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RE: "their size is the equivilent of the size of the opening when a standard door is open one inch."

Posted by David Aiken on May 9, 2009 at 13:38:28:
"There are no unknown principles by which too-small devices can improve room acoustics."

Sorry, but we can't know that. If there is an unknown principle, by definition we don't know about it or it wouldn't be unknown. People do make surprising and unexpected discoveries from time to time. Neither you nor I can think of how that could be the case in this situation but neither of us, nor anyone else, can claim categorically that it can not happen. Push me for odds on it happening and I'll come up with a number that's vanishingly small, as close to zero as I can make it, but it will be a finite number, not no chance at all. It has to be a finite number because we can't give that iron-clad guarantee that there is no such principle. We simply don't know what there still is to discover and we are going to be surprised by discoveries from time to time. History teaches that lesson rather well.

I also don't think it's necessarily nothing but placebo effect and explanation bias. I suspect they actually do something which is audible, but at much higher frequencies than the bass. I think they may be producing a slight shift in tonal balance favouring the bottom end or reducing a little top end brightness and people are interpreting that shift as an improvement in the bass when it's actually occurring at the other end of the spectrum. I suspect it's a small shift but we audiophiles tend to be sensitive to small shifts which often seem to have a bigger perceptual effect for us than the actual size of the "physical" shift would indicate. Small things can irritate us and removal or reduction of that small thing can seem like a huge improvement in some cases, not something commensurate with the small change that actually occurred. Of course, if we were actively chasing that change, we may also be psychologically inclined to exaggerate its scale as well, but that inclination need not be the sole determinant of what we hear and it may certainly not result in every such person exaggerating the effect by the same amount.

Certainly, what we think we hear is not correct but that does not mean that our hearing is basically unreliable. Our hearing is basically reliable and we happily rely on it without bothering to check whether or not we're getting it right unless something then happens to make us suspect we've made an error. In my experience we get it right in normal life most of the time, and I've yet to see someone come up with an account of why our hearing should be less reliable when listening to audio than it is under normal conditions. Of course, if one is actively listening to determine whether or not there is a difference and the difference either does not exist or is close to the limits of our hearing then we're going to be more error prone than if the difference is significant in size but that's true of all perception and while we may be more disposed to make a given type of error because of our personal dispositions when there is no difference or only a very small difference, the fact that we're so predisposed does not mean that we're going to get it wrong all the time under those circumstances. Errors definitely can and do occur and I've made a few myself over the years but on balance I think my hearing has been right far more often than it's been wrong. I wouldn't have an audio system and I'd be using a simple boom box to listen to music if I thought my hearing was as fallible as many people claim. There would be no reason to trust that I was getting it right on any of the differences that exist between the sound of a boom box and my system if my hearing was that fallible.

Anyone who invests significantly more in an audio system than the average person does, and probably everyone who posts on this board is in that position, is saying that they hear differences that they're willing to trust their ears on, regardless of whether or not they have test data to back that up. They may be extreme sceptics about cables or certain tweaks or a lot of things and they may not include those things in their systems but they do believe that the choices they do make in assembling their system do result in genuine differences and they trust what they hear regarding those differences. Everyone trusts their ears but some trust them more than others. The differences are often at the margins but people can and do have huge disagreements and disputes about what happens at the margins.

David Aiken