A scientific standard is one that is invariant of the conditions.
ps..do you really believe that poorly designed "tests" which confirm preconceived notions is a "scientific standard"? Your "bar" is far lower than mine.
Yes, I think this a key point, a lot of the tests are fishy, dissecting them
is the scientific standard.
So good engineering should hang on being verified by DBT? Do you really thin that is reasonable or even beneficial to the progress of audio technology?
If they're properly conducted and verified, yes I do.
He meant, should engineering
wait for everything to be verified by DBT? In some cases the evidence just isn't there yet. You can't spend your life waiting for
everything to be proven.
There's a constant flux of theories and prove/disprove, so a lot of people opt for overkill and achieve peace of mind like that, especially in audio since overkill isn't very expensive.
I don't think the problem is expectation bias. I think the problem is ego. You could do a million perfectly handled scientific tests and it wouldn't please some people, because they have so much invested in their anecdotal, purely subjective opinion that they can't stand being wrong.
I've seen a pattern. The people who cling to the fairy tales the hardest and get the maddest if someone points out their errors are the folks for whom audiophilia isn't a way to listen to music, but rather a vehicle for self pride. No amount of money is too much, because they aren't spending money on electronics and wires- they're spending it on building themselves up. What they really want is for everyone t be impressed by their accomplishment.
You keep attacking marketing, audio salesmen and rich people. I've told you before this is
seperate from audio science, you intertwine them like it's the very essence of the conversation. Just because audio salesmen sharks and high profit cuts exist, it doesn't suddenly invalidate the technology. It's like saying a certain $600 component is an empty "vehicle for self pride" with no significant sonic differences, so this suddenly necessitates that
all components of the same nature should be set on fire.
Originally Posted by jnjn /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Discuss technical issues if you can. I note you did not, but rather you attack the individual.
I've got news for you. I'm not your enemy. Your incomplete understanding of the scientific method, you lack of understanding of where all the audio testing fails that method, and your inability to realize that.... is.
jnjn
Yes, this part.
The people who cling to the fairy tales the hardest and get the maddest if someone points out their errors are the folks for whom audiophilia isn't a way to listen to music, but rather a vehicle for self pride.
I see far too many objective people cling desperately to their unsupported or inaccurate understandings, and resort instead to personal attacks like the ego card just exercised.
cheers, jnjn
Indeed some of the objectivists seem to cling very hard to their totality of instrumentation, data and evidence. Sometimes it feels like, if the evidence or data isn't there, it just doesn't exist. I wouldn't really call that objectivism at all, it's more like some kind of skepticism and strict adherence to raw data, then to enhance this belief system, the raw data is crystallized to levels beyond what it ever meant in reality. So it's not objectivism and science, it's skepticism and raw data crystallization. Then, contrary to what bigshot was saying, it feels like they want to polish their system like a pride of science, well sometimes they are polishing synthetic quartz and not real diamonds.
Unfortunately, I see that on both sides of the argument.
A person who is investing his self worth in a stereo system is going to have much more reason to defend non-existent differences between cables or CD players.
I'll just admit you could be right here and a lot of these people could exist, which invest into expensive audio only to serve as a pretty mirror to look at, but I still don't this should be intertwined with whether the components have
real differences or not, in some cases they do, in some cases not.
The things that *really* matter... speaker design, equalization and room treatment seldom get discussed, and when they do, it's either with vomiting out scientific cut and paste, or in general vagueries that don't help anyone.
I read person after person saying, "room treatment is important" (myself included) but I have yet to see anyone post that has a general grasp of the subject (myself included again).
You have
personally decided that speaker design, equalizers and room treatment is what matters. First speaker listeners are a minority on this forum, so you should probably ask some questions here -
http://www.stereophile.com/forum. Second equalizers and room treatment are only
tweaking the end signal. A lot of people are devoted to improving the signal itself, which makes sense.
It's a fact that differences under ideal circumstances (that is, on the bench) tend to be smaller than under actual application.
That's not a fact.
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The real problems arise with humans , humans are relatively crap at distinguishing small differences in signals and the human short term audio memory is very short compared to visual memory. Echoic memory is a few 100 ms and short term store is a few seconds, the longer term auditory storage (which allows us to recognize our mothers voice on the phone or Von Karajan vs Solti) does not have the same characteristics, though it is capable of storing quite fine discriminations for voices , a useful evolutionary thing. Consequently a 5 minute gap for a cable swap is going to hide all but the grossest of differences.
In other words, the ultra short term audio memory is more accurate with 0.1dB shifts in FR, and the long term audio memory is more accurate at Von Karajan versus Solti. I see your point relative to cables, since they are passive components with a simple task, however the more intricate and complicated electronics could start to have subtle character differences, which is why certain companies spend so much time listening to electronics in x-fold different combinations.
This is just an example, I'm not supporting the Colorfly C4, but I don't think they - or anyone else - is actually expecting the Cirrus Logic CS4398, various capacitor choices, precision clock, and AD823 differences in sound to show up in frequency response, or pretty much
anything visible in RMAA, imho.
start using controls,level matching, Blinding in your listening evaluations - then report back to us what you "really" perceive
I agree there is an acute lack of blind listening evaluation.
Have you tested the line out of an iPod against the output of your DAC? I compared my iPod playing an AIFF file to a well regarded, quite expensive SACD player playing the original CD. Once I had balanced the levels the two sounded identical. I haven't tested against a standalone DAC myself. Feel free to try it.It takes a bit of work to balance the levels, but I bet you'll find the same thing I did.
You don't know until you've done the test yourself. I have done the test. I know.
I have done tests like that a lot, and there is definitely a difference.
A friend of mine designs and builds high end sound systems for live venues. He was doing a big show at an outdoor arena that was over 100 miles out of town. As he was setting up, he realized that one run of his speaker wire was missing. He had forgotten to load it in the truck. He sent his assistant to the local Home Depot and told him to buy a whole roll of lamp cord and a big pile of duct tape. He ran the lamp cord from his mixing booth to the stage and taped it down with duct tape because he didn't have the mats to cover the cabling on one side. So one side was his industrial grade speaker cabling, and the other was the stuff on your table lamp at home. When he went to set up his EQ, he was expecting to have to compensate for the crappy cabling. But lo and behold, both sides performed the same. He wouldn't use lamp cord if he didn't have to, but not for sound reasons... rather because it's harder to cover up so people don't trip over it.
Look at post
#1004.
A lot of people actually use CAT5E or lamp cord since "all wires sound the same".
If I didn't have a link to evidence that they actually sound / measure different, I'm sure most users in this thread would assert they sound the same -
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=14082&view=findpost&p=148578
It's a scientific system based on streamlining everything to the scope of which has been already evidenced. With such a system, I imagine advancement to be extremely thin tailed.