I never said he had no right to be upset. And I said that the PR guy is clearly the worst of the lot.

But Da(n)ve throws a tantrum when insulted, when he has a viable course of action (cancel his order). Why give your money to the roid-raging PR guy at that point? Why write a novel and a half on someone who is clearly a waste of time? Why would you ever non-ironically type the words "Welcome to the internet, bitch"? The reason is that he sounds broken in his own, not as bad but still douchey, way.

He typed these words and hit send:

No amount of righteous anger makes that anything less than laughably douchey. Especially when it was preceded by a 5 paragraph tirade about how he didn't get his toy in time for Christmas.

Then there's the PA dude who feels the need to mention not once but twice that he's famous.

Does anyone involved in there come across as anything but a douchebag? Certainly the PR guy is the worst but the whole thing is a pasty nerd slapfight of the worst degree.

If 100% of the signal gets transported, but the cable introduces jitter then it will result in errors during decoding. It's not just a matter of 100% of the signal arriving, it's also a matter of arriving at the right time.

This is a common viewpoint here, that based on your poor understanding of the science involved it's not possible. Meanwhile, the audiophiles, based on their poor understanding of the science involved, assume it is.

HDMI has no error correction, and is prone to jitter. So yes, changing an HDMI cable can theoretically affect the quality of the audio and video output by the device.

I'm not saying the price is justified, because that's pretty absurd. But making a blanket statement about what isn't possible without any understanding or experience is just as ignorant as doing the opposite.

I like how those who can hear the difference (a difference that, again, is provable and measurable) are suffering from the placebo affect, but when you can't hear the difference it's because the difference doesn't exist.

Sometimes you can't tell if the emperor is naked or not because your monocle is crappy and smudged. If your system isn't good, you're not going to be able to hear the difference.

Sure that's true of major labels, but the gp's quote here is about Linn records, an audiophile record label that *does* care about quality and *does not* brick wall their recordings.

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to here, but audio is a subjective experience. There's a lot of bs and snakeoil in that industry, don't get me wrong, but I think the biggest thing lost in the discussion between "audiophiles" and their critics is that music is an aesthetic experience. While I think "good" sound is highly correlated to accuracy, ultimately our brains are not oscilloscopes, and our ears are not high quality microphones.

Not to mention the fact that most "live" music as we know it and listen to it (unless you only listen to classical and jazz) is amplified through a speaker and resonating around a giant room.

If you can't tell the difference between a 24-bit lossless file and 128kbps mp4 file you literally haven't tried.

The backlash against "audiophiles" has gotten so ridiculous that there's an almost religious belief by their critics that there's no such thing as better sounding audio, even when it's measurable and provable.

is like watching Hollywood try to do geek stuff.

You guys are to humor what The Net and Swordfish are to computers.

I mean what do you think our government is, a government?

And yes I do realize that's too much to ask from Slashdot readership.

My guess is that Thompson wants their format to be able to sold for lossless downloads, as the formats move that way.

This would be a way for, say, Amazon, to sell lossless downloads and maintain 100% compatibility. Those who care could buy them and then transcode to whatever superior lossless format they wanted to.

Why should a citizen of Alabama's vote count more than a citizen in New York city?

That just seems fundamentally undemocratic.

The Iowa votes still counted towards the popular vote.

The entire thing renders the electoral vote into a formality - it really doesn't matter where the 270 electoral votes come from. Only the popular vote now, matters, and a vote from Iowa still counts towards that popular vote.