Audio placebo with relation to medicine and drugs - Page 2

I know things sound different after a couple purple microdots. So I am assuming perhaps dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine play a part in processing sound. Therefore people on antidepressants may have a predictable response to sound that could be measured. Could explain the wide variance in hearing "ability".

Seems hearing and the sense of smell and more tied to memory, and the possible colorization of output.

That's a very interesting and plausible hypothesis, if true you could write a book on how to enjoy music by thinking properly and become as famous as Tony Robbins .

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open [to propaganda] one." Malcolm Forbes on keeping the world in darkness.

I love your tag line. If people really understood the power of money and its influence through the system of foundations they would shut that BS down in a flash.

Your doctor was educated by text books produced directly/indirectly by the foundations of Carnegie/Ford/Rockefeller ad nauseum.... they also seem to own pharmacuetical businesses (born of the petrochemical industry). Hence we treat symptoms (with patented formulas) instead of researching causes. My hypotheses would never see the light of day in the current regime of grant - > research -> product cycle. Also, I would like to see one "climate change" "scientist" who isn't/hasn't been sucking on the foundation grant tit. Probably none. Follow the "experts"...baaaaaaa.

Pirates of capital own everything and intend to keep it that way. Freedom is an illusion...much like placebo.

Who ever said Tony Robbins actually knows what he's talking about anyway. I think he just makes it up and makes it happen...baaaaaaa....here's my wallet. He should have been an audio salesman.

Not so nice to diss the medical organization so, especially when the OP appears to be studying for medicine. But at least now I know you don't think aftermarket cablers are the most evil profession in the world lol.

I also think that the issue isn't one of placebo's effectiveness, but of the ethics of selling a placebo as a viable product. Sure, it could very well have an effect on your system and improve the sound from whatever cause, measurable or placebo, but an industry in which it is the norm to pass placebo off as an actual product will very quickly degenerate into snake oil and scam artistry.

Cables, anyone?

Monster cable is a great example of massively marked up product, well over 200%.

What you say about the medical field is largely accurate, but you've got the global warming part completely backward. The petroleum industry has been funding the fight against the climate change scientists for decades. Recognition of global warming eats too deeply into their profits. It's therefore only logical that they would want to impede widescale acceptance of the phenomenon. That's why they've been funding and fueling (no pun intended) their industry scientist scammers for years to deny it, just like the tobacco industry did to slow public acceptance of the fact that cigarettes cause cancer. And now they have a whole new slew of propaganda tools to help push their agenda, mostly on the right wing, like rush windbag. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake, and just like the tobacco industry that is so severely harming people's health they're not going to go down without a fight.

And there you have it folks! The answer to the cable debate.

Nice work Haloxt

the global warming and tobacco debacle is child's play compared to the cable debate. Don't you think people are making incredible sums of money trying to make us go "green" with retarded and expensive windmills while suppressing clean nuclear power? As for cigarettes being dangerous, a cigarette contains radioactive fertilizer and hundreds of carcinogens and addictive additives, that's what kills, not the tobacco itself. Good for the medical industry and allowing the government to charge addicts more.

Well, inhaling burning tar, etc. from tobacco into your lungs on a habitual basis isn't going to be very good for you even without the chemicals. Safe to say that people were getting cancer from smoking long before they added the chemicals.

And no, I don't think people are making incredible sums on windmills. That's why most of them still need government grants and R&D funding. Tens of billions more is made by the petroleum industry, which we know from their profit reports, and altogether gives them much more financial clout and backing for pushing their agenda.

And nuclear power causes cancer, which is why Germany is phasing out all its reactors and shutting them down. As long as we were able to get comparable energy, I think most people would rather have wind than insane nuclear, with no place to put the waste and the increased cancer risks. I would also question whether the windmill industry was more influential than the nuclear industry, which seems highly doubtful.

But back on topic, my definitive tests prove there is absolutely no difference whatsoever with using different cables. It's all definitely a placebo, but if you get a benefit more power to you! </ducks>

I've said my piece and won't argue anymore, but what kind of cables did you use?

I was mostly kidding. I only tried one other cable with my HD600s and didn't notice any difference at all. Hardly a definitive test, though, especially without having had sufficient amping.

I'm not going near the cable debate, but I do think that the placebo effect in audio is real. If you spend a lot of money on something, you want and expect it to sound good, in much the same way that you want an expensive, exotic medical treatment to work wonders. That expectation can easily lead you to hear things that, on any objective basis, simply aren't there.

I've never owned a system that could be called high-end in the sense of "high-end" that Head-Fier's often mean. I got my first component sound system in the mid-70s; I was already familiar with it, since it was a hand-me-down from my father, who had just upgraded his entire system. But I think I can honestly claim, after all these years of listening to decent equipment, that I can recognize significant improvements in sound, when they actually exist.

What I'm getting at is simple: this just isn't rocket science. The first time I heard Magnapans, I was floored. The first time I heard Grados, I was floored. The moment I fired up my T-Amp, I was floored (O.K., that was a price/performance thing, but you know what I mean.) If you need to strain to hear a difference, it either isn't there or it is probably too subtle to be significant.

I definitely have a tweaker side, and I am not immune to trying the latest fad when I can afford it. But I recognize that the pleasure I get from this has more to do with my being a gearhead than from any truly important improvement in sound.

In sum, yes there is a placebo effect in audio. But as long as I keep that in mind, and as long as I recognize that there are other pleasures in tweaking (toy value, if you will), I don't have a problem with it.

P.S. I hope this post doesn't piss anyone off. It's just an opinion. Others will surely differ, and that's fine with me.

On the other hand, your state of mind could keep you from hearing cable differences (if they are really there). For example, someone who is pro-cable plugs his cables into an extremely fatiguing sound system, even after getting used to it for several weeks, it might actually cause him headaches to concentrate on the micro-details that make up cable differences and it will be much more difficult for him to tell a difference or maybe even impossible. What makes music fatiguing is not the same thing as how high end it is btw.

That's very true. And your point underlines the idea that there are many, many variables involved in listening to and evaluating hardware. But as you also point out, we are talking about "micro-details" here. Isn't that a bit like the bewilderingly minute detail with which wine afficionados describe a particular vintage? You know, along the lines of "strong notes of cherry, dried apricot, turpentine and a rather saucy, oaky finish redolant of soiled diapers?" I enjoy a glass of good wine, but I have NEVER had the slightest idea where all of that stuff comes from.

Oh, that I agree with completely. I have often come across mid-fi equipment that is clearly voiced to make an immediate impact, but becomes gratingly difficult to listen to after more than a few minutes. Funny thing is, many people come to think of such bad sound as somehow good. When I got my first decent speakers, a college friend dismissed them as having "no bass."

Which was odd, because they were a sub-sat combo made by a now long-defunct company called 3D Acoustics, and they were my introduction to mid-priced speakers (they were about $500) that could produce reasonably deep, well controlled bass. His reaction didn't seem so odd, though, when I considered the "system" he owned. It was one of those godawful late-70s "all in one" systems, with the turntable molded into the top of the case. It sounded horrible, and there was no deep bass at all, but it put out gallons of boomy, sloppy mid-bass, to which my friend had become sadly accustomed. That's a placebo effect of a very different kind.