AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - And they shall know us by the trail of dead.

wrote:
wrote:
wrote:
wrote:

First things first. My fundamental objection to your tweaks:
Exactly
the same as my objection to ABX. I know of no validation of either by a
controlled experiment. And controlled experiment support is the only
basis on which I'll grant consent to a procedure, drug, treatment.

So then run a controlled experiment if that's what floats your boat.

That a theory appears to someone or to millions to be
sound or unsound is of no interest to me.

Why do you think that is of interest to me?

The hell of science is paved
with millions of sound theories that came and died. A scientist called
Pettenkoffer (lovely name for a mad scientist-no?) had such faith in
"bad miasmas" as the source of epidemics that he swallowed a culture of
cholera bugs to disprove Pasteur. And lo and behold- he sailed through
it.

Speaking of bugs, doctors had such faith in the prevailing wisdom of
the day, that they ridiculed a 19th century Hungarian surgeon named
Ignaz Semmelweiss. Who argued that doctors could pass on potentially
life threatening diseases, if they did not disinfect their hands before
an operation. Despite evidence that deaths on his ward were reduced,
Semmelweiss' findings were ignored by the conservatives that were
prevalent in the medical/scientific industry. People DIED because of
people like you, Elmir. Don't forget that.

They ***DIED***, in case you didn't get that.

Died.

(As in "not living any longer").

The conversion on the road
to Damascus of Fella and De Wal is an uncontrolled experiment.

I've got some sad news for you, Elmira. ALL audio observations are
"uncontrolled experiments". You're simply kidding yourself if you think
you can control all factors during a test. You do so, because you are
frighteningly ignorant of all the factors that can change human
perception of sound, during a test. Controlling some variables whilst
pretending you're controlling all does not an objective test make.

Fella and deWaal conducted exactly the appropriate test that an audio
system was designed for. They did not attempt to conduct a test with
parameters not in keeping with the purpose of an audio system.

Speaking for myself, if I had to conduct a DBT or ABX test every single
time that I needed to determine differences for two given conditions,
well.... ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I would be dead of old age long before I
finished performing DBT and ABX tests on these things.

For example... I was working on setting up and tweaking my Rega Planar
tt today, and one of the things I was testing happened to be the
5-pinhole paper tweak that you tried (except I did not endeavour to add
the animal picture or aspirin). I had to test many locations on and
around the tt before I found one that I felt contributed a positive
change to the sound (needless to say, there was no question in my mind
that the 5-pinhole paper did effect a change... I'm far beyond that
issue). I need to determine differences in SECONDS. I don't have time
to conduct any of your "statistically significant" DBT or ABX tests for
each location of the paper, in order to be "certain" that I am hearing
a change.
You don't get anywhere in audio doing ridiculous things like that.

If you have to conduct such blind tests, then you're not an "advanced"
audiophile, you're an "insecure" audiophile.Which implies that your
knowledge of audio will be severely limited by your misguided belief
that you are being "smart", "rational" and "objective", because of all
the time you're wasting on such tests, and because you are unlikely to
hear all but the largest differences possible (ie. speaker vs.
speaker), due to the inherent stresses these tests produce. That said,
I'm stating my choice and the reasons why, but if people want to be
foolish and feel good about themselves but running DBTs that will only
hinder the process, I'm not going to stop them. That's your choice.

Results
are valid for Fella and De Wal and long may they enjoy them. Long may
Sullivan enjoy ABXing. If he ever does it in his real life for his real
choices. Not just on one of the RAO email pages.

Sullivan, like Krueger, is not an audiophile, and doesn't even enjoy
audio. What they both enjoy is arguing about their favorite religion;
irrelevant, pseudo-scientific test methodologies for audio.

In fact I can think of no way that one could devise
a controlled experiment for the infinite variety of human response to
aesthetic stimuli. Even if one enrolled tens of thousands all one would
get would be the responses of these subjects to these test samples.

Of course, that's one of the many drawbacks of believing in the
religion of ABX/DBT tests for audio. If you didn't take the test
yourself, then it isn't meaningful. But I could take that further and
say that if you don't test the way that you listen to your stereo, then
it isn't meaningful either. And I can take that one even further by
saying that if you do test as you would normally listen to your stereo,
then it does not matter a whit if you think you hear changes due to
expectation effect. Because sound perceived is sound heard.

So
you're free to enjoy your tweaks and publicise them to others who may
have similar response.

Great. Now that I have your permission to do that, I can finally begin!

It "proves" nothing either way.

Again, you miss the point... I'm not here to "prove" anything to
anyone. I've said this about 3,000 times now. Life is too short for me
to bother doing that. Everyone here is free to believe what they want
to believe. If they choose to believe that I don't believe in the
tweaks, the tweaks are jokes, I'm a troll, and they don't need to try
them for all those reasons and more, then people are free to believe in
their own lies that they make up as well. But if you want anything to
be "proven", then as I have always encouraged people, you need to prove
it to yourself, and not be intellectually lazy and demand that others
do your thinking for you.

The contention
begins when you claim universal validity.

I don't recall having ever claimed that. On the contrary, I often said
that the validity for ANYTHING in audio is up to the beholder of the
audio device. And because everyone has different levels of listening
skill, -no one- can claim that (almost) -anything- in audio is 100%
audible.

And since it is an argument about nothing very
much it may never end. Just like the ABX argument.

There is no comparison. My tweaks are part of a new revolution in both
audio and science, that changes the fundamental presumptions about
audio, and perception of sound.
ABX is a joke from a bygone era. It's sole purpose, whether it (and its
supporters) are conscious of it or not, is to prevent audio from ever
progressing too rapidly (to keep the status quo, which is what
conservatives like Arny and Steven like to do). Just as you would do,
given the chance. Alternative audio concepts is the exact opposite of
ABX; it's bleeding edge, it's avante garde, it's in fact, the future of
audio and science. People like you have a long ways before your
thinking catches up (perhaps 40-50 years) . Had the tweak worked for
you the first time out, as you seem to have expected it to, that wait
might have been 40-50 minutes, for you, instead of 40-50 years.

A few unimportant clarifications. I did not put
the tweak assembly on the floor. I put it on the bottom of the frame
of my Acoustats under the wiring.
I chose the Xover for the third tweak because
that is where all four inputs and outputs meet conveniently.
I did not measure exact distances for the
pinpricks.

Exact distances is not necessary, so long at the center hole is on the
same diagonal as the 4 others. How you listen when you do audio tests,
is more important than how you measure pinholes.

I will clarify again that you said your wife did feel she detected
differences but they were negative. Well again, I'm not surprised here,
after spending all afternoon experimenting with the location of
pinholed paper on my Rega. Because as I say, there were definitely
places that I perceived as a negative change. For example, I didn't
like it right next to the Rega's output cable, but it was better near
the electrical cable. Best of all though, only came when I placed it on
the top of the plinth, in front of the tonearm base.

IOW, these are things that require experiment. Trying something one way
and declaring the entire revolution null and avoid is not much less
rigid than those who would dismiss all such alternative ideas without
ever trying them at all. I've talked about many different tweaks, all
are valid, by me. None are any more difficult to try than the 5-pinhole
that you tried, and as I said, the L-shape for Dummies printout is even
easier and more noticeable than the 5-pinhole paper tweak. Although
experimentation is greater for alternative audio concepts, so are the
rewards when you get it right.

What conrolled experiment? A simple one would
not constitute true "scientific " validation but go a long way towards
real life:
At random keep changing tweak /no tweak. The subjects don't know which
is which. Give them a paper with 30 like/ don't like squares to fill
for a series of 15 "tests". In fact Fella and De Wal could do it at
home with any assistant. I'd trust them to be truthful. Ten correct "I
like" choices and you're home.

Fella and deWaal already proved this experiment for themselves, and you
know that. So why on earth are YOU suggesting test protocols for
someone else, and not yourself? Are you made that insecure by the fact
that there are 3 people presently on this group who have heard
differences brought about by the 5-pinhole tweak that you failed to
validate, with your admitted "enourmous biases" and all? Are you that
sure of your listening skill and that you executed the tests properly,
that you can now just assume everyone else is kidding themselves about
the tweak? Because for your sake, I sure hope not.

BTW, as I already mentioned here, I already did DBTs on the 5-pinhole
paper tweak and passed. That wasn't done to prove anything to anybody,
either.

And then please let's get back towards
exchange of "subjective" views about equipment, recordings etc.

You just finished handing out supposedly "objective" test protocols for
other people to go by (other than yourself, of course), and now you're
telling everyone to "go back to subjective views" of audio??

One
soon learns to recognise those whose opinions one'd consider seriously
to agree with or not..

I take this to mean that you only favour the opinions of those that you
know think like you and by and large, agree with what you agree with.
So basically, this way you don't get any scary "challenges" to your
modes of thinking thrown at you, you don't have to ever learn anything
new, that you didn't already know before. Makes you feel "stupid" and
"out of control" to be in a position of learning something from someone
that you didn't at all know, doesn't it?

No I did not think you were a professional
audio reviewers. Most are interminable bores, stretching minuscule
material to fill the pages. I thought you might be a better kind of eg.
columnist.

I quite agree. That's always been my perception of Stereophile, quite
honestly. I haven't read it in many years so I don't know if its any
different today, but it always had the most "interminable bores"
writing interminably boring reviews, that never much made me take
interest in the equipment (unless I already was), let alone the
reviewer. It's like the audio equivalent of the American Journal of
Medicine, or the minutes at an AES meeting. Very dry, very uninspiring.
The tiny little print didn't help the interest factor either, it made
it seem even more like articles on equipment were being churned out by
a computer program. I never could tell the difference between
reviewers, as they all seemed cut from the same cloth to me, in the way
they approached a review. They often would start out the review in a
self-gratuitous fashion, droning on and on about themselves and
completely irrelevant things, like their favourite wine, things that
have only the flimsiest connection to the audio review. I often found
myself shouting at the magazine "Get to the point, already!". Not a
good sign. Next would come the excessive, plodding details about what
the product looks, feels or smells like, then the excessively boring
listening notes, and finally the technical tests, which I always
completely skipped over, as they have no relevance for me. Basically, I
think I could write 4 reviews in the space of a single Stereophile
review, and say more of relevance about the 4 audio products, than a
single full length SR review does.

I just found an old issue, opened to a typical review, and here's what
I'm talking about:

....."Over time, i became aware of a slight 'electronic' haze in the
treble and upper midrange, but it was low enough in magnitude that only
a curmudgeon would complain about it. (But then, this is Stereophile,
otherwise known as Curmudgeons 'R' Us). [Ha.Ha. I'm laughing like crazy
at this oh-so funny joke. :-| -SHP].

[Wait, there's more hilarity to follow...]

...."In the initial listening sessions -ie. BDL (Before Dedicated
Lines)-- there seemed to be a degree of blandness in the presentation,
so that something like the "Battle Music" on Bernstein's new recording
of Candide (DG 429-734-2, disc 1 track 9), which is almost scary in its
impact when heard through the C-J PV11, came across as just a bit
subdued with the Coda in the system (Levels were matched for this
comparison). ADL (After Dedicated Lines), however, it was a different
story: most of what seemed like blandness in the Coda was gone,
replaced by a chameleon-like (or Zelig-like) variablility as a function
of the recording itself. "

End quote.

Yup, all that was supposed to be only two lines of text. Between the
minute details given on what track the reviewer was listening to (I'm
surprised he left out the Library of Congress classification number for
the song), the obscure references to his other equipment, the esoteric
references to boring Woody Allen movies, the stilted descriptions ("a
chameleon like variability as a function of the recording itself", the
constant parenthetical asides, the detours the reader gets taken to
unnecessary made-up acronyms AND their definitions, and the really lame
stabs at something that's supposed to resemble humour, I completely
forget about what the hell the component was that the reviewr was
supposed to be reviewing for me, and why I was reading this review in
the first place.

At the end of these short novels that they call product reviews, you
never do end up learning much about audio or even everything you want
or need to know about the product under review. You do however get to
learn a lot about the reviewers opinions of themselves... kind of like
that bore at a party that never stops talking about himself, and always
believes that his interest in his stories are everyone's interest.

I meant it as an unsolicited compliment.
Where do you get the stamina to fill the
pages the way you do is a true mystery. I already exceeded my ratio.
Ludovic Mirabel

I like writing and it comes naturally. Not everybody has that.