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Re: For what it's worth...

Jim. I am usually very careful on spelling out clearly what I want to say. If I have any fault it is that I can overemphasise in order to make sure that I am understand.

I think there might have been something I said to you which might have been misunderstood. When I listed what various people in the world of audio had observed, and then went on to say that if YOU had been listening over many years, that YOU should have been hearing what they heard. I did not mean that you should have been struggling, deliberately listening repeatedly, to try to hear what they have heard, I meant to say that if you had been listening regularly, over many years, then some of the things that had happened to many of these people SHOULD, by now, have happened to you !!

I do not know John Curl or Charles Hansen but I do know what happens in real life. In real life, things so often happen by chance.

To generalise, to explain myself. If you have two boxes of a particular specification capacitor, the boxes from different manufacturers but with the capacitors of exactly the same specification and if a particular circuit calls for a particular specification capacitor, then an engineer should be able to go to either box and use a capacitor from either box (which is what engineers have done for decades !!). But, IF one day (say) John Curl replaced a capacitor with a (presumed) identical capacitor but now heard that the sound was worse (or better) - it does not matter whether the sound was worse or better - if it should not have altered at all then at this point an (audio) engineer - worth his salt - ( for this story John Curl) should investigate why ! If, after investigation, the engineer cannot explain why the sound changed - he only knew that it HAD changed - and any measurements showed no differences in the signal - then that engineer, if he was making an audio product, would surely chose to use the capacitor which 'sounded' the best ?? Even though there might not be an available explanation as to why.

For any lay people reading this let me choose another - equally bizarre - circumstance.
If you have a remote control which requires AA batteries, then you should be able to fit either Duracell AA batteries or Ever Ready AA batteries and not alter the sound !! But, if you suddenly replace the batteries and find that the sound has got worse - this does not make (technical) sense. Any engineer will tell you that this does not make sense !! But, what happens sometimes in audio is as bizarre as that !!!!

If therefore you are a designer of audio equipment and you provide a remote control with your equipment, then you (should !!) be investigating different types of batteries to see which 'sounds' the best and which 'sounds' the worst. You have to investigate lithium and non lithium, rechargeable and non rechargeable - and so on !!.

This has happened with wires, with insulation materials, with printed circuit boards, with plastics, with heat sink materials, with passive components, with lacquers, with equipment housing, the list is endless.

And, dismissing people's experiences (many of them highly respected engineers) as "suggestion, the placebo effect, imagination, mood changes, audio faith healing, belief, and effective marketing' is blinkered to say the least - and, I might add, unworthy of anyone who calls themself a scientist.

So, Jim, what I meant was that at some time during your listening life you should have encountered one or more of these instances when the sound changed when it should not have changed !! When there was no explanation from within conventional electronic or acoustic theories to explain why. That you should have encountered circumstances (probably like Charles Hansen must have done) when the sound changed and you were taken aback saying "Wait a moment, wait a moment, all I have done is change the wood I am using. THAT should not have changed the 'sound'. I must investigate further."
Regards,
May Belt.

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