Walter Bushell wrote:

In article , chung
wrote:
Snip

Sure, that's why DBT's of speakers are rather moot. But cables? You can
be sure that the powers of perception will overcome the subtle
differences, if any exist.


Snip

So if your funds are limited put your money into things that survive DBT.
Better speakers rather than expensive cable, for example.

BTW Radio Shack solid core cable 18 guage gets an OK rating from
"Sterophile". 3.99 60ft spool.

Ecch. 18 gauge is *tiny* wire. OTOH, 12 gauge from Home Depot
will run you a few more cents a foot and do a superb job, even
on long runs.

Panzzi wrote:
"josko" wrote in
:

Isn't this a case of circular reasoning? Cheap cable -- poor
quality. Expensive cable -- high quality. Sighted test reveals, to
you, that expensive cable sounds better than the cheap cable, on
some ad-hoc measure(s) that is/are relevant to you. Not surprising
really. You start with a hypothesis that there should be a
difference in sound between the two and then you find the evidence
that this indeed is the case. Ah... Human nature. Isn't
confirmatory hypothesis testing wonderful? And quite a problem to
overcome if one's goal is to judge equipment based on the sound
alone.

I totally agree with you that cheap cable doesn't necessary mean poor
quality; expensive cable doesn't necessary mean high quality.

But what you tried to say (if I understand it right) is because
somebody start up "wanting" to distinguish sonic difference between
two cables, then he/she already bias?

What about somebody start up "wanting" to prove that there is no sonic
difference between two cables, then he/she is not bias?

And could somebody correct me if I am wrong...

Panzzi, you are right. Every evaluation should be done totally neutral, that
is why DBT is used. Of course the testing has to be done honestly, i.e. when
you hear a difference it should be also noted down. It is one preposition of
scientific approach to only valuate objective criteria, which is why DBT has
been developed.
Even if the sensation is a subjective quality, applying a technique like DBT
objectizes the results. Furthermore only a significant number of testers
will validate the results.


Proved something not true doesn't always directly means that it is
true?

I don't get it...

I do not get your logic either, you meant: it isn't

Panzzi

--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy

"Michael Scarpitti" wrote in message
news:Hr6ec.9443$_K3.48405@attbi_s53...
*snip*
...

They are saying that if you saw what you are listening to, then your
ability to differentiate subtle differences will be affected.

Prove that!

This has been proven over and over to you through the experience of many
listening tests. If you can hear a difference while sighted, and fail to
discern under blind conditions, the sighted test must be flawed. In order
for this to be proven to your satisfaction, apparently you will have to
engage in a blind listening test yourself, and you have thus far refused to
entertain the possibility. This is what we call self-defeating.

*snip*

It's actually like this: you must be wrong if you say that you cannot be
mistaken.

I *could* be mistaken (in principle) but it is NOT true that I *must*
be mistaken.


You have yet to admit that you could have been mistaken. The reason you
were likely to have been mistaken was the well know psycological effets of
bias.

Although in the case of magic green pens, I would say that you *must* be
mistaken if you can hear differences .

On what grounds? That is an empirical claim, is it not? It cannot be
true that I *must* be mistaken unless there is a flaw of logic. There
is no contradiction in saying I heard differences with a green edge
pen, now is there?

If you listened to 2 CDs that were physically identical and claimed to hear
a difference between them, would you agree that you were mistaken in what
you thought you heard, or would you insist that something must have been
changed between the disks? (Perhaps one was subjected to lower temperatures
during shipping, etc.) As regards as a green pen treated CD, there is no
physical property that can account for a change in sound any more that in
the example of the 2 identical CDs.

I *may* be mistaken (though the likelihood is
remote) but not because I saw what I was listening to.

That's one of the key points of the debate. We believe a very good
reason for you to be mistaken is if you know what you are listening to.
And you seem to think that you are above that.

The existence, degree, and effectiveness of this 'bias' is not
established to my satisfaction. You cannot exclude, a priori, the
possibility that I can hear differences between $100 Monster cable and
$50 Monster cable interconnect. You cannot merely claim that because I
can see which one is which that makes any perception of sonic
differences completely false. That strong a claim is not supportable.

As has been said many times, it may not invalidate a priori what you thought
you heard, but that fact that you used an inherently unreliable testing
protocol means that the test results require validation via a reliable (ie
blind) testing protocol in order to be validated. Why do you continue to
deny this requirement?

I find it surprising that when listening to 7 different power amps, I
heard 7 distincly different sonic signatures. Of these, i was
'expecting' the best performance from the Harman Kardon. It was, in
fact, one of the worst. Any 'bias' hypothesis has a severe problem
with such an outcome. It is in fact a counter-example, and that alone
is enough to discredit the hypothesis altogether.

This has again been explained to you ad-nauseum. Go back and re-read either
this or any other related thread to find out how this works. Bias is not
limited to meaning "you heard what you expected to hear", and since you
claim you had no expectations, you were therefore immune to bias. It
doesn't work that way.

*snip*
You need a different kind of test. You need a large sample of
*qualified* people to listen to two products and offer their opinions.
By 'qualified', I mean people who are experienced in listening to
high-quality audio equipment. If 75% of those queried hear a
difference, then that is significant.

Well, how exactly would you conduct this kind of test? What is the
sample size? Who declares the tester "qualified"? How do you do level
matching and other things to make sure that you are really comparing
only two things?

These are not difficult questions. If anyone is interested, he can
arrange for such an experiment. I have no interest in doing so.

And why would you need a different kind of test? Isn't it the most
important to you whether *you* can tell the difference?

Absolutely. I could not care less what anyone else thinks.

So why don't you construct a blind test with someone doing the product
switching for you? Put the question of what you can and can't hear to bed
once and for all?

*snip*
No, DBT cannot. All it can tell is whether the issue is indeterminate.
A negative result in a DBT is an indeterminate result.


A negative result means you cannot tell the two things apart.

Under what conditions? With what kind of equipment? With my Stax
electrostatic headphones (driven by the power amp) I can hear all
kinds of things that might not be audible listeing to speakers. Most
speakers offer far less resolution that Stax Earspeakers. It is easy
to imagine that the negative result simply reflects the fact that the
system being used to test the component is insuficiently transparent.

Why is
that indeterminate, especially given how easy you can tell them apart in
sighted testing?

It was not 'negative'. I heard the differences.

A statistically meaningful negative result in a dbt would, in fact, prove
that you couldn't hear any differences. Explain how again that would be
indeterminate?

And a positive result would mean that there are indeed sonic
differences. Hey, you can tell those skeptics that they are wrong after
all, that the green pen really works! Isn't that priceless?

I am certain that I heard the improvement on *some* discs. I do not
know why. The effect was subtle (basically, less noise) and did not
occur with all discs. This means that there are some aspects of the
way some discs are recorded or manufactured that are susceptible to
excess noise that the green edging in some way minimizes. It seemed to
have more effect on poorly-recorded discs.

See previous discussion of green pens above. Please answer the following
question to be sure we all understand your position. You are given two
identical in appearence CDs. Upon listening to them, you decide that they
sound different. Perhaps one seems to have more air around the instruments.
Please explain this phenomenon.

*snip*

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:27:43 +0000, Panzzi wrote:

But what you tried to say (if I understand it right) is because somebody
start up "wanting" to distinguish sonic difference between two cables,
then he/she already bias?

What about somebody start up "wanting" to prove that there is no sonic
difference between two cables, then he/she is not bias?

And could somebody correct me if I am wrong...

The point is that you don't even need to consciously "want" a certain
result for sighted factors to influence a person's perception of an item's
quality or performance. That's one reason that product designers spend so
much time on the visual appearance of a product (along with its packaging,
marketing and so on.) They are trying to introduce, at the very least, a
subconscious bias in favor of their product.

So, yes, wanting to prove a difference between two items is bias. Wanting
to prove NO difference is also a bias. And that bias - whether conscious
or subconscious - can impact the opinion a person has about a product.

A properly designed and implemented DBT helps reduce the bias factor to a
random outcome because neither test subject or test administrator know the
identity of the product in question until after the test is over.

That said, this discussion has taken on aspects of "how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin?" I enjoy audio equipment as a hobby because I
also love music. So I certainly don't mind when my conscious and
unconscious biases aid my perception of enjoyment of music. It is not
necessary for every aspect of my system to gave gone through a DBT before
I can enjoy it. Conversely, I also don't find it necessary to begrudge
those who have done research that suggest some of my choices have a
non-factual, subjective quality about them.

Hopefully for most of us, at some point it does get back to the music. ;-)

-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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"Bruce Abrams" wrote in message
...
"Michael Scarpitti" wrote in message
news:Hr6ec.9443$_K3.48405@attbi_s53...
*snip*
..

They are saying that if you saw what you are listening to, then your
ability to differentiate subtle differences will be affected.

Prove that!

This has been proven over and over to you through the experience of many
listening tests. If you can hear a difference while sighted, and fail to
discern under blind conditions, the sighted test must be flawed.

Or the blind test itself is flawed or not appropriate for this particular
purpose.

In order
for this to be proven to your satisfaction, apparently you will have to
engage in a blind listening test yourself, and you have thus far refused
to
entertain the possibility. This is what we call self-defeating.


It is totally his choice and is not self-defeating if he is willing to live
with the results achieved with his approach/techniques. He feels this
change on this particular test is as low as you feel it is high on the green
pen test.

*snip*

It's actually like this: you must be wrong if you say that you cannot
be
mistaken.

I *could* be mistaken (in principle) but it is NOT true that I *must*
be mistaken.


You have yet to admit that you could have been mistaken. The reason you
were likely to have been mistaken was the well know psycological effets of
bias.


Not true. He has said the same thing in several earlier posts, and his
logic is correct.

Although in the case of magic green pens, I would say that you *must*
be
mistaken if you can hear differences .

On what grounds? That is an empirical claim, is it not? It cannot be
true that I *must* be mistaken unless there is a flaw of logic. There
is no contradiction in saying I heard differences with a green edge
pen, now is there?


Logically you are correct. He is just convinced that the green pen effect
is bogus, so he is discounting the logic.

If you listened to 2 CDs that were physically identical and claimed to
hear
a difference between them, would you agree that you were mistaken in what
you thought you heard, or would you insist that something must have been
changed between the disks? (Perhaps one was subjected to lower ?
temperatures during shipping, etc.) As regards as a green pen treated
CD, there is no physical property that can account for a change in sound
any more that in the example of the 2 identical CDs.

I *may* be mistaken (though the likelihood is
remote) but not because I saw what I was listening to.

That's one of the key points of the debate. We believe a very good
reason for you to be mistaken is if you know what you are listening
to.
And you seem to think that you are above that.

The existence, degree, and effectiveness of this 'bias' is not
established to my satisfaction. You cannot exclude, a priori, the
possibility that I can hear differences between $100 Monster cable and
$50 Monster cable interconnect. You cannot merely claim that because I
can see which one is which that makes any perception of sonic
differences completely false. That strong a claim is not supportable.

As has been said many times, it may not invalidate a priori what you
thought
you heard, but that fact that you used an inherently unreliable testing
protocol means that the test results require validation via a reliable (ie
blind) testing protocol in order to be validated. Why do you continue to
deny this requirement?


They don't require any validation whatsoever so long as he can live with the
possibility / results of being wrong. As he apparently can with no problem.

I find it surprising that when listening to 7 different power amps, I
heard 7 distincly different sonic signatures. Of these, i was
'expecting' the best performance from the Harman Kardon. It was, in
fact, one of the worst. Any 'bias' hypothesis has a severe problem
with such an outcome. It is in fact a counter-example, and that alone
is enough to discredit the hypothesis altogether.

This has again been explained to you ad-nauseum. Go back and re-read
either
this or any other related thread to find out how this works. Bias is not
limited to meaning "you heard what you expected to hear", and since you
claim you had no expectations, you were therefore immune to bias. It
doesn't work that way.


The kind of "expectation bias" cited by folks here (e.g. people "expected" a
switch but the sample wasn't changed) is *exactly* that kind of bias.

*snip*
You need a different kind of test. You need a large sample of
*qualified* people to listen to two products and offer their
opinions.
By 'qualified', I mean people who are experienced in listening to
high-quality audio equipment. If 75% of those queried hear a
difference, then that is significant.

Well, how exactly would you conduct this kind of test? What is the
sample size? Who declares the tester "qualified"? How do you do level
matching and other things to make sure that you are really comparing
only two things?

These are not difficult questions. If anyone is interested, he can
arrange for such an experiment. I have no interest in doing so.

And why would you need a different kind of test? Isn't it the most
important to you whether *you* can tell the difference?

Absolutely. I could not care less what anyone else thinks.

So why don't you construct a blind test with someone doing the product
switching for you? Put the question of what you can and can't hear to bed
once and for all?


Because it is a question to you, not to him.

*snip*
No, DBT cannot. All it can tell is whether the issue is
indeterminate.
A negative result in a DBT is an indeterminate result.


A negative result means you cannot tell the two things apart.

Under what conditions? With what kind of equipment? With my Stax
electrostatic headphones (driven by the power amp) I can hear all
kinds of things that might not be audible listeing to speakers. Most
speakers offer far less resolution that Stax Earspeakers. It is easy
to imagine that the negative result simply reflects the fact that the
system being used to test the component is insuficiently transparent.

Why is
that indeterminate, especially given how easy you can tell them apart
in
sighted testing?

It was not 'negative'. I heard the differences.

A statistically meaningful negative result in a dbt would, in fact, prove
that you couldn't hear any differences. Explain how again that would be
indeterminate?


No, it would prove he couldn't hear a difference *using that test* *at that
time*. Not that a difference doesn't exist. A "null result" does not prove
a negative. Nor does a null result in a dbt prove anything unless the test
itself has been validated agains some proven standard of known difference,
which in the open ended evaluation of audio components is extremely
difficult since all kinds of differences may/may not emerge with critical
listening but may be missed in a quick comparison if one's ear/brain is not
allowed time to adjust to what one is listening for.

And a positive result would mean that there are indeed sonic
differences. Hey, you can tell those skeptics that they are wrong
after
all, that the green pen really works! Isn't that priceless?

I am certain that I heard the improvement on *some* discs. I do not
know why. The effect was subtle (basically, less noise) and did not
occur with all discs. This means that there are some aspects of the
way some discs are recorded or manufactured that are susceptible to
excess noise that the green edging in some way minimizes. It seemed to
have more effect on poorly-recorded discs.

See previous discussion of green pens above. Please answer the following
question to be sure we all understand your position. You are given two
identical in appearence CDs. Upon listening to them, you decide that they
sound different. Perhaps one seems to have more air around the
instruments.
Please explain this phenomenon.

If I may presume to answer for Michael, that one is easy. The two cd's are
not identical, appearances notwithstanding. Nor is a "green pen" disk
identical to an unmarked disk no matter how much you discount the
possibility that the green pen has any effect.


*snip*

Panzzi wrote:
chung wrote in
news:WOBdc.106144$w54.751724@attbi_s01:

The issue is not whether there are real differences in cables. The
issue is someone believes strongly that since he heard those
differences in a sighted test, then those differences *must* be real,
in a sonic sense. The disagreement then, of course, is on whether
perceptual bias can affect what one believes one hears. On one side,
the poster believes that perceptual bias could never explain those
differences that he knows he hears for sure. On the other side, we
have those who believe in the effect of bias overwhelming sublte
differences, and that belief is based on personal experience as well
as published research decades old.

Thank you Chung for your reply.

You brought out a very interesting point (at least to me though): If
someone can make a cable that visually lead to another beleive that it is
better than the others, don't you think they are quite successful?

That's a rather moot point. Success of the cable company is not part of
the debate.

And as
a matter of fact, when I picked up a speaker cable, I would not know what
is inside, what material or technology they claimed they used. If that is
the case, how can that affect my judgement? Would it be the packaging of
cables? Or the appearance of the cables?

For one thing, price? For another, there are a myriad of factors
affecting your perception: matching of levels in comparision, your mood,
etc. If you believe that cable differences are subtle at best, those
factors must be controlled for.


I wouldn't say you are wrong, since you really believe that you heard
those differences. I would say that if you do a careful bias
controlled test, you may not hear those differences.

But in a "normal" world, do we have to do a DBT like 20 times before we
can open our eyes to see what cables we just plug into our system? I
mean, in a testing environment, it might work; but for everyday life, how
can you do that.

You don't have to do that. You can buy whatever you want. In cables, I
recommend 12 ga. from retailers like Home Depot and Radio Shack. Reason
is that a cable is trivially easy to make transparent. But you can spend
your money any way you want.


I mean, even you go to Home Depot to pick up the ugly looking 12AWG zip-
cord, you will need to see them, right? But would that affect your
ability to "distinguish" it from the "other" cables since you have seen
it already, one way or the other, how can ensure yourself would not bias
on that zip-cord against another speaker cables?

My recommendation is that you don't need to distinguish the sound of the
HD cable from more expensive ones. But if you want to, make sure you
control for biases.

Anyone who obsesses over sound of cables have clearly the wrong
priority, IMO. But whatever method you use to pick your cable is OK with me.


Who cares if subjective listening rules or objectively listening
rules? And what does "rules" mean? By definition,listening is
subjective. In a case like cables, or green pens, sounding different,
fortunately the DBT can answer the question of whether those
differences are real audible differences.

By saying "rule", I mean whether subjective or objective will become the
mainstream of cable testing?

There is no such thing as "mainstream of cable testing".

Should we rely on the characteristic
(number) of the wire like the L, C, R, say if A wire has lower L than B
wire, then A is better than B. Or if I plug in A wire for you to listen,
and then plug in B wire afterward (signted most likely), you like B, then
B is better than A for you; I like A, then A is better than B for me.
Nobody should or can say, "hey, you are wrong! Because both A and B are
the same." I mean, I like A, it doesn't matter that you like A or B or
even C, that doesn't really concern you, right?

No need to do anything like that. All normal cables sound very, very
alike. It does not concern me at all what you like.

Now if you say cable A *must* sound different than cable B, as a
technical fact, then please provide some evidence. It could be
measurements, or controlled testing results.

Being open mind also means being aware of the powers of perceptual
bias. And being open mind does not mean that we will entertain any
crazy theory, like magic green pens improving sound, without asking
for proofs.

I tell you what, name any present technology was not started from "crazy
theory".

There are crazy theories like elephants can fly. You think that theory
would start any new technology?

Fifty years ago, if I told you you can carry a 3" x 2" little box and
talk to your grandma in England, would you think it is a crazy theory?


How about if today someone say that the cable needs to be broken in to
sound better. You think 50 years from now, that would be a valid theory?
How long have we been using cables?

How about green magic pens? You think 50 years from now, there will be
some truth to that theory?

Forty years ago, when you walk into a 200 sq.ft. room full of flashing
light equipment that you can only communicate with it through a 1" width
paper tape, if I told you you can "shrink" all these and place on your
lap and communicate with it through your own voice, would you think it is
a crazy theory?

And the example can go on and on and on...


And the counter examples go on and on. You have to exercise judgment
based on what we understand, and ask for proofs if something does not
agree with our current state of knowledge.

Think about it.

Why waste time?


Panzzi

Panzzi wrote:

"josko" wrote in
:

Isn't this a case of circular reasoning? Cheap cable -- poor quality.
Expensive cable -- high quality. Sighted test reveals, to you, that
expensive cable sounds better than the cheap cable, on some ad-hoc
measure(s) that is/are relevant to you. Not surprising really. You
start with a hypothesis that there should be a difference in sound
between the two and then you find the evidence that this indeed is the
case. Ah... Human nature. Isn't confirmatory hypothesis testing
wonderful? And quite a problem to overcome if one's goal is to judge
equipment based on the sound alone.

I totally agree with you that cheap cable doesn't necessary mean poor
quality; expensive cable doesn't necessary mean high quality.

But what you tried to say (if I understand it right) is because somebody
start up "wanting" to distinguish sonic difference between two cables,
then he/she already bias?

1. Physical reality (based on research in psychoacoustics and electrical
engineering) is such that there could not be an audible difference
between a $50 and a $100 Monster interconnect, unless one of them is
broken.

2. Also, we know (from psychology and from behavioral decision theory)
that confirmatory reasoning is one, only one mind you, bias exhibited by
decision makers. Basically it "biases" processing and evaluation of
informational inputs in such a way that "supports" some preconceived
notion, which could be either strongly or weakly held. "Quasi-experts"
are especially prone to this. This tendency manifests itself in
different ways. For example, once you think you've heard the
difference, you attend to the difference by paying special attention to
say "ability of the cable to resolve inner detail" and you "hear" that
effect over and over again. Also, biased decision maker typically
treats non-diagnostic information (not relevant for judgment) as being
diagnostic (relevant for judgment) for the judgment at hand. For
example, brand name, price, type of conductor (silver vs. copper)....
become important when judging cable sound even though they are not.
Decision makers need not to be always fully conscious of these
influences. Note: conductor and dielectric (say silver and teflon) may
be important in theory, but in practice they are not since they do not
change the signal sufficiently so that the change is detectable by ear,
unless the cable is deliberately designed to act as a tone control.

3. Put 1 and 2 together -- people hear difference between a $50 and a
$100 Monster interconnect in a sighted test. Conclusion: their
evaluation was biased.

Or, some audiophiles hear a difference between CDs treated with a green
pen and non treated CDs. Now, let's assume that this is a
representative sample of audiophiles, which it could be easily. This
would mean that the hearing acuity among audiophiles is binomially
distributed, which is simply impossible. The physical reality, but not
psychological reality, is such that the green pen could not possibly
work. Can you justify a preference based on psychological reality? Yes
of course. Can you say in these instance that your preference is based
on physical reality? Of course you can, but this being RAHE, i.e. the
free audio forum, somebody is going to raise a question mark sooner or
later.


What about somebody start up "wanting" to prove that there is no sonic
difference between two cables, then he/she is not bias?

Easy -- use a test with implemented bias controls (e.g., level matched
DBT).

TonyP wrote:



The extreme ends of this in commercial cable are Alpha-Core 'Goertz'
MI cable (highly capacitive, very low inductance), and Naim NACA5
(fairly high inductance, low capacitance). I have compared these
cables directly, using low-impedance (3 ohms) speakers, and I heard no
differences whatever, although there was a measured 1.5dB droop at
20kHz with the Naim cable. Such a result should not come as a surprise
to anyone with a basic knowledge of electronics, and some experience
of listening tests.

Key word there is that *you* "heard" no difference, even though you
measured one.


Well, we always know that our measurement equipment is much more
sensitive than our ears.

You have 2 speaker cables, one 8 ft. long and another 10 ft. long.
Clearly they measure differently . You think you can hear any difference?

TonyP wrote:
Michael Scarpitti wrote:

snip

I find it surprising that when listening to 7 different power amps, I
heard 7 distincly different sonic signatures. Of these, i was
'expecting' the best performance from the Harman Kardon. It was, in
fact, one of the worst. Any 'bias' hypothesis has a severe problem
with such an outcome. It is in fact a counter-example, and that alone
is enough to discredit the hypothesis altogether.

I have heard differences in some amps that I own. My Carver 1.5t does
not sound the same as my Onkyo M510 or the Counterpoint SA220. I was
giving a friend the Onkyo (didn't need 3 amps and just had the Carver
serviced and spec'ed), so we hooked it up to my Acoustat 1+1's medallion
mod speakers. We listened between the Onkyo and Counterpoint. They both
sounded very good. I would have thought that the SA220 would have
'destroyed' the Onkyo considering the price difference. The Onkyo cost
me $160, the Counterpoint, $2500. I would probably be hard pressed to
say which was better if my eyes were closed,or even if I could say which
was which. We only listened briefly. Possibly, with a more detailed
listening session, differences might have been heard. But, for that
brief session, the Onkyo and Counterpoint sounded the same. I gave him
the Onkyo. The Carver sounded 'different'. It was readily apparent.
Nothing subtle. I even hooked my Pioneer Elite receiver, then my JVC
receiver to the speakers, and *anyone* could hear the difference. These
are all products with vanishing low distortion and wide frequency
responses, yet they sound different.

You write all this, then chide Stewart with the classic '*YOU* heard no
difference' argument when he reported his *controlled* listening
versus measurement results. Do you not see the contradiction?
WHy is your anecdote evidentially superior? 'YOU heard no difference'
would still apply; moreover, yours weren't even *blinded* comparisons,
so they suffer from *additional* sources of error.

I have no ax to grind with those that can't
hear a difference. Good for
you. You can save a lot of money and buy a competent receiver, Home
Depot speaker wire and Radio Shack gold interconnects, decent efficient
speakers and live in audio bliss. I wish that were the case for me.

There's good news: it might be!
Try trusting *only* your ears...which means, alas,
using a bias-controlled comparison protocol.

--

-S.

"They've got God on their side. All we've got is science and reason."
-- Dawn Hulsey, Talent Director

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:28:41 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

(S888Wheel) wrote in
news:MFZdc.7606$rg5.31187@attbi_s52:

So I guess that makes nearly every speaker audition worthless.
Gosh I guess that makes normal home listening in general worthless.

Goosh! I wonder who will do a DBT on speakers, power amplifier, pre-amp,
cd-player before purchase any of the above?

I certainly do on amps and CD players, but not on speakers.

You can't just walk into a store blind-folded and start doing switching
speakers 20 times before buying a pair of speakers, right? I wouldn't...

Then, does that qualified as "sighted test".

Well, I don't get it is why you can do sighted test on other components but
you can't do it on cables?

I just don't get it...

It's very simple. Differences among speakers are very large, so a
blind test would give 100% results in each case, and is therefore a
waste of time.

But even that wouldn't eliminate bias...Harman's speaker comparison labs
use blind protocols because they have demonstrated that brand and finish
can have biasing effects on perception of *quality*.

--

-S.

"They've got God on their side. All we've got is science and reason."
-- Dawn Hulsey, Talent Director

"Bruce Abrams" wrote in message
newsPfec.116870$w54.831648@attbi_s01...
"Michael Scarpitti" wrote in message
news:ws6ec.9599$wP1.29055@attbi_s54...
*snip*
No, I certainly am not. In professional wine tasting, the *opinion* of
the wine's quality may be influenced by the label, but no-one has ever
claimed that the label affects one's taste buds. This is not even
*plausible*.

No one ever suggested the taste buds were affected. It is the brain's
interpretation of the taste bud's neural impulses that is affected. And
in
listening, no one has questioned what the sound actually does to the ear
drum. The only issue that has ever been contemplated is the brain's
interpretation of the sound. You have claimed that your brain is
impervious
to the biases that are *universally* accepted as fact in the greater
scientific world. I'm reminded of an old Yiddish proverb, "If 3 people
tell
you you're drunk, lie down and take a nap."

The proof lies in a classic 'Candid Camera' episode in which several
wine glasses were set in front of open bottles of wines of wildly
varying price and reputation. The glasses were then filled *from one
bottle*, and the unwitting 'tasters' duly commented on many well-known
aspects of the wines contained in the bottles behind the glasses. Note
that it was *impossible* for taste to have varied here, and yet the
tasters reported many conflicting things about the same wine in the
different glasses. This is yet another prime demonstration that
sighted testing is useless for the determining of subtle differences.

This was not 'one' taster, now was it?
Irrelevant.

Hardly, I remember here not long ago that fewer than 1 in 4 people actually
fell for this trick, and they were the hand selected ones chosen for the
segment on tv.

What this says is that 3 of 4 or more actually trusted their taste and could
not tell a difference and said so. Despite actually being lied to.

This is totally to his point that it is possible, indeed probable, to do
sighted testing and simply respond to the sound, especially in the kind of
testing he cited where he was listening to various amps to see which one he
liked best.

Sighted listening *might* lead him astray; it doesn't neccessarily (or even
probably) do so.

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:j2pec.122982$JO3.82316@attbi_s04...


not one single person has *ever* proven an ability to hear
differences among cables. Why are you so afraid to try?


I have read this claim by Stewart & others who are offering money to
anyone who can hear a difference among cables, and it begs the
question: How many have so far been *unable* (demonstrably) to hear
differences? In other words, how many folks have accepted this
challenge & then failed?

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 18:07:37 GMT, TonyP
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On 10 Apr 2004 05:05:03 GMT, Walter Bushell wrote:

Isn't it possible that some audiophile wire acts as tone controls? IIRC
some was shown to have inductive and capacitive amounts that could
reasonable be audible between some components.

The extreme ends of this in commercial cable are Alpha-Core 'Goertz'
MI cable (highly capacitive, very low inductance), and Naim NACA5
(fairly high inductance, low capacitance). I have compared these
cables directly, using low-impedance (3 ohms) speakers, and I heard no
differences whatever, although there was a measured 1.5dB droop at
20kHz with the Naim cable. Such a result should not come as a surprise
to anyone with a basic knowledge of electronics, and some experience
of listening tests.

Key word there is that *you* "heard" no difference, even though you
measured one.

Oh sure, it's certainly *possible* that someone whose mother was a
*real* bitch might be able to hear differences among cables, but I
have not yet met anyone with hearing of such acuity - and neither has
Tom Nousaine. Hence the cash pool remaining unclaimed for about five
years now. Perhaps Mike would like to try? He do seem very vocal,
right up until he might actually have to *prove* his claims.......

BTW, it's easily possible to *measure* differences which are *way*
below the threshold of audibility, so I try to avoid saying that
things *are* the same - just that they *sound* the same.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:36:52 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:

Date: 4/11/2004 11:12 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: ZTfec.112112$gA5.1451284@attbi_s03

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:28:41 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

(S888Wheel) wrote in
news:MFZdc.7606$rg5.31187@attbi_s52:

So I guess that makes nearly every speaker audition worthless.
Gosh I guess that makes normal home listening in general worthless.

Goosh! I wonder who will do a DBT on speakers, power amplifier, pre-amp,
cd-player before purchase any of the above?

I certainly do on amps and CD players, but not on speakers.

So as per your assertions on sighted tests, does this make all your speaker
evaluations worthless?

You deliberately ignoring the standard qualifier that sighted testing
is useless for *subtle* differences. IME, speaker differences are
almost always *gross*. You can of course have great fun with single
blind listening behind a gauze curtain, where price and performance
can be shown to be very unrelated in many cases. The KEF Q1 is very
effective here, it's a real giant killer, as is the Dynaudio 52. In
particular, a pair of Dyna 52s and a Paradigm Servo 15 will humble
many a 'high end' supersystem..................

Differences among speakers are very large, so a
blind test would give 100% results in each case, and is therefore a
waste of time.

For differences yes. For preferences no. Sighted bias affects preferences in
speaker auditions.

Quite so, see above. Much easier and quicker to do than a full DBT.

It often surprises me that some people devote so much time
and effort to an argument about amps and cables while neglecting an issue that
, by their own beliefs, plagues their selection of what they believe is the
only really important decision in audio.

Quite so. How many weeks has this thread been dragging on? :-)
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:30:41 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

"Bob Marcus" wrote in
news:9UBdc.109693$JO3.78365@attbi_s04:

The argument is not about their experience. The argument is about the
significance of their experience. There are sound scientific reasons
for believing that most cables (and interconnects) on the market are
sonically indistinguishable. There are also sound scientific reasons
for believing that people often imagine differences between things
that are not actually different.

Well, I tell you what. If there exist something that can change your
sense, that can make you imagine "thing" that doesn't exist, then we
should be really scare of it. I wonder how they can do that? As a matter
of fact, there is no prove by now that this item exist. Thanks God!

There is a *vast* amount of evidence that this exists. I have myself
conducted several tests where the listeners reported many audible
differences between cables and amplifiers - when I had *not* actually
changed anything over!

So when someone says he hears differences between two cables that are
not actually different enough to matter sonically, it is
scientifically reasonable to conclude that he imagined those
differences. It is a free world, as you say, and you are free to
disagree with that conclusion.

bob

So, you will only believe what nowaday science proved? I think you're
not. Take "do you love your parents/girlfriend/wife/kids/Ferrari?" as an
example, no scientific theory whatsoever can prove it. You just do!

Take "your next step", if you need scientific confirm before your next
step, you will never walk again, might be never sit as well.

The other night I was watching TV, they were saying scientists found
evidence that there was water on Mars, so a step closer to prove that
there are/were living creature on Mars. I can't help but laugh at so
called scientists! What make them think creature on Mars need water?
oxygen? Or even living in a form that we can detect?

We have so many things that science cannot explain just on this earth,
but they are here, thousands of years, million of years, and they are
still here. What make you say that, "if that against the law of science,
that must be wrong!"

No science can fully explain how our brain work, and you conclude that if
I can hear something that "scientifically proved" not exist, and I must
be wrong?

You must be wrong if you don't hear it when you don't *know* what is
connected. That is the whole point of this debate, not mere handwaving
about how we don't know everything in the Universe.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:30:27 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

"Bob Marcus" wrote in
news:gQfec.116874$w54.831576@attbi_s01:

No present technologies were started from crazy theories. They were
started from plausible theories. There's a difference. Given
everything we know about cables, and everything we know about human
hearing, "cable sound" is not plausible. It's the other thing.

Not really! Some years ago, there was a guy said or try to prove that the
earth is round, the impact was so big that people regarded him as crazy,
of course, crazy person had crazy theory not "plausible theory", and they
barbeque him later on, remember who?

It has been known that the earth is round for millenia, not just
centuries. That story is and always has been, a nonsense. You may
however be thinking of heliocentricity, which is what got Galileo into
trouble. It wasn't that anyone regarded him as 'crazy', simply that
the Church could not tolerate anyone suggesting that God's Earth was
not the centre of the Universe.

Such religious intolerance is also very common in 'high end' audio, of
course.....

What I'm trying to say is, engineers should have an open minded to hear
everything without saying, "it is impossible!" Because the only thing
that is impossible in this world is, "it is impossible". Everything is
possible, might be not now you can prove it.

No, it is not and never will be possible for you to run a mile in two
minutes. Similarly, it is not and never will be possible for you to
hear differences among reasonably normal speaker cables.

Alchemy is interesting, could somebody ever think of we can turn a piece
of charcoal into diamond?

Yes, since that is easily possible due to both being carbon. You would
have been better to stay with turning lead into gold, which can and
indeed *has* been done by the high-energy physics boys. Unfortunately,
it costs a lot more than the gold is worth! :-)

Isn't it some fancy Alchemy we are talking
about... if we were born 200 years ago? And believe it or not, modern so
called "material science" is inspired by so called "crazy" Alchemy.

No, it isn't.

I had an interesting experience in regarding to cable.

I once picked up two different kind of copper cables and made two power
cords all using the same AC plug and IEC connector.

I don't know what should I expect, and I performed a listening test on
both of them, remember I don't know what should I expect, I don't even
know or expect they are difference.

I used the power cord on my power-amp., and guess what? One of them gave
me significant different on bass and the other just don't.

Rubbish. Indeed, *impossible*............. :-)

I then asked my wife to perform the same test without knowing what to
expect, she pointed out the same result.

Not that old 'even my wife heard it from the kitchen' tale again!

I then asked one of my so called audiophile friends, who has been with
Hi-end stuffs for the past 30 years, same test without expectation, he
pointed out the same result.

Not that you suggested anything was different, of course........

The funny thing is after that, I used another two different wires to make
another two power cords... well, this time, even I believe that I was
wasting my time.

I can't explain it if I accept the "wire is wire" theory. Oh... of course
you can say I am a big fat lier!

No, simply a careless experimenter........
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

In article JPfec.112098$gA5.1451301@attbi_s03,
TonyP wrote:
Snip?
Key word there is that *you* "heard" no difference, even though you
measured one.

So, better to repeat the experiment with ten year old girls. Men over 30
aren't likely to hear such a change. Not a lot of program material up
there anyway.

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:j2pec.122982$JO3.82316@attbi_s04...
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:27:35 GMT, (Michael
Scarpitti) wrote:

I could not care less what anyone else thinks.

Says it all, really.....................

.....only what they can prove or show me.......


With my Stax
electrostatic headphones (driven by the power amp) I can hear all
kinds of things that might not be audible listeing to speakers.

You do not know this to be true, since you have never verified your
opinions in a blind test.

You do not know this to be false....I claim I heard a difference
between 7 amps, which is not an extraordinary claim that would require
extraordinary evidence...it is NOT the same as claiming that I was
abducted by aliens....

Most
speakers offer far less resolution that Stax Earspeakers. It is easy
to imagine that the negative result simply reflects the fact that the
system being used to test the component is insuficiently transparent.

However, many speakers *do* offer similar resolutuion to Stax 'phones,
and not one single person has *ever* proven an ability to hear
differences among cables. Why are you so afraid to try?

Speakers in a room have echoes, no matter how high their quality. Only
by using something like the Stax can one eliminate the room effects.


Why is
that indeterminate, especially given how easy you can tell them apart in
sighted testing?

It was not 'negative'. I heard the differences.

So you *claim*, but there is no proof that what you 'heard' has any
existence in the physical world.

So you say....I have good reason to say otherwise: experience.

And a positive result would mean that there are indeed sonic
differences. Hey, you can tell those skeptics that they are wrong after
all, that the green pen really works! Isn't that priceless?

I am certain that I heard the improvement on *some* discs. I do not
know why. The effect was subtle (basically, less noise) and did not
occur with all discs. This means that there are some aspects of the
way some discs are recorded or manufactured that are susceptible to
excess noise that the green edging in some way minimizes. It seemed to
have more effect on poorly-recorded discs.

Utter rubbish! Green pens simply have *no effect* whatever, either
measurable or audible.

There is insufficient evidence to support your claim that it 'cannot'
have any effect.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:33:02 GMT, (Michael
Scarpitti) wrote:

"Ban" wrote in message ...
Panzzi wrote:

What about somebody start up "wanting" to prove that there is no sonic
difference between two cables, then he/she is not bias?

And could somebody correct me if I am wrong...

Panzzi, you are right. Every evaluation should be done totally neutral, that
is why DBT is used.

DBT *may* be neutral, but it may also be insensitive.

However, all available evidence shows that it is the *most* sensitive
method for discerning *real* audible differences This is why it is
used every working day by major players such as Revel, JBL, B&W,
Meridian and KEF.

The method in
itself may be neutral, but if the equipment used in the test is not
capable of offering sufficient resolution, the test is meaningless. It
would be like testing speakers with old scratchy 78's played with a
ceramic cartidge and steel needles.

So what? That has nothing to do with the methodology.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

I don't know, but we do know of three attempts to do the same with amps
and all failed, as reported by a poster here. He has a similar offer with
amps but without the large cash incentive.

I have read this claim by Stewart & others who are offering money to
anyone who can hear a difference among cables, and it begs the
question: How many have so far been *unable* (demonstrably) to hear
differences? In other words, how many folks have accepted this
challenge & then failed?

Yes, in some cases the sellers of wire do this on purpose so as to make
their wire sound different. All listening alone tests usually include
controling for gross differences of this kind. Most attempts at wire
"sound" are made on the basis of metal used or braiding pattern etc. and
these are the ones at question. Similar rcl values no matter any the
above is the basic standard to test for wire "sound". Those reporting
differences heard must first demonstrate they are an exception to the
listening alone tests done showing results at the level of guessing, if
we are to give any credance to their claims.

Isn't it possible that some audiophile wire acts as tone controls? IIRC
some was shown to have inductive and capacitive amounts that could
reasonable be audible between some components.


The extreme ends of this in commercial cable are Alpha-Core 'Goertz'
MI cable (highly capacitive, very low inductance), and Naim NACA5
(fairly high inductance, low capacitance). I have compared these
cables directly, using low-impedance (3 ohms) speakers, and I heard no
differences whatever, although there was a measured 1.5dB droop at
20kHz with the Naim cable. Such a result should not come as a surprise
to anyone with a basic knowledge of electronics, and some experience
of listening tests.

Key word there is that *you* "heard" no difference, even though you
measured one.

From: Stewart Pinkerton
Date: 4/12/2004 10:44 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: KzAec.122931$K91.335705@attbi_s02

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:36:52 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:

Date: 4/11/2004 11:12 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: ZTfec.112112$gA5.1451284@attbi_s03

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:28:41 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

(S888Wheel) wrote in
news:MFZdc.7606$rg5.31187@attbi_s52:

So I guess that makes nearly every speaker audition worthless.
Gosh I guess that makes normal home listening in general worthless.

Goosh! I wonder who will do a DBT on speakers, power amplifier, pre-amp,
cd-player before purchase any of the above?

I certainly do on amps and CD players, but not on speakers.

So as per your assertions on sighted tests, does this make all your speaker
evaluations worthless?

You deliberately ignoring the standard qualifier that sighted testing
is useless for *subtle* differences.

No, I am simply disageeing with it. Based on your response so far to my post,
you seem to be ignoring the research that suggests sighted biases affect
prefences when speakers are being compared even with large differences. Does
this fact render sighted evaluations of speakers for preferences useless or
not? So far it has been a black and white issue for you. I'm just trying to see
if your rules on what is and is not worthless change when the component
changes.

IME, speaker differences are
almost always *gross*.

So? What does that have to do with the fact that listeners are not imune to the
effects of sighted bias when comparing speakers for preference?

You can of course have great fun with single
blind listening behind a gauze curtain, where price and performance
can be shown to be very unrelated in many cases. The KEF Q1 is very
effective here, it's a real giant killer, as is the Dynaudio 52. In
particular, a pair of Dyna 52s and a Paradigm Servo 15 will humble
many a 'high end' supersystem..................


Can you cite tests that support this assertion?

Differences among speakers are very large, so a
blind test would give 100% results in each case, and is therefore a
waste of time.

For differences yes. For preferences no. Sighted bias affects preferences in
speaker auditions.

Quite so, see above. Much easier and quicker to do than a full DBT.

I never said anything about tests being double blind did I?


It often surprises me that some people devote so much time
and effort to an argument about amps and cables while neglecting an issue
that
, by their own beliefs, plagues their selection of what they believe is the
only really important decision in audio.

Quite so. How many weeks has this thread been dragging on? :-)

Long time.

--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:30:27 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

Alchemy is interesting, could somebody ever think of we can turn a piece
of charcoal into diamond?


Yes, since that is easily possible due to both being carbon. You would
have been better to stay with turning lead into gold, which can and
indeed *has* been done by the high-energy physics boys. Unfortunately,
it costs a lot more than the gold is worth! :-)

Actually, they make diamonds as well. Indistinguishable from the
real item.

http://jewelry.about.com/gi/dynamic/... s_hunter.html

http://gemesis.com/

Six months ago these started to be made. Clear is planned within 2-3
years. This company are the only ones to have done it so far.

I'd buy one myself a dozen times before I bought a nearly slave-labor
mined one that likely supports drug lords and local wars or DeBeers.

Tests like a diamond. Can even be used scientifically like a diamond
for lasers and cutting and so on. The owner even took one to a diamond
expert at DeBeers and showed to him. The man turned white and about
passed out examining it. The owner said he "looked like he'd seen a
ghost, then recovered and said it was obviously "fake"." Lol.

$3500 per carat, perfect grade, perfect clarity (investment grade),
up to 1.5 carats in any shape or cut you desire.



Isn't technology great?

I used the power cord on my power-amp., and guess what? One of them gave
me significant different on bass and the other just don't.

Rubbish. Indeed, *impossible*............. :-)

Maybe, maybe not. Possibly he's used to the thin flabby bass from his
18 gauge wire versus 14 gauge electrical cord and can't tell better
sound.

When I hear people complaining about studio grade speakers being
"harsh" and "revealing" - I laugh. They just are so used to
imprecise, smeared sound that they forgot what real quality sounds like.

I've listened to such speakers for as long as I was able to afford them,
and commmercial grade speakers often elicit the opposite response
from me - they sound "muffled" and "blurry", often from having too
much to do and too little precision in construction. 6 inch woofers
going down to 40hz? They claim it, but it's just not flying in real
life.

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:pDAec.124810$JO3.82571@attbi_s04...

DBT *may* be neutral, but it may also be insensitive.

However, all available evidence shows that it is the *most* sensitive
method for discerning *real* audible differences This is why it is
used every working day by major players such as Revel, JBL, B&W,
Meridian and KEF.

The method in
itself may be neutral, but if the equipment used in the test is not
capable of offering sufficient resolution, the test is meaningless. It
would be like testing speakers with old scratchy 78's played with a
ceramic cartidge and steel needles.

So what? That has nothing to do with the methodology.

Let me explain. An insensitive test may give a 'false negative',
simply because the inadequate equipment does not reveal the
differences. It may also give a 'false positive', because inasmuch as
the equipment is not sensitive enough to reveal real differences,
people may be forced to try to satisfy the tester's request for a
decision, and mistakenly choose one as being better.

Stewart Pinkerton
wrote:

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:36:52 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:

Date: 4/11/2004 11:12 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: ZTfec.112112$gA5.1451284@attbi_s03

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:28:41 GMT, Panzzi wrote:

(S888Wheel) wrote in
news:MFZdc.7606$rg5.31187@attbi_s52:

So I guess that makes nearly every speaker audition worthless.
Gosh I guess that makes normal home listening in general worthless.

Goosh! I wonder who will do a DBT on speakers, power amplifier, pre-amp,
cd-player before purchase any of the above?

I certainly do on amps and CD players, but not on speakers.

So as per your assertions on sighted tests, does this make all your speaker
evaluations worthless?

You deliberately ignoring the standard qualifier that sighted testing
is useless for *subtle* differences. IME, speaker differences are
almost always *gross*. You can of course have great fun with single
blind listening behind a gauze curtain, where price and performance
can be shown to be very unrelated in many cases. The KEF Q1 is very
effective here, it's a real giant killer, as is the Dynaudio 52. In
particular, a pair of Dyna 52s and a Paradigm Servo 15 will humble
many a 'high end' supersystem..................

I'll argue that blind listening comparisons on loudspeakers would be exactly
the best comparison method. I'd use it regularly IF I could afford it. Even a
screen and speaker position rotation is superior to "open" listening. The
basic problem is cost/practicality.

IMO differences between loudspeakers (and even the same loudspeaker in a
different position) define the epitome of "subtleness." Differences that are
so small that an opague cloth over the I/O terminals reduces them to
inaudibility are not "subtle" they are non-extant.

Loudspeaker differences between better speakers (1-2 dB) ARE subtle in the
realm of human acoustical perception in an acoustical far-field. They are
subtle "enough" to actually be "audible" to humans in a normally reverberant
environment.

Differences among speakers are very large, so a
blind test would give 100% results in each case, and is therefore a
waste of time.

Actually not so; it would be true that subjects would be able to reliably
identify which was which; but that makes the use of normal bias controls is
even more useful. "Blind Screen" tests (as Paradigm calls them) help reduce the
effect of appearance/finish/brand/size/color/sensitivity/etc on sound quality
perception.

The ONLY problem with bias controlled testing of loudspeakers is practicality.


For differences yes. For preferences no. Sighted bias affects preferences in
speaker auditions.

Quite so, see above. Much easier and quicker to do than a full DBT.

It often surprises me that some people devote so much time
and effort to an argument about amps and cables while neglecting an issue
that
, by their own beliefs, plagues their selection of what they believe is the
only really important decision in audio.

Quite so. How many weeks has this thread been dragging on? :-)
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:j2pec.122982$JO3.82316@attbi_s04...


I am certain that I heard the improvement on *some* discs. I do not
know why. The effect was subtle (basically, less noise) and did not
occur with all discs. This means that there are some aspects of the
way some discs are recorded or manufactured that are susceptible to
excess noise that the green edging in some way minimizes. It seemed to
have more effect on poorly-recorded discs.

Utter rubbish! Green pens simply have *no effect* whatever, either
measurable or audible.

There is another discussion he

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue1/auric.htm

"Harry Lavo" wrote:

.....snips to specific content ....

"Bruce Abrams" wrote in message

"Michael Scarpitti" wrote in message

This has been proven over and over to you through the experience of many
listening tests. If you can hear a difference while sighted, and fail to
discern under blind conditions, the sighted test must be flawed.

Or the blind test itself is flawed or not appropriate for this particular
purpose.

So far no one has shown that sighted listening tests are appropriate, let alone
the more appropriate, for decision-making based on acoustical or sound quality
performance.

IMO they've not been validated for the claimed purpose of decision-making based
on sound quality.

The existence, degree, and effectiveness of this 'bias' is not
established to my satisfaction. You cannot exclude, a priori, the
possibility that I can hear differences between $100 Monster cable and
$50 Monster cable interconnect.

Well for sure. But we can examine extant evidence and find that no other human
has ever provided reasonable ability to do so when commonly known
bias-mechanisms are present. So for you to conclude that you "can" when
controls are absent is not supported by any reasonable evidence.

You cannot merely claim that because I
can see which one is which that makes any perception of sonic
differences completely false. That strong a claim is not supportable.

Actually most 'blind' tests provide visual contact with the wires.

*snip*
No, DBT cannot. All it can tell is whether the issue is
indeterminate.
A negative result in a DBT is an indeterminate result.

It doesn't prove a negative but it does show that the subjects were unable to
sonically identify the DUTs.

A negative result means you cannot tell the two things apart.

Under what conditions? With what kind of equipment? With my Stax
electrostatic headphones (driven by the power amp) I can hear all
kinds of things that might not be audible listeing to speakers.

Your statement of this doesn't prove that you can "hear" things that have never
been verified to have acoustical effect.

Most
speakers offer far less resolution that Stax Earspeakers. It is easy
to imagine that the negative result simply reflects the fact that the
system being used to test the component is insuficiently transparent.

Which is the standard retort to all skeptics.....your equipment lacks
sufficient resolution to hear the differences in question. However, in this
case, if this were true all one can say is that while differences may be
audible with electrostatic headphones ..... it says nothing about those other
experiments where loudspeakers were used.


Why is
that indeterminate, especially given how easy you can tell them apart
in
sighted testing?

It was not 'negative'. I heard the differences.

A statistically meaningful negative result in a dbt would, in fact, prove
that you couldn't hear any differences. Explain how again that would be
indeterminate?


No, it would prove he couldn't hear a difference *using that test* *at that
time*. Not that a difference doesn't exist. A "null result" does not prove
a negative. Nor does a null result in a dbt prove anything unless the test
itself has been validated agains some proven standard of known difference,
which in the open ended evaluation of audio components is extremely
difficult since all kinds of differences may/may not emerge with critical
listening but may be missed in a quick comparison if one's ear/brain is not
allowed time to adjust to what one is listening for.

Lots of internal assumptions and "mays" included in this line of reasoning.
Nary a shred of evidence that uncontrolled listening has "more" acoustical
resolution.

See previous discussion of green pens above. Please answer the following
question to be sure we all understand your position. You are given two
identical in appearence CDs. Upon listening to them, you decide that they
sound different. Perhaps one seems to have more air around the
instruments.
Please explain this phenomenon.

If I may presume to answer for Michael, that one is easy. The two cd's are
not identical, appearances notwithstanding. Nor is a "green pen" disk
identical to an unmarked disk no matter how much you discount the
possibility that the green pen has any effect.

Taken literally this can only mean that the discs were "different" without the
Green Pen.

Nonetheless; we're back to the beginning. Some folks insist that certain
"differences" exist. But, when they are unable to "show" that these differences
are based on acoustically generated sound when commonly known human
bias-mechanisms are compensated they choose to "debate" the results instead of
just proving that the differences are real when the scoreboard is not shown in
advance.

'Differences' sometimes described as obvious, so large that 'any fool' can hear
them, become "subtle" under scrutiny and then so vague that the mere presence
of skeptical parties or bias control mechanisms manage to plug the ears of
even the most ardent advocate or hardened experienced audiophiles.

The argument always comes full circle. What surprises me is that even after 30
years of debate on power amplifiers there has been exactly Zero examples of
nominally competent amplifiers or wires (frequency response +/- 0.1 dB
confirmed at 100,1000 and 10,000 Hz and amplifiers not driven into clipping 1%
of the time) reliably "sounding" different to any subject when even the most
modest of bias controls are present (as modest as a cloth being placed over I/O
terminals.) Never, Not Once.

And Yet some will "argue" indefinitely. If the case of amp/wire sound was so
strong ..... then why hasn't anyone stepped up to the plate?

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in
news:sCAec.120552$w54.841514@attbi_s01:

No, it is not and never will be possible for you to run a mile in two
minutes. Similarly, it is not and never will be possible for you to
hear differences among reasonably normal speaker cables.

Not quite so. Scientists are trying very hard to find out how to travel
to outaspace without even travelling in the speed of light! "Worm hole
theory" is one of them. It is possible but just haven't find out a way to
do it. And if the worm hole theory in applicable, running a mile in two
minutes is possible.

Yes, since that is easily possible due to both being carbon. You would
have been better to stay with turning lead into gold, which can and
indeed *has* been done by the high-energy physics boys. Unfortunately,
it costs a lot more than the gold is worth! :-)

Back a few hundred years ago, people didn't know a piece of charcoal and
diamond has something in common. That because by that time, people were
not as "highly educated" as today's people. A hundred years later, people
will laugh at a lot of our nowaday so called physics theory. I am pretty
sure about it.

Isn't it some fancy Alchemy we are talking
about... if we were born 200 years ago? And believe it or not, modern
so called "material science" is inspired by so called "crazy" Alchemy.

No, it isn't.

Yes, it is! Because I toke a couple of semesters in material science
classes before.

I used the power cord on my power-amp., and guess what? One of them
gave me significant different on bass and the other just don't.

Rubbish. Indeed, *impossible*............. :-)

That is 100% not engineer manner. You're bias by your own belief and
ignoring what is actually happening, and call it impossible because you
cannot explain it.

No, simply a careless experimenter........

I'm sorry but that "audiophile experimenter" is an international well
recognized/respect engineer/professor.

A lot things you can see/hear/feel it, but you can't explain it by
nowaday science, that didn't mean it is not there! Face it.

Panzzi

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 17:47:38 GMT, (Michael
Scarpitti) wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:j2pec.122982$JO3.82316@attbi_s04...
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 07:27:35 GMT, (Michael
Scarpitti) wrote:

I could not care less what anyone else thinks.

Says it all, really.....................

....only what they can prove or show me.......

You refuse to be shown, or to accept proofs offered by several people.
You also refuse to try it for yourself. Options are limited.........

With my Stax
electrostatic headphones (driven by the power amp) I can hear all
kinds of things that might not be audible listeing to speakers.

You do not know this to be true, since you have never verified your
opinions in a blind test.

You do not know this to be false....I claim I heard a difference
between 7 amps, which is not an extraordinary claim that would require
extraordinary evidence

Actually, given our knowledge of amplifier capabilities and of human
hearing thresholds, it *is* an extraordinary claim, for which you
offer no proof but repetition of your claims.

...it is NOT the same as claiming that I was
abducted by aliens....

It is statistically similar................

Most
speakers offer far less resolution that Stax Earspeakers. It is easy
to imagine that the negative result simply reflects the fact that the
system being used to test the component is insuficiently transparent.

However, many speakers *do* offer similar resolutuion to Stax 'phones,
and not one single person has *ever* proven an ability to hear
differences among cables. Why are you so afraid to try?

Speakers in a room have echoes, no matter how high their quality. Only
by using something like the Stax can one eliminate the room effects.

Yes, so what? How does room reverberation affect resolution? And why
are you so afraid to try a blind test?

Why is
that indeterminate, especially given how easy you can tell them apart in
sighted testing?

It was not 'negative'. I heard the differences.

So you *claim*, but there is no proof that what you 'heard' has any
existence in the physical world.

So you say....I have good reason to say otherwise: experience.

Those who oppose you have equal or greater experience, and we have
tried both methods. Why have you not even *tried* a blind test?

And a positive result would mean that there are indeed sonic
differences. Hey, you can tell those skeptics that they are wrong after
all, that the green pen really works! Isn't that priceless?

I am certain that I heard the improvement on *some* discs. I do not
know why. The effect was subtle (basically, less noise) and did not
occur with all discs. This means that there are some aspects of the
way some discs are recorded or manufactured that are susceptible to
excess noise that the green edging in some way minimizes. It seemed to
have more effect on poorly-recorded discs.

Utter rubbish! Green pens simply have *no effect* whatever, either
measurable or audible.

There is insufficient evidence to support your claim that it 'cannot'
have any effect.

Firstly, the green pen was in fact a *joke* perpetrated by Jim
Johnson, and secondly, it has no basis in theory.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:pDAec.124810$JO3.82571@attbi_s04...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:33:02 GMT, (Michael
Scarpitti) wrote:

"Ban" wrote in message ...
Panzzi wrote:

What about somebody start up "wanting" to prove that there is no sonic
difference between two cables, then he/she is not bias?

And could somebody correct me if I am wrong...

Panzzi, you are right. Every evaluation should be done totally neutral, that
is why DBT is used.

DBT *may* be neutral, but it may also be insensitive.

However, all available evidence shows that it is the *most* sensitive
method for discerning *real* audible differences This is why it is
used every working day by major players such as Revel, JBL, B&W,
Meridian and KEF.

You misunderstood. 'DBT' says nothing about the quality of the
components involved, which must be first-rate if other components (the
ones being tested) are to have a chance to reveal themselves.

The method in
itself may be neutral, but if the equipment used in the test is not
capable of offering sufficient resolution, the test is meaningless. It
would be like testing speakers with old scratchy 78's played with a
ceramic cartidge and steel needles.

So what? That has nothing to do with the methodology.

That's the point: the methodology is useless without extremely
transparent equipment. I should think you would find this abundantly
clear. You cannot tell which lens is better if both are covered with
mud.

Panzzi wrote:

"Bob Marcus" wrote in
news:gQfec.116874$w54.831576@attbi_s01:

No present technologies were started from crazy theories. They were
started from plausible theories. There's a difference. Given
everything we know about cables, and everything we know about human
hearing, "cable sound" is not plausible. It's the other thing.

Not really! Some years ago, there was a guy said or try to prove that the
earth is round, the impact was so big that people regarded him as crazy,
of course, crazy person had crazy theory not "plausible theory", and they
barbeque him later on, remember who?

So, the scientist says the earth is round, and the ignorant rabble declare
him crazy. Now let's apply this analogy to the cable "debate." Aren't you
now arguing that the rabble, rather than the scientist, is right?

What I'm trying to say is, engineers should have an open minded to hear
everything without saying, "it is impossible!" Because the only thing
that is impossible in this world is, "it is impossible". Everything is
possible,

No, everything is not possible. It is not possible for elephants to fly. And
it is not possible for you to distinguish between cables which differ by
0.25 dB at 20 kHz. Scientists know this, even if you don't.

might be not now you can prove it. So you'll say, "I won't buy
it because I can't convince myself base on my knowledge".

But there are even more examples of crazy theories that *didn't* pan
out. Alchemy. Laetrile. On and on and on...

Alchemy is interesting, could somebody ever think of we can turn a piece
of charcoal into diamond?

Gee, maybe someone who knew they were both made of carbon!? Look, there's a
big difference between what "we" don't know and what the typical consumer
doesn't know.The latter can say, "We don't know what the limits of human
hearing are." He can say, "We don't know how a wire can affect an audio
signal." But what he really means is that HE doesn't know, because he's made
no effort to find out what scientists have already learned about those
topics.

Isn't it some fancy Alchemy we are talking
about

Yes, what YOU are talking about is exactly analogous to alchemy.

... if we were born 200 years ago? And believe it or not, modern so
called "material science" is inspired by so called "crazy" Alchemy.

Yeah, right.

I had an interesting experience in regarding to cable.

Oh, boy, here we go again.

I once picked up two different kind of copper cables and made two power
cords all using the same AC plug and IEC connector.

I don't know what should I expect, and I performed a listening test on
both of them, remember I don't know what should I expect, I don't even
know or expect they are difference.

I used the power cord on my power-amp., and guess what? One of them gave
me significant different on bass and the other just don't.

I then asked my wife to perform the same test without knowing what to
expect, she pointed out the same result.

I then asked one of my so called audiophile friends, who has been with
Hi-end stuffs for the past 30 years, same test without expectation, he
pointed out the same result.

The funny thing is after that, I used another two different wires to make
another two power cords... well, this time, even I believe that I was
wasting my time.

I can't explain it if I accept the "wire is wire" theory.

Really? I can. In fact, that's the difference between you and me. I can
explain what you just described, right down to your wife and friend agreeing
with you. But you can't explain it, no matter what "theory" you accept. All
you can do is compare it to alchemy and flat-earthers. Well, wake up and
smell the espresso: The alchemists and flat-earthers were wrong.

And so are you.

bob

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Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:j2pec.122982$JO3.82316@attbi_s04...

I am certain that I heard the improvement on *some* discs. I do not
know why. The effect was subtle (basically, less noise) and did not
occur with all discs. This means that there are some aspects of the
way some discs are recorded or manufactured that are susceptible to
excess noise that the green edging in some way minimizes. It seemed to
have more effect on poorly-recorded discs.

Utter rubbish! Green pens simply have *no effect* whatever, either
measurable or audible.

From:

http://www.msen.com/~lwp/green.pen.html

All this discussion of scratches and stamping is missing the point.

Anyone who knows only a little bit about acoustics and laser optics
can understand the actual mechanism of improving sound quality with a
green pen. The "feel" of an audio recording depends largely on the
ambient quality of the sound, the hints of reverberation and
spaciousness captured from the setting of the recording. In recent
years, discriminating listeners have come to prefer a "drier" sound,
comprising only the direct noises produced by the musicians, and
minimizing any audible effects of the room in which they are playing,
or the reverberant and echoic qualities of said room.

As several posters have noted, the key to CD playback is in the
accurate reflection or scattering of a laser beam by the pits in the
CD. When the laser is reflected the pickup detects this, and when it
is not reflected the pickup detects its absence. But the "scattered"
laser light does not simply cease to exist! Rather, it reverberates
and echoes around in the medium, much the same way that ambient sounds
persist in any real world space except the anechoic studio. This
cumulatively produces the "airy" "spacious" "cloying" "harsh"
concert-hall feeling that the audio engineers try so hard to eliminate
when they produce a "dry" sounding master.

Since this problematic ambient laser light is almost always red light,
the only way to eliminate its harmful resonance is to introduce
something capable of actually absorbing red light, much the same way
the audio engineers add small bits of foam to their studio walls to
absorb sound. Thus using precisely the correct shade of green marker
on the edge of the plastic disk provides you with a means of absorbing
all this excess red laser light before it can cause subtle harmonics
and phase shifting effects in the audio output of the playback system.
Obviously, this becomes even more important in any system which
utilizes "dithering".

On 12 Apr 2004 16:07:42 GMT, (Buster Mudd) wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message
news:j2pec.122982$JO3.82316@attbi_s04...

not one single person has *ever* proven an ability to hear
differences among cables. Why are you so afraid to try?

I have read this claim by Stewart & others who are offering money to
anyone who can hear a difference among cables, and it begs the
question: How many have so far been *unable* (demonstrably) to hear
differences? In other words, how many folks have accepted this
challenge & then failed?

So far, in about five *years*, not one single person has stepped up to
the plate, despite numerous very vocal claims of such an ability, just
like that of Scarpitti. Ever wonder *why* this is?

OTOH, in a separate event which just predated the 'cable challenge'
prize pool, Greg Singh did claim to hear 'pretty amazing' differences
between two Audioquest cables, but crashed and burned when put to the
test - just as Steve Zipser had done the year before, with amplifiers.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 04:33:22 +0000, Michael Scarpitti wrote:

This is impossible to substantiate. Why would I not like the Harman
Kardon amp's sound when I 'expected' to? I ended up by the denon amp,
of which I had no particular opinion beforehand.

You must understand I had formed no specific opinions or impressions
of any of the 7 amps before I listened to them. The differences were
substantial, differences that are impossible to attribute to any
psychological source. I am not referring to 'subtle' differences, but
gross ones.

Continued repetition of the argument that I must have been mistaken is
without merit. I could not in any way have been mistaken that all 7
amps sounded different.

I have made NO comment suggesting that you have not heard what you
heard.
However, assuming there is not some medical issue with the physical
aspects of the human ear, the heavy lifting of "hearing" is done by the
brain as it processes the signal delivered by the ears.

Yes, you may have well had no conscious expectation that one item should
have sounded better, but that still leaves us with subconscious
influences. (And if the impact of subconscious info was easily
deciphered,
it would hardly be subconcious, would it?) For better or worse, there is
no practical way to decouple one part of the brain from another during a
sighted listening test. The best we can do is create a intentional
ignorance as to which product is which.

That is the goal of a DBT - to help eliminate the impact of those
conscious and subconscious factors via true blindness as to which item
is
which during the evaluation process. That is certainly a worthy goal for
researchers, design engineers and many others who can use that info to
good advantage.

As noted previously, I have no particular compulsion to subject every
component of my home audio system to DBT. I have to look at those
components everyday and live with them which certainly makes any
subjectivity I have about them part and parcel of the listening
experience. To the extent any that conscious or subconscious bias I have
aids my enjoyment of music in that environment, the better it is for me.

I believe the central point of difference is

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Michael Scarpitti wrote:

The method in
itself may be neutral, but if the equipment used in the test is not
capable of offering sufficient resolution, the test is meaningless.
It would be like testing speakers with old scratchy 78's played
with a ceramic cartidge and steel needles.

So what? That has nothing to do with the methodology.

Let me explain. An insensitive test may give a 'false negative',
simply because the inadequate equipment does not reveal the
differences. It may also give a 'false positive', because inasmuch as
the equipment is not sensitive enough to reveal real differences,
people may be forced to try to satisfy the tester's request for a
decision, and mistakenly choose one as being better.

Hey Michael,
to settle this argument to your and everybodys satisfaction, why don't you
invite some of your adversaries to perform the test together with you using
your equipment. I'm sure Steward will agree because he has put up the
challenge, so there is even the chance for you to win some bucks. :-)
Writing doesn't convince anybody, but when you can demonstrate and proof
your point of view, it is different matter and we all have learned
something.
Otherwise this discussion goes on ad infinitum....
--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy

"Nousaine" wrote in message
news:YNLec.122988$w54.855042@attbi_s01...
"Harry Lavo" wrote:

....snips to specific content ....

"Bruce Abrams" wrote in message

"Michael Scarpitti" wrote in message

This has been proven over and over to you through the experience of
many
listening tests. If you can hear a difference while sighted, and fail
to
discern under blind conditions, the sighted test must be flawed.

Or the blind test itself is flawed or not appropriate for this particular
purpose.

So far no one has shown that sighted listening tests are appropriate, let
alone
the more appropriate, for decision-making based on acoustical or sound
quality
performance.


I'm not referring to sighted testing per se. I'm referring to long term
evaluative listening, whether sighted or blind. As you well know, Tom, I've
proposed a blind version of such a test as a control test to bridge the gap
between the two sides of this debate.

They've not been validated for the claimed purpose of decision-making based
on sound quality.


Since hundreds of thousands or millions of audiophiles think they can hear
differences based on sighted tests, it is incumbent upon any test that seeks
to replace sighted testing to show that when used for evaluative component
comparisons, it can show that known subtle differences (that do exist) are
determined at least as well as they are under sighted conditions. And it is
important to establish that "blinding" and only blinding, not a change in
the type of test, is what makes the difference. So far we only have your
one "anecdotal" assertion that you have conducted such a long term test
blinded under identical conditions to the subjects previous sighted
conditions. That hardly stands as conclusive evidence.

All other assertions that "blind" produces null results use substantially
different a-b or a-b-x techniques that have not been validated for long term
evaluative listening. That is why a carefully designed control test, or
control tests, are needed for your tests to achieve credibility with your
skeptics.

snip, remainder of argument between Tom and Michael not relevant to above

wrote:

Yes, in some cases the sellers of wire do this on purpose so as to make
their wire sound different. All listening alone tests usually include
controling for gross differences of this kind. Most attempts at wire
"sound" are made on the basis of metal used or braiding pattern etc. and
these are the ones at question. Similar rcl values no matter any the
above is the basic standard to test for wire "sound". Those reporting
differences heard must first demonstrate they are an exception to the
listening alone tests done showing results at the level of guessing, if
we are to give any credance to their claims.

For the most part, I don't hear a difference in wire sound. I have a box
of various interconnects and speaker cable with great claims by their
makers on the wonderous sound they will make. But, I am now using Canare
L4E6S interconnects. Cheap, well made wire and RCA connectors.
I would still like to 'hear' one of the super expensive ones though in
my system.


Isn't it possible that some audiophile wire acts as tone controls? IIRC
some was shown to have inductive and capacitive amounts that could
reasonable be audible between some components.


The extreme ends of this in commercial cable are Alpha-Core 'Goertz'
MI cable (highly capacitive, very low inductance), and Naim NACA5
(fairly high inductance, low capacitance). I have compared these
cables directly, using low-impedance (3 ohms) speakers, and I heard no
differences whatever, although there was a measured 1.5dB droop at
20kHz with the Naim cable. Such a result should not come as a surprise
to anyone with a basic knowledge of electronics, and some experience
of listening tests.

Key word there is that *you* "heard" no difference, even though you
measured one.

"Michael Scarpitti" wrote in message
news:_CAec.124807$JO3.82468@attbi_s04...

Speakers in a room have echoes, no matter how high their quality. Only
by using something like the Stax can one eliminate the room effects.


This is a "given" truth. However your system might work for you to enjoy
music through one Stax model set-up and one amp. What is the practical
significance in that either for you, me, or the rest of the audio world?

Panzzi wrote in message news:AfMec.26247$wP1.67300@attbi_s54...
Back a few hundred years ago, people didn't know a piece of charcoal and
diamond has something in common. That because by that time, people were
not as "highly educated" as today's people. A hundred years later, people
will laugh at a lot of our nowaday so called physics theory. I am pretty
sure about it.

Why wait? There's plenty of audiophile "theory" to laugh at right
now. Green pens, magic bricks, wooden pucks, cable "micro-diodes"
and a whole lot more of black magic bunkum.

As has been said, they laughed at Galileo, but they also laugh at
Bozo the clown.

Steven Sullivan wrote:

TonyP wrote:

I have heard differences in some amps that I own. My Carver 1.5t does
not sound the same as my Onkyo M510 or the Counterpoint SA220. I was
giving a friend the Onkyo (didn't need 3 amps and just had the Carver
serviced and spec'ed), so we hooked it up to my Acoustat 1+1's medallion
mod speakers. We listened between the Onkyo and Counterpoint. They both
sounded very good. I would have thought that the SA220 would have
'destroyed' the Onkyo considering the price difference. The Onkyo cost
me $160, the Counterpoint, $2500. I would probably be hard pressed to
say which was better if my eyes were closed,or even if I could say which
was which. We only listened briefly. Possibly, with a more detailed
listening session, differences might have been heard. But, for that
brief session, the Onkyo and Counterpoint sounded the same. I gave him
the Onkyo. The Carver sounded 'different'. It was readily apparent.
Nothing subtle. I even hooked my Pioneer Elite receiver, then my JVC
receiver to the speakers, and *anyone* could hear the difference. These
are all products with vanishing low distortion and wide frequency
responses, yet they sound different.

You write all this, then chide Stewart with the classic '*YOU* heard no
difference' argument when he reported his *controlled* listening
versus measurement results. Do you not see the contradiction?
WHy is your anecdote evidentially superior? 'YOU heard no difference'
would still apply; moreover, yours weren't even *blinded* comparisons,
so they suffer from *additional* sources of error.

Nowhere in my writing above, is Stewart's name mentioned. Nowhere. His
results were his, mine are mine, and those that were there, agreed. They
heard a difference. And it was obvious. Nothing subtle. Nothing that you
would have to strain to hear. And.. it is repeatable. I never claimed
that my "anecdote evidentially" superior. That is your statement, not
mine. I claim no superiority in testing, listening, measuring, anything.
Just reporting the experience. That is all. And, unless you were there,
you either accept or don't accept the results. But, you can not deny my
personal experience or those that were there. You don't have to be
"blinded" to hear a difference. Just listen and be honest. If you are
ever in the LI, NY area, let me know, for it is repeatable.
There is no contradiction except you choose not to accept my results
because of *your* bias. Who determines that "blinded" is a better test?
Again, everyone has a bias, even myself. But, I am honest with what *I*
hear, or don't hear.

I have no ax to grind with those that can't hear a difference. Good for
you. You can save a lot of money and buy a competent receiver, Home
Depot speaker wire and Radio Shack gold interconnects, decent efficient
speakers and live in audio bliss. I wish that were the case for me.


There's good news: it might be!
Try trusting *only* your ears...which means, alas,
using a bias-controlled comparison protocol.

Again, I listen with my ears, not measuring instruments. I am sure that
you picked all your equipment with a "blindfold" on (meaning DBT).