[Arny Krueger]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

Ethan Winer wrote:
On Feb 24, 9:16 am, (Scott Dorsey)
wrote:
Julian Hirsch's philosophy seemed to be that the
metrics he had at the time were wonderful and if there
were audible differences they should be ignored and
people who heard them should be belittled.

I don't entirely disagree, but that omits the very real
and pervasive placebo effect, and expectation bias etc.
For example, if someone insisted to you that their CDs
sound better after applying a green felt marker to the
edges, what would you tell them?

Been there, done that.

Same for someone who
claims raising up their speaker wires on "cable
elevators" improved the sound.

By the time I saw that fad manifest itself right before my face I wasn't so
much into tilting at windmills.

All claims of sound differences are not real.

Strictly speaking they are real to the claimants if they are sincere. What's
lacking is general applicability and reliability.

So in cases like this, the
first step is to use a blind test to see if the
differences are real or just imagined.

There are some "hot" words in there that may not help our cause a lot.

Oh, absolutely. But you have to actually DO the test,
you can't just wave your hands around and say "that won't
show up in a blind test" and ignore it.

We would go crazy trying to do everybody's testing for them.

I have heard a lot of things that I wouldn't have
expected to hear, and
some of them turned out to make sense when investigated
more carefully and some didn't. For example... those
cable elevators... do they actually change the coupling
of the speaker to the floor through a heavy cable?

If the cable is big enough to be acoustically signfiicant, is it still
really a cable?

Does the speaker have to be propped back a couple degrees
to make them fit?

No.

Those side-effects can change the sound
a lot and sometimes that's a good thing.

I don't know of anyway that people are helped by increasing their belief in
audio placeboes.

I was reviewing for a high end magazine and tried this
big metal block on my amplifier... and it really did sound better.

woo-woo-woo-woo!

A single-blind test showed it sounded better.

A single blind test is a DBT that is defective. Wise people don't go there,
ever since Clever Hans back in the early 1800s.

Then I tried
a cinderblock from the backyard,
and that did the same thing....

Just because it is cheap doesn't mean it is right.

now I have my amplifier
on a more sturdy support and I use less microphonic input
tubes.... --scott

Oh, tubes! Well getting rid of the microphonc tubes was a good idea, but
the best way to do that involves a bit of modernization...