SR Tuning Discs, Psychoacoustic Bias and Listening Fatigue

I am open to negative bias. That’s why since initially posting I’ve checked over serial days a few times. Same results. Trust me, I was very open minded to a change being heard. I certainly hear not subtle differences between two digital coaxial cables

Who knows if the discs really make any difference? But negative bias is far less likely than good old positive confirmation bias and the venerable placebo effect. What bothers me is that many of these products have stratospheric profit margins because that is the surest way to trigger confirmation bias-- price it high and lard it up with pseudo-scientific claims that are next to, if not impossible to prove or even comprehend. Just my opinion, but most would be far better off if they focused on room acoustics before going for a ride down twisted tweak road.

I have a Don Sachs preamp, & one day I got a bug up my ass & swapped from existing feet to Maple footers & made no significant sound change. I had a set of Panega's feet laying around & tried those, & instantaneously, the music opened up. Tried that a few more times to see if I was nuts but, I haven't move them since.

This post gives me reading fatigue.

@wesheadley I can’t agree with your point. I belong to a large audiophile “club” including folks with vastly different preferences, tastes, expectations and biases. So, I’ve seen hugely different responses to new audio experiences, particularly in the tweaks and cables domains. In my experience auditioning tweaks and cables over the years, I have found the negative bias of those who believe only in measurement as a valid indicator of performance is far more intractable than the expectation bias the owner of a tweak or cable might have. Indeed, I rarely have encountered strong positive expectations where tweaks and cables are concerned. Most of my fellow listeners take a try it and see attitude. After all, if the experiment fails, the item can be returned. But, there is always someone in the group who strongly, and I mean strongly, denies the possibility that tweaks or cables make a difference, even when most in the room hear one.

The argument for positive expectation bias, that people hear what they want hear, is nonsensical to me. I don’t remember ever witnessing somebody insisting a new tweak in their system improves system performance when no one else hears it. After all, who can be fooled by expectation bias over the long haul, when their system continues to suffer from sonic imperfections the tweak they purchased was designed to correct. To my mind, the psychoacoustic argument hasn’t even face validity, let alone empirical reliability.
 

Of course, this is not to say that all tweaks work in all systems, or even that any given tweak works in any system at all. I’m only saying that outright dismissal of the possibility of an audible effect is far more immovable than the expectation that a tweak will, rather than might, work in a given system and room.