How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"?
 

I saw the following post over at Blu-ray.com:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/2963950-post1.html


I don't get how that could possibly improve anything at all. :hscratch:

Anybody here use such products before? If so, any validity to their claims or is it just a BS placebo effect?

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Snake oil! We're dealing with a digital medium here, whether it's CDs, DVDs, or BDs. Think of it as a string of dots and dashes, or 1s and 0s or hole, no hole. That's what the pick-up laser is seeing when your player is reading one of these discs. Don't waste your money.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

:lol: People are dumb.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Aha!! I think I see why they make that claim. By putting a spacer on the back side of the disc, they'll claim the they've brought the disc closer to the laser reading the pits. -smile- Hope they won't cause an interference problem on some poor, unsuspecting user.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

So I'm not wrong in assuming this is pure BS. Cos the post I quoted made no sense to me at all.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

The biggest red flag is that nowhere in the post is it explained how these are supposed to work.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Which is funny because he had responded to my incredulity with the following:

I did read the so-called explanations in his links and some of the reviews. All I could think of while reading them was "riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight... :rolleyes:"

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Those could absolutely make the audio and video better for a person.

How? as the thread title asks?

The mind perceives both of those things, and the entire world around us. The mind is very susceptible to suggestion, thus the audio and video would be better for the person who accepted the suggestion.

Men who had lost limbs in war were given the suggestion that a capsule with sugar in it was a painkiller so powerful it might kill them, when the mobile hospital ran out of morphine. When the soldiers took the capsules their pain from horrific war injuries was indeed relieved, possibly more than the actual drug would have. In a more widely known case soldiers with terrible injuries were injected with saline solution, and told it was morphine and it would quell their pain very soon. When injected it was observed that their pain was indeed relived, possibly more than the drug itself would have. In both cases these soldiers were actually prevented from entering shock and possibly dying by nothing more than suggestion and faith.

All done by suggestion and the resulting placebo effect... and it's very real.

I have no doubt the people who buy those discs truly hear better audio and see better video. Hell... compared to war injuries perceiving better audio and video is nothing.

I bet those same people have better audio than most already due to their use of Monster Cable and the like too.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

So a placebo effect, as I asked in my first post. Thanks.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

I remember "back in the day" Stereophile or one of the magazines made a huge deal about putting car wax on CD's or painting the edges with a green marker or something.

All good, fun reading.

The problem of course is that things like this convince people nothing can make a difference.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

For fun, go back to the thread and say that you tried these and they made no difference. Prepare for attacks on your equipment and/or status as an "audiophile".

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Yeah this stuff works for the same reason all snake oil does.

A friend of mine bought a 360 a couple of years ago and was just going on and on about how amazing the graphics looked in HD and about how awesome HD DVDs looked. I went over one day and thought it looked terrible. I checked the 360 video cable and he was using the yellow video cable and not the component. He created the entire HD experience mostly in his mind though I guess the upscaling of the TV helped a little. I switched it to HD for him and he was convinced it wasn't that much better though to me the difference was night and day.

I've long since stopped believing what my friends tell me looks and sounds amazing. We are all different and sometimes we can see and hear what we want to. I think my SACDs sound great, but most people think that is in my mind and they are probably right.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

The point behind these types of tweaks is mostly jitter and error related. The optical system is not perfect, it does not perfectly pick up the string of 1s & 0s, that's why it has error checking built in. And it does not perfectly reproduce the original timing. Look up jitter/judder if you want some more audiophile pain. They are attempting with all these bizarre little things to reduce errors and timing issues.

That said, Don't waste your money. http://www.stereophile.com/reference/590jitter/#

I can't find it anymore, but there is a website for guys that tear apart their CD players to minimize....vibration or something. They actually play CDs on a bare drive dangling with wires running everywhere, no outer chassis. (torn out of expensive players) They used some word as their buzzword....stripped, lite, open, minimal, naked....I can't remember.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

I still own one of the original audiophile CD players. The company basically took a cheap CD player and tore out crappy parts, replacing them with "high end" parts. Did it make a difference? Well I won't go down that road, but I did buy one. And like I say still have it (tho not in use at this minute). What is it?

Original Meridian MCD

http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/7/4/4...2205143_tp.jpg

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

I know someone who actually worked on the CD standards and encoding. He's a math professor at a university now. We've had some interesting conversations on this stuff.

There is data redundancy on an optical disc, an inherent redundancy so the laser can accurately read even if there is a scratch on the surface. Also, the lasers 'look' at the disc from several angles for years now, there is no one laser than can 'skip' or 'miss' the data. The circuits used in processing and filtering have come so far since that article from 1990 that it's not really all that relevant any more. A lot of research has been done on this stuff. This is why you don't even have a skip in audio in a car when you hit a bump in the road, multiple lasers, vastly improved processing, tighter spindle speeds, etc. The early car CD players would skip if a gnat hit the windshield if any of you are old enough to remember. Now my(~10 years old) Kenwood system in my truck hardly notices me being offroad and bouncing around. There's a reason that's true, a lot of research and improvements in every area of this stuff.

I liked that article above. The guy is obviously trying to do his homework and seems to be intellectually honest. I have no doubt that in 1990 the manufacturing of optical discs and the players and the like were in the early stages, and some of those tweaks may have affected things. The technology has come a long way since then in every area.

CD's never have been able to produce the audio quality of an old-fashioned LP record anyway. Just ask an audio snob with a Bang & Olufsen or other high-end turntable and a huge album collection. You'll get an ear full.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Except that's not the claim: "cleaner performance (sound), better bass, more detail, greater clarity, better highs and midrange, more natural sound, better imaging, better soundstage, and a greater depth to the performance."

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

$120? Is that for like 500 of them? Or 1?

Greater depth to the performance? How about greater depth to your wallet after you take all the money out you spent on this?

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Hate to say it, but B&O is the Bose of high end. Now, a Clearaudio, I'd take one of those. You can get into a decent set for less than $10k.

CDs don't have the warmth of LP. LPs don't have the range of CDs, esp noticeable on the low end. 24/96 or higher digital beats both. But the trick with LPs is to have them clean. It's probably worth spending a bit on upgrading your cleaning rather than on upgrading your TT if you are at the low end looking to improve your sound.

At this point it's much cheaper and easier to get into SACD and Bluray audio discs if you want high quality sound. A good TT is really only worth recommending to someone with plenty of cash or an extensive LP library.

Well, yeah. But if we go by marketing claims, Westinghouse LCD is better than Panasonic plasma. And Bose has the best speakers on the planet. Or a recent humdinger: Chevy has better reliability than Honda.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Argh, I can almost feel the audiophile unlogic coming out of the screen and attacking me!!

I'm a skeptic audio guy. If you can't prove it in a double blind test, it doesn't exist. Any effect is simply the placebo effect.

For some more funny audiophile equipment and it's voodoo magic claims:
http://parseidon.com/general/ridicul...hile-equipment

I tried to find those wood audiophile feet for audio equipment I saw years ago, but I couldn't find them. Found this instead:

http://www.audiophileproducts.com/referencepoints $37 pointy feet!!

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

I'm sitting on one, and I look and sound better.
These things really work!!!!!!!!!

:dance:

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Try hockey pucks. It's like magic!

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Audiophiles can be an extreme bunch. I used to subscribe to THE ABSOLUTE SOUND, STEREOPHILE and other such publications. There is a snobbery and elitist attitude with owners of $4000 cables, those who insist a CD player needs 100 hours of use to be broken in, and others who claim that putting four quarters on the corner of each speaker will bring out detail on the high ends, and speed up the bass by at least an octave (or a parsec). I am not ridiculing what the improvements they claim to be hearing, but they will throw science and logic to the wolves in support of their tweaks.

Check out the Mapleshade company (which supposedly produces some excellent recordings, but also sells equipment, cables and tweaks), which claims that maple sounds better than oak when it comes to stands, and that using one of their power cords (which is also placed on a stand!) will improve resolution of your laptop. It's freakin' hilarious.

What really gets me is that nearly all tweakers claim that the modifications they make to their system improves the sound. I can't recall a time when someone noted that placing Symposium rollerblocks under their DVD player actually degraded the 5.1 surround sound, or that using brass cones instead of wood blocks under their amplifier made no difference at all.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

I probably shouldn't mention this, but I guess since I've never done a "double blind test" you won't believe it anyway....

I have a pair of KEF 103.2 speaker, great classics. But they need to sit on stands. They have good bass, but not extremely low. Very tight. So after getting metal stands for the speaker, I used the spikes that came with them to punch thru the carpet to get to the concrete slab. I felt I could hear a difference. I then filled the stands with sand. I think it also made a difference.

I had a nice set up, back in the day. Not particularly expensive, but nice. I thought some tweaks made a difference and others did not. I also didn't feel ever tweak made a difference in every set up in every room.

The issue with double blind test is that is not scientific. If one person can hear a difference in a double blind test, it doesn't prove or disprove anything. You would have to have a statically significant number of people be able to tell the difference.

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Well wasn't saying putting them on stands was a "tweak". It was using metal spikes to "anchor" the stands directly to the concrete slab (the stands were built with machined holes so you can thread small spikes in them) and filling the stands with sand that were the tweaks.

But thanks, I'll take it!!

Re: How could a Carbon Fiber*Platter possibly "Make Every Disc You Play Sound Better"
 

Speakers vibrate, obviously. But if the box/stand/bracket is vibrating separately from the actual audio, it can throw off the output, or even add unwanted sound. That's not snake oil, although there are certainly unreasonably priced "fixes" for it that aren't worth most people's time.