[Glmoneydawg]

I take it as a given that placebo effect is very strong in audio.

Although we don't have a number like "40% of perceived sound quality is imaginary" or anything like that, one only need to look at studies of other markets to see how easily it can happen.

Wine with a higher price tag on it actually tastes better. It's still cheap wine, but people enjoy it more.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170814092949.htm

Food with interesting, cartoony packaging tastes better to children.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488606/

If this effect *didn't* extend to audio equipment, it would be very odd. So, we might expect to see that more expensive (but physically identical) cables actually sound subjectively better (not that the signal improves, just that people experience better sound) and that's basically what we observe.

This is probably why even the most staunchly performance-focused audio manufacturers also typically pay attention to fit, finish, materials, industrial design, packaging, etc... everything that affects your perception of and feelings about the gear also has the potential to affect how it sounds to you.

Even beyond the sound quality...if you are gonna sell upmarket your product better be very well constructed and look great....this isn't exclusive to audio.

 

[robthemac]

I take it as a given that placebo effect is very strong in audio.

I agree, but I think that people underestimate its prevalence and power. Also, people think that the placebo effect is something that happens to others, not themselves.

I also agree that visual aspects play a part. It is also reflected in studies on packaging and labelling of placebos.

I also think there are other reasons for devices to look and feel good. It's a lot easier for me to get approval from my better half, for one....

 

[bigshot]

The whole point of placebo is that you aren't consciously aware of its effects. It makes sense that people ignore it, or try to underplay it. Combine that with the egotist's need to be infallible and you've got a stubborn brick wall defense that a donkey couldn't even muster up.

 

[robthemac]

Combine that with the egotist's need to be infallible and you've got a stubborn brick wall defense that a donkey couldn't even muster up.

And a horde of people with $500 cables....

 

[castleofargh]

I personally don't have any doubt that placebo effects are involved in audio. If a product is expensive, beautiful, and made by a highly regarded company, I would expect a significant placebo effect. If such a placebo effect enables people to enjoy their equipment and music more, I suppose that's not entirely a bad thing, but IMO it's a different matter when someone is stretching financially to buy something which makes little or no difference, hoping and believing that it makes a significant difference.

But I think there are also some real challenges with objectively ruling out objective differences based on finite sets of objective measurements, or based on theoretical arguments.

of course placebo and preconceptions can make someone enjoy music more. no question about that. topics like this one and in general this entire section of the forum are for people who want to know if the magic is effectively in the sound or not. some like myself get very unhappy when there is doubt lingering around on that matter. it's an active decision to go look for that. we never force anybody to do it if they don't want to.
what ends up having guys like me clashing with people happy in their own mind construct, is that those guys come push their subjective reality onto everybody else and call it fact. that wouldn't happen if they weren't so ignorant of their own condition. a great many audiophiles get offended when you doubt what they claim to have heard or what they remember about it. they take it as a personal attack because the only explanation they come up with in their mind is that we think they are mental, or lying. if they really understood how omnipresent biases are, how human senses cannot be consciously separated from each others, or how flawed our memory is, they wouldn't get mad. doubting their sighted tests would just be stating the obvious.
sadly we have daily examples that people don't know, don't understand, or don't accept that could happen to them.

I conduct a lot of personal tests for myself(I think one a week is a conservative estimate). I don't post the results unless they become relevant for a topic and I really put serious efforts for them to be reliable, because I don't think of most of my tests as rigorous enough to be evidence of something other than for me on my gears for my use. also most of the time my tests are about trying to prove myself wrong. and luckily enough, a majority of time I fail to do it so my results are that I have no result. not something of much value to share with others. "hey guys, look here I have proof that my hearing sucks!", would be the main idea behind most of my experiment results. ^_^

because I know all I've learned about sound and myself from doing those amateur experiments, I admit that I am biased in favor of other people who also conduct controlled tests. I assume they understand things better and can draw conclusions more in line with their data. on the other hand, for self proclaimed subjectivists doing only sighted tests, I basically trust nothing they say. maybe they're right, maybe they aren't, but as I can't tell and they also can't. so what is the point? better reject the all thing and wait for actual evidence IMO.

 

[Phronesis]

of course placebo and preconceptions can make someone enjoy music more. no question about that. topics like this one and in general this entire section of the forum are for people who want to know if the magic is effectively in the sound or not. some like myself get very unhappy when there is doubt lingering around on that matter. it's an active decision to go look for that. we never force anybody to do it if they don't want to.
what ends up having guys like me clashing with people happy in their own mind construct, is that those guys come push their subjective reality onto everybody else and call it fact. that wouldn't happen if they weren't so ignorant of their own condition. a great many audiophiles get offended when you doubt what they claim to have heard or what they remember about it. they take it as a personal attack because the only explanation they come up with in their mind is that we think they are mental, or lying. if they really understood how omnipresent biases are, how human senses cannot be consciously separated from each others, or how flawed our memory is, they wouldn't get mad. doubting their sighted tests would just be stating the obvious.
sadly we have daily examples that people don't know, don't understand, or don't accept that could happen to them.

I conduct a lot of personal tests for myself(I think one a week is a conservative estimate). I don't post the results unless they become relevant for a topic and I really put serious efforts for them to be reliable, because I don't think of most of my tests as rigorous enough to be evidence of something other than for me on my gears for my use. also most of the time my tests are about trying to prove myself wrong. and luckily enough, a majority of time I fail to do it so my results are that I have no result. not something of much value to share with others. "hey guys, look here I have proof that my hearing sucks!", would be the main idea behind most of my experiment results. ^_^

because I know all I've learned about sound and myself from doing those amateur experiments, I admit that I am biased in favor of other people who also conduct controlled tests. I assume they understand things better and can draw conclusions more in line with their data. on the other hand, for self proclaimed subjectivists doing only sighted tests, I basically trust nothing they say. maybe they're right, maybe they aren't, but as I can't tell and they also can't. so what is the point? better reject the all thing and wait for actual evidence IMO.

The research on subconscious cognitive biases goes back decades, and I've been working to apply it to improve judgment and decision-making in engineering. We're certainly all subject to these biases, and they can hugely impact our lives. I like studying the lives of highly successful people, and my impression is that they tend to do a better than average job of detecting and mitigating biases (Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are good examples in the world of investing). And of course this is really important in science too.

The basic problem here is that, because these biases operate mainly at a subconsciously level, they're somewhat invisible - or at least cloaked - so it's inherently difficult to detect and mitigate them. So I sympathize with people who sometimes make bad judgments and decisions because of these biases, since I surely do too!

Another complication is that it's somewhat natural and not entirely unreasonable for people to trust their perceptions and intuitions, and to sometimes have conviction about them. So it can be very difficult to convince someone that something they heard wasn't real.

As far as gathering, accepting, and rejecting evidence, as I said in the other thread, I try to be pragmatic and scale my efforts based on what's at stake for me. I don't feel a particular calling to try to enlighten others, but I help where I can. I was in the audio shop a while back and a customer was struggling over how to allocated his headgear budget. He was contemplating stretching to buying a $4500 McIntosh DAC/amp, and I suggested that he compare it with my $500 Mojo. I sincerely told the sales guy that if the McIntosh sounds significantly better (which I hoped would be the case), I'll likely buy one. We picked some good tracks on Tidal, matched levels as best we could, used a decent headphone (Utopia), and both compared (sighted tests). Neither of us heard much (if any) difference, though I thought maybe the Mojo sounded a bit better. I think I saved him a lot of money, and I don't think he cared about the McIntosh look or name.

 

[Zapp_Fan]

The power of the human mind to erroneously convince itself it's seen or heard something is hard to overstate. If you've ever been to a hypnosis show, you can see the types of things people think they see / hear / feel when nothing more than a few laughs are at stake. Now imagine what audiophiles can do when thousands of dollars and personal dignity are on the line!

 

[Phronesis]

The power of the human mind to erroneously convince itself it's seen or heard something is hard to overstate. If you've ever been to a hypnosis show, you can see the types of things people think they see / hear / feel when nothing more than a few laughs are at stake. Now imagine what audiophiles can do when thousands of dollars and personal dignity are on the line!

To provide some balance though, as Gerd Gigerenzer and others have argued, our biases are inherent to heuristic shortcuts which are wired into us from our evolutionary history. These heuristics have been and still are necessary to make reasonably accurate judgments and decisions in real-world timeframes, given the finite limits of our cognitive processing capability. We can't methodically deliberate through all of the situations we face in our daily lives. The way our brains/minds work is in some ways a curse, but can also be a blessing, such as when we enjoy music.

 

[Zapp_Fan]

True enough, I am mostly being silly here. Have you read Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman? It's a great treatment of cognitive biases and how they're apparently meant to save time / effort. He doesn't go much into perceptual bias (well, at least, not up to where I am in the book) but it's a very good general overview.

 

[Phronesis]

True enough, I am mostly being silly here. Have you read Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman? It's a great treatment of cognitive biases and how they're apparently meant to save time / effort. He doesn't go much into perceptual bias (well, at least, not up to where I am in the book) but it's a very good general overview.

Yup, that would be the first book I would recommend as an entry to this topic. Kahneman is excellent and lives up to the hype (he's a rival of Gigerenzer to some extent, and Gigerenzer is worth listening to also).

I too would like to read more about perceptual biases, and will appreciate any recommendations.

 

[castleofargh]

if audiophiles can't find it in them to look up placebos and preconceptions in wikipedia despite how often they get to read it mentioned by annoying dudes, I doubt they would go read psychology books.
I enjoyed a bunch of Kanhneman's books. all his seemingly random anecdotes often involving his buddy Amos something, and leading to cool observations and ideas. I felt that more than getting answer I was getting a different way to look at the world.
got the same impressions from a few light scientific books, like the one on Feynman life, I'm always shocked by how similar those people can be in how they simply look at the world from a different reference point. and just that changes everything.
I'm usually an avid reader of the useless, mainly SF(I love original ideas), and had no particular interest in psychology. at least I thought so. turns out I love that stuff.^_^
not directly in the same vein of topics, but certainly interesting and with some ideas we can't help to project on audiophiles impulse purchases, I really learned a lot from The marshmallow test. also a pretty easy read for noobs like myself.

I remember Gigerenzer from Ted talks or stuff like that but never looked for his books. what he said seemed much more obvious and as such less attractive to me. but maybe that's because he has to discuss simple stuff on such a platform?


wow I don't think I've ever made so many off topic posts in one day. I blame you so that I don't have to reflect on it.

 

[KeithEmo]

Along with strictly psychological issues like cognitive bias, I find that many audiophiles seem to be either unwilling or unable to understand certain fine nuances of meaning.
And I find that this specifically seems to relate to many of the apparent disagreements in this particular forum.
In many of the tests I've read about, the protocols used are seriously limited, or actually flawed.

And, in MANY cases, people try to use the results of tests to bolster their arguments when the results themselves simply fail to do so.
For example, you could test a few dozen people, or even a few hundred, and conclude that "peanuts are not toxic to humans".
(The reality is that peanuts are perfectly safe for most people, cause slight allergic reactions in some people, and are quite lethally toxic to a very few.)

As an example of the problem.... to pick a subject that's a personal favorite of mine......
"Is there an audible difference between high-resolution and CD resolution audio files?"

This seems to be a very simple question, which suggests that a simple answer might in fact be found....
HOWEVER, actually designing a protocol to test it properly is rather complex, and the details of such a test will depend on your goals.

For example, let's say my goal is to determine: "If most people can tell the difference between 16/44k and 24/96k files."
(This would be the sort of question I would want to know if I sold high-res files, or a player that plays them, or even a magazine that reviews them.)
To test it, I would probably make up a group of ten files... composed of a random mix of different resolutions...
Then I would pick a random sample of 100 people, ask each to rate which files they thought were high-resolution, and then correlate the results.
A good correlation between their guesses and the actual sample rates of the individual files would indicate that "most of them noticed a difference".
And a poor correlation (approaching random) would indicate that most of my test subjects hadn't been able to tell the difference.

However, you have to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL to avoid "reading things into the results that aren't there".
Let's just assume, for the sake of our discussion, that, out of 1000 total guesses, 516 were correct and 484 were wrong (we required each person to pick one or the other).

From an "overall statistical view" our results would seem to show that "the majority of people cannot tell the difference most of the time".
(516/1000 is well within random variation for a sample of that size.)
And, so, if our goal was "to find out whether the majority of people could tell the difference" then we have probably got a usable result (the result being "no").

HOWEVER, have we proven that "there is no audible difference"?
Not at all.
What if it turned out that, out of our 100 participants, five of them (that's 5% of our sample) were right 90% of the time?
We would then have a very positive correlation with a specific portion of our test sample.
If even one person could tell with 90% accuracy, then we have a pretty good case to claim that "at least some people can probably tell the difference with good reliability"...
And, if five people guessed with 90% accuracy, we would have an even better case to claim that "a significant minority of people seem able to tell the difference with good reliability"...
(However, notice that, if we'd only looked at the overall number, we would have missed that significant portion of the result.)

Now, which result is "the correct one"?
The answer is: BOTH OF THEM.
However, which result might be more useful to you or I may depend on what we want to use it for.
- If I'm setting up a new "easy listening broadcast radio station" for the general public, I would probably conclude that "most of my intended audience won't notice the difference".
- BUT, if I was setting up "a new audiophile radio station for discerning listeners", I might decide that many of the members of my target audience would be among the 5% who notice.
- So, if the goal of my study was: "To find out if MOST people can hear the difference", I would have a result: NO.
- BUT, if the goal of my study was: "To find out if there was an audible difference", I would also have a result: YES (because I have several test subjects who rated very highly).
- AND, if I personally am trying to decide whether it's worth buying high-resolution files, then that result would be somewhat inconclusive.
(If that's the case then my best bet is to take the test myself.)

Note also that our results would absolutely suggest further study.
After all, there is some statistical probability that, by random chance, some of my subjects will score far better than the random average.
(Flipping a coin and getting ten heads in a row by random chance is extremely unlikely, but the odds aren't actually 0%.)
Statistics tell us that, if only one person guessed with 90% accuracy, there's a good chance it's random; but, if five people guessed with 90% accuracy, the odds of that are lower.
We've also only determined our results with certain music samples, certain associated equipment, and under certain test conditions.

We always need to consider how our test conditions relate to real world usage conditions:
- perhaps, with a different set of speakers, the results would be the same - perhaps not.
- perhaps we would get different results with speakers - or with headphones
- perhaps the results would be different with different types of music.
- perhaps, if my new audiophile radio station is going to be dedicated to 70's and 80's era rock music, it might be a good idea to run a test specifically with those.
- and, if I'm hoping to attract 50 and 60 year old listeners, perhaps I should be more interested in what they hear than in what high-school students notice
- (and perhaps people would score better after being "trained" by hearing both versions of all the files first)

As a "science oriented discussion area" it would be really nice if people would be, well, more detailed and scientific about both their claims and their conclusions

 

[castleofargh]

agreed. we could say that we're a good example of scientific vulgarization gone wrong. scientific research leads to myth and marketing tricks just as often as it leads to a better understanding of sounds or listeners. also the very first thing a person not familiar with science will do, is pass all the warnings, all the conditions for the test, and go straight for the conclusion. then he will tend to apply that conclusion to a lot of non applicable situations. the very concept of conditional truth is pretty foreign to the audiophile hobby.
and that's when we have proper data to begin with. in practice people grab on to any random extraordinary anecdote they have, and run with it as if it was a new law of physics. that I find really scary. someone who misread a question and turns it into whatever he's interested in, it's wrong, but I get it. we're audiophiles, we're egoistic by nature. but that ability to turn any random accident into rules, that stuff is nasty. it pollutes all discussions.

 

[sonitus mirus]

The research on subconscious cognitive biases goes back decades, and I've been working to apply it to improve judgment and decision-making in engineering. We're certainly all subject to these biases, and they can hugely impact our lives. I like studying the lives of highly successful people, and my impression is that they tend to do a better than average job of detecting and mitigating biases (Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are good examples in the world of investing). And of course this is really important in science too.

The basic problem here is that, because these biases operate mainly at a subconsciously level, they're somewhat invisible - or at least cloaked - so it's inherently difficult to detect and mitigate them. So I sympathize with people who sometimes make bad judgments and decisions because of these biases, since I surely do too!

Another complication is that it's somewhat natural and not entirely unreasonable for people to trust their perceptions and intuitions, and to sometimes have conviction about them. So it can be very difficult to convince someone that something they heard wasn't real.

As far as gathering, accepting, and rejecting evidence, as I said in the other thread, I try to be pragmatic and scale my efforts based on what's at stake for me. I don't feel a particular calling to try to enlighten others, but I help where I can. I was in the audio shop a while back and a customer was struggling over how to allocated his headgear budget. He was contemplating stretching to buying a $4500 McIntosh DAC/amp, and I suggested that he compare it with my $500 Mojo. I sincerely told the sales guy that if the McIntosh sounds significantly better (which I hoped would be the case), I'll likely buy one. We picked some good tracks on Tidal, matched levels as best we could, used a decent headphone (Utopia), and both compared (sighted tests). Neither of us heard much (if any) difference, though I thought maybe the Mojo sounded a bit better. I think I saved him a lot of money, and I don't think he cared about the McIntosh look or name.

What if your Mojo products aren't actually audibly superior to many other similar devices costing a fraction of the amount? What biases are you gravitating towards that makes you believe the Mojo is any better than a McIntosh or a cheap Schiit product? If there is a difference, it can't be much, can it? I would think any differences should be insignificant, unless you really like to see a light turn on to confirm a specific format is playing. I think I could save that same person even more money.

 

[Phronesis]

I remember Gigerenzer from Ted talks or stuff like that but never looked for his books. what he said seemed much more obvious and as such less attractive to me. but maybe that's because he has to discuss simple stuff on such a platform?

From what I've seen, his books for the general reader are a bit light, and his books for specialists are quite dense. I haven't yet found anything in between from him.