darkclouds
Particular about his Sméagol Grammar we thinks he is.
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2001
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Quote:
Man, that just gave me a headache.
Kidding aside, I do agree with you for the most part. As with most gear that I buy, things don't just pop out at me immediately. But over a month or so, I'll start to notice certain things more. And usually, it's only in the absence of an item/component that I'll come to realize what it's effects were.
| Originally Posted by edstrelow Interesting to see the list of tweaks that people stop using after some period of use. I think this type of information is far more informative to other readers than double blind testing or a/b ing which are highly overated procedures and probably not appropriate to the psycho-physical type of judgments which are involved in audio. I agree that long-term listening probably is needed, and that it is easier to hear a difference than decide that this constitutes an improvement. The problem with A/B and Double blind testing to deterine what is real in audio is that it is not easy to perform a psychophysical test which keeps both false negatives and false positives at bay. Imagining that you hear a difference which is not there would be a false positive. Failing to detect a real difference is a false negative. An A/B or double blind comparison which finds a difference beyond statistical certainty is convincing but if it fails to find a difference this does not prove that that there is no difference. In statistical terminolgy, if you find a statistically signficant result you reject the null hypothesis (of no difference). You are almost never able to accept the null hypothesis and few if any statistical tests exist for this purpose. As a one-time practitioner in this area I should note that negative (i.e. no-difference) experimental results are almost always rejected for publication, in part because aside from statistical issues, any fool can carry out an experiment which doesn't work. You have failed to find a difference, not proven that there is no difference. Failure to find a difference may simply be due to experimental error. What sort or errors are we talking about? Firstly just confusion about what you are hearing, or listening for, such that your judgmental standard goes astray. In the end you are so confused you don't know what you are listening for. There may be equipment errors, for example I would not want to asses any interconnect just after being unplugged/replugged since the connection may take some time to settle down or break in. Cardas claims that cables should not be moved and be allowed to rest for several hours to avoid certain charging effects. You could avoid this somewhat by having an A/B switch, such that nothing actually moves but the switch. But can you be certain that adding this extra circuitry or breaking the circuit for comparisons does not affect performance? The consequence of various manipulations may be simply to increase "noise" of various type in the system such that in the end everything sounds about the same and you swamp the difference with noise. What about warm-up effects as you continue to use equipment? Most equipment sound better as it warms up, possibly to some optimum then it may even deteriorate, making comparisons over time difficult and aren't almost all comparisons made over time. There are several other procedures available in psychophysics... testing thresholds by adjustments, assesing "just noticeable differences'' and many variations of these which are used to test for subtleties of perception. Generally such testing involves trained observers since taking the man off the street, or characteristically, the undergraduate psychology student, forced to do experiments as a course requirement just gets you unreliable data. As far as judging equipment or tweaks, I find that simply listening to material with which you are very familiar is about as good as you need. If I start hearing more detail or other good aspects of the music than I have heard before, then I am on the right track. Also the diffrence should show up over repeated listening. It used to be the custom of small audio shops to allow people to audition components and the like for several days in their own set-ups before buying. Alas such practices are now uncommon although most things bought through the mail are returnable within 30 days or so. As regards tweaks that I have finally rejected are a number of disk pad attachments, any one want a "Blacklight?" But I still think Herbies Grungebuster is great. I also continue to use CD weights, generally the old Allsop Sorbethane rings which which are almost impossible to find. Most disk polishes are not worth the effort unless your disks are dirty as generally you end up scratching the disc. However the Aric Illuminator has the best, non- scratching cleaing pads I have encountered and the the polish itself has a small effect. I think the black paint that come with it is about as effective as the polish. "Tweak" contact enhancer is bad, it works, especially on bass, but later dirties up the contact. Pro-gold seems good and seems to clean the contacts too. |
Man, that just gave me a headache.
