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.
That a theory appears to someone or to millions to be
sound or unsound is of no 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.
He performed an uncontrolled experiment that confirmed that most people
survive any epidemic. Inborn resistance etc. The conversion on the road
to Damascus of Fella and De Wal is an uncontrolled experiment. 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.
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. So
you're free to enjoy your tweaks and publicise them to others who may
have similar response. It "proves" nothing either way. The contention
begins when you claim universal validity.
And since it is an argument about nothing very
much it may never end. Just like the ABX argument.
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.
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.
And then please let's get back towards
exchange of "subjective" views about equipment, recordings etc. One
soon learns to recognise those whose opinions one'd consider seriously
to agree with or not.. Most of the professional reviewers? No.
Ferstler, Sullivan, NYOB, ScottW? No. J.G. Holt, Atkinson, Jenn, Scott
something in RAHE? Yes.
This is a personal, idiosyncratic listing
valid for this writer only/
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 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
-----------------------------------------------------
wrote:
wrote:
wrote:

Red-faced disclosu I tried what you're pleased to call a
tweak.

You're wrong, I'm not pleased to call them "tweaks". I feel it is
undignified for the importance of these techniques. I prefer to call
them "treatments". I only call them "tweaks" because it is what you
people understand. And as you've just shown me, some of you even have
trouble with that term.

Redfaced because it shames me that I bothered.

Very interesting. It's always the same reaction. When they can't
discern differences, then people feel ashamed, and they would never
give the -- **treatments** another chance if their life depended on
it. Ruling out any further chances that they can detect changes by
improving their initial experiment (e.g. it may not have been done
right) or trying different ones.

I applaud you anyway, because at least you took a chance, however
small, at expanding your mind and fighting a lifetime of conditioning
through education in conventional laws of science. By me, you just
didn't fight hard enough.

after spending my
professional life giving wide berth to medical and nonmedical quackery
("functional hypoglycemia", "kissing disease", "fibrositis", "chronic
fatigue"
and such) I decided to try a quack remedy from another area.

You're not the only quack... I mean "doctor", to have done so. One of
Belt's best customers is a doctor (ever heard of Dr. Graham?).

Also, it might interest you to know that the concepts these tweaks are
based on have been blind tested by the medical community, and have been
proven to help tinnititus sufferers. Here's part of the story on that.
The Belt's have a daughter who requires a hearing aid. She always
complained that voices sounded unnatural and annoying (imagine having
to filter everything you hear through the sound of a hearing aid).
After treating the -battery- in the hearing aid, the problems
disappeared. Staff at a local medical facility got wind of this, but
being doctors like you, were -extremely skeptical-, to say the least.

Nevertheless, they actually granted a DBT study of the effects of the
battery treatment to hearing aid patients, who reported, like the
Belt's daughter, that the hearing aids after treatment were much more
pleasing and natural to listen to. It is the only official DBT study of
a Belt treatment that I know of. Nevertheless, continued resistance to
the ideas by doctors in the medical community, just like you, prevents
hearing aid wearers from ever improving their situation. That's only
one of the many ways in which our society is being "cheated" of
progress by the politics of science. (So unfortunately, it isn't just
audiophiles that are cheating themselves out of a revolution in audio,
due to social politics).

I got it all: five pinholes, picture of my beloved dead Siamese,
aspirin tablet
(actually ASA- I think Bayer made enough money out of it already).

Oh no! You didn't try the original BAYER Aspirin! No kidding!

(Actually, yes, kidding).


Since all my speakers are dipoles (no boxes) I had to compromise
and
put the lock, stock and barrel under the wires from the interface to
the ELS
panels.

Maybe I'm not picturing this right, but it sounds like you have not
enough flat surface area on your speakers to lay the 5-pinhole device
on it, and if you placed it on the floor underneath the wires, that
would not be good. If you'd have told me this, I would have responded
that although wood speakers are probably the best object to use this
device with, you're better off simply taping it as described, to the
top or back of your cd player, near the output jacks. And the same for
the amp as well (providing you don't have a Class A amp like I do, that
gets mighty hot and might burn the paper).

Besides being properly installed, it's also important to be sure the
device is properly set up. It's a plain white paper rectangle with 4
pinholes in each corner, one in the center along the diagonals of the
corners, -underneath that- goes the animal picture with 4 legs and a
tail, and the aspirin goes over the middle hole in the center of the
pinholed paper. Then to attach it, a single piece of scotch tape going
over the aspirin in the center, to hold it all together. It's all
described in this article here, in case you didn't read it:

http://www.musicweb-international.co...ep05/Snark.htm

To take no chances I put the third tweak next to the
inputs/outputs
on the Xover box.
Result: no difference
I got my wife. I told her to report any difference and told
her nothing
else. After a
few minutes I put the tweaks in. She listened again.: not much
difference,
maybe a little worse, she said.

So although she interpreted it as a negative change, she did detect a
change? Don't you find that interesting, since according to your
theory, no change should be possible since this device does not affect
the signal path?

Should I buy box-speakers?

Yes. Just get a cheap pair of entry-level Boston Acoustics, and then
you can apply the tweak, and they'll sound better than your
electrostats. (Note to: Robert Morein. This was a "joke". You know, "ha
ha"? Tongue-in-cheek? Farcical? Not serious? Kidding only? Nevermind).

Assuming you put it together correctly and installed it correctly, what
you should probably do is try something else. Frankly, I was suprised
the 5-pinhole tweak worked as well as it did for the other two.
Although I had no problem discerning its effect, when I tested it on my
wife, she couldn't reliably do so. This is why I came out with v.2 of
the L-shape printout most recently ("L-Shape Tweak For Dummies!"). What
you should have done is printed out the L-shape as instructed, and
taped one of these babies to the back of your CD player, next to the
jacks (and maybe a few more elsewhere). Whether you like the sound or
not, I feel its far more likely to produce audible differences than the
5-pinhole paper. I spent yesterday afternoon taping L-shape printouts
all over the seats and interior of my car (among other things), and
vastly improved the car's audio system.

Another disclosu huge negative bias. As you say my mind
is not ready. Not for your tweak, not for astrology, not for 89,9% of
codings in the psychiatric compendium of diagnoses, not for telepathy,
not for a host of other things.

Stop lumping in pseudo-sciences, paranormal and other things you don't
believe in, with the tweaks. That shows again, an extreme bias on your
part. That's not any way to practice science. You're supposed to try to
remain "objective", remember?

YES, the "huge negative bias" is going to be a problem, because it
colours your perception of sound. This means your brain most certainly
heard the differences made by the tweak. (Hundreds of people, including
3 on this forum, have heard the changes brought about by such devices).
But your thought processes coloured the interpretation. Maybe you
didn't even know what to look for, and were expecting the kind of
changes you normally get from audio products based on conventional
audio theory. Maybe you were expecting a "night and day change" (I
don't think the 5-pinhole device provides that, as I've said before).
When that doesn't show up, you might not be listening carefully enough
to the sound before and after, and overlooking the changes that you are
able to perceive.

That said, at least one of the other two fellows who heard the effects
of the 5-pinhole device did have a negative bias going in (though
probably not as HUGE as I'd expect yours to be, given how determined
you were in your attacks against me and my tweaks). He heard changes
anyhow.

I sincerely admire your incredible energy, your verbal
talents and I think you write well, amusingly and inventively.

Thank you. I do my best. Like all of us, I'm sure...

Are you a pro?

Hifi reviewer? No, I never really tried to go for that. Whatever I
managed to get into audio magazines was strictly non-paid. Now that you
mention it, I recall I was offered a reviewer position once, but the
deal fell through after the magazine folded.

You could easily be. Many worse writers fill the newspapers.

I think you're right, after a pro reviewer thought I'd be a good audio
writer, I thought so too... (but never pursued it). After I saw
Ferstler here (and RAHE), I thought "Well gee... it really doesn't take
much to write about audio professionally, does it?". In that way, I
suppose Ferstler's an inspiration for anyone to try to get into the
business. Didn't pass high school? No problem! Howard Ferstler's a
professional audio journalist! Did your last IQ score turn out to be
lower than your shoe size? No problem! Howard Ferstler's a professional
audio journalist! Do you hate audio and audiophiles with a passion?
Really??How about this: would you rather smash your fingers with a ball
peen hammer than upgrade your audio system? Hey, no problem! Howard
Ferstler's a professional audio journalist! You could be one too!

I regret that you managed to pervert a supposedly audio
forum although you're not the only one abusing the rec. audio. name.

I regret that you feel that way. Others have said the exact opposite,
that I managed to bring the theme of RAO back on to the subject of
audio, after 10 years of it being centered around what a dogmatic
trolling ******* that Arny is. And quite frankly, given all the
attention that you and everyone else here was lavishing on me every
single day, all day long, you'd have a tough time convincing me that
people would rather not have me here. I wish more people would have
taken Dizzy's lead to killfile me or at least ignore me a lot more,
because even though I only responded to perhaps a quarter of the posts
addressed to me, it's a very time consuming practice, nevertheless.
Even if its only to "fashizzle" someone's post.

But perhaps you've been here so long and never taken your blinkers off,
that you don't realize that your delusions are not shared by the Usenet
community. I was here before you ever head of the place, and I know
rec.audio.opinion has always been the "backwoods trailer trash cousin"
of the rec.audio hierarchy. Thanks in large part to Arny and the
contention he attracts, it is now undisputably regarded as a flame
group. Long before I came on with my little tweak posts, the vast
majority of the content on this group was an attack of some sort
against someone. Attacks based on audio and not character were rare,
until me (I admit most of the post SHP attacks were on my character,
but at least some were on my audio beliefs).


Have a good journey to Venus.
Ludovic Mirabel

Venus? Never been there. Although, I hear the weather's nice and I was
thinking of taking the shazbots there on vacation.

Something tells me you'll be back.

Well, I doubt that, but they say never say never. Something tells me if
I do, you'll know about it.

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.

Mr. SHP says:
"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."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I couldn't have said it better myself. Doctors, witch doctors and
quacks were killing people for millenia. They were applying spider webs
to open wounds, cauterised and bled the sick wholesale.
Why? Because like Semmelweis contemporaries
they relied on gorgeous theories like noxious miasmas, stars in a bad
configuration, devils
in the flesh, morphic resonances and hymns to quantum rather than
looking for a little thing called evidence.
If women were still dying wholesale of puerperal
feverin 1952 Dr. Semmelweis would be writing a paper for "The Lancet"
demonstrating a dramatic fall in mortality rates in women treated by
doctors with clean hands.
The trick is not to invent more
loony-bin ideas like pinpricks in a sheet of paper with photos of
animals- fourlegged, no chicken, pigeons or centipedes- but to show
that they WORK for believers and nonbelievers alike..
Granted that would be quite difficult
in the world of subjective perceptions. So if it works for you or
Mssrs, Fella
and De Wal well and good. All kinds of things work for all kinds of
people in the world of likes and dislikes.
If someone believes that he had wonderful
intercourse with a beautiful extraterrestrial who am I to argue? It is
only when he wants to start a movement and begins to sell amulets that
one recalls the messianic movements ending in mass-suicide.

Ludovic Mirabel





wrote:
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.

wrote:
Mr. SHP says:
"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."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Yes, but that's true of everything I say.

The trick is not to invent more
loony-bin ideas like pinpricks in a sheet of paper with photos of
animals- fourlegged, no chicken, pigeons or centipedes- but to show
that they WORK for believers and nonbelievers alike..

You missed the point, but you always do. Semmelweiss was not able to
convince his colleagues, eternally skeptical "non believers", that his
findings were correct. Maybe he didn't have the means to do so to their
satisfaction. If he had my foolish friend, all those people on the
wards would not have DIED.

You know.... as in "DEAD"??

Are you starting to get the point, or do I have to draw a map for you
in crayon?

Instead of listening to reason, they decided "What the hell. We'll play
with people's lives, sure, who cares! Better to scoff and ridicule one
of our colleaguges than play it safe and take a chance he might be
correct and save lives! After all, potentially looking foolish is a
hell of a lot more important than SAVING LIVES!!".

By the same token, you and your friends are being equally imprudent and
irrational, by dismissing 30 second tweaks that take a fraction of the
energy to install as you put out to trying to refute them. And think of
the energy you are wasting in mustering up so much hositility towards
ideas that play with your many insecurities.

It isn't "pinpricks on a sheet of paper" that kill people (although it
certainly seems to have killed you. With embarassment, I mean). And no
silly, "centipedes, chickens and pigeons" are a stupid idea. They won't
work, they don't have a tail. No kidding you never got the tweak to
work, jeez! You probably used a picture of a porcupine to set up the
device! You're so incompetent, it's not even funny! Geez!

And so on.

Granted that would be quite difficult
in the world of subjective perceptions. So if it works for you or
Mssrs, Fella
and De Wal well and good. All kinds of things work for all kinds of
people in the world of likes and dislikes.


If someone believes that he had wonderful
intercourse with a beautiful extraterrestrial who am I to argue?

And if someone wants to believe that everything in audio sounds the
same and that principles of audio that were developed hundreds of years
ago are all we will ever understand of audio, then who am I to argue?

Oh who am I kidding, I LOVE arguing with you bigots!


It is
only when he wants to start a movement and begins to sell amulets that
one recalls the messianic movements ending in mass-suicide.

You're ridiculous. I don't recall anyone dying from wanting to BUY
PRODUCTS FROM PWB AT WWW.BELT.DEMON.CO.UK.

......At least, not that I know of.