[KeithPhantom]

It is funny going from you about me making up my mind. You are disregarding experiences of tens thousands of people because you are unable to explain something.
Maybe the problem is not that it is not true but the scientific methods are not right or going into insufficient level.



Here comes the bashing So my multiple experiences over time are "anecdotal impressions", but yours are the only real truth

I don't know who from the two of us is right. I'm just writing my experience and the experiences of some people I know, which were the same though without me influencing them or vice versa.

But as I wrote, if I'm even deluding myself it is worth the few dollars for electricity as my enjoyment of music after that is higher. And I encourage people to try it out and decide for themselves. Because it does not matter, if it is the equipment change, or a change in their mind, it is often to better

First of all I want to thank you for expressing your view on this subject, since is really important to have different sides in an argument. Personally, I also learn more how others think and why they do.

I will not deny that you personally may perceived changes, this is something many have said. In spite of that, the problem is the lack of evidence for it and the exaggeration of the deltas perceived when they are to a scale that's way below any possible psychoacoustic or physiologic perception of any human, even including outliers.

Because others may claim it is true it does not make it true, that's a bandwagon argument, maybe you should revise your argument and present testable and repeatable evidence of that and your other claims.

About your scientific method argument, you have the burden of proof since you're asserting it cannot reveal and/or approximate us to the truth. As for this, you have to provide your own method to achieve a better result than the one we have been using for centuries and has provided us with repeatable evidence of how the world works.

Finally, it is important to know the science behind audio, not just in terms of finances and cost, also the sheer knowledge is needed to build better equipment, to understand more about psychoacoustics (a different realm of audio science), etc. The science behind it reveal how it works and lets us compare and infer over the equipment we're using to represent the audio.

Disclaimer: because you use a fallacious argument doesn't mean that your conclusion is automatically wrong, it just means the argument is faulty and cannot truly explain the reason your conclusion may be true.

 

[Bfh29]

I will not deny that you personally may perceive changes, this is something many have said. In spite of that, the problem is the lack of evidence for it and the exaggeration of the deltas perceived when they are to a scale that's way below any possible psychoacoustic or physiologic perception of any human, even including outliers.

This might be one of the weak points in the argument. There are very small changes which humans should not perceive and be influenced by. But is that actually true? As we can probably agree, human mind and senses are something scientists just started to understand and be able to explain. And reducing the testing of effect on human senses just to one sense and even there just to one aspect of it can introduce significant error into the results. It is like sounds in the ranges that we don't perceive as sound and still they have an effect on us and we perceive them in a way.

It is like reducing the quality of headphones just to a response curve graph. It will tell you the sound character of the headphones, but that is not the whole picture.

The same goes for materials used in the audio equipment. Did you look at it in sub-atomic scale? Are there changes? Can they have an effect on our perception of sound? I don't know? Do you?

I'm no scientist, so I can't tell you what methods to use or what to concentrate on. What I can tell you from my experience of solving problems in my line of work is looking at things from different or unusual perspective helps. If you are too concentrated on conventional methods and disregard out-of-the-box thinking you probably won't get to something new. I'm not saying you are not doing it, just saying what worked for me and my teams.

Also assuming burn-in process has effect on the sound and trying to prove it is true by you guys might be fruitful in getting to interesting results

Again as I said, you guys might be right, but history taught us again and again that science is always behind and some people that were in their times regarded as mad men were actually right, then again, some of the mad men were actually just mad men

 

[KeithPhantom]

This might be one of the weak points in the argument. There are very small changes which humans should not perceive and be influenced by. But is that actually true? As we can probably agree, human mind and senses are something scientists just started to understand and be able to explain. And reducing the testing of effect on human senses just to one sense and even there just to one aspect of it can introduce significant error into the results. It is like sounds in the ranges that we don't perceive as sound and still they have an effect on us and we perceive them in a way.

It is like reducing the quality of headphones just to a response curve graph. It will tell you the sound character of the headphones, but that is not the whole picture.

The same goes for materials used in the audio equipment. Did you look at it in sub-atomic scale? Are there changes? Can they have an effect on our perception of sound? I don't know? Do you?

I'm no scientist, so I can't tell you what methods to use or what to concentrate on. What I can tell you from my experience of solving problems in my line of work is looking at things from different or unusual perspective helps. If you are too concentrated on conventional methods and disregard out-of-the-box thinking you probably won't get to something new. I'm not saying you are not doing it, just saying what worked for me and my teams.

Also assuming burn-in process has effect on the sound and trying to prove it is true by you guys might be fruitful in getting to interesting results

Again as I said, you guys might be right, but history taught us again and again that science is always behind and some people that were in their times regarded as mad men were actually right, then again, some of the mad men were actually just mad men

If you see, I separated psychoacoustics from transducer design and development. Why did I do it? Because they are different fields to be studied. Audio science at the level of signal processing and transducer fidelity is completely understood up to a point that new advances are new implementations of concepts previously known. Burn-in at tranducer level is so depreciable that it cannot be detected by humans. Why burn-in cannot be detected is due to the thresholds that science calculated and there is experimental and peer-reviewed data to support it. These experiments are usually done with a MRI and very low-level signals. Our brains are inelastic, and what we don't understand is the processing of signals that already are magnitudes larger than the effect of burn in.

Thanks for reading and I really appreciate your opinion...
KeithPhantom

 

[bigshot]

You are disregarding experiences of tens thousands of people because you are unable to explain something.

Tens of thousands of people claim to be haunted by ghosts and abducted by aliens. The thing that makes something true in a practical sense so we can apply it is verifiable evidence. If there was a physical change that could be heard, there would be some sort of change that could be measured and proven. And if it was audible, it would show up in controlled listening tests. I'm perfectly willing to believe burn in exists, even though I've never experienced it. All you have to do is show that it has been documented and verified.

If you think about it, it makes no sense whatsoever. Assuming burn in is an uncontrollable thing that just happens... When does it stop? If a sound signature is shifting, why would it only shift to a better sound and then stop and stay there? Wouldn't it sometimes overshoot the mark and degrade the sound, or continue to shift over time? If I bought a piece of equipment that clearly changed how it sounded over time, I would assume it was defective. I wouldn't hang onto it to see if it ended up somewhere I liked. I would return it and get something that wasn't so loosey goosey and unpredictable. If headphones changed sound signature over time, why wouldn't they plug them in at the factory and burn them in before shipping? When we are auditioning cans in the store, we might like the way they sound before burn in better and get mad when they change when we buy them and take them home.

The people who design home audio equipment strive after consistency. They want every unit they manufacture to meet their standards. A designer of planar magnetic headphones told me that the manufacturing tolerances on the headphones he designed was =/-1dB across the audible range. He told me that his headphones were tested to meet spec before they were shipped. He said he wasn't expecting them to change, and when he was asked about burn in, he said they would sound the same in the first hour as the hundredth. He was proud that his tolerances were so tight.

I don't believe things just because people insist that they perceive it. I'm sure they believe what they're saying, but perceptions are subject to all kinds of distortions and inaccuracy. One person's perceptual error doesn't mean someone else is going to have the same kind of perceptual error and perceive it the same way. In fact, error like that is very unpredictable. "This porridge is too hot. This porridge is too cold. This porridge is just right." Everyone perceives things differently. That's why I'm not interested in "impressions". I just want to know the facts.

If you don't have facts, I'll proceed with the facts I have until you can come up with some. It isn't difficult to do that. It starts with a line level matched, direct A/B switched, blind test. If you do that in good faith, I will listen closely to what you say and I'll try to verify your results. If we can do that, we can start to figure out where the change is coming from.

This might be one of the weak points in the argument. There are very small changes which humans should not perceive and be influenced by.

Tiny differences that probably can't be discerned are exactly what the whole high end audio market is built upon. The truth is, if you can't hear it, it doesn't matter. There is a threshold where human ears are unable to discern differences. It has been established in countless scientific tests. There is a certain amount of variation from person to person, but those variations extend more to the degradation side than the improvement side. Humans hear with human hearing.

Audio salesmen are happy to sell that to you with the argument, "We don't know everything about human hearing, so MAYBE this makes a difference." But if it made a real difference, you could hear it. They are selling theoretical differences. And the problem with theoretical differences is that they cost a great deal of money and provide little or no actual benefit.

It pays to be practical, and not be fooled by pie in the sky sales pitch.

I'm not bashing anyone... except for disingenuous high end audio salesmen, and they deserve it. My purpose is to just try to help you think along a straight line of logic and not stray off into the weeds that the salesmen have planted for you. Why would a salesman lie to you about burn in? Simple. He picks a number of hours out of the air... "Just burn them in 200 hours and they will be fine." He knows that you will become acclimated to the sound and it won't bother you any more. No return. If he can get you to keep them until the return window closes, he is home free. Sure, at the end when your ears are acclimated, it won't bother you any more, but was that the sound signature you wanted? Or is it the one the salesman forced on you and you've just gotten used to it?

 

[AudioThief]

It is funny going from you about me making up my mind. You are disregarding experiences of tens thousands of people because you are unable to explain something.
Maybe the problem is not that it is not true but the scientific methods are not right or going into insufficient level.



Here comes the bashing So my multiple experiences over time are "anecdotal impressions", but yours are the only real truth

I don't know who from the two of us is right. I'm just writing my experience and the experiences of some people I know, which were the same though without me influencing them or vice versa.

But as I wrote, if I'm even deluding myself it is worth the few dollars for electricity as my enjoyment of music after that is higher. And I encourage people to try it out and decide for themselves. Because it does not matter, if it is the equipment change, or a change in their mind, it is often to better

Bigshot isn't saying that "he didn't hear any difference, so it couldn't be!", which would be the same argument you are using. Your explanation is completely anecdotal, and doesn't prove anything other than your feelings surrounding the sound.

The key to unlock the truth, if you ask me, is to understand psychoacoustics, and how incredibly powerful placebo is. Our interpretation of sound is seemingly random. The smallest sensory cues like room lightning, emotional state, amount of sleep and so on can change the way we feel about the sound, and we can attach those ideas to the "essence" of the headphone.

 

[Bfh29]

Tiny differences that probably can't be discerned are exactly what the whole high end audio market is built upon. The truth is, if you can't hear it, it doesn't matter. There is a threshold where human ears are unable to discern differences. It has been established in countless scientific tests. There is a certain amount of variation from person to person, but those variations extend more to the degradation side than the improvement side. Humans hear with human hearing.

Audio salesmen are happy to sell that to you with the argument, "We don't know everything about human hearing, so MAYBE this makes a difference." But if it made a real difference, you could hear it. They are selling theoretical differences. And the problem with theoretical differences is that they cost a great deal of money and provide little or no actual benefit.

It pays to be practical, and not be fooled by pie in the sky sales pitch.

I'm not bashing anyone... except for disingenuous high end audio salesmen, and they deserve it. My purpose is to just try to help you think along a straight line of logic and not stray off into the weeds that the salesmen have planted for you. Why would a salesman lie to you about burn in? Simple. He picks a number of hours out of the air... "Just burn them in 200 hours and they will be fine." He knows that you will become acclimated to the sound and it won't bother you any more. No return. If he can get you to keep them until the return window closes, he is home free. Sure, at the end when your ears are acclimated, it won't bother you any more, but was that the sound signature you wanted? Or is it the one the salesman forced on you and you've just gotten used to it?

It is not about the money. Most of the audiophiles I know try things out, if they hear the difference they buy it, if not they return it. And you can see it in the forums also.
I also a few times compared more expensive equipment with less expensive and not always there was positive difference.
Where I'm not saying some people aren't influenced by the sales pitch or the price otherwise that much money would not be pumped into marketing

 

[KeithPhantom]

It is not about the money. Most of the audiophiles I know try things out, if they hear the difference they buy it, if not they return it. And you can see it in the forums also.
I also a few times compared more expensive equipment with less expensive and not always there was positive difference.
Where I'm not saying some people aren't influenced by the sales pitch or the price otherwise that much money would not be pumped into marketing

It does not matter the price or if other also flawed ears (including me) hear something, if measurements show there is no difference or the difference is magnitudes smaller than the threshold of our hearing, there's no way any discernible difference can be detected by any human, including outliers since these are not so extreme.

 

[bigshot]

It is not about the money. Most of the audiophiles I know try things out, if they hear the difference they buy it, if not they return it. And you can see it in the forums also. I also a few times compared more expensive equipment with less expensive and not always there was positive difference. Where I'm not saying some people aren't influenced by the sales pitch or the price otherwise that much money would not be pumped into marketing

Look at the sig files of people on this forum and see the stables of headphones they list. There is absolutely no reason someone needs 20 or 30 sets of cans except for just plain old American consumerism. Look at the sidebars and banners in this site. They are designed to put across not just information about the sound fidelity of the product, but how the product makes you feel. Luxurious wood just has to sound better than plastic, right? That intricately wound cable must sound better too. That satiny black background. The fancy typefaces that appear so futuristic. None of this has anything to do with sound, but it is a huge part of how people choose what to buy. I think you might be underestimating what is actually driving the market for audio components. And I think you might be underestimating the power of after-the-fact self validation in convincing one that they have made the right decision.

Of course the thing that puts the lie to all the psychology, ego gratification. slathered on glittering generalities, technical misconceptions and manufactured bias is the simplest thing of all... a level matched, direct A/B switched, blind comparison. What if you did one and you found out your DAC sounds exactly the same as one that cost a fraction of the price? Would you be happy about that? Would you be angry? Would you sell your overpriced DAC, or just keep it because you like it? Hard to know until you've actually done the test and found out for yourself.

One thing I can't emphasize enough. Bias isn't a frailty or failing. It is a 100% natural part of being a human. We exercise bias just about every moment of our lives. It's how we make even the smallest decisions. If we were completely logical, we would get nothing done because we would stop and think out every decision. You can't turn off bias consciously. It is a subconscious process. "Why do you prefer X over Y?" "I don't know, I just do..." Bias is deeply rooted and complex, and we exercise it without even knowing it. I embrace my bias and use it where it is most useful... I follow hunches, try to discern patterns, attempt to predict outcomes... none of this is totally logical, but it points me in the general direction I want to go. But I don't trust bias when it comes to buying expensive products. If I spend hundreds of dollars on something, I want it to be of high quality and I want it to do the job well. Thankfully, sound fidelity is drop dead simple to test while eliminating the bulk of my bias. Once I have that information and I am secure in it, I can make an informed decision- one based on facts, not advertising hyperbole, bandwagon effect, or appeals to emotion, luxury or ego. When I find out a new fact, it delights me. That is a huge part of the reason I am interested in home audio- that and of course music.

 

[AudioThief]

It is not about the money. Most of the audiophiles I know try things out, if they hear the difference they buy it, if not they return it. And you can see it in the forums also.
I also a few times compared more expensive equipment with less expensive and not always there was positive difference.
Where I'm not saying some people aren't influenced by the sales pitch or the price otherwise that much money would not be pumped into marketing

It definitely is about money. Lets say you have a nice pair of headphones - say the Sennheiser HD600. You go and read reviews about headphones, and maybe browse this forum a bit. Soon, you'll have the mindset that the HD600 is a "midrange" headphone - the BEST sound is a bit more expensive. So you sift through thread after thread, and start thinking about how much better these more expensive headphones might be.. HD800? They're probably really good, but what about the Hifiman Susvara or Focal UTOPIA? Either way, these headphones will definitely be A LOT better than the HD600, cause they are newer, ten times the price and lauded on the boards and in reviews. If you think those factors won't matter when you demo or purchase the product, you're very much mistaken. Just the fact that you believe strides are being made in the headphone industry in terms of sound quality means you'll be biased towards hearing a difference. The fact is of course that essentially nothing of importance is happening, except portability and noise cancelling (and digital audio stuff that is a bit besides the point). When Sony made the MDR R10 or Stax made the SR-Omega, we had the best sound there was - and that was in the early 90s. Since then, not much has happened in terms of sound QUALITY. I.e we aren't hearing more detail, or deeper bass, or wider soundstage and so on. Sure, some headphones do one thing better and another one worse, we have a TON of options these days compared to before, but the quality of sound is the same. Because headphones were figured out many many years ago. The audiophile industry is booming purely as a result of peoples inadequate technical understanding. I was completely fooled by it, as most non-engineers probably are. But if you actually go out and look for the truth, you will be very disappointed with the hobby... But also happy, because you know the truth, and you can find the best SOUND, not the best placebo effect... And thats a lot cheaper than searching for the holy grail!

 

[castleofargh]

This might be one of the weak points in the argument. There are very small changes which humans should not perceive and be influenced by. But is that actually true? As we can probably agree, human mind and senses are something scientists just started to understand and be able to explain. And reducing the testing of effect on human senses just to one sense and even there just to one aspect of it can introduce significant error into the results. It is like sounds in the ranges that we don't perceive as sound and still they have an effect on us and we perceive them in a way.

It is like reducing the quality of headphones just to a response curve graph. It will tell you the sound character of the headphones, but that is not the whole picture.

The same goes for materials used in the audio equipment. Did you look at it in sub-atomic scale? Are there changes? Can they have an effect on our perception of sound? I don't know? Do you?

I'm no scientist, so I can't tell you what methods to use or what to concentrate on. What I can tell you from my experience of solving problems in my line of work is looking at things from different or unusual perspective helps. If you are too concentrated on conventional methods and disregard out-of-the-box thinking you probably won't get to something new. I'm not saying you are not doing it, just saying what worked for me and my teams.

Also assuming burn-in process has effect on the sound and trying to prove it is true by you guys might be fruitful in getting to interesting results

Again as I said, you guys might be right, but history taught us again and again that science is always behind and some people that were in their times regarded as mad men were actually right, then again, some of the mad men were actually just mad men

 

[Sonic Defender]

People need their illusions. I would love just once to come across a science doubter with an open mind that actually engages in valid, multiple trial blind listening tests. I so often wish that I had money to travel and perform the tests with some of these people. We should start contributing a little money into a fund and build it up to use as travel money and set-up a test with one of the biggest supporters of I trust my ears. I am sure we could find a few willing subjects. Seriously, that would be great and maybe after the economic fallout of the pandemic has shaken out we could actually start such a fund. I know that at a head-fi meet I hosted about 5 or so years back I did a 7 subject, multiple trial blind listening test and nobody could detect the 320mp3 from the lossless master it was made from. Two of the subjects going into it were so convinced that they could because they had been doing sighted testing at home and could tell the difference between such files. Suffice to say they slunk away with their tail between their legs once they saw that they couldn't tell the difference.

 

[bigshot]

It doesn't take a lot to do a controlled listening test. Usually all it takes is about three hours, under $50 in equipment, a friend and an open mind. I'm sure all science deniers have the first two. Maybe the first three... But it's the last one that is the big problem. We can spend a lot of money on equipment and people in white coats with clipboards and it wouldn't mean anything if the person is bound and determined to lie to himself. He'll just find an excuse to nitpick the results. People need to learn for themselves. You can't force it on them.

We did have one guy come in here swearing that he heard a difference between DACs. I shepherded him through the process of doing a controlled listening test (while everyone else tried to tell him it wouldn't count unless he adhered to grossly impractical standards) and he came out the other end unscathed convinced that his big bucks DAC sounded exactly like his regular one. That was one of the best days of my life, not because he agreed with my findings, but because he had the dedication to actually do a test to find out for himself. It takes integrity to admit you were wrong. Too many people figure that anonymity in chat rooms means that they don't need to be honest, not just with other people, but with yourself too.

 

[jagwap]

There is burn in on some products.

There is scientific evidence of this. I linked to some of it before.

However, if you are determined not to hear it in even the best run double blind test, you won't because of your own bias.

How can I convince you if you've already made up your mind?

In all truth I cannot be bothered, but when you belittle other's views, when the may be right, but it doesn't fit your world view, well I think it needs pointing out that in this you may not be automatically right.

 

[bigshot]

You have said there is burn in on speakers, but when I asked for your info, you told
me it was proprietary information.

 

[jagwap]

You have said there is burn in on speakers, but when I asked for your info, you told
me it was proprietary information.

No I didn't. I added a link to the Klippel paper on the change in measurements that occur after burn-in.

My info, as to who I work for, and any internal report are proprietary of course, and I will not risk my career to correct someone with less information.