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In Reply to: RE: NO, posted by gusser on August 19, 2015 at 12:22:26
I really don't care if you want to stay ignorant.
Not my problem.
DanL
Follow Ups:
"I really don't care if you want to stay ignorant."
That is a strange choice of word, and also completely inappropriate. Ignorant of what, exactly?
Much of what is written by those whom you would, I think, be calling "ignorant" is concerned with requests for evidence and proof, and with estimates of the orders of magnitude of physical effects. This is not "ignorance," this is just a healthy skepticism and enquiry about improbable-sounding claims.
Let us consider one of the wilder claims that one might find in the Tweakers' Forum. Would you say that anyone who questions that claim is also guilty of "ignorance"?
One of the things that troubles me about some of the claims, such as the audibility of the breaking-in of wire, is that those who make the assertions seem to have so little curiousity, and are seemingly so ready to attribute what they hear to effects that lie outside the realm of currently understood science. If the wire itself really were causing the change, then as gusser says it should show up in spectrum analysis. And as he says, it would be something that was well known and documented from experience in other branches of electrical engineering that are far more challenging than in humble home stereo systems.
We are talking here about alleged changes in the electrical response characteristics of an amplifier. If these changes are occurring, then the reliable way to verify that is by subjecting it to detailed electrical measurements. We may not be able to explain or predict exactly what psycho-acoustic effect a particular change in the electrical characteristics will produce. But we can be absolutely sure that if the most sensitive measuring instruments fail to demonstrate any change in the electrical characteristics that is anywhere near the threshold of audibility, then there will be no genuine audible effects. If, on the other hand, the measurements revealed changes that could be above the threshold of audibility, then that would provide solid evidence supporting the claim. But then, as gusser has said, why are such effects not known and studied in other branches of electrical engineering?
Or one could sidestep the use of precision measuring apparatus by instead conducting rigorous double-blind listening tests, to see whether those who claim to have golden ears really can reliably discriminate between, say, new wire and broken-in wire. Such tests could provide useful information. of a kind that is lacking in anecdotal reports of situations where the listener knew exactly what he was listening to.
As I have remarked before, the Tweakers' Forum provides a nice illustration of the fact that people can sincerely believe they hear differences where none exist. Surely this should give anyone who thinks they hear differences that "cannot be explained by known science" pause for thought and reflection?
Chris
When the preponderance of experience
of so many people and your own ears
tell you something is true and
you refuse to believe it until
someone with a PHD proves it
I would call it ignorance.
I was really skeptical too
until I heard the difference.
Then I learned.
Refusal to learn IS ignorance.
DanL
"When the preponderance of experience
of so many people and your own ears
tell you something is true and
you refuse to believe it until
someone with a PHD proves it
I would call it ignorance.
I was really skeptical too
until I heard the difference.
Then I learned.
Refusal to learn IS ignorance.
DanL"
So would you apply the same argument to say that if lots of tweakers report hearing the effects of crystals on top of the coffee table, or whatever, then we should take that seriously also, and that to do otherwise would be ignorance?
And by the way, the experience of my own ears does not tell me that I can hear audible effects of the break-in of wire or solder joints. Quite the contrary. That is one of the reasons why I find the psycho-acoustic explanation for the reported effects to be the more likely one.
Chris
Science always lag behind experience.
Science eventually comes up with
a way to quantify what we hear.
To discount, out of hand, experience
because science hasn't caught up yet
is just foolishness or ignorance.
I don't count Tweakers Asylum because
they are too willing to find magic beans.
They are the other extreme from your ilk.
I refer more to the Cable Asylum and
their cable cookers and cryo treatments.
They trust what the hear and don't worry
about science to prove what they hear.
Science will eventually catch up.
"If an audio component really does sound bad and
you can't find something to measure that will explain it,
you are probably measuring the wrong thing."
DanL
"I don't count Tweakers Asylum because
they are too willing to find magic beans.
They are the other extreme from your ilk.
I refer more to the Cable Asylum and
their cable cookers and cryo treatments.
They trust what the hear and don't worry
about science to prove what they hear.
Science will eventually catch up."
Well, there is the problem; it is all a matter of degree, and where one draws the line. For you, magic beans are one side and cooked cables are the other side. For someone else, the dividing line comes somewhere else.
My view, since I cannot personally hear any of these alleged effects, is to use a common-sense application of understood scientific principles, and to be skeptical of claimed effects that don't accord with those principles until such time as they can be proven to occur. The proof could consist of electrical measurements that demonstrated that the alleged effect did in fact lie above the threshold of hearing. Note that I am not saying that one could necessarily predict from the measurements exactly what change the listener would "hear." But I would say that since one could easily measure electrical signals at the nanovolt level, and so on, it would be easy enough to estimate whether any measured changes could conceivably be audible to the human ear or not.
Or alternatively, the proof could consist of rigorously-conducted double-blind tests that established that there did indeed exist people who could reliably discriminate between the before break-in and the after break-in sounds. Just having people who know what they are listening to report that the sound has changed doesn't really cut the mustard. If one accepted such anecdotal reports as evidence, then one would have to accept what the magic-bean tweakers reported also.
Chris
So since you cannot hear a difference
therefore there must not be one.
Better to believe you are not
missing out on something than
to give credence to those that do.
Interesting
DanL
"So since you cannot hear a difference
therefore there must not be one.
Better to believe you are not
missing out on something than
to give credence to those that do.
Interesting
DanL"
But the magic-bean tweaker would use exactly the same argument against you.
Chris
You have stated that you have hearing loss.
I still hear above 20KHz - Big Difference.
DanL
Your membership profile says you were 51 in 2009.I know audiologists have different measurement scales than we use in electronics but I have to ask how far down in db or the sister audiologist scale is that 20khz?
I crudely tested my hearing a few months ago with an oscillator and it is gone around 14khz. I am 55 years old and from what I have read, 14khz is considered good at that age. Again this was hardly an official calibrated hearing test.
I'm not doubting you, but if you have flat hearing to 20khz at your age, you are part of a very small group based on standard hearing vs age scales.
Edits: 08/20/15
I am also very sensitive to peaks.
I still can't handle metal domes.
Their HF resonance gives me headaches.
DanL
"Their HF resonance gives me headaches."
Me too and I only hear to 14kHz.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
"You have stated that you have hearing loss.
I still hear above 20KHz - Big Difference."
Well, if you could demonstrate in properly-conducted double-blind listening tests that you were able reliably to discriminate between the sound of a newly-soldered joint and a joint that had "broken in," then I would be happy to concede the point. I would be willing to bet that you would not succeed, though.
Chris
Haven't you heard the latest audiophile theory against DBT's.Such testing is believed to be too stressful on the subject. The intense pressure due to the risk of being proven wrong creates an anxiety to where the subject can no longer focus on the subtle differences and thus hears no difference.
And the key word there is "subtle"!
When these outlandish claims are first presented, the reports are always "huge, ground breaking, night & day, my IPOD listening spouse even heard the difference".
But when pushed for measurements or DBT's, these "huge" differences suddenly become to small to measure or detect by controlled testing.
There is just no end to the BS and probably never will be.
Edits: 08/20/15
More or less since these audiophile cable claims started.How much longer do we have to wait for science to catch up?
I guess you do acknowledge that standard measurements fail to reveal any audio related differences between you cables and solder joints?
Edits: 08/20/15
How long did it take for science to measure
THD, IMD and difference between harmonics?
How long did it take science to discover
that the world isn't flat?
That the Earth is not the center of the universe?
These take as much time (and therefore money) as
there is interest in the discovery of the truth.
There is always a majority that does not
want to see the truth, let alone prove it.
They want to live with their dogma.
DanL
Various IC's etc. sound different to me and I don't know or want to know why. That said, I don't spend a lot of $$ on it.
That is a whole different can of worms.
I have been down there on the asylum too
and I don't want to start again. 8^D
DanL
"There is always a majority that does not
want to see the truth, let alone prove it.
They want to live with their dogma."And there you go! The truth is that the formal electronics industry does not support your claims. There is absolutely no credible evidence wire and solder joints have a "sound signature".
You are the one who won't accept the truth and are sticking to dogma!
What professional journals do you read to keep up with where electronics measurement technology is at?
And before you say "Stereophile", anything you can buy at a supermarket magazine rack ain't no technical journal!
Edits: 08/20/15
"The truth is that the formal electronics industry does not support your claims. There is absolutely no credible evidence wire and solder joints have a "sound signature"."
You keep saying this but who else except the audio industry is trying to hear it?? Not the aerospace industry, not the car industry, not the oscilloscope industry or GPS industry...take you pick. The truth is they don't know or care because they are not trying to listen to the sounds of things. So you are putting a big strawman up and keep knocking it down but it is IRRELEVANT!
Who says that audio electronics are not part of the "formal" electronics industry? You? Just because the circuits outwardly lack the sophistication of a missile guidance system you are missing just how subtle they have to be to not damage the precious signal because human perception is so sharp for some kinds of distortions.
"You are the one who won't accept the truth and are sticking to dogma!"
No that would be you, sorry. This whole "The formal electronics industry" schtick is evidence enough. Nevermind that the subtler points of audio design are simply not taught in engineering school because they are not "Formal" enough.
"What professional journals do you read to keep up with where electronics measurement technology is at?"
What kind of professional, unamplified concerts do you attend to sharpen your listening skills?
I have in my lab a LeCroy 12bit scope with 2G/S. It has FFT functions among a myriad of other things. I have used 100K HP network analyzers to measure return losses on coax cables in high voltage systems with signals in the hundreds of MHz. i think for audio the tools are probably good enough but the ANALYSIS of that data is what is lacking and the correlation with listening. Humans should be the standard and the measurements used to support what we hear and that correlation used to make better SOUNDING (not necessarily measuring) gear.
WRONG !!!
Truth is TRUTH
No matter where found or from whom
TRUTH is an absolute
If not absolute then it is not TRUTH
Science nor anyone owns truth
Science has been wrong many many times
Each time they had a "logical" stand
Science is blind leading the blind
Sometimes they eventually get it right
Mostly they have bad guesses
that they proclaim as truth
DanL
.
.
Infamous sockpuppet
Never did it and never will.
DanL
single malt scotch?
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Actually I stopped drinking 35 years ago.
DanL
"single malt scotch?"
"Actually I stopped drinking 35 years ago."
Maybe that's my problem! But all things considered, if it comes to a choice between the single malt scotch or being able to hear the breaking-in of solder joints, I'll settle for the single malt!!!
Chris
Except that nobody in the professional electronics industry represented by the IEEE is practicing what you say, not even showing any remote interest.
More of what they are not doing
rather than what they are doing.
No interest is the thing.
No interest in finding a way.
No interest in spending the money.
DanL
Possibly because they're all old and can't hear well like a teenager can when I first got into audio. What financial gain is there if many people cannot hear it or appreciate the difference. Hence the proliferation of solid state, digital, MP3, etc.I will say it again, don't let someone older than you tell you what you can't hear.
Edits: 08/20/15
What would we gain from this?
There are many more things that need attention, things that actually have tangible effects.
Heck I would even give Drlowmu some potential credit with his wild bypassing escapades, but this is out there.
Much bigger effects come from Placebo or Sensory Adaptation.
Slight variations in the way we hear at a given point of time depending on the environmental conditions leading up to that point in time.
Other senses we have that also adapt, are things like touch and smell.
That is why you are able to slowly slip into a hot bath, or why the presence of perfume seems to fade over time.
So in summary, swapping a part like an output transformer could quite possibly sound like it's breaking in, but only if the design parameters are substantially different enough, which they usually are when somebody is "upgrading". (Or changing some other part that is measurably and significantly different.)
However, you can't really account for that, quite often you have to make your selection based off of parameters ahead of time and fingers crossed benefit from the selection after purchase.
Infamous sockpuppet
We are not doubting you can hear the differences between wire and solder connections. I for one am quite sure you do.What some of us are asking for is documentation of this phenomena. Surely based on known documented human hearing thresholds, such a change would be clearly reflected in voltage levels at certain frequencies within the signal chain.
And it doesn't take a Phd to measure that either. A cheap 5mhz Heathkit scope should be more than sufficient to measure this voltage change.
So after all these years of these claims, where is this data?
WE DO IN FACT WANT TO LEARN! Please show us some standard learning material and not your personal perceptions which we cannot experience ourselves or verify.
Edits: 08/20/15 08/20/15 08/20/15
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