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>>I was dubious about vibration<<
>>my Shanling CDT 100 was already on an acrylic stand on vibrapods and that on a Hutter rack.<<
You couldn't have been that dubious, you were already a consumer of vibration control products and were out purchasing more.
In any case, former skeptics with conversion stories are not uncommon in religion, paranormal phenomenon -- and audio. |
>>there is no need to debase someone else's beliefs.<<
>>There are a lot of things out there that a lot of folks feel good about
believing that can't be explained or even proven to exist. Start with God. With
your mentality I could visualize you going to church<<
This is not a church dedicated to one set of beliefs where good manners
means non-believers must sit reverently for fear of insulting someone's
"religion."
This is a site where audiophiles of every stripe are free to join in, offer
opinions, reservations, beliefs, skeptcism, and recomendations based on
many different approaches.
This way, the people who come here get to listen to many different
approaches and everyone gets to make up their own mind. |
>>I paused the player and placed it on brass cones (seating position was
lower than rack so he couldn't see under the player and I blocked his view).
Sat down and pushed "play". He immediately was puzzled and
asked me :WHAT DID YOU DO? THE SOUND IS RADICALLY IMPROVED!!!<<
There are several problems with this "conversion experience."
First, by pausing the music and doing something, then starting the music
again, you raised the expectation that you did something to improve the
sonics.
Second, if you are the audio expert here and your buddy is the "
untrained" listener, your buddy faced peer group pressure to hear an
improvement in order to measure up.
Third, your experiment was not done double-blind. In other words, YOU
knew you had made a change and whether you know it or not, your body
language may have been giving your buddy the tip that you wanted him to
notice, were testing him, had some expectation, or that YOU thought the
sonics had improved, which would make your buddy want to please you by
complimenting the change you -- the expert -- had made by pausing the
music, getting up to make a change -- you needed to place the cones -- and
then resuming the music.
This is WHY listening tests must be done double-blind to carry any weight.
If you did this test double-blind and your buddy with his untrained ears was
eable to reliably tell when the cones were in place and when they weren't --
that would be convincing.
Now, since you claimed the chage was so dramatic that your buddy had to
exclaim that the sound was RADICALLY IMPROVED, we should expect that it
would be easy for him to tell the difference in a double-blind test. |
>>Nevertheless, at some level it is real and an explanation for why vibration
control can influence what we hear.<<
We have no *proof* that it is real.
Whether this sounds insulting or not. there are always at least two
explanations for "hearing" anything.
1) There is something "real" to hear.
2) It is caused by the imagination.
John Dunlavy used to do an experiment where he would invite audiophiles
and audio critics to his lab and position technicians behind a set of speakers.
The technicians would employ Zip Cord and the audience would be
unimpressed. Then the technicians would swap out the Zip Cord for exotic
looking speaker cables and the audience would exclaim enthusiastically
about the radical improvements they heard.
Only problem:
The cables were never really changed -- it was still Zip Cord.
Why did the audience "hear" large improvements when there was
absolutely no difference?
The mind is powerful and can supply us with sensory experiences that have
nothing to do with "reality."
So, it is always necessary -- for some of us -- to question whether any
testimonial is based on something real or something imagined. |
This only becomes a problem if one needs to live in a provable universe.
I'd rather take the Algonquin Round Table, United Nations, or ecumenical council approach.
We all weigh in, let the questioning poster sort it out. |
Newbee --
Excellent overview of the two different mind-sets and their attendant concerns.
>>The original post here concerned how do people deal with vibration, not whether it is meaningful to do so.<<
True, but when a topic like this comes up, others lurk or peruse the thread as well. I think it is useful for people who come to this forum because they are interested in audio to know that there are people here with different philosophies and approaches. Otherwise, it would give the false appearance of a concensus around things like expensive cabling, vibration control, etc.
I think we're a better forum if people interested in audio know that there isn't any such concensus among audiophiles, that these topics are controversial at best, and that there is a place in this forum for skepticism, that it isn't a "church" for believers only. I think the "church" approach would make this forum weaker, less inclusive, more limited in its appeal.
I don't think we want that.
At least, I don't. |
>>If you got the impression that the untrained ears phrase was demeaning
for my friend that was not my intent<<
No, I did not get the feeling you were trying to demean your friend.
One of my problems with so many of the testimonials I see and the
arguments that follow is that it turns into something like a game of button,
button, whose got the button?
What I mean by that is -- you generally read these testimonials where a new
Cable or Vibrapod, or Halograph, or Shakti Stone is inserted into a system
and makes this HUGE difference. So big that ANYONE would be able to hear it
-- even with cheese cloth over their ears. And even my next door neighboor,
who is half deaf and didn't even know I'd changed anything walked in, his
knees buckled and he shouted out, "MY GOD, YOUR SYSTEM SOUNDS
SO MUCH BETTER, I CAN HARDLY WALK!!!"
But, then when you ask why no one can seem to pass a double-blind listening
test and reliably tell any difference -- the story always changes. Suddenly,
the story becomes all about how these changes are incredibly subtle and only
people who've been trained in Tibetan Caves by Zen Masters can hear the
difference and only with the right system and only when they are in the right
mood and only when their moon is in Sagitarius --- and that's why the
subjects cannot pass these tests.
That's all. |
I would never try to convince you that you didn't "hear" what you
heard. The subjects in Dunlavy's tests "heard" large
improvements even though the cables were never even changed. All this
means is that the mind is powerful and can supply sensory experiences for
us, can make us "hear" things that are not there, but hear them
nonetheless. So, even in the worst case, no one can say you didn't hear what
you heard. The question is whether it was real or not. No one should feel
insulted by this question. Every scientist that does an experiment builds in
safeguards to protect against these types of influences, or else no one will
accept his/her results. Who would trust a scientist who said he/she didn't
need to build in such safeguards because he/she could trust him/herself not
to be influenced. Why should any one of us be immune? However, the last
part of your statement is true. There is no magic bullet to end these types of
debates. The best we can say is that some people believe in these things and
some people don't and each has their reasoning. (See Newbee's overview of
the divergent belief systems.) However, the idea that one camp enjoys music
more than the other is rather specious. |
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>>I had a pair of silver/copper pro silway IIs that had some nice bass control and openness qualities when used with my CDP but they also had a horrific tiring glare. No getting around it. They sucked in that role to the point of being unlistenable.<<
This is the kind of thing that fascinates me. What in a cable would cause "glare?" These comments treat the cable as if one listens to a cable that plays music through a speaker, like a guiatr string. No responsibility is given to any other component for music reproduction. For some reason, cable enthusiasts are very trusting of their other components -- the ones that have the toughest most complex job -- and endlessly suspicious of their cables -- which have the easiest job in the entire chain.
Cable advertisers have done a superb job of getting audiophiles to overlook huge problems in their speakers and rooms and to fixate on their cables, inventing problems where none exist.
It is easily demonstrated that rooms have glare, but no -- it must be the cable -- even though there's no evidence whatsoever that cables cause glare.
Okay, I know this is a vibration control thread, but I just had to comment. |
