I 100% agree. But it goes for the two parties.
Now, it should be time to make a real study to debunk this question. Blind tests, to demonstrate it can be heard or not. Measurements to see if we can measure any changes.
Some pretend they hear a difference, some not, the difference i hear is not obvious enough to put-me out of the doubt it can be "psychological".
And, as i said several time, when i am at this level of incertitude, i decide i don't bother myself about. Copper is less expensive and < 5% less conductive.
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There are a LOT differences the Pioneer has with my other amps, so of course they sound different. The Pioneer is still using the original components. Wont you believe that recapping will change the sound?
And it will be foolish to say that everyone has the same hearing ability, wont you agree?
If you want to know how far human can hear differences, simple, set up a listening test with protocol that you believe is representative, I will volunteer (and I'm not the man-on-the-street kind).
There are a LOT differences the Pioneer has with my other amps, so of course they sound different. The Pioneer is still using the original components. Wont you believe that recapping will change the sound?
And it will be foolish to say that everyone has the same hearing ability, wont you agree?
If you want to know how far human can hear differences, simple, set up a listening test with protocol that you believe is representative, I will volunteer (and I'm not the man-on-the-street kind).
So you haven't established that there are any actual audible differences either. Ok. More hand-waving and empty claims. If only we could harness that energy and put it on the grid so it could be used for something productive instead of being wasted.
se
In this let's call it a hobby for most or a personal enjoyment I see two types of camps participating. You have those who know and understand electronics at a very high level and those who only can use their ears and listen to what may be said that may be true or may be myth, those latter ones have little critical knowledge to prove or disprove anything they read or hear and just go with the current faith.
Now this leads to two different types of audio tweaking. On the one hand you have those at a level of say Scott and Pavel or Sy, and on the other hand we have those who espouse these other types of improvements like cables and even magic wood blocks to lift a cable up off the floor. One set of practitioners uses high level electronics understanding to make real and measurable changes to a system at the board level, changing components, values and even circuit topology and those who can't possibly do that who can only change external things like cables and adding questionable things like small wood blocks to attach to the walls of their homes hoping that the myths they hear are true and wanting to believe those, so they have expectation bias that what they have just paid money to do actually did something.
I think this is part of the endless argument that goes on here, the people in the know technically and those who aren't necessarily making anything up but not necessarily correct in their assumptions or even in their experiences. At the same time I will not say that all of these tweaks that people do to attempt to externally improve their systems don't actually hear some changes in a system, there are real reasons in many cases that they have actually changed something that changes the sound, whether it is really an improvement or not is a subjective opinion, but it can make a real difference, just not usually because of the mythological reasons that are passed about.
Perhaps I don't hear the difference between a copper speaker wire and a silver speaker wire because I don't really expect to in a system where the speaker and the source have benign impedance curves and there is no problem of matching equipment? I don't know.
Now ask me about aliens and I say i just don't believe that in a universe as vast as we live in to think we are the smartest or only living organic beings in the universe seems preposterous to me. I have no evidence for either side of the argument, just a personal belief. Now my wife when she was alive believed in ghosts and spirits and I didn't, but she couldn't get behind there being a chance of aliens. Now how the H*ll you get from here to anywhere else in the universe in a real reasonable time frame I have no idea. Perhaps the scientists who just postulated and I know it has been done before that the universe as we see it is only a two dimensional holographic representation are correct, or the person who said perhaps our entire universe is in a parallel universe where we are only in a grain of sand on someone Else's beach has just as much base in reality as my believing that there could actually be others who are visiting this planet we call Earth! I, my brother and my sister do remember an incident when we were very young that I could not explain to this day, doesn't mean it was what we thought what we saw, but I still remember the incident.
Now this leads to two different types of audio tweaking. On the one hand you have those at a level of say Scott and Pavel or Sy, and on the other hand we have those who espouse these other types of improvements like cables and even magic wood blocks to lift a cable up off the floor. One set of practitioners uses high level electronics understanding to make real and measurable changes to a system at the board level, changing components, values and even circuit topology and those who can't possibly do that who can only change external things like cables and adding questionable things like small wood blocks to attach to the walls of their homes hoping that the myths they hear are true and wanting to believe those, so they have expectation bias that what they have just paid money to do actually did something.
I think this is part of the endless argument that goes on here, the people in the know technically and those who aren't necessarily making anything up but not necessarily correct in their assumptions or even in their experiences. At the same time I will not say that all of these tweaks that people do to attempt to externally improve their systems don't actually hear some changes in a system, there are real reasons in many cases that they have actually changed something that changes the sound, whether it is really an improvement or not is a subjective opinion, but it can make a real difference, just not usually because of the mythological reasons that are passed about.
Perhaps I don't hear the difference between a copper speaker wire and a silver speaker wire because I don't really expect to in a system where the speaker and the source have benign impedance curves and there is no problem of matching equipment? I don't know.
Now ask me about aliens and I say i just don't believe that in a universe as vast as we live in to think we are the smartest or only living organic beings in the universe seems preposterous to me. I have no evidence for either side of the argument, just a personal belief. Now my wife when she was alive believed in ghosts and spirits and I didn't, but she couldn't get behind there being a chance of aliens. Now how the H*ll you get from here to anywhere else in the universe in a real reasonable time frame I have no idea. Perhaps the scientists who just postulated and I know it has been done before that the universe as we see it is only a two dimensional holographic representation are correct, or the person who said perhaps our entire universe is in a parallel universe where we are only in a grain of sand on someone Else's beach has just as much base in reality as my believing that there could actually be others who are visiting this planet we call Earth! I, my brother and my sister do remember an incident when we were very young that I could not explain to this day, doesn't mean it was what we thought what we saw, but I still remember the incident.
When/if you said that last night your wife was telling you from the kitchen to lower down the volume, I wont ask you whether it was really your wife, or somebody else, or she was telling you to turn up the volume. I wont ask you to prove that it was really your wife etc. I wont say it is an empty claim.
Cant you see that it is you who care too much about the issue. You are the one who waste energy on something not important.
When/if you said that last night your wife was telling you from the kitchen to lower down the volume, I wont ask you whether it was really your wife, or somebody else, or she was telling you to turn up the volume. I wont ask you to prove that it was really your wife etc. I wont say it is an empty claim.
Cant you see that it is you who care too much about the issue. You are the one who waste energy on something not important.
If it's not important, why do people like you keep making the claims?
se
Steve (SE), I am not aware of any single one scientific method that would reliably evaluate subjective sound quality of the amplifier. I also am not aware of any scientific method that would reliably and repeatedly find subjective sound difference between amplifiers. If you rely on scientific methods in this (methods that do not exist), then yes, you may say "everything sounds same".
What claim?
Long time ago I had a JBL microphone (still have it somewhere) for karaoke. The cable was so thin and looked cheap. So I went to a store where I used to go to purchase boutique components. I asked for the most expensive microphone cable available. So I got this high-end looking cable. I asked only 3 meters hoping that it would further improve the sound.
When I finished replacing the cable and used it for singing, I found out that I had to put much effort to sing so I threw away the cable and put back the old one.
Now, do you think I should do a controlled blind test before claiming that the new cable was worse than the original JBL? I was CERTAIN so I didn't need to do blind testing! (Tho I know that my mistake was I forgot about burning-in).
If you are not sure or certain (about my ability), prepare your own blind test because you are the one who needs it.
That's a much broader and less-well-defined thing than "sonically transparent". The latter is a simple yes/no and is well-covered in normal measurement routines. The former gets into hedonic issues with effects boxes, and the answers will be quite a bit more complicated since you need to examine a variety of effects and how they interact.
What claim?
Long time ago I had a JBL microphone (still have it somewhere) for karaoke. The cable was so thin and looked cheap. So I went to a store where I used to go to purchase boutique components. I asked for the most expensive microphone cable available. So I got this high-end looking cable. I asked only 3 meters hoping that it would further improve the sound.
When I finished replacing the cable and used it for singing, I found out that I had to put much effort to sing so I threw away the cable and put back the old one.
Now, do you think I should do a controlled blind test before claiming that the new cable was worse than the original JBL? I was CERTAIN so I didn't need to do blind testing! (Tho I know that my mistake was I forgot about burning-in).
If you are not sure or certain (about my ability), prepare your own blind test because you are the one who needs it.
*sigh*
Go back to sleep.
se
The question was whether my old Pioneer SA-7700 would be audibly distinguishable from a modern "high end audio" amplifier that was designed to be more "objectively perfect." You know, like John's design goals, not an "effects box" like a SET tube amp based on a circuit topology from the 1930s.
se
Ain't it awful.
Feel better now you've got that off your chest?
So what?
We still invented TVs, and went to the moon, and built the Hubble. All with incomplete understanding. It's called the Hubble telescope, not the Gödel.
You 'incomplete understanding' guys really **** me off. What are we supposed to do? Throw up our hands in despair and walk off?
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