[anetode]

Xaborus, to do this topic justice would require countless pages of circular arguments, ending in frustrating stalemate.

So I'll speak on behalf of at least some subjectivists and get to the bottom line:

We don't care!

Well put. I can respect that.

You have your control group and your trial group. The control group will only have the placebo. The medical staff administering the drugs have no idea which patient is in which group.
There is no switching.

Often there's also a natural history (no treatment) group to allow for analysis of the placebo effect and/or a standard treatment group

In this thread I see much confusion over what DBT means. Good DBT protocols for speakers have been around at least since the 70s and modern listening preference studies include a multitude of test groups including trained listeners, kids (i.e. untainted hearing, different expectations), experts and self-professed experts. Medical DBTs are altogether different, nonetheless they glean useful conclusions even though they deal with chemical interactions in organ systems which in terms of complexity put acoustics to shame.

1, Thank you to whichever mod moved this into the asylum, er, Sound Science

2, I can now ignore it along with everything else in Sound Science, per my usual strategy for retaining some portion of my sanity.

We now return you to your scheduled rants,

1, Demand thread moved to sound science
2, Crap on thread until it is
3, Pat yourself on the back
4, Become the inaugural member of anetode's blocked user list.

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

1, Demand thread moved to sound science
2, Crap on thread until it is
3, Pat yourself on the back
4, Become the inaugural member of anetode's blocked user list.

 
Sounds about right.
But you forgot to mention Mr. E is a genius and we are all a gang of blatherskites.

 

[joeyjojo]

Quote:

More to the point, I'm sure there are things out there that we can't measure yet.

 
This is another popular head-fi sound science claim I've been thinking about. It's said that there must be something in the music we can't yet measure. That the frequency response and power spectra and all those other graphs are useful but there must be something we're missing. Those graphs by the way are all visualisation of different measurements of the very same information, which is just a time-varying signal, but in different ways for our visual systems to interpret because humans are good at reading graphics. Another way for you to study that information is with your ears, of course, that's why we're here, to listen!
 
My main point is that your ears may be good at some measurements, but in general they are insensitive, rarely reproducible, and extremely susceptible to bias.
 
Good equipment these days will easily exceed in reproduction what your ears can discern. E.g. the human ear may be capable of large dynamic range, say 100 dB, but a good amp will exceed that, with a lower noise floor than you can hear, before you consider that most music only fills the top 10 or 20 dB. A middle aged human ear may be sensitive up to 14 KHz, which is laughable compared to my beta22 which is flat to 2.5 MHz. Etc. etc. The speakers/headphones are always the most identifiable component in anything but the cheapest system.
 
To go back to the original point of this thread - if you hear a difference it's either because the equipment measures differently, or you're being fooled by your expectations. If it measures the same, or below what is humanly possible, then you will not be able to tell them apart. If the cheaper DAC has 0.003% THD and the expensive DAC has 0.0009%, they are very easily seperated by measurement, but absolutely impossible to seperate by ear (all else being equal).
 
But then specs are nice. I built a B22 because I wanted a project and I appreciate that it's pretty much the pinnacle of amplification, technically. Whenever I read opinions on how it sounds lifeless or boring compared to other amps in sighted tests I assume that's either because 1) the other amps are sufficiently far from neutral to actually be detected by ear, 2) the other amps cost more/look nicer, or 3) it's a faulty build, with (2) BY FAR the most likely.
 
The broader question about "are there things we can't measure" is hard but my gut feeling is no. We live in a physical universe with physical laws, and I can't think of any phenomenon we can't measure given the motivation. Physicists at my last university measured the electron to be perfectly round to less than 0.000000000000000000000000001 cm. That scientists can deal with that kind of problem makes analysis of a time-varying voltage look absolutely trivial to me.
 
Edit: crikey I'm starting to sound as rabid as that nwavguy!

 

[Vkamicht]

Quote:

The broader question about "are there things we can't measure" is hard but my gut feeling is no. We live in a physical universe with physical laws, and I can't think of any phenomenon we can't measure given the motivation. Physicists at my last university measured the electron to be perfectly round to less than 0.000000000000000000000000001 cm. That scientists can deal with that kind of problem makes analysis of a time-varying voltage look absolutely trivial to me.

 
Probably one of the best posts I've read here. People that say there's something-in-the-music that you just can't measure are trying to justify their purchase, and probably use that line to their angry spouse/gf/parents as well. Don't be so egotistical - our ears suck. They suck compared to hardware and they even suck compared to other animals. Get your dog to blind test your DAC and you'll get more accurate results, maybe worth posting.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

 Don't be so egotistical - our ears suck. They suck compared to hardware and they even suck compared to other animals.

 
It's not our ears that are the problem so much as our brains. It's our brains not our ears that can lead us to believe there are audible differences even when there are none.
 
se

 

[JadeEast]

This thing that can't be measured, is it a property of sound, or a property of the phenomena (our experience)? 

 

[billybob_jcv]

Quote:

This thing that can't be measured, is it a property of sound, or a property of the phenomena (our experience)? 

 
That is an interesting question.  What it implies is that given the same stimuli, the same person could have two different experiences?  Or does there need to be some other stimuli sneaking in (sight, foreknowledge, etc)?

 

[Arietites]

Quote:

 
It's not our ears that are the problem so much as our brains. It's our brains not our ears that can lead us to believe there are audible differences even when there are none.
 
se

+1
If this  "thing" can't be measured, why would our ears perceive it ? Organ of Corti structure and fonction are well known now, The organ of Corti transduces pressure waves to action potentials and that's all... If something more happens, it's in our brains...
 
PS : Hello, first post, i'm french so excuse my english...

 

[billybob_jcv]

Quote:

+1
If this  "thing" can't be measured, why would our ears perceive it ? Organ of Corti structure and fonction are well known now, The organ of Corti transduces pressure waves to action potentials and that's all... If something more happens, it's in our brains...
 
PS : Hello, first post, i'm french so excuse my english...

 
I believe some traditions are good:  Welcome to head-fi, sorry about your wallet!

 

[joeyjojo]

Consciousness is still being unravelled, but my perspective on it is it's an emergent "thing" from the physical structures in our brains. The "experience" can't be measured as it appears to us internally, because as far as the universe is concerned it's just some electrical brain activity. Only to "itself" does it appear as something real.
 
It then makes no sense to ask to "compare" experiences, as they only exist in the frame of the "experiencer". It's like comparing two variables of different types in computer programming. You can compare the regions of the brain containing activity though, and they're broadly in the same regions across healthy brains.
 
It's like that wine example earlier. The wine reviewers genuinely believed the wines tasted the way they did from different bottles, even though it was the same stuff. No doubt their noses and tongues are much better than the average (or rather, they have more practice and experience with them at analysing wine), but they still ignored most of the signals because their eyes were saying "this one looks great, I've seen wines like this before, they cost a fortune, other reviewers write rave reviews on this one!" or "ugh looks cheap, this will be rough" and their experiences as a result were different to if they had no visual cues.
 
(Whoever posted that wine comparison was bang on with comparing it to head-fi!)

 

[billybob_jcv]

Quote:

Consciousness is still being unravelled, but my perspective on it is it's an emergent "thing" from the physical structures in our brains. The "experience" can't be measured as it appears to us internally, because as far as the universe is concerned it's just some electrical brain activity. Only to "itself" does it appear as something real.
 
It then makes no sense to ask to "compare" experiences, as they only exist in the frame of the "experiencer". It's like comparing two variables of different types in computer programming. You can compare the regions of the brain containing activity though, and they're broadly in the same regions across healthy brains.
 
It's like that wine example earlier. The wine reviewers genuinely believed the wines tasted the way they did from different bottles, even though it was the same stuff. No doubt their noses and tongues are much better than the average (or rather, they have more practice and experience with them at analysing wine), but they still ignored most of the signals because their eyes were saying "this one looks great, I've seen wines like this before, they cost a fortune, other reviewers write rave reviews on this one!" or "ugh looks cheap, this will be rough" and their experiences as a result were different to if they had no visual cues.
 
(Whoever posted that wine comparison was bang on with comparing it to head-fi!)

 
OK - but in the wine scenario there are clearly other stimuli entering the brain - the visual cues.  What about in the absence of other cues?  Or, will the brain always find a difference, and therefore the results of a long-term test should be no better than chance?

 

[joeyjojo]

If it's not blind I'd guess the main thing would be price. Then looks, build quality, reputation of company, even just how fond you are of it. Whether you planned for ages to get it and heightened the anticipation. I'd be very biased by technical specs if I had read them.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

 

PS : Hello, first post, i'm french so excuse my english...

 
Welcome to HeadFi! And please don't apologize for your English. It's better than that of some native speakers I know.

 
se

 

[rhythmdevils]

How about this for a thread title:  "I dont understand why people have to be either subjective guys or objective guys"  The perspective Purrin has here is actually pretty profound.  It's the middle way.  It's easy to jump to one exreme or the other, that's why so many people do in every aspect of our lives, and it creates problems everywhere.  Catscratch hit the nail on the head IMO.  It's hard to deal with the complexity of the real world, we are emotional creatures and our emotions demand easy answers and explanations in the world.  But the world isn't full of easy answers and explanations. 
 
I'm shocked to see someone on a thread about sound quality in music say "why can't we take the human ear out of the equation".  Have we really lost track of the point of all of this to that extent?  The human ear is THE point.  No answer or view of this can be correct or accurate or meaningful in any way without including the human ear in the picture.  But measurements are useful for helping to explain what we hear.  They are both useful parts of the picture. 
 
What's funny about all of this is the "objective guys" are guilty of the same preconceived predecided agenda bias they so vehemently attack the "subjective guys" for all the time.  It's just the opposite extreme.  Despite the use of objective data, both extremes are reacting emotionally rather than logically.  The "objective guys" have totally missed the point and thrown out subjectivity as a whole while holding onto their emotional bias.  It's beyond "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".  They seem to have "thrown out the baby, and kept the bathwater".  It also reeks of latching on to something they don't really understand themselves because of the emotional gratification of simple, easy answers.  Real scientists don't come at things with fully formed opinions.  A real scientist has to be open minded and live constantly in a state of unknown.  And you can't disprove something simply by not being able to measure it.  It's funny how people always think that the current understanding of the world encapsulates all truth and nothing exists outside of that understanding.  Remember when people thought thte world was flat?  Until they discovered new evidence and new understanding?    If you couldn't measure gravity, would it then cease to exist? The view the "objective guys" have taken here would be like saying (assuming you couldn't measure gravity) that there's no way to measure gravity so it doesn'nt exist, and then jumping off a cliff, despite all the subjective evidence showing that things are pulled towards the earth, and when you jump, you fall.  There will always be subjectively perceived phenomenon which cannot be explained by measurements or science.  The world is infiinitely complex, and humans will be long extinct before we discover and explain everything with science. 
 
You can't lump things into simplistic, extremist explanations.  Measurements are useful, but you can't deny your experience because it isn't measurable.  Of course many people hear things because they want to hear them or think they should hear them, so you can't fully trust that either.  A lot of people are taken advantage of by salesmen who use marketing techniques to influence what we perceive subjectively.  So measurements are great tools for cutting through a lot of BS.  They're just not the only tool.  Measurements are great because they aren't influenced by marketing or preconceived notions or bias, but the way those measurements are interpreted IS influenced by those same things.  In the end you just have to have common sense.  And use your brain.  And remember that the point of all this is just enjoying music. 
 
The objective only guys will keep trying to invalidate any experience that falls outside of that which is measurable, and the subjective guys will keep trying to invalidate the measurements that find problems in the gear they want to be perfect.  It will never end.  And in the real world, no one will really care.  Nwavguy will soon be lost in obscurity.  The only ones who will really have an affect on people's lives are the ones out there creating music that actually touches our lives and rises above all the BS. 
 
Most musicians would probably throw up if they saw people pushing these kinds of crazy agendas with the music they've created.

 

[TheAttorney]

^ Well stated