Quack medical and vitamin supplements come to mind. Ever listen to late night radio with sponsored programming? Healing magnets!😀
I'm just about ready for a digital e-cigarette, preferably one sample in a multi-bite version.
Not as crazy as you might imagine: "These developments led to a rapidly growing industry creating magnetic products for a variety of conditions. However, the development of this industry preceded any reliable scientific evidence that static magnets actually work for the purposes intended. In the United States, it was only in 1997 that properly designed clinical trials of magnets began to be reported. Subsequently, results of several preliminary studies (detailed in the Scientific Evidence section) suggested that both static magnets and electromagnetic therapy may indeed offer therapeutic benefits for several disorders. These findings have escalated research interest in magnet therapy."
From NYU Langone Medical Center
Dan, it's hard yakka knocking down the objectivists, the quality of their footwork is a marvel to behold. If challenged, a steely glint develops in their eyes, they grit their teeth hard, they pull out their mighty DBT rod of a weapon and steadily beat you over the head and body with it, again and again, until you're a bruised and bloody mess groaning and heaving on the floor - and then they casually toss their somewhat dented walloper to one side, cheerfully whistle, and exchange a laugh and quip about a job well done ... 😉
qusp and morinix - thank you. that is the point I'm trying to make. It takes a major suspension of disbelief that anyone playing in the realm of QM or say nanotech has to invest huge quantities of time, money, sweat to even approach something feasible to demonstrate. To imagine someone "in the know" throwing them into some audio device is preposterous.
fas42 -
I get a burr in my saddle because I have a chronic disease and thanks to modern medicine, I am doing alright.
My wife, from Peru, often hears of witch doctors who can cure any disease and the first step is to get off of my medication. Without hard data, VERY doubtful I drink a tropical fruit smoothie and call myself cured. I've seen a few folks that have tried this and they don't look so well...far from cured.
This isn't life or death but I pretty much got fed up with tweaks that had no basis in real fact and spent good sums of money searching for better sound.
I get a burr in my saddle because I have a chronic disease and thanks to modern medicine, I am doing alright.
My wife, from Peru, often hears of witch doctors who can cure any disease and the first step is to get off of my medication. Without hard data, VERY doubtful I drink a tropical fruit smoothie and call myself cured. I've seen a few folks that have tried this and they don't look so well...far from cured.
This isn't life or death but I pretty much got fed up with tweaks that had no basis in real fact and spent good sums of money searching for better sound.
The video lecture by JJ, Opus 4 Studios: James D. (JJ) Johnston, Richard Heyser Distinguished Lecturer - AES-PNW - YouTube, is very interesting because he points that numbers, like SNR, can be completely misleading unless all aspects of the situation are fully delineated. And, with regard to human hearing, it's all about mental focus: focus on the wrong things and it will impossible to hear differences or come to meaningful conclusions. And similarly, if the focus changes between hearing two identical sounds, they will sound different ...
As pointed out elsewhere, people can train themselves to hear even high bit rate MP3 artifacts, they have learnt, by listening to snippets again and again, to focus in the key areas where the processing still is not clever enough to mask 100%, and pick it every time. Of course, forever more they can't listen to MP3 without tuning into the signature 'distortions', even subconsciously - sort of like always picking up on 'hifi' sound ... 🙂
As pointed out elsewhere, people can train themselves to hear even high bit rate MP3 artifacts, they have learnt, by listening to snippets again and again, to focus in the key areas where the processing still is not clever enough to mask 100%, and pick it every time. Of course, forever more they can't listen to MP3 without tuning into the signature 'distortions', even subconsciously - sort of like always picking up on 'hifi' sound ... 🙂
Hello Frank, I am an objectivists myself, in the sense of seeking proofs and measurements, rather than objectivist in the sense of ridiculing others.
In this case an observation and request for help and suggestions is completely forgotten about and turned into every kind of proof why the initial observation cannot be.
If I was to read the initial observation, it would pique my interest and encourage me to perform the experiment for myself before demanding DB proofs.
Dan.
The answer is to do your own fiddling, using what you already have or materials lying around the house. That's how I started - the only significantly expensive tweak, as such, that I have ever bought was the fancy cables around in the mid 80's, once - still have them, haven't used them seriously, just as a convenience when useful.
If you try something and it makes no difference, that's fine, you've learnt something. In my case, my hearing was acute enough that I certainly heard the differences, so I've persisted. Plus, my wife has no trouble hearing it, which helps - I can put on "terrible" music at a high volume, which she would hate if coming from a normal hifi ,and she barely notices that it's an album that another time she strenuously objected to -- so, there are multiple advantages, 😀 ...
You might re-read the posts. The initial observation may or may not be real (I suspect it's not, but am certainly open to evidence), but what everyone was trying to tell you is that you need to do a better experiment to make that determination. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot of effort trying to measure something imaginary.
JJ Johnston is indeed an excellent source for understanding how hearing perception works. DBTs are absolutely a sine qua non, and he does not suffer people who want to claim otherwise.
My experience is that the understanding of what's going on when a tweak makes a difference can be very hard to come by. When I first started the game of tuning up the system, some things made obvious sense, there were weaknesses in how things were set up, the components used were not good enough, so they were replaced or the problem areas bypassed.
However, some things, in fact the key areas were a nightmare, I couldn't get a handle on what was happening -- the frustration was diabolical! In the end, I gave up - my wife heaved a sigh of relief, 😉 - and I ditched the game for many, many years. In the end, though, I was inspired to give it another go, and am quite pleased with where I'm at ...
Again we disagree. I just visited J. Johnston and family for a rather pleasant dinner and evening. (Good wine, great salmon, a fine sound system and an interesting brood.) So there are some folks he does suffer through.
Second there is something that Bybees clearly do. They create extreme amounts of non electrical noise! 🙂
ES
Mr Simon,
that's all gone, I just installed Quantum Puréetors in my desktop.
(what wuthering life Frank must endure)
-jan
I'm taking 'funny' as not in ha ha ha. What's a little peek among friends, eh? 😀
-fas42
I am not scared at all in doing a DBT. I've heard differences in amps without knowing anything about the amps being compared. I have no fear.
But....
Once I do have my equipment in tip-top shape again (long story) I would like to set up DBTs and use SY's article as a starting point.
To add -
In my humble opinion, the brain is an organ that works very hard at gathering as much data as possible to ensure survival. It will use any means via the 5 senses to make a judgment.
As to my own brain, I don't trust it..in this case. I'm happy to be oblivious to what is out there and then let my ears do the work in judging any difference.
In my humble opinion, the brain is an organ that works very hard at gathering as much data as possible to ensure survival. It will use any means via the 5 senses to make a judgment.
As to my own brain, I don't trust it..in this case. I'm happy to be oblivious to what is out there and then let my ears do the work in judging any difference.
If you seriously study, the statisical and methodology that the medical, pharma, insurance companies and many studies of large groups of all kinds, as only a few examples, use to find correlations, you will then begin to understand how such might be helpful in audio/listening tests/results.
Thx-RNMarsh
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As Will Smith may have informed you of, there's a 6th sense present, goes by the name BS allergy.
(so far, I've narrowed Frank down to, A : a lawyer into amateur theatre, or B : a regular drama queen)
I can fix that. So we're back at the wife in the kitchen as compelling evidence.
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