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In Reply to: RE: Ignore the doubters! posted by Garg0yle on September 20, 2015 at 10:57:11
>>How about those old Western Electric speakers that you make your living off selling, do you think those engineers subscribed to this same bullshit?
Never sell, only buy.
I only point out some widely-recognized lacunae in trying to apply ill-formed notions of physical science to human sciences in hopes that some will see the light.
This is one of the principal topics in 20th century thinking...hardly vague or awkward.
The subject here is knowledge conditions, not forum political jive.
Just don't be so sure I am wrong if you have no instinctual understanding of what I am getting at. Like I said, I am well-trained and well-read in the field of human research and scientific thinking and I might know a few things that you and almost all engineers don't.
If you don't think the interface between electronics technology and music listening is extraordinary complex, well then I rest my case.
I agree the OP mixes physics and some weird juju, but I think it's working out for him.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Follow Ups:
Geez Louise sum it up for us with out trying to sound so sophisticated.
Are you saying it is OK to have the JuJu because of some "I think therefor I am" type thing?
In other words, the pucks actually do sound better because he believes they sound better?
Spit it out Joe.
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
Seems to me that Joe is giving us a university level description of well known placebo effect. That being "the complex music to electronics interface". (note you have to include the science of acoustics in there as well).
Yes, the person who claims it most likely hears it, monetary gains aside. I certianly agree that happens to all of us at some point or another.
But the question on an electronics forum should be about technical proof of the phenomenon and that certianly requires repeatable and quantifiable evidence.
Listen, Garg0yle, nothing personal. I am sure you are a nice and sincere guy.
This subject is in fact very sophisticated. Big words and mostly non-obvious thinking. Most people don't have a clue that it even exists, but there are vast libraries of thought out there on these very questions.
I'm just pointing out for those who have ears to hear what I'm saying, that scholars who specialize in trying to understand how people "know" their world have a much more comprehensive view of the matter than civilians.
WHY do people who never studied this material think they are natural-born experts in it? I can only think, "One doesn't know what they don't know."
This extends to understanding how "Science" as a logical system and human social enterprise works. Most audio forum science is pretty close to trash, not so much in the realm of electronics where high-school lab conceptions are reasonably useful, but when EEs and guys who learned electronics in the Navy start talking anthropology and human research, it gets pretty silly.
This subject is neither easy nor obvious.
Big Science, modern physics works in a universe that is probabilistic and perspectival, whereas the EE lab is neither. It works on convenient fiction, a simplification that is good enough.
One of my engineering partners in Silbatone has a PhD in Solid State Physics and Material Science. He doesn't think all this wire stuff is absurd, even if he doesn't have a ready explanation. As I was saying, a REAL scientist will test his model against reality/experience and if they don't map each other, adjust the model.
I am pretty sure that when Dr. Bae things of current through a wire, he is on a totally different plane from myself and most DMM owners.
This is the key gesture in science, testing models vs.reality. Making top-down pronouncements from general law is a tiny part of it, cause there aren't that many laws.
Even major forces such as gravitation are poorly understood, except that we know "what" it does.
JUJU
I am saying that the "juju" might add something valuable to the important process of hands-one/ears-on experimentation, without in itself having much physical/physics grounding. Maybe it makes him feel good and inspires a deeper connection with what he is doing. I'm looking at the whole project and thinking...good work!
A bit flaky here and there but so what? Nice system!
I am a Virgo and basically a nerdy analytical person. I sometimes wish I had more juju and mambo in the mix, but I go with experience, observations, and my naturally questioning attitude and trust in that.
I really can't "explain" why people go for some of the crazy audio tweaks out there and to do so without trying it myself, I would feel like I am not checking my suspicions. But I really can't get interested in some of this microlevel tweaking when I have much bigger issues to deal with first.
More to the point, I also really catch a bad vibe off snake oil peddlers, and that is something else I'm interested in anthropologically. I'm from South Philly not Missouri, but I think some people out there want a wizard at the controls. I hear Shun Mook and I think they are trying to mook me.
Hey, what are we doing on SET forum. SE amps should blow compared to low distortion SS an PP amps, right?
How did we find out that they aren't so bad? Experimentation in the face of received wisdom.
Let's do more.
Don't throw out a chance to grow and expand understanding because of some wacko trying to sell seemingly bogus pucks. That is my message.
Don't buy the pucks. I know I wont.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Joe, you sound like someone with whom it is possible to have a rational discussion. What would your response be to the following?It is clear that at some level, if one is not going to be a gullible simpleton who believes everything he is told, one must make some sort of a judgement call about whether a reported effect even deserves any serious consideration or not. For example, if I report that by burying a teapot at the bottom of my garden I get a much improved soundstage in my living-room stereo system you would not (I hope!) give any credence whatsoever to the claim. You would be able to make an assessment, based on known and well-established understanding of how the physical world works, that the claim was simply ludicrous; it does not need to be tested before being dismissed.
So, what is one to make of somebody's claim that reversing the direction of a piece of signal wire changes the sound? There are (at least) two possible explanations for the reported effect. One of these is that there really is a genuinely verifiable effect on the sound. (And to me, the only way it could be genuinely verifiable is if the person reporting it could reliably demonstrate the ability to hear the difference in rigorous double-blind tests.) Another possible explanation is that the person has imagined the effect, with their expectation of a difference leading them to "hear" it when they make experiments reversing the wire.
To me, the possibility that the direction of the wire actually makes a verifiable difference is about as likely (that is to say, very very unlikely!) as that burying the teapot in the garden would make a difference. As gargoyle emphasised, one is talking about alternating currents here. Why on earth should there be a difference based on the direction the wire is connected? On the other hand, it is very well documented in countless experiments that people may "see" things that are not real, or fail to see things that are real. There are huge numbers of examples of optical illusions. I'm not so familiar with experiments concerning aural illusions, but it does seems to be the case that the brain is easily fooled into perceiving what it expects to perceive.Given this situation, surely the overwhelmingly more plausible explanation for the alleged effect of reversing the direction of the wire is that it is entirely in the imagination of the listener? Why should it be given any more credence than the claim that burying a teapot will affect the sound?
Of course, there is in principle another conceivable explanation for a genuine effect, as has already been mentioned, namely, that because of some badly soldered joint, for example, there is some sort of crude diode rectification involved. That could be much better settled by making measurements with test equipment, not by delving into obscure corners of human psychology. And in any case, it would not be providing any sort of general principle about the direction of wires mattering. Rather, it would just be a lesson that shoddy soldered joints should be avoided.
Chris
Edits: 09/20/15 09/21/15
Good question.
I don't think there is a one size fits all answer, however.
The question of directionality is a good example. Do I believe it? No, frankly. Sounds like total hogwash based on my limited knowledge of the subject.
But look at Slagle's story about Mapleshade. He was unrolling wire off of a spool and was supposed to label start and finish so they would know the "direction" of the wire for future testing. Then Dave intentionally swapped one around and labeled it backwards.
Pierre called Dave and said he thinks Dave labeled one of the wires wrong. In other words, he got caught.
Not sure if I am supposed to tell that story or not!
I don't know, Bro.
It seems Pierre has some way to know. Pierre is what I would call an intense auditioner and a hardcore experimenter. I first met him about 30 years ago and he was doing wacky experiments even back then. What can certain people learn to distinguish? I'm not sure.
Learning is routinely ignored in a lot of the forum discussion. Somebody who works with audio gear all day for decades learns things average folks don't know about sound, including highly developed sonic memory. I don't think it is pure memory, more like developing a framework to categorize sound differences that don't make much difference to average folks.
I routinely ignore even things I know matter, i.e. could make a positive or negative difference. I use speaker wire I bought USED from an installer in Vegas on ebay. It is used Belden 4 conductor. Sounds OK to me, but I think the kinds of speakers I use are somewhat less sensitive to wire choice than modern speakers even though I totally believe wire sounds different, but I don't get involved too heavily anymore. I make my interconnects and most wires myself out of stuff I selected though evaluation.
I think it is also hard to separate the device from the sales pitch. As soon as I hear a super wizard sales pitch about how this genius dude discover a new physics, I shut it off. For some reason this works on otherwise seemingly rational people, many with excess money.
But I have heard items like the Tice clock of the late 80s make a distinct difference, when it "shouldn't" have. This was a digital clock that you plug into an outlet near the system and it cleans up the sound. $15 at WalMart, a couple hundred $ from Tice or something like that. Basically an unexplained phenomenon with chicanery and snake oil drizzled on top, at a price.
This comes back to the difference between "knowing that" and "knowing how." Just because there is no handy explanation or a totally farfetched 'new physics' explanation is offered doesn't effect whether it works or not.
I guess I would say you can't _know_ until you try it, but something has to motivate people to try things. Intellectual curiosity might be enough in some cases, but personally I'm getting lazier by the day.
In all honesty, my main filter on this stuff is how much time do I have to expend. I have amps to build. Shopping to do, etc. To me, the magic puck thing is operating on a level of tweakery I haven't gotten to lately.
When I was younger I would build circuits just to hear what they sounded like, which is how I first got into SE amps and triode amps. I was just experimenting and keeping what I liked. I was more high energy and I suppose more fascinated in those days. I worked on audio and studied old electronics books and magazines around the clock.
However, I know that there are some things I am purposefully ignoring that might be major learning experiences but gotta make cuts somewhere.
Perhaps it comes down to personal style. Some people are magic puck and crystal people and some aren't. Nobody can do it all. Pick what lures you in. For me it might be a tube, circuit, or new transformer concept, but it won't be a magic crystal.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Are you kidding me?Look at their BiWire jumpers. Those are hand cut copper scraps with labels hand drawn by a Sharpie pen. Are they serious? Is that the best they can do in terms of professional product manufacturing?
Next look at their interconnects. Hand made RCA connectors? No, I don't mean hand soldering OEM RCA connectors, I mean making RCA connectors from scraps of brass sheet!
And how about those AC cords. Do they have any clue of minimal acceptable electrical safety standards? AC plugs made from butcher block stock?
This is a joke! How can anybody take such products seriously. Yeah, I know, "well did you try them?"
This is exactly why these high end audiophile vendors are the laughing stock of the IEEE!
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15 09/21/15
MapleShade?
------------------------------
Are you kidding me?
Gusser, is it safe to say that you are not a buyer?
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
I don't see why they deserve any praise here. I dislike all audiophile snake oil but at least some vendors do produce high quality craftsman ship with their products to spite their technical uselessness.
This stuff however is junk and the AC power products are downright dangerous!
Somebody is going to get hurt. Making AC power cords from what looks like loose 22ga hookup wire. Altering UL listed power strips for resale. Making AC line plugs out of wood.
It's one thing when some charlatan cable shop buys standard electrical parts at Home Depot or a supply house and builds an AC cord with some nylon flex over it. At least if competently assembled it's more than likely safe. Still not approved though. But this MapleShade stuff is over the top in terms of safety hazards.
Yeah, the CPSC may just laugh it off or they may seek a court injunction to stop sales at the other extreme.
At least I will have tried to prevent a serious accident.
Since when do people think they have the right
to "protect" people from themselves?
It is a free country which means people have
the right to do what you think is stupid.
You have the right to call them on it
BUT not the right to force them into
what you consider "correct" behavior!
Please, I plead with you, stop the police state
that you wish to impose because it offends you.
You do not have the right to not to be offended.
DanL
You are free too build whatever unsafe electrical devices you see fit in your own home. But when you offer them for sale to the general public at large, well thankfully we have laws and standards that must be adhered to for the protection of others.Are you honestly suggesting we abolish building codes and product safety standards?
Based on your recent posts belittling formal engineering education and study, In can see the logic in this idea as well.
And since I made that post I did some research and found it quite easy to file a complaint - which I am going to do, like it or not.
Yes good people do have a moral responsibility to report crimes to the relevant authority. And those AC power products as displayed are a crime when it comes to basic electrical safety.
Edits: 09/21/15 09/21/15
That in a nut shell is what
is wrong with this country.
You never bought the product
but you want to make sure
no one else can.
I will never understand
the hubris of that position.
DanL
!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
Any experienced electronics or electrical person can easily see those products are not safe under established safety standards of the past 40 years or more.
And you know it!
Defending this is silly.
So are feet under the component.
So are cable elevators.
So are tubes without cages.
Also for 50 years before that wood insulted
most electrical wiring with porcelain help.
Wood is a good electrical insulator.
It isn't going to cause a fire.
It just doesn't take abuse well.
Joe Public does not shop at Mapleshade.
Audiophiles do.
You are supposedly trying to save Joe Public
but he is not involved at all.
DanL
It is with government, as with medicine. They have both but a choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.
--- Jeremy Bentham
Typical audiophile analysis. You pick an example such as knob and tube wiring but overlook the details.
gusser,
I've already put ceramic hoods on top of the anode caps, if this is what you worry about. These are a bit old photos.
This is about the Mapleshade power products.
Your amp is a good example of Dans point in ths issue. It's yours, in your home, it's not being sold to the general public.
AGAIN ...
The general public does not shop at Mapleshade.
Another spurious red herring argument.
DanL
OMG stop with the nonsense!
Of course the general public is the ONLY people who buy Mapleshade products.
Audio enthusiasts are part of the general public.
I wouldn't want to resort to name calling, so I won't start now, but you "sound" like a complete moron. I am not calling you a moron, just saying you sound like one.
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
I'm glad I live in DC, land of the free. Guess I'll go smoke a legal joint and make myself a run to the power pole out of Cardas tonearm wire.
I don't buy any Mapleshade products. I'm a DIY er. I'd make my own.
But where Mapleshade deserves praise, in my opinion, is for their attitude of experimentation and perfectionism, as they see it.
When I visited Ron and Pierre at Ron's house 15 years ago, they didn't have a volume control in the system. They played Mapleshade recordings and they knew the level they were recorded at and they set the amp to THE proper volume. They had an outboard volume control box, if needed. for visitors.
The amp was liquid cooled Mosfet with the cooling line running down to the basement where it was cooled by an antique fan blowing on an old air conditioner coil.
As mentioned before these guys are quite serious experimenters and very careful listeners. If one is of the mindset to be intrigued by such tweaking, these guys are old masters at it.
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
Supra Mains Power Distribution Block
z
It's more of a moral and legal matter, rather then a "right".
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
Moral
In whose eyes - not mine for sure.
It does not claim UL certification.
It's obvious that it will not stand abuse.
Somebody MIGHT get hurt is a red herring.
People get hurt stepping off the sidewalk.
The same reason is used to get swings, kickball,
monkey bars, jungle gyms etc out of playgrounds.
It is a very stupid argument in a "FREE" society.
Legal
Again do you want the government involved in deciding
what can and cannot be sold in the audio realm
because once you invite them in ...
They see No boundries !!!
They crush the whole business with regulations.
They love to make laws and even more laws.
I have seen it happen in many venues.
The whole section of business crushed by regulation.
GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT = POLICE STATE
Then let lawyers involved in this - Bad Idea.
Nowhere is it written that the government has the power
to protect people from bad decisions.
You can warn them but the choice is theirs.
In a free society that is.
DanL
No, we are not trying to outlaw monkey bars in playgrounds.
But what's wrong with imposing minimum standards of weld quality or steel grades?
Is the problem for you that the inexperienced, unlicensed hacks can't participate in the industry?
They are selling things that people want.
You don't want it fine.
But to make sure that others can't ...
Once you get the gov't involved then
they can and will destroy the industry.
Feet under the component makes
the whole stereo unstable.
Cable elevators cause a tripping hazard.
Tubes must have cages or
someone might burn themselves.
You can easily see where this can go.
You want BIG BROTHER in this ???
Think a little before you do this.
You may say that is not what you want
but it is a very slippery slope.
DanL
You think it's ok for some firm to sell playground equipment with shoddy welds or inferior steel where a child falls and seriously injured?We should not have product safety standards?
P.S. I would be honored to destroy the snake oil audio accessories industry. About time these people make an honest living.
Edits: 09/21/15
That isn't what happened...
ALL swings and ALL jungle gyms were banned.
Workmanship was never considered.
Workmanship hasn't been mentioned
about Mapleshade just materials used.
Yours vs Someone Else's Products
Who gets to decide that???
Who gets to draw the line???
The gov't will ban them all
because they can.
Someone somewhere will get offended.
Again who buys Mapleshade products ???
Audiophiles and wannabes not general public
and not some 10yr old kid or grandma.
So they are going to be
somewhat smart about it's use.
and poof another item on that list.
> > I would be honored to destroy
the snake oil audio accessories industry.
Now we are getting to the real point ...
This is something that YOU are going to do
to make YOU feel better and more in control.
YOU are going to wipe out the snake oil industry.
YOU are going on your soapbox and decry
the charlatans and beguilers as criminals.
YOU are going to bring fairness to the masses.
This is about YOU.
DanL
.
I see your point Dan, I'm growing tired of all the legislation and laws getting shoved down our throat. This is a political agenda based on kickbacks and "earmarks" (or whatever fancy name you want to use). It is also a machine that funds litigation, I don't think our founding fathers had this in mind....
^ +1
Like I said, there are plenty of snake oil audiophile products out there. And for the most part they do no harm. Even many of the AC power products while not UL or equivalent listed, they do appear safe based on casual observation and the source of the raw components.
However once that line is crossed, it is more than fair game for anyone to suggest an investigation by authorities. It's their decision to act or ignore, not mine.
You know damn well if those Mapleshade power products would ever be subjected to safety inspection they would fail miserably.
Pierre called Dave and said he thinks Dave labeled one of the wires wrong. In other words, he got caught.
Indeed I was caught but the comment was that the "spool" from the reversed wire must have gone through an extra de-reeling procedure.
I do know that pierre and ron (bauman) have a series of very specific test tracks they use to listen for direction and iirc the differences they hear is all in the attack of the notes. Sure some will argue that a real engineer should be able to measure this and it is important to note that both Pierre and Ron are top level real engineers.
I have another friend Johannes who could nail the relative phase of a SE amp to a speaker. This doesn't have anything to do with absolute phase but rather the idea that air is harder to compress than it is to rarify which sets up a situation to create an even order distortion. When you combine this even order distortion generator with another (a SE tube output stage) suddenly you get very different distortion spectra based on phase. Johannes would simply instruct me to listen to the bass and it was easy to hear. I admit I heard differences but in no way could I ever nail it like Johannes could.
(important thing to note for all you absolute phase junkies is simply swappping speaker cables polarity is not a fair way to reverse phase)
dave
"I have another friend Johannes who could nail the relative phase of a SE amp to a speaker. This doesn't have anything to do with absolute phase but rather the idea that air is harder to compress than it is to rarify which sets up a situation to create an even order distortion. When you combine this even order distortion generator with another (a SE tube output stage) suddenly you get very different distortion spectra based on phase. Johannes would simply instruct me to listen to the bass and it was easy to hear."
This is an interesting point, since indeed there must be some degree of asymmetry in a sound wave, since air pressures can increase arbitrarily high, but they cannot decrease below zero. On the other hand, as I learned from a Wiki page, a sound level of 94dB corresponds to a fluctuation of about 1 part in 100,000 around atmospheric pressure, so one would have thought any non-linearities associated with this effect would be really tiny; at something like the 0.001% level or so. This looks as if it could be rather negligible in comparison to the order of magnitude of distortions from the amplifier, and from the speaker itself.
In fact, I think I have seen astonishingly large distortion figures quoted for loudspeakers. Isn't it possible that, if there is some audible effect associated with the phase choice for the connection of the amplifier to the speaker, it is much more likely to be associated with asymmetries in the way the loudspeaker itself responds to being driven outwards, as opposed to being driven inwards? I would have thought that such kinds of mechanical asymmetries in the behaviour of the loudspeaker cone would be overwhelmingly more important than non-linearities in the way the acoustic wave propagates in the air.
I was a bit puzzled by you final remark: "important thing to note for all you absolute phase junkies is simply swappping speaker cables polarity is not a fair way to reverse phase". Until I reached that point in your message, I thought that you precisely were talking about what happens if you reverse the two speaker wires? What did you mean, if not that?
Just to make sure we don't go off on a complete tangent, this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of the phase of one speaker relative to the other in a stereo system! The effect you are wanting to talk about is, I believe, what is normally called "absolute phase," and could be discussed purely in a mono audio system. It is concerned with the issue of whether a transient attack at the beginning of an impulsive sound will drive the speaker cone forwards, towards the listener, or instead drive the cone backwards, away from the listener. This effect would precisely be reversed if one switched over the two wires going to the speaker. Thus I am puzzled by your sentence apparently saying that that is not what you were talking about.
Anyway, in summary, I could believe that absolute phase has a chance to be an audible phenomenon, because of non-linearities and asymmetries in the system. But I would have thought non-linearities and asymmetries in the mechanical response of the speaker cone would be far more likely to be at play here than non-linearities in the propagation of sound waves in air.
Chris
By absolute phase I indeed meant swapping polarity of both channels at the same time and not one channel in relation to the other.
The air thing was under the assumption of mainly bass (due to the large amounts of air movement) and an asymmetrical design (not an open baffle) where there is a pressure build up in a back chamber. I was using lowthers in rear loaded horn at the time.
dave
"By absolute phase I indeed meant swapping polarity of both channels at the same time and not one channel in relation to the other."
OK, good...we are on the same wavelength (so to speak)!
I think, though, that the percentage change in air pressure around the quiescent 1 atmosphere is still absolutely tiny, even for loud low-frequency sounds.
But the asymmetry of the loudspeaker response, together with the asymmetry of the SET amplifier response (because of its predominant 2nd harmonic distortion) would certainly, I imagine, lead to the possibility of either addition, or subtraction, of the two asymmetries, depending on the polarity of the connection to the speaker. I'd put my money on that, rather than asymmetry in the acoustic propagation of the air wave itself.
Chris
It was presented to me as the non-linearity of air as being the cause. What other aspect of a speaker design could generate even distortion?
A slightly off center voice coil in the gap?
suspension / spider?
dave
"It was presented to me as the non-linearity of air as being the cause. What other aspect of a speaker design could generate even distortion?
A slightly off center voice coil in the gap? suspension / spider?"
Quite possibly.
I tried quickly googling around a bit, and distortion figures for loudspeakers seem to be commonly up to the order of several percent, especially at low frequencies (presumably because the amplitude of the cone movement gets larger at low frequencies). These distortions include substantial second harmonic, which implies asymmetry.
So if the second harmonic distortion of the speaker were comparable with the second harmonic distortion of the amplifier, then I suppose there could be a significant and audible difference if the two asymmetries were combining on the one hand in unison, versus on the other hand in opposition.
By contrast, I think the non-linearities in the acoustic propagation in air will be way down, for any kind of realistic sound pressure level. (The "maximum possible" sound level in air at standard ambient pressure, based on supposing the pressure reaches down to zero in the troughs, is about 194 dB. which is pretty loud!!!. A loudspeaker, on the other hand, will be hitting one or other of its end-of-range mechanical movement limitations at hugely lower sound levels. Thus asymmetries at normal listening levels will be likely to be much bigger for speakers than for air, since the ratio of typical cone movement over maximum possible cone movement is a much bigger fraction than the ratio of air pressure change over ambient air pressure.)
Chris
Silly wabbits...It would never happen with the UPOCC copper or silver wires. Less Grainy so it solved the directional issues.
megasat16
It is the Neotech UP-OCC hook-up wire I use the most in my projects and it's highly directional.
Neotech UP-OCC
Highly recommend, this is some of my favorite, best sounding wire I have encountered. I can not hear if it is directional or not.
Indeed I was caught but the comment was that the "spool" from the reversed
wire must have gone through an extra de-reeling procedure.
============
Slick footwork, Slagle!
But obviously they did not need your silly labels anyway.
JR
------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
"Big Science, modern physics works in a universe that is probabilistic and perspectival, whereas the EE lab is neither. It works on convenient fiction, a simplification that is good enough."
-Well sure, much of what is used was discovered empirically, nothing wrong with that, it avoids a lot of smoke! lol
"JUJU
I am saying that the "juju" might add something valuable to the important process of hands-one/ears-on experimentation, without in itself having much physical/physics grounding. Maybe it makes him feel good and inspires a deeper connection with what he is doing. I'm looking at the whole project and thinking...good work!"
-That is fine.
"WHY do people who never studied this material think they are natural-born experts in it? I can only think, "One doesn't know what they don't know."
This extends to understanding how "Science" as a logical system and human social enterprise works. Most audio forum science is pretty close to trash, not so much in the realm of electronics where high-school lab conceptions are reasonably useful, but when EEs and guys who learned electronics in the Navy start talking anthropology and human research, it gets pretty silly."
-I don't think you are giving some enough credit, after all you don't know what they don't know. ;)
"I am a Virgo and basically a nerdy analytical person. I sometimes wish I had more juju and mambo in the mix, but I go with experience, observations, and my naturally questioning attitude and trust in that."
-Now don't go dragging astrology into this Joe! lol.
"Hey, what are we doing on SET forum. SE amps should blow compared to low distortion SS an PP amps, right?"
-Not at all, I fully understand that all distortion is not created equal, nor is everything linear.
One doesn't have to look too hard, the first control on most stereos is the volume. Like a lot of things in audio, it is logarithmic.
In earlier times, yes I was naive, I thought 5 on the volume dial meant 50 percent power and that "low THD" amps couldn't possibly be the cause for bad sound.
Fortunately, I was able to learn this from others work in physics.
It was there the whole time, I just needed to be able to see it.
"How did we find out that they aren't so bad? Experimentation in the face of received wisdom."
-I get what you are saying...
△ᴉʇɐuᴉɯnllI oᴉpn∀△
This extends to understanding how "Science" as a logical system and human social enterprise works. Most audio forum science is pretty close to trash, not so much in the realm of electronics where high-school lab conceptions are reasonably useful, but when EEs and guys who learned electronics in the Navy start talking anthropology and human research, it gets pretty silly."
-I don't think you are giving some enough credit, after all you don't know what they don't know. ;)
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In human research areas such as audio testing and evaluation, I see a lot of the same approach taken in the EE lab, which doesn't work!
This "scientific" approach to DBT and ABX and all that is based on totally discredited paradigms in social science. The basic notion is that people, or rather their behavior, can be studied in the lab similar to physics experiments. Control the "experiment" and good solid insights come out the other end.
I can tell what people don't know about this subject by what they write. This is bad science and really bad human research. Why? Because it doesn't recognize how people relate to the world and doesn't recognize and control many relevant variables. The result is that the test has little relevance outside the unique conditions of the test.
Where I get upset is not seeing that forum guys don't understand human research, this is a very specialized and complicated field. It is when these highly questionable notions are weaponized and used to shut down discourse, using the holy mantle of Science. I see it all the time.
Did you blind test that opinion? Sighted listening! Expectation bias!
I can understand when tech people get peeved at hearing about bogus new electronics phenomena invented out of thin air. Well, that's how I feel about this audio forum evaluation science. It is extremely dubious and certainly no basis for feeling superior and in control of listening evaluations (especially other peoples') the way we are in control of circuits.
It is not a science in the sense it is being framed and can not be.
I realize that many, perhaps most, have no idea what I am talking about sometimes and that the idea of scientific listening testing seems totally reasonable on the face of things, but it is not that simple, really not.
My main interest in pointing out things like this is to remove blockages to advancement and useful experimentation in audio. This is what I have been trying to do my whole audio career.
The tip off for me that I am on to something is how ferociously people defend their turf. When I first started writing and publishing articles about horns, an extremely unpopular subject at the time, I had drunk old geezers calling me up late at night, "Roberts, you bastard, you're putting audio back 30 years!" Numerous "pros" ridiculed me to my face, including one who had a complete horn system within two years.
Look at how people defend audio testing, when 99% of the defenders have no training in or understanding of the field whatsoever, and how strongly they defend Science when they don't have much insight into the profound intellectual complexities of their claims, and it appears that there are some really deep-seated understandings about the world and their place in it riding on those topics.
I get it that some personalities do not like to feel adrift and want to pin everything down with scientific certainty. Well, we are in fact more adrift than many would like and I think that is a good thing. It is what makes us interesting.
One important insight that I have gained in 30 years as an anthropologist in audio is that we modern first-world humans are not that far from our primitive ancestors. Science is another of many cultural activities that shares a lot with religion and politics. People are people and science does not offer an exit route.
Incidentally, I was a declared Physics major at U.Penn. That lasted exactly two classes. They put me in a class in Elementary Mechanics that consisted of me and 5 guys selected by the Chinese government to come to Penn to study Physics. After getting all As in AP Physics in high school, I thought I knew this stuff cold. Well, I felt like I was surrounded by Enrico Fermi, Walter Heisenberg, and Nikolai Tesla. Maybe I was. I swiftly dropped the class and took "Intro to Film Making" instead.
In retrospect, I think the Physics department was testing me in a "sink or swim" environment and I definitely saw some vivid underwater phenomena!
Sure, Physics has its place but it is not the universal key to understanding human existence. I'm glad I took the anthropology and philosophy of science/social theory route. These perspectives have been very useful in the audio world.
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Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
I don't believe only that "the pucks sound better", but I do believe they are a tuning accessory, as I wrote at the start of this topic:
"-the sound can be further tweaked with wooden discs on transformers or tweaks as battery grounds."
And from my experience too much of any tuning accessory can be harmful and this also applies to these discs as well.
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