I thought of an automobile analogy, but decided on this one instead:-
You hear a woman's voice (speaking). It sounds beautiful. Then she walks around the corner and she's a real dog.
A wave of disappointment sweeps over you.
Now, reimagine that when she walks around the corner, she's actually a real stunner. Totally different emotion rolls over you. Do you get your tape measure out (ok - no dirty jokes here) or do you just enjoy the vision and the sound?
There's a third narrative here. You've never heard her, but your friend tells you she sounds wonderful . . .
That's how it is with audio my friends.
If it looks good and it sounds good go figure.
What you describe is valid in all walks of life, all human activities and experiences. It's how we are wired, it's who we are.
But if you are very strongly involved in say audio, you often think that you are perfect, that you can listen and judge with the detached and hard scientific mind of a robot. Saying 'I hear what I hear' is saying just that: 'I am not human, I am infallible!'.
In normal life we are not aware of 99% of the stuff going on in our head, below the surface of consciousness; we literally have no idea what's going on in our mind.
So it is extremely hard to accept that what you hear is not what you hear, despite the overwhelming evidence amassed over many decades and centuries even! It takes a lot of serious ambition to figure that out, to come to grips with it, and then move on with methods and means to try to work around that situation.
Science is unnatural. Many of our successes as a species are a result of doing things the scientific way despite the fact that it is unnatural.
Read The Emperor of all Maladies - A biography of Cancer and you get an idea how hard it is to work in a scientific and detached way, to accept your humanity and get a grip.
Jan
Yet scientific is the most popular word around these parts
(a bit like observing a physicist and former astronaut turn hollistic pussy the moment he hits the c-note : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X4p8D0_yBg )
(a bit like observing a physicist and former astronaut turn hollistic pussy the moment he hits the c-note : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X4p8D0_yBg )
I think "crackpot" is not the word that skeptics and rational people would use here. But do keep in mind the famous Upton Sinclair quote. 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
You might find this article from Jan's magazine to be useful and entertaining.
You mean, a big box with a guy inside switching the cable around in milliseconds?
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We don't put 50V and 50nV on the same connector. Neither do the RF people, but they do have transmitter antennas near receiver antennas, so IM from transmitter connectors can easily get into the receivers. We don't have that situation: we don't have to listen to a hi-fi 10 miles away in the presence of IM from our own hi-fi.john curl said:
Anyway, I'm sure we all agree that we should have good connections. Nothing whatsoever to do with (alleged) directional cables or (alleged) IM from surface oxides on cable. This may be a good place to remind people yet again that an audio interconnect is simply the upper part of a potential divider; it just has to be sufficiently linear or sufficiently low resistance in order to work - inadequacies in one characteristic can be offset against excellence in the other. That means that a potato (having higher resistance than a copper wire) would need to be more linear than copper to do the same job.
Let's put some numbers to it. Say 0.5R for the cable, feeding a 10k load. This is a ratio of 20 000:1. Even if the load, or the cable, was hopelessly nonlinear in impedance the effect would only be at or below the 0.005% or -86dB level. Unlikely to be audible. An RF engineer might have to worry about such things, but an audio engineer can safely ignore them. In reality we know that copper is quite linear, and amplifier input impedances are usually not too non-linear - in any case the cable resistance is likely to be swamped by the output impedance of the source. So we can say with some confidence that pieces of wire are the closest thing to an ideal component we have in our systems.
False dichotomy. Ears-only listening tests are not the same thing as measurement. Peeking is useful for huckstering, entertainment, and extracting money and worship from the gullible, but has no truth-value.
OTOH, when I employ the peeking method, I can also reliably distinguish cable direction, amplifier brands, and component types.
OTOH, when I employ the peeking method, I can also reliably distinguish cable direction, amplifier brands, and component types.
What is a "salary-bot"? Is this a rude name for someone who earns a living by doing something useful based on facts? If so, what should we call someone who does not earn a living or works from ignorance?Coldhead said:
"Neglecting observations" is not the issue. All that is asked is that the "observations" be actually heard (i.e. ears alone). A vaguely plausible explanation might be nice too. At present we have the exact opposite: no evidence of an effect, and reasonable explanations as to why there can be no such effect. It is the true believers who are neglecting something: reality.
I think he's referring to my Sinclair quote, i.e., people who are happy to believe the demonstrably untrue because disbelief would interrupt the flow of revenue.
JBL Master Reference Monitor (M2) will be here Tuesday morning.
Hi Richard
That’s good news (and have a look at your e-mails).
Why you kill the opportunity to put them side by side with the M2 for a long listening comparison?
George
Great quote!
Also thanks for the article link - an excellent read...
Also pleased to see the ref to Firesign Theater -- I have and love all their stuff, used to have to order the vinyl direct from the USA in the 70s, as no one but me seemed to have heard of 'em. Still sadly obscure but youtube etc is helping more to enjoy 'em!
Forum rules prevented me from using the other quote from Alvarado at Principal Poop's speech.
I am well aware of the scientific method. Lets not get serious over this
I think the emotions I describe are accurate - and that is what I was trying to convey, whether its a hot woman or a nice piece of hi-fi gear.
As JA once posited 'Objective fantasy vs subjective reality'
Folks got carried away about connectors. As jn confirmed at audio frequencies the signal does NOT travel in the surface oxide. Silver sounds bright until it oxidizes, both nonsense.
Another one has turned up. Tunneling, tunnel diodes exist so whenever tunneling is around there must be diodes. Folks are just putting words together like the hucksters.
Another one has turned up. Tunneling, tunnel diodes exist so whenever tunneling is around there must be diodes. Folks are just putting words together like the hucksters.
Yes, nice article. Of course much more could have been said maybe if space allowed. The classic introduction and reference is Daniel Kahneman's, Thinking Fast and Slow. There are some other good books and articles as well. For easy reading and for free, this one isn't too bad: The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science | Mother Jones
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