popcorn, etc. lead me to believe it's just as much bull honky as these examples.

Quote from: oldfart on March 29, 2008, 03:16 PM

I just found this reference in a news story about a new wine scandal: "Citing the Giscours affair, several French wine commentators noted that when one property is accused of fraud, suspicion quickly falls on the entire region. They recalled the scandals of 1972 and 1973 in which one of the most famous exporters, the Cruse firm, was found guilty of offenses similar to those with which Giscours is charged. In the aftermath, the entire Bordeaux market collapsed. Chateaus were shuttered or sold, and the wine business did not recover until the end of the decade." It is from an article in the NY Times. Here's the headline: " Bordeaux Winemaker Is Charged With Fraud Over Contents of Its Products"

vegas · « **Reply #44 on:** March 29, 2008, 10:57 PM »

Fine, you want (monster) quality cables without paying the 800% markup. www.MONOPRICE.com That's all one needs to know. No one in the WORLD could tell the difference. NO ONE.

Deozaan · « **Reply #45 on:** March 30, 2008, 12:48 AM »

Quote from: vegas on March 29, 2008, 10:57 PM

Fine, you want (monster) quality cables without paying the 800% markup. www.MONOPRICE.com That's all one needs to know. No one in the WORLD could tell the difference. NO ONE.

Thanks! I just got 480p cables for my Wii for < $6.50 including shipping! Going to the store to buy them would have cost me at least $15 or $20!

Hirudin · « **Reply #46 on:** April 27, 2008, 11:31 PM »

Sorry to re-hash an old thread, but I thought y'all might like this review of a $3000, liquid-filled audio cable...

Velumnatics AudioPhlow

$3000, is a bit much for me, but it sounds like these things sound like they reelly are best in the field.

Look at the size of em! (That little black square is an MP3 player)

f0dder · « **Reply #47 on:** April 27, 2008, 11:34 PM »

Oooh!

Liquid filled! Nice! Must have! Must sound good! etc... $3000? Oooh.

mouser · « **Reply #48 on:** April 27, 2008, 11:52 PM »

we need to link to this post about a lawsuit thread from Monster Cables and the response:
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13072.0

Armando · « **Reply #49 on:** April 28, 2008, 01:49 AM »

Of course, it was an April's fool joke... Yes ?