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The mechanistic discussion of the GSIC effect so far has been limited to speculation as to how such a thing might work, on the part of those who think it works, and presumption of "placebo effect" delusion in those who appear to honestly perceive an effect, on the part of those who think it cannot work.

"Placebo Effect" is misleading, however, as those engaged in medical trials understand ahead of time that they have some chance of receiving a placebo in place of the treatment under test.

I think it more likely that what we have here is an example of an unexamined assumption: that the audio system used to test the GSIC is limited by stochastic noise.

The test CD is played for some period of time, then the treatment is applied and the same CD is played again. If, in some significant number of trials, the noise of the audio system actually decreases between the first and second times the CD is played, the post-hoc fallacy would assign the improved performance to the treatment. If the noise does not decrease, or even increases, the failure would be attributed to that particular disc already lacking any defects that the GSIC might cure.

It is not at all hard to imagine that the show environment in which John Curl heard the GSIC suffered from RF pollution that underwent abrupt level changes over periods of many seconds or even minutes. Controlling the mechanical and electronic noise in an audio playback system is not trivial, and I doubt any of the GSIC proponents have experience in doing this. No matter how expensive the equipment may be, the system integration and support have to be done with equisite care to get stable and reproducible results.

Once the debate started, then any claims of certainty in hearing the effect are under suspicion of vainglory. I'll leave that topic for another time.


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