HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Peter Belt has died, did anyone take him seriously.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/pete ... dRPOwFx.97

No. Remember getting some of his bits free with Hi-Fi Answers. They had no affect as far as I could tell. At least £10-£20 was hardly competitive with some of the products that have appeared in recent years. I blame James Micheal Hughes who was the main publicist of the Belt tweaks. In fairness I bought Arcam 2+ on his recommendation and they were rather good. He lost the plot with his Belt enthusiasm and turning speakers facing the wall etc.

I'd love it to have all been true. I remember some freebie black foils with HiFi Answers that you had to cut into triangles and stick on the record label pointing at the hole. I liked the idea that something like that could work, but couldn't really hear it. I wouldn't have minded seeing him treat a room and listening before and after.

The names for the stuff did little to dispel the mad professor image...'Morphic Message Foil' and 'Quantum Tweezers'. Not big prices but still £20 for some bits of foil. In fairness.though, a lot of his ideas could be implemented for free.

I remember Jimmy Hughes saying to remove wadding from speakers, so not a total fruitcake...

I liked his headphones...

Jimmy Hughes went for it hook line and sinker and IN HIS ROOM, they made a difference even demonstrated 'blind,' when I didn't know what he was doing. At home, nothing at all and at the end, I was getting a better sound than he and without all this stuff... Psychological bollocks or was there really something in it? I'll never know for sure...

It is my guess that Peter Belt was a charlatan . It would seem that as the company is still going it was done for financial reasons.

As a 22 year old , I tried anything and everything he offered , evening going so far as putting a plain piece of paper in over 800 books in my living room . I was dissatisfied with the sound of my hifi as it did not match the idea of what it should sound like I had in my head, an idea unfortunately forged largely through reading magazines. I gave up hifi for 18 years whilst I lived rock and roll lifestyle and then thankfully discovered H/S .

There is also a logical fallacy to their causal explanation of their equipment , there position was shifting the emphasis from altering the performance of playback gear to altering the perception of the listener: "It has always been perception," she told me in 2012.


This means you are not objectively changing the performance of the hifi , you are changing the listeners perception of it . What you have here is simply an expectation bias con trick . It relies upon the notion that the performance of your hifi can be changed by your perception of it . Which is bollocks for all kinds of epistemological and ontological reasons .

Somewhat perversely it is also proves that expectation of improvement cannot actually make an objective improvement ,because it didn't work .30 years later he is still peddling the same shit to fisrt time buyers who use it decide it is bollocks and discard it . Unfrotunately as the tv programme confirms there really is one born every minute .

That is why PB was a charlatan or a deluded idiot .

I am amused by Rabski's tribute to hm , after spending all his time on wigwam telling people to get with the programme or piss off he pens a paean to intellectual diversity . Alas he is misguided .

"RIP indeed. I didn't agree with him, but the world needs people like him and it is a worse place without him. Mad? Possibly, but pleasantly so. We need people on all sides of the fence in order to sustain debate and keep up the good fight. The world is the sadder without him. "

So the world needs people who peddle shite for money does it ?

I still have some of the "house shaped" foils on my turntable lid. Never got rid of them as they didn't seem to do any harm. However, the one pointing at the platter spindle was unceremoniously removed by and over zealous technician fitting a cartridge for me (I'm a bit ham fisted).

Happy days.

I presume his remains are stored in little pockets in the pinned up corners of the curtains in his listening room.

terrybooth wrote:I presume his remains are stored in little pockets in the pinned up corners of the curtains in his listening room.

Special edition electret cream...

I'm getting morphic messages from the spirit world...

I think we should show a little more respect for the old boy. I doubt he made that much money out of his dubious products which likely relied on expectation bias. Those dealers that feel threatened by The Doc are raking the cash in by comparison. RIP Mr Belt. At best the Beltisms made me chuckle.