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In Reply to: RE: RU Blinded by testing ? posted by tomservo on June 14, 2007 at 07:21:31
"Wow, reading this thread makes it very clear lots of folks really trust their judgment but don't trust there hearing alone."
It's because their ears might take in the sound, but how the sound impacts them emotionally is more than ears alone.
"So many people that have a problem with 'blind testing' cite conditions which are not part of the test such as not being comfortable, being pressured to decide and such, all of which is unrelated to the big picture."
I do blind testing if I think it's needed for helping me choose the best option. The rest of the statement is irrelevant, unless one's concern is people's hearing ability instead of choosing amongst prospective audio components.
"I suppose it is necessary 'Not to see' what the real point is if your going to be so strongly against it."
I cannot speak for others, but I'd have no such problem personally. I hope to make a test CD shortly based on FLAC vs. AU files burned to it. For even I fall victim of "placebo effect" from time to time. I think CDs burned from AU sound better than those burned from FLAC.
"For a moment lets assume everything one can buy in hifi is real, I mean it actually does something that you hear. This means the claims for things like the wood blocks, expensive wood knobs, C-37 tuned lacquer, magic clocks and all the other exotica are all valid and the performance of all cables is relative to selling price."
I've never assumed that personally, but I'll go along here....
"Can you think of ANY area where a business is set up where harvesting your spare cash is involved, that is not largely BS and illusion?"
Using byproducts in hamburger and calling it "100 percent beef".....
Claiming 24/192 upsampling is a superior form of digital conversion relative to older 20-bit 8x oversampling, without solid technical reasoning.
Claiming newer technology is inherently better.
Use of pitch correction in a mix without noting so on the album..... Making people think the hot new singer has pitch control comparable to Bing Crosby or Ella Fitzgerald......
"I mean things like diamonds; exotic cloths and all the vanity products are not priced based on cost to manufacture but what the traffic will stand. How much that is, depends on marketing and the image one can generate."
The law of supply and demand.
If watch has "Rolex" printed on it, it will command a higher price than an identical watch with a different name...... Just the way it is.....
"In the case of diamonds in particular, this is a good example of something common as sand in some places who's value is entirely based on control of the supply and marketing."
So you're implying an opaque diamond should be equal in value to one with brilliance and sparkle? Or because cubic zirconia exists, we shouldn't even use diamonds?
"So, what if you said 'well some of this stuff is BS', you become more skeptical and ask questions. Questions like ' since there was a beach in Africa that for miles and miles was diamonds, what exactly do I get for that large stack of cash buying a diamond?'"
Uh, the rareness of the quality, as deemed by a jeweler who can appraise it.....
One should have him examine any diamond for quality. Otherwise one could end up spending thousands on cheap cubic zirconia.....
"Or, 'I hear nothing when I tap on this knob, yet the $500 replacement knob claims it will improve the sound of the electronics by damping the control, what exactly do I get for my $500 per knob?'"
Like the one who will presume the diamond is worth it without third-party examination, there will be people who presume a $500 knob improves the sound of his preamp.
The best we can do is inform..... If he still wants that $500 knob, that's his deal. We might think it's whacked, and it may indeed be whacked, but it's not me buying that $500 knob. Nor is it you.
I think damping a volume control wouldn't do much because the device itself does not resonate enough to pose a sonic concern. Now a tube damper is a different story, simply because I've experienced microphonics in tubes. Maybe when one taps on a knob and does hear something, he may be hearing tube microphonics or a dirty wiper momentarily losing contact. But again, I don't think any knob could fix that.
I personally think those who spend $500 for a knob either are ultra-desperate in getting better sound or have more money than they can deal with. But otherwise, if he wants it, I don't care if he spends $5000 for a specially-treated Magic 8-Ball, if he thinks it would improve the sound.
"People, as intended, are essentially unaware that we are programmed by all the marketing forces we are constantly exposed to."
Tell me about it. I encounter people who just got to have that 24/192 upsampling DAC..... This is why information is key.
"Consider, what your friends or acquaintances have bought that didn't make sense to you, think about 'the demand' in the dim bulbs in the inner cities that kill for fancy gym shoes or sports jacket that cost less than a half dollar to manufacturer yet sell for hundreds."
Dim bulbs????
Does social pressure mean anything to you???
Why do people choose to listen to 50 Cent over Rachmaninoff??? Why do people wear their hats sideways?? Why do people get gangrene.... errr... tattoos?? Why do people pierce holes all over their body???
Some of these "dim bulbs" may be planning to become engineers, physicists, and rocket scientists....
"Our primary information source as a nation IS the same business that markets all that to us, shapes our world view by careful omission and inference. No one seems to mind or even be aware of it, which takes a lot of money and effort."
I don't know about the money. And there are a lot of people who think I spout a bunch of BS. The information is to be looked at, and I think those sincere enough to investigate the situation will do the right thing. But the information must be laid out.
"How does one become more discerning with ones spare cash?"
By simply suggesting products that might be satifying to the user and is less costly. And why these products would be a better value.
But there is no law saying they must like and/or get what we think is a better value.
"You start thinking of reality checks, ways of determining if the price is based on some actual effect or effect only in your brain from marketing programming, like a pair of $800.00 pants or $5000 watch or a $300,000.00 car etc."
If people buy a $250,000 Ferrari, it might be a hideous chunk of $$$ for a car more intended for a racetrack than its planned use..... But again, if someone is willing to do such transaction, why should anyone else be concerned.
That $$$ may ultimately be transferred to someone who determines some people's job future. And that transfer made a difference in them keeping their jobs.
It almost sounds like you have a dislike people over material possessions. This is never a healthy attitude, because a lot of us are employed by these very people.
"Frankly, I don't buy the argument that unlike your sense of taste, smell, vision, touch, telepathy and everything else, that in hifi, using only ones sense reduces what you can discern."
I'm not sure what you're saying here..... I will say that if one is satisfied with his audio system, his inability to discern differences in a test doesn't mean jack.
"Yes, there is often a gap between what you can discern in a proper blind test or all of your senses and what one might get "with knowledge" but that gap is often the difference between what you know and think vs what you can genuinely detect."
You may want to rephrase this..... I have no idea what you're stating.
"Remember the Pepsi challenge? When you can't see the can, Coke tastes a lot more like Pepsi and vise versa, once Pepsi grew to a comparable size, such blind tests were to both companies disadvantage as the result (little taste difference) didn't help either sell product but harmed the market image of both."
That's because I think tasting one right after the other makes the second item a lot more like the first. The aromas of the first are still around. (When I did the challenge, only when I started focusing on the first drink alone to determine what I was tasting, my choice of "Coke" went up to about 90 percent. Prior to that, I was randomly guessing.)
"Hifi is all about the money and the various strategies to get it from the customer."
I think of Don Allen, I know how wrong that statement is. Hi fi is about attaining the musical satisfaction from favorite performers, close to experiencing them in concert. The problem is people have gotten desperate in recent time, because designers would rather rehash their technology and bash the consumers instead of improving the product.
Nobody was marketing $500 knobs before digital audio became mainstream. And there were a lot more people into quality audio at the time.
"Some of it is real, some of it is not, if your receptive, you can hear both just as sure as you are sitting there. Much appeals to vanity, uses plausible but wrongly applied technical explanations tailored to play off the curious magazine reader's background. Or, you can think it is all real, your in the matrix after all."
Wrongly-applied technical explanations. The problem is most of those citing "wrongly-applied technical explanations" are themselves spouting such information.
I use asynchronous conversion as the model. I couldn't blame someone who got duped into buying such a product, then thinking he needs that $500 knob.....
The technical explanation for the knob is no more corrupt than that for ASRC, in my humble opinion. The ASRC is maybe worse, only because it seems plausible, where the knob is obviously questionable.
I also think of "experts" like JJ, who had no clue how convolution worked in digital audio playback..... His comments were total speculation. (He thought convolution was applied to frequency spectra.) People never questioned him because they "knew" he was correct. Maybe the most-blatant example of my "2 + 2 = 5" analogy on a recent post here.
"Its sort of like this. There have been many oil shortages over the years, each one was followed by a step function in price. In the 1960's, selling oil was so profitable to make may rich, support thousands of small oil companies and still have 3 to 5 guys come out to 'service' your car for under 30 cents a gallon."
The rise in costs there are due to other things. The minimum wage made servicing at gas stations a thing of the past. But for another discussion.
"Now, the oil companies have become a few conglomerates, becoming more efficient, have not made any capitol investments in refineries in ages, have paired service down to a foreigner in a glass box and after the last oil crisis they very quietly announced they made more profit than any industry in the history of the world."
They wanted to build more refineries. Environmental regulations have put a kibosh to it. And even today, such restrictions have made such endeavor almost impossible.
You need to see the big picture. The reason why prices are high is because these regulations have killed domestic competition, and created dependency on foreign entities. Including Iran and Venezuela.
"Some day we might have a real shortage but so far, none of them have been, they were all essentially marketing strategies to bump profits ever higher. With the government getting a cut also, there is a strong an anti incentive to change this."
At least you got that part right.
"OR one can believe what all the snake oil companies tell you."
People believe what they believe. People want what they want. But informing them is the solution to your pet problem, not calling them "dim bulbs."
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