Propeller Head Plaza

Re: I'm not sure where to start....

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That's all I'll say, sorry, I'm tired of having some of the people here claim "JJ is no scientist", I'm tired of them making accusations of professional misconduct on my part, and so on, so from this point forward (No, Phil, it's not you I'm annoyed with, nor is it John Esc...), I'm simply going to point to the literature.

I fully sympathize with you. I've been attacked by both sides, to the point of having my competency and ethical standards as a lawyer attacked. This is, after all, just a hobby.

I don't know if you would be willing to answer the following question, but I'll try. You say:

The sensitivity of the ear at low levels, for instance, is remarkably close to the atmospheric (molecular) noise level. Those kinds of observations have been confirmed by DBT. The masking performance of the ear is likewise estimatable by knowledge of neural firing rates, etc, calculated from entirely different information, and it is confirmed quite well in DBT. And so on and so on.

Does what is known about the sensitivity of human hearing suggest that distortion measured at 110dB below 50mV could possibly be audible?

My dilemma remains that my personal experience tells me that speaker cables, interconnects, power cables and power line conditioners all can have a significant effect on sonic performance. With one or two minor changes in the combination of cables and power line conditioners I use, I can make a recorded performance go from a living, breathing event to a dull, lifeless thud. I realize that to the extent I believe that this experience is due to actual audible differences, that puts me at odds with most of the science in this area. But I continue to examine my own “expectations” and other psychological factors that could be affecting my experience and simply can find no correlation between those factors and the results of the different combinations I have tried.

For me, and I suspect for many audiophiles, it’s not merely a question of which wire sounds better. It is achieving that extremely rare and elusive (regardless of how much money one spends) combination of wires and components when the music suddenly comes alive and the magic arrives – when the goose bumps pop out, the feet start to tap, the spirit soars with the music and one is no longer listening to equipment but is fully engrossed in the music. Moreover, I find when this magic has been achieved, it is repeated over and over with countless well-known and new recordings. It is no mere fluke limited to a specific recording, a particular day, a particular time of day, or a particular mood.

Either the placebo effect is so pervasive that it has my mind permanently in its grip, or science simply hasn’t devised or conducted the right tests or discovered the valid theory to confirm and explain such an experience, but I can not imagine ever accepting the fact that the magnitude of difference between the magic that comes from the proper combination of components and wires and the ordinary performance of a very expensive, but emotionally un-involving system, is all in my imagination.



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