[Phreon]

Here is a link to a very good article Stereophile did in 1994: http://stereophile.com/features/827/

Though the author gave excellent explanations of CD technology and took precise measurements that showed various voodoo tricks at the time (remember the green marker) had no measurable effect, he swore up and down he could hear a difference. What does this say? To me, it shows that even a knowlegable professional, when presented with facts gathered with highly advanced gear, is still subject to the bias of his desires.

Let's face it, the hearing experience does not take place in our ears, it happens in our brain. Yes, our brain, the same place our hopes, fears, predjudices, desires and biases come from. We can have complete, memorable experiences in our head...it's called imagination.

Have you ever seen children at play, believing they're controlling the flight of a frizbee, causing lightning or talking to animals? Have you ever seen "The Wizard of Oz" played with "Dark Side of the Moon" and sworn the music synced up perfectly to the movie? Of course kids can't control lightning, and no, DSOTM does not perfectly sync up to the The Wizard..., but we want to believe and our brains fill in the gap. Or have you ever listened to a song on the radio and despite heavy static, had no problem following the melody even though in reality, it was 50% is illegible?

Our brains are amazingly adept at filling in gaps in experiences we expect and making sure our expectations are met, if only in our mind. How else do you explain people who see the Virgin Mary in a jar of Jiffy Peanut Butter or feel TV faith healers talking just to them?

It is precisely for the reasons I've stated above that science is NOT about describing our experiences, but rather proving or disproving our ideas or theories through repeatable, logical experimentation.

I believe the desire to feel a $1000 power cable made from off the shelf parts is contributing to almost mystical sonic experiences is akin to believing that $500 muffler makes your `85 Honda Civic a sports car and magnets on the carb. increase gas mileage. Just as pensioners who've been swindled out of their savings by gypsies and never report the theft, we bought it and buyers remorse simply won't let us believe we made an embarrasing mistake. How shameful to admit being duped...so much easier to claim you have gold plated unobtainium ears.

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[omedon]

You don't think Wizard of Oz syncs with Darkside of the Moon?

'Lunatic is on the grass' right as the scarecrow appears and rolls on the ground.

'Black, black' with the witch and "blue, blue" with dorothy followed by "which witch is which and who is who". All the talk about home, the sleep and spell part with the poppies and "magic bell" as they ring the bell at emerald city.

"Raise the blade" within a second of when the scarecrow pops up with the Halberd.

I can't say that it was intentional but I don't see how you can not see how it syncs. I last saw this three years ago and am quite drunk now and it still is with me. Improves my enjoyment of both the movie and the album quite a lot. Perhaps it is like one of those fuzzy 3-d images. Some people see it and others don't (I never could in regards to the 3d-images).

As far as the rest goes, I will check out the article in the morning. I am definitely with you with the brains effect on our experience part. And the possibility of it to play with us. But I am very sure that I will keep on thinking that instruments and tests aren't always testing everything worth testing and that the limits of our knowledge (or better yet absolute knowledge) have not yet been reached.

It probaly has something to do with why I am neither a theist nor an atheist. I hope you can understand the implications of my last sentance. I don't feel like explaining it now and am not sure it is appropriate for these boards.

I may be out to lunch here but it seems to me that stating science doesn't describe (perhaps a better word is 'explain' though they seem the same to me) our experience is like say everything is magic, miracles, and gypsies. (edit: that is a bit of a leap perhaps. I don't bend your words into something they are not. That is just my take on it.)

To me 'Magic' is a word used to describe scientific phenomenom that are yet to be explained properly. Either the world is logical or it isn't. Either there are laws of physics or there aren't. If they can be broken then they are not very good laws and we need to form better theories or ideas to reflect the true laws of nature.

Anyways I need to eat

Have a good night all

(I think I will stay away from this thread for a day, I feel that it is (or I am) becoming entirely too self indulgent as well as philisophical. I am still enjoying reading the more technical comments and explanations and would like to give them more room)

 

[Edwood]

YeeeeeeHaw!

Were in for a thread lock!










+1

-Ed

 

[Patrick82]

Most CD tweaks are supposed to reduce the light scatter of the CD.
If you demagnetize the CD it will increase the reflectivity of the surface so that less light goes into the CD. The light will eventually exit from the edges of the CD and that's why you can reduce the problem with blackening or greening. However, green color doesn't work better because infrared is not a color. You can also bevel the edge at a certain angle to reduce how much light exits the CD.
Burning sharper pits on the CD will also reduce light scatter, different dye types work better than others. You also need to burn the pits at the optimal speed based on burner and dye material.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that light scatter can do some nasty things with the audio signal, especially if that light enters the sensor. It's similar to power cords and high frequency noise, the goal is to reduce the noise and have as clean signal as possible.

There's also the problem with the CDs not being perfectly round which makes the servos work harder, this will be reduced with a separate power supply and/or power conditioning. The DAC should always have a separate power supply to minimize the jitter, but unfortunately they have that only in high-end CD players.

I believe most tweaks make a difference, but the question is if it can be heard and will it be worth the money you spend on it.

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotJeffBuckley The worst part is that once people spend the money, and hear the expected difference (having been told precisely what to listen for, led to believe by perceived authority that it's better), they become ardent defenders and give their pens and their swords (and their keyboards) to the task of promoting the product.

The differences are so subtle that the consumer needs to be guided in the right direction until they can hear the differences. It's like comparing 128kbps mp3 against wav. Someone didn't hear any differences between them, but when telling them to compare the decay of the high frequencies it became easy to hear the difference! Also, most upgrades are emotional differences, it just sounds better but you can't explain why. Just because you can't hear a difference in A/B-ing doesn't mean a tweak isn't worth the money.

Only a very small percentage of audiophiles can actually hear the difference in tweaks because they have more experience in audio. Those with "golden ears" are good at long-term listening but bad at short-term A/B-ing, that's why they score so poorly in blind tests. Music isn't about comparing samples, it's about long-term experiences that are emotional. In the high-end it's almost impossible that any human can hear a difference in blind tests. You need to live with your gear for months until your ears adjust to a new tweak, and once you remove that tweak it should be easy to hear the difference, if not, then the tweak may not have been worth it. Some improvements are very small, in a long-term blind test it could be so small that the only difference was that you just felt better emotionally when using the tweak comparing to when not using it. However, if you know when using a tweak or not, you will most certainly get a placebo and the tweak will always make you feel better emotionally, a placebo will be worth the money in this case.

Most of the newbies who hears an improvement are affected by placebo, for example a testimonial said "my wife heard the improvements from another room". Most of the testimonials just sound silly, but the manufacturer can never know if they were affected by placebo or not. Unfortunately when skeptics read the testimonials their skepticism just grows stronger.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Patrick, the issues you raise about CDs strictly aren't. The "problems" you talk about are made up by the people that sell these items for exhorbitant amounts of money to individuals who apparently don't know any better. "True-ing" a CD and applying a black sharpie to the edge for $1600 doesn't do anything - literally, nothing at all - to how the CD is read. It's technophobia that plays to people's misunderstandings of how a CD is read, how the technology works.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick Only a very small percentage of audiophiles can actually hear the difference in tweaks because they have more experience in audio. Those with "golden ears" are good at long-term listening but bad at short-term A/B-ing, that's why they score so poorly in blind tests. Music isn't about comparing samples, it's about long-term experiences that are emotional. In the high-end it's almost impossible that any human can hear a difference in blind tests. You need to live with your gear for months until your ears adjust to a new tweak, and once you remove that tweak it should be easy to hear the difference, if not, then the tweak may not have been worth it. Some improvements are very small, in a long-term blind test it could be so small that the only difference was that you just felt better emotionally when using the tweak comparing to when not using it. However, if you know when using a tweak or not, you will most certainly get a placebo and the tweak will always make you feel better emotionally, a placebo will be worth the money in this case. Most of the newbies who hears an improvement are affected by placebo, for example a testimonial said "my wife heard the improvements from another room". Most of the testimonials just sound silly, but the manufacturer can never know if they were affected by placebo or not. Unfortunately when skeptics read the testimonials their skepticism just grows stronger.

This is a pretty common claim. Apply Occam's Razor to this case: there is no measurable difference, and the sensory expectancy effect has been proven time and time again to cause people to perceive that which they have been lead to believe they should perceive (this applies to sight, sound, touch, and even taste). Is it more likely that a few people who spend a massive amount of money on products they insist give so-subtle-you-can't-pick-it-up-with-instruments have Golden Ears which can discern differences the mere mortals cannot, or is it more likely that the well-established expectancy effect is working in tandem with a very strong desire to hear a positive difference after spending large amounts of money to do so?

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phreon Go to http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm and plug in the following patent number: 5,487,057 There you'll find both patents and cited references for the Bedini process. It's a good read if you're into pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...7&RS=5,487,057
Quote:

Diagram 12 illustrates a ten second excerpt comparison of waveform A, unclarified, with waveform D, clarified. Waveform B is exclusively unclarified, and unique to waveform A. Waveform C is exclusively clarified and is what is unique to waveform D of the sound track. Waveform A, the unclarified sample, is significantly different than waveform D, the clarified sample.

Look what it says near the bottom. So there has been measurements made that show a difference?

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotJeffBuckley Patrick, the issues you raise about CDs strictly aren't. The "problems" you talk about are made up by the people that sell these items for exhorbitant amounts of money to individuals who apparently don't know any better. "True-ing" a CD and applying a black sharpie to the edge for $1600 doesn't do anything - literally, nothing at all - to how the CD is read. It's technophobia that plays to people's misunderstandings of how a CD is read, how the technology works.

So you think jitter doesn't exist? It can be measured and people can hear it.

Jitter doesn't matter at all when copying a CD to the harddrive, because the data will still be the same. But when jitter is passed on to human ears, the brain doesn't store the data like a harddrive. The brain receives the data in real-time and it needs to be jitter-free for it to sound like real life.

 

[Phreon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick82 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...7&RS=5,487,057 Look what it says near the bottom. So there has been measurements made that show a difference?

People make thinks up in patents all the time. The USPTO doesn't have the time and can't afford to hire people qualified to investigate and understand proposed patents. Bad patents get issued all the time, it's a real problem. Google the subject.

The same patents also describes how the author proved how two image files were different by taking several steps, including converting them to Word Perfect files! This is an attempt to specifically designed to mislead, as Word Perfect is not designed to handle binary files and can produce all kinds of weird results. Why not instead use software designed for the sole purpose of examining binary data? Perhaps because it would be a simple, one step process that would show the author's claim is hogwash?

Here are classic textbook explanations of Scientific Theory. If you deviate from the examples, it's bad science.

I. The scientific method has four steps

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature (more on the concepts of hypothesis, model, theory and law below). If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected or modified. What is key in the description of the scientific method just given is the predictive power (the ability to get more out of the theory than you put in; see Barrow, 1991) of the hypothesis or theory, as tested by experiment. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.

And

III. Common Mistakes in Applying the Scientific Method

As stated earlier, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of the scientist's bias on the outcome of an experiment. That is, when testing an hypothesis or a theory, the scientist may have a preference for one outcome or another, and it is important that this preference not bias the results or their interpretation. The most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation of a phenomenon, without performing experimental tests. Sometimes "common sense" and "logic" tempt us into believing that no test is needed. There are numerous examples of this, dating from the Greek philosophers to the present day.

Another common mistake is to ignore or rule out data which do not support the hypothesis. Ideally, the experimenter is open to the possibility that the hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Sometimes, however, a scientist may have a strong belief that the hypothesis is true (or false), or feels internal or external pressure to get a specific result. In that case, there may be a psychological tendency to find "something wrong", such as systematic effects, with data which do not support the scientist's expectations, while data which do agree with those expectations may not be checked as carefully. The lesson is that all data must be handled in the same way.

Another common mistake arises from the failure to estimate quantitatively systematic errors (and all errors). There are many examples of discoveries which were missed by experimenters whose data contained a new phenomenon, but who explained it away as a systematic background. Conversely, there are many examples of alleged "new discoveries" which later proved to be due to systematic errors not accounted for by the "discoverers."

In a field where there is active experimentation and open communication among members of the scientific community, the biases of individuals or groups may cancel out, because experimental tests are repeated by different scientists who may have different biases. In addition, different types of experimental setups have different sources of systematic errors. Over a period spanning a variety of experimental tests (usually at least several years), a consensus develops in the community as to which experimental results have stood the test of time.

Why is it so hard to understand the aluminum and plastic are non-ferrous and are completely uneffected by magnetic fields produced outside of a lab enviroment. Sure, a linear accelerator could change a CD, however, I doubt it'd be playable after being fried by mega or tera-volt electron fields.

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