Have we lost civility and respect on Audio forums?
I think we have. I have seen many discussion on audio forums and how nasty they can become when you have people disagreeing. Seems like there are a lot more know it alls now. I been in 20 years and I can still learn. But I also know I know quite a bit. Like cables can enhance the sound and higher end well designed gear can truly be ear candy special. Is this just on audio forums or the internet period.
Yup. Civility is dead. Several months ago I read a comment, or a post, from an audiophile even older that I am, who was wondering how to re calibrate suggested stylus force numbers to "wet". Man oh man, did the flamers come out. If it hadn't been so sad and demoralizing.... It took me awhile to come back, I have no idea if the OP folded his tent or not. It isn't a problem unique to this forum. The ascendance of dogma over reason seems to be complete. I have literature from Thorens showing wet and dry stylus force tables. I have cartridge data sheets showing both... But the experts had no trouble coming down on a person who was just looking for usable knowledge. We are surrounded by those who think they can lift themselves up by pushing others down.
Then you have people like Floyd Toole and Sean Olive who strictly evaluated sound quality in their research using proper time synchronized quick switching double blind tests but are subjectivists. All of their studies were based on listener preferences. All scoring of their tests were done with subjective ratings.
No, they didn't. You keep repeating it as if were fact or it will be since you use it like a chant or a mantra. If you'd look up that conversation Darko had with Paul Barton (who was part of the team of Toole, Olive and others) you'd stop saying that. But you won't so here's a link to that conversation.
They used the exact same speaker positions so all the room reflections would be the same so there had to be a pause to swap out speakers. No synchronized quick switching. You can quick switch with cables but that would negate what the masters learned about human hearing and how our brains work. People need time to adjust to properly ascertain what they're listening to.
I was off a bit on the length of the listening sessions as they were of 20 minute durations and not half an hour. 20 minutes spent listening and 20 minutes spent not listening. The podcast is a great listen and worth anyone's time.
@puptentlook. I been doing this 20 years. Because I sell cables people think in trying to shill. Most of us are smart enough to know what we are hearing in our audio systems by this point. We know when it sounds better and when it doesn’t. Not bragging but I have some seriously high engineered equipment in my system that I bought after months and years of research. Then one guy comes on and expects me and others to accept his way and only his way then personally attacks me, my integrity and those who agree with me. WHAT A JOKE!
Exactly right ...Especially when it is done not on a statistical way with a crowd in a laboratory where the number of subjects is crux of the matter for the average results, but in a confortable living room with the owner listener own perceptive habits ...
You can quick switch with cables but that would negate what the masters learned about human hearing and how our brains work. People need time to adjust to properly ascertain what they’re listening to.
I'm a DIY guy out of financial necessity. I make my cables, out of the best Beldon or Cardas I can afford, with the best hardware I can put my hands on. I freely admit I have copied commercial maker's designs. I have recapped both of my Kenwood KD TT's, a 500 and a 550. I have built Heathkit and other (like from plans...) amplifiers...I repair my CD players, and gear, it's not just smoke inside the wires for me.
My complaint is this society's headlong rush into Orwell's 1984.... History started when you were born, NOTHING of importance happened before then, if it did we can change it (Stalin, Mao, and Che have been re-imagined as heroes? And heroes re-invented as criminals?). If you can't buy it. it just doesn't exist, or have an intrinsic value. (who had the price tag on her hat on Hee-Haw? Who's even seen Hee-Haw or heard Buck and Roy?) Dogma is knowledge, do not question the dogma (you want to be on the right side, don't you?) I do not want to be lectured to by a someone who wouldn't recognize a JBL Paragon if it was eating his B&W's. But at the same time I don't mind being taught. I'm sad that an old ear who can remember, let alone still use, something from the dawn of Hi-Fi (when it had to be figured out and knowledge was shared freely and joyfully...) be belittled by somebody who already knows it all, and has no tolerance for those that don't know it all, or know different, and smugly knows, JUST KNOWS that he knows it all, and you don't
phewww, I need a nap, or a time out or something... wonder what my blood sugar is :-)
I thought i was pretentious ego... And i am a bit for sure or perhaps more than a bit and i apologize...😁
But some beat me patronizing every hobbyist as deceptive and deceiving because we dont use only and essentially double blind test as the only factor to assess objective sound quality in our acoustic room or in our living room ... Fascinating human indeed ...
I myself affirm that improvised simple blind test are enough in our optimization process ...
I just bought a low cost pre-amplifier i dont need a double blind test to perceive immediate improvement...
Why ?
Because aural memory is associated with the body and not just the brain... Sound memory is not a book stored on a shelves... Sound qualia are associated with the body movement and reaction too because memorizing sound and producing sound are associated ...
Also aural memory is of two kind : conscious memory manifesting as clear thought and unconscious deeper memory in the body emerging as emotion and feeling...
i dont remember consciously for a long time the difference between two sounds impressions for sure , but relaxed with enough time my body and my associated emotions with the different sounds inform me on a subconcious level and i feel at ease with the sound or not ...
I dont need a double blind test as claim scottwheel with a rapid switching to feel my emotion... I need time and relaxation in my acoustic room...
I connected the low cost pre-amplifier i received today and , knowing my room/ system i felt an improvement ...
Scottwheel will call me deceived and deceiving in my review because i did not pass a double blind test BEFORE writing my review...
Some people were deceived in the past by some very costly high end products for nevermind the reason , and now they crusade against any subjective impression as almost a fraud if not verified by double blind test...
For me simple improvised blind test is enough and not even always necessary ...
Myself i was never frustrated because i never owned high end costlier product as scottwheel , save vintage one, and i always relied on my creativity not on double blind test ...
I think scottwheel deceive himself with this mantra ...He dont even believe it himself ...😊 I hope for his sake he dont believe it himself ...😁
Yes. No. It’s always been the best of times or the worst of times. Everything is relative to your expectations, desires and means of participation! Enjoy the ride and ignore the irrelevant.
Then you have people like Floyd Toole and Sean Olive who strictly evaluated sound quality in their research using proper time synchronized quick switching double blind tests but are subjectivists. All of their studies were based on listener preferences. All scoring of their tests were done with subjective ratings.
“No, they didn’t.”
Yes they did.
“You keep repeating it as if were fact or it will be since you use it like a chant or a mantra.”
It is a fact.
”If you’d look up that conversation Darko had with Paul Barton (who was part of the team of Toole, Olive and others) you’d stop saying that. But you won’t so here’s a link to that conversation.”
Why on earth would I look up an interview on YouTube with a guy who is NOT Sean Olive or Floyd Toole when I can go straight to the source? Floyd Toole published a book about Hifi in which he talks extensively about double blind testing and his use of it in his research. Sean Olive has a blog in which he does the same and they have both published peer reviewed papers with the AESJ including one specifically about double blind testing. Do you really think that some YouTuber interviewing someone who is NOT Toole or Olive is going to give you better information on their testing methodologies than their own published books, research papers and personal blog?
“They used the exact same speaker positions so all the room reflections would be the same so there had to be a pause to swap out speakers. No synchronized quick switching.”
Do a quick search on the Harman speaker shuffler then get back to me on quick switching in their research.
“@scottwheel Do you have any friends? You are not making any here and @calvinj said you really are obsessed with his posts. If you do not know what an Apple Airtag is then you are living in a cave in China.
Best thing to do with a sociopath like this is ignore them. Oh I know it will have this post deleted but he she it they them is a pathetic little person and I feel good unloading on this fraud. @calvinj we may not always agree, but I agree with your consensus on this sea creature. Keep posting I enjoy reading the responses, at least 99.9%of them. Here is to hoping this Sea Lion is eaten by a Great White in the South China Sea.”
I can’t help but wonder if the irony of your post copied and pasted above on a thread lamenting the lack of civility is lost on you. Thanks for the laugh.
Psychoacoustics laboratory double blind test statistical research dont means that any perceived qualia in your living room is a deceptive illusion if you dont go for a double blind test ...
Think about the complete absurdity of such claims over the head of all hobbyist buying their gear and optimizing it mechanically, electrically and acoustically ...
Why in the world someone will take one week to patronize everyone about this double blind test ? They are not practical at all ..
How many changes i did encounter in the few years i takes to create my system room ?
Thousand changes with tuning of one hundred resonators ...
simple blind test are practical when needed and they were needed , but double blind test with switching box my a...s.. How to do this with room acoustic tuning ?
How to do this with mechanical damping tuning process ? How to do it with some devices used in electrical noise floor controls ...
I used simple some blind tests for my satisfaction ... According to scottwheel i am deceived and i deceive people not asking for double blind test for ANY SMALL INCREMENTAL CHANGE, among at least one thousand one in few years ..
Sometimes we makes a fool of ourself without being even conscious of what we ask for ...
Laboratory conditions research are not a home listener room ...
For the cables i bought they were low cost one and i modified all of them without double blind test to my audible satisfaction (deceived or not i did not feel the desire to buy costly one ) ...
😁😊
Only a gullible revengeful owner of high end costly gear and cables can reverse his coat and now ask for double blind test or otherwise ask ourself to shut our mouth ... Comical as a three stooges movie ...
I am not gullible , never buy tweaks, nor costlier gear, i study basic acoustic, buy low cost gear and reach sonic heaven after few years without doubleblind test ...
“I am wondering, using your own testing criteria / and methodology, just how we would draw a valid conclusion about your Las Vegas system being SOTA ?”
I thought you guys don’t trust my “testing criteria” Don’t you guys trust your own ears? My invite did not come with any conditions about how anyone has to pass judgement. If Calvin or you or anyone else finds themselves in Las Vegas and wants to hear for themselves and judge by whatever criteria they want they are welcome to do so.
On a side note, I’m not sure you have a very accurate and complete accounting of my criteria for judging audio.
My criteria is mainly acoustic parameters and factors on which i can act as did your "friend" Edgar; not double blind test ...😊
I learned to trust and trained my ears enough to do a minimally satisfying job... You said yourself that you dont trust your own ears without double blind test ... Is it not comical ?
By the way i am pretty sure your system is minimally good at least, not because i trust the ears you did not trust yourself each side of your head , but because your own the set of filters of your "friend" Edgar ...
😊
On a side note, I’m not sure you have a very accurate and complete accounting of my criteria for judging audio
Why on earth would I look up an interview on YouTube with a guy who is NOT Sean Olive or Floyd Toole when I can go straight to the source?
Paul Barton is of that source. Toole has worked with him from those early days and by now, should be back where the started which is where Barton lives (who’s looking forward to working with him again). They’ve never really been out of touch since the tests were conducted. If you took the time to listen to Barton, you’d know that Toole worked with him on speaker design parameters as well, helping to perfect the product. They were like two peas in a pod when it came to speakers.
That, and it’s not a YouTube video but a SoundCloud recording. What’s the matter, can’t you listen that long? Do you need pictures/video to keep your interest? Would what he said throw buckets of cold water on your position?
The Harmon Speaker Shuffler is located in Northridge, Ca., which looks to have been developed in the early 2000s. In 1966, Toole conducted his very first tests on speakers and listening and Barton joined him around 1974, in Canada.
I tried by two times to discuss rationally with him to no avail ... The last time he extracted my sentence of his context to made his obsessive point about double blind testing ...😁
I renounce to discuss with him ... He is of good faith tough, very intelligent , and i dont doubt his system is good with the BACCH filters... The problem is his past frustration , his change of mind about high end gear, then his crusade on us , poor deluded audiophiles he want to save us really , we are like he was before the enlightening sun of double blind test revelation as a debunking tool ...Now price tag means nothing for him compared to double blind test ...He turn his coat inside out about high end , beginning to be a customers of high end and now becoming a debunker ...😁
But for me price tags had never mean much because i learned how to use basic acoustics and other optimization methods to reach what i called : the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold , defined by a balance between all acoustic factors implied in the opti9mizaqtion process of any system/room at any price ...
I learned to trust and train my ears in a minimal way with acoustics experiments .. I dont need to be a debunker ...
Acoustician designing a small room dont use double blind test and has no need for it ...
@maghister he can’t trust his ears he does not want us to trust ours.
“Paul Barton is of that source. Toole has worked with him from those early days and by now, should be back where the started which is where Barton lives “
So the testimonial of some guy who worked with Toole is a better source on how Toole did his research than Toole and the actual published papers of Toole’s research? I disagree.
Double blind test are not science , they are tool useful for example in pharma research coupled with statistic , never on an individual basis ... Simple blind test are useful tool in the designing process on an individual basis NEVER as debunking tool "per se" more a testing tool ...
Most techno cultist conflate science with his tools , as Dr, Fauci confused his statistics use with science, but for Fauci it was greed and power not a confusion created by naivete at all ...😊
“That, and it’s not a YouTube video but a SoundCloud recording. What’s the matter, can’t you listen that long? Do you need pictures/video to keep your interest? Would what he said throw buckets of cold water on your position?
The Harmon Speaker Shuffler is located in Northridge, Ca., which looks to have been developed in the early 2000s. In 1966, Toole conducted his very first tests on speakers and listening and Barton joined him around 1974, in Canada.
What are you so afraid of?”
Having to sit through an interview and then try to explain to how you misunderstood it. Have you read Toole’s book? Have you read Olive’s blog? Have you read any of their published research papers?
“An ongoing controversy within the high-end audio community is the efficacy of blind versus sighted audio product listening tests. In a blind listening test, the listener has no specific knowledge of what products are being tested, thereby removing the psychological influence that the product’s brand, design, price and reputation have on the listeners’ impression of its sound quality. While double-blind protocols are standard practice in all fields of science - including consumer testing of food and wine - the audio industry remains stuck in the dark ages in this regard. The vast majority of audio equipment manufacturers and reviewers continue to rely on sighted listening to make important decisions about the products’ sound quality.
An important question is whether sighted audio product evaluations produce honest and reliable judgments of how the product truly sounds.
A Blind Versus Sighted Loudspeaker Experiment
This question was tested in 1994, shortly after I joined Harman International as Manager of Subjective Evaluation [1]. My mission was to introduce formalized, double-blind product testing at Harman. To my surprise, this mandate met rather strong opposition from some of the more entrenched marketing, sales and engineering staff who felt that, as trained audio professionals, they were immune from the influence of sighted biases. Unfortunately, at that time there were no published scientific studies in the audio literature to either support or refute their claims, so a listening experiment was designed to directly test this hypothesis. The details of this test are described in references 1 and 2.
A total of 40 Harman employees participated in these tests, giving preference ratings to four loudspeakers that covered a wide range of size and price. The test was conducted under both sighted and blind conditions using four different music selections.”
So please do tell me again what part of my assertion that they do double blind listening tests for subjective evaluations.
you did get the date right when it comes to the Harman shuffler. Somehow you didn’t address your clams that their tests were quick switching.
«In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it.»
Then someone who trust his ears someday suddenly discovered that he could not trust them anymore ... This sudden discovery is so stressful that he embark on his crusade because he is coherent and want to solve his own stress problem after this sudden discovery and adopt double blind test method with rapid switching to calm his doubts after every purchase and he begin to preach everyone about it as if each person was like him stressed by the discovery that our hearing is not always trustfull...😊
This is cognitive dissonance ...
Myself i slowly learned how to trust my ears in the limit of a specific domain of activity : acoustic of room/system and audio optimization ...For sure i can be deceived sometimes then i used simple blind test as a tool ...But i never encountered a traumatic experience of self deception as some high end costly consumers who became stressed by their experience and stressed by the sudden understanding about their self deception ...
Then i was never myself in a state of cognitive dissonance nor in a crusade for truth ... I stayed always relaxed and never stressed occupied by my acoustic journey ..😊
Nobody negate the usefullness of double blind testing...
You dont get it scottwheel ..
But nobody here confuse laboratory protocols with home listening and audio optimization as a hobby ...
I dont need double blind testing protocol before purchase...
Some company as good marketing practice could gain to use it not only for publicity but for a continuous improvement of the product...
What is annoying and preposterous then is your fixation on double blind test as the only way to pick gear or to optimize our audio system ..Simple improvized blind test is enough ...
Did you get it ?
A hammer is not craftmanship, a double blind test is not science... It is a tool in the two cases which ask to be used at the right time for the right job and by the right person for a specific goal which is NEVER debunking ...
@puptentthanks to real science and technology, i get a blood sugar reading every 5 minutes….
I also run a very heavily modified 1961 M240. I suspect we would get along well. Stop by anytime :-) i serve a mean Pinot, well you can decide if it’s Pinot as tge bartender…tends..to be…. double… blind
So the testimonial of some guy who worked with Toole is a better source on how Toole did his research than Toole and the actual published papers of Toole’s research? I disagree.
I've never seen anyone so afraid to listen to something that might mitigate, inform and help to broaden one's understanding of something like you do. Barton is not testifying; he's relating a past experience that's wholly relevant to this back and forth with you. I'm not saying Barton is a "better source" than Toole. He's been right there with Toole all along.
All this tells me you're great at reading what you want and discarding the rest that doesn't conform to your views. You borrow someone else's work, cherry pick what you need, conflate things and hide behind your manufactured position.
Every time I point you to that recording, you come back with evasion, side stepping something so simple as listening to another perspective that would help to educate yourself. Seems to me that you're aware, or feel it with your spidey senses, that you'd suffer a great heaping of cognitive dissonance yourself if you did so, hence the projection with your last post.
I see you soldiered on with another post while I wrote this so let me just say that nowhere in what you quoted from Olive's blog did he mention quick switching with the subjects. Yes, they used it, but for convenience. If you did read up on it, the speaker switcher could swap out a speaker in about 3 seconds but how long did it actually take before listening again? Cabling would have to be disconnected and reconnected. Toss in any number of things and they could have waited for a good 5 minutes before starting back up again.
The tests I addressed in my "claims" were done a good 30-35 years before and all the way up to the speaker swapping device they came up with. I never said Toole, Olive and Barton didn't do blind listening tests. I didn't miss a thing.
Now psychanalysing your motives and explaining your obsession for double blind test by the stress resulting from your discovery that we cannot trust our ears (which fact is not even wrong but which fact is not true either because we can and must learn how to train our ears) was perhaps an error i did trying to understand you ...
Perhaps you are only a techno- cultist objectivist in a crusade against deluded subjectivist audiophiles ... you are not the first one here ...
You never considered that "the faillibility" of human hearing was the reverse side of the coin , and reflect his creativity in perception of meanings ... We never hear sound as in physical waves, we hear meanings ...No perception exist without a concept behind it ... If not only meaningless chaos exist ...
@tomic601I'm in the frozen Northern part of Flyoverlandia. A double blind bartender.... now that's some real scientific experimentation. Results are inconclusive, we'll try again tomorrow... Cheers!
“Every time I point you to that recording, you come back with evasion, side stepping something so simple as listening to another perspective that would help to educate yourself.”
Have you read Toole’s book or any of Olive’s blog posts or any of the actual peer reviewed ARSJ papers of their research that documents their actual testing?
I have. Do you think that this interview will demonstrate that Toole’s and Olive’s own accounts and published papers misrepresented their use of double blind tests? Simple question. If you do think that this interview will somehow prove that both Olive and Toole misrepresented their use of double blind protocols in their research I will give it a listen. If you don’t think demonstrates that they misrepresented their work I see no reason to read second hand accounts of their work after having read their first hand accounts and their actual research papers.
Why did you not listened to me and spoke about your friend Edgar invention instead of this crusade about double blind test for all ?
You would have been useful for all here, even for me because i read about it in awe but dont own it , but instead you choose to be annoying ...
I think i get it : We are not worthy of this communication as a subjectivists deluded audiophile crowd ... 😁
So ridiculous is my thought i could not discover any other explanation for your opinionated obsession about double blind test for all ...
«Every man is a different mystery»-- Anonymus thinker
«Hell is only this : science at all cost and only science for all and for the greatest good»-- Anonymus reader of the novel Morwynn by John Cowper Powys
“Slippery and very unscientific…. a peer would answer the question….but i will help you…..
How are you going to decide your effort = SOTA ?”
The invite was for you or Calvin or anyone else to come over and listen for yourselves and decide for yourselves using whatever criteria any of you want to use. How is that “slippery?”
All this ranting about how I try to dictate how other people listen. I offer the most open ended unconditional audition of my personal system in my home and that is some how “slippery?”
But i leave you a respectful way out….just explain a few things like SOTA and by what means congruent and conforming to your stated beliefs you will establish improvement across a simultaneous multi variable change ( the room )….
Do you think that this interview will demonstrate that Toole’s and Olive’s own accounts and published papers misrepresented their use of double blind tests? Simple question.
Simple answer: I never said or implied that it does. Does the fear of listening to it lead you to think it does? I don't. In fact, I said so in my last post and yet you keep on regurgitating (what's gotten to be a meme by now) that I did. Are you confusing me with what other members may have said?
The only issue you're dancing around with is this notion that all this double blind listening is done with "quick switching" when it was most likely not. You never went back and cited where Toole and Olive did just that. Throwing up all the other things they did is not germane to this discussion, but a smokescreen, a diversion.
You called me a liar earlier for pointing out they took 20 minute breaks between sessions, which you've never been able to dispute. If you'd listen to the recording, you'd see where you're wrong and you just can't do that, can you? It's okay to be wrong. We've all been wrong. It's not the end of the world...just an adjustment. Without adjustments, we all keep going the wrong way.
Very simply put, they didn't have the speaker swapping device back then. That's it. The rest is some confusion on your part as to everything else you bring up.
“The only issue you're dancing around with is this notion that all this double blind listening is done with "quick switching"
I never said all blind listening *is* done with quick switching. I said it should be. The Harman shuffler switches speakers in about 2 seconds. It’s not instantaneous which would be ideal but it is quick. They spent north of a million dollars to build this just for the sake of quick switching.
What difference does it make to you how *I* determine state of the art? If you really want me to give you a step by step description of how I plan to judge the quality of my system then please give me a good reason to do so. I just don’t think you are genuinely interested.
“…… i get you are hiding behind the invitation….”
I’m hiding behind an open invitation to you or Calvin or anyone else to come to my home and listen to my system and judge it for yourselves using whatever criteria any of you see fit? Ok….
“But first… invite yourself “
yeah, I don’t really need an invitation to listen to and evaluate my own system. I live with it. Given your disdain for my beliefs and methods of evaluation it seems odd you are now so fixated on it.
Again it’s an open invitation to listen to my system and evaluate it any way *you* see fit. What are *you* hiding from?
I would take up any such invitation at my earliest convenience. I’m not holding my breath.
“Some are not interested in hearing the music or a difference.”
Apparently you are not interested in hearing my system. Which is perfectly fine.
”Some just want to be right.”
I just want to get the subjectively best sound I can get from my system.
”WE ARE NOT THE SAME.”
So it seems. I absolutely would accept any open invitation to hear any system that someone is claiming to be pushing the state of the art. That’s what interests me the most these days in audio.
No worries. I tried to extend an olive branch. Such is life.
The sound quality of the Scottwheel system has nothing to do with his dogmatic opinion about how to implement double blind testing protocols for all audiophiles before they spoke about their system impressions or about reviewers before they review anything; the sound quality of his system has nothing to do with double blind test protocol as a universal measure of what is a "musical meaningful sound" ...
I am sure by the way that his system is at least good and better than most system of the people here ... He own the best sofware to do this created by Choueiri not by double blind test protocols 😁but because Choueiri know enough physics and love enough Bach great mass his favorite works to do so ...He declined to explain this after i asked many times to change his tune for a more useful message and to change the matter of his ideological discourse for a serious acoustic subject ...He refuse to do it ...
I am not worthy of his trust it seems because i think that universal double blind test is unpractical and meaningless as a universal method to test audio claims by ordinary people ... I am not against double blind test protocols as a statistical tool in the industry even in audio, and i am in favor of simple improvised blind test in some step of the optimization process of any system for the average audiophile...
Then slipping on his personal system qualitative value proves absolutely nothing about his claim and prove not at all that he is reasonable in his demands toward us all : he implicitly means ,shut your mouth or deceive people because you refuse to use double blind test protocol in your listening testing ...
But the question of tomic601 about his claim of owning a SOTA system ( Who decide what is SOTA and who the judge will be ?) after scottwheel suggesting himself that it is because of double blind test choices from him, which is bullshit claim, is a meaningful question he refuse to answer save by an invitation ...He own a top system for sure because he bought costlier components not my low cost type of component and more importantly so because he is the owner of the BACCH filters the next acoustic revolution on stereo listening AFTER the transition from mono to stereo ... This SOTA system has nothing to do with double blind test protocol... He never really preach about that BACCH...Why?
Why harassing people right to communicate their subjective impressions about their journey by asking as a mantra : stay silent or prove your right to speak qualitatively about the gear AFTER you have adopted the dogma of double blind test for all because me scottwheel i own a SOTA system ... This is Bullshit, the real reason why he own a SOTA system is because he own the BACCH system on which he said almost nothing but spoke on all his posts since he is here about his enlightenment in the art of double blind test to heal subjectivist audiophiles disease ...
I conclude that he is of good faith but lie to himself about his motives ; or he is of bad faith and lie about the reason his system is SOTA, not double blind test choices but mostly the new acoustic revolution tool : the BACCH system... Pick your choice about him ...
These discussions are fascinating for their complete predictability. Anytime it's about cables, fuses, switches, the discussion is basically the same. Somebody takes the "scientific" view that they make no difference while someone else believes regardless of measurements a difference can be heard. In this case, whatever substantive points there are to be made were made days ago.
one would think that would be the end of it, but there is something fascinating about the entirely emotional response This debate produces. The arc of the discussion is always the same . it always ends up at I'm right because my equipment is more expensive than yours or I'm right because I have read more articles about this than you and then there are composition length posts that say the same thing over and over. After about two rounds of this, it's entirely pointless because there's nothing new to be said, and no one is going to change their mind. What I find interesting is why does this topic produce such an entirely emotional response? That would be an interesting study. After all, no one Can impose their view on anyone else. As long as people want to buy modestly priced cables, there will be someone to sell them and as long as people want to buy extremely expensive cables, there will be someone to sell them too. so, really, there is nothing at stake in this debate, there are no more real points to be made and at this point it has become little more than the primary antagonists hurling personal insults at one another. I'm not complaining, it's entertaining in the same way that a professional wrestling match provides some entertainment, but I just find it interesting that an esoteric topic produces such raw anger. Personally, I think cables can make a difference because I think I have heard the difference. But the gentleman who says otherwise is entitled to his opinion. even though he may be a bit haughty In his presentation, I don't think he has insulted anybody's mother, but some of the responses suggest he has crossed some sort of emotional line. I suppose this discussion does at least start to answer the original question post by the OP
What I find interesting is why does this topic produce such an entirely emotional response? That would be an interesting study.
The answer to this is simple and evident...
There is a universal debate in our society all across earth about what is human and why post-human is inevitable and better ...
There is a techno cultist ideology permeating all societies fault lines ...
There is transhumanism opposing techno-cultutist religion for human version 2.0 and human version 1.0
Now in psycho-acoustic it is not double blind protocols which are a mere tool that define "sound musical quality" but it is the way evolution grounded the human life for his survival in an acoustic environment created by the gesturing and sound producing body of mankind which psycho-acoustics science try to understand using all different tools and methods between pure physics and neurophysiology and psychology, music, linguistic etc .....
The study of what is a human perception of sound qualities and the complex amount of information conveyed by the ears/brain/body are on the brink to be completely revolutionized , as all aspects of society begin to be , by A.I. revolution and the way the techno-cultism of corporations will define what is human , an obsolete animal and what tomorrow must be : the dawn of a new type of post human...
The battle is between those who refuse to reduce wisdom to mere knowledge and those who refuse to reduce human knowledge to mere science , and those who refuse to reduce science to mere technology and refuse to reduce all life to a mere technological tool ....Rationalism in his new form as in his past form is not reason ... Read Blaise Pascal and Goethe ...Two top scientists ...
In audio the same battle rage between subjective human and techno cultism in a way or in another reflecting the great battle ... This is why us ordinary people felt this debate as fundamental ev3en when manifested in a minor way in an audio forum about the question : what is sound quality and how to spoke about it ...
Music is art….there in lies the elusive meaning of a subjective response, communicated by objective devices. If you have a response which allows that art to connect with you, then look no further.
Art is a crafmanship born from necessity, but educated by the heart and mind ...Science is his offsping as is technology ...
The question is , who want a purely non human health care with the hypothesis that the human body is only a machine corporations will takes care ?
What is sound, the result of machine manipulation and computing or an artform expressive of human heart ?
For sure you are right and i thought the same...
But how to answer someone who dont trust his own heart and ears ? Only dials and double blind test protocol because and it is true, human hearing is prone to errors as it is prone to learnings ...
I prefer to fail and learn step by step ...It is called art ...
«Good sound is never so much the perfect sound but only the sound you created and produced by yourself as art form «--Anonymus musician 🎹
Music is art….there in lies the elusive meaning of a subjective response, communicated by objective devices. If you have a response which allows that art to connect with you, then look no further.
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