Do you believe in Magic?

03-09-12: Sabai
The description is not the described. The perception may be explained in various ways. But it exists in its own realm outside the world of explanation -- whether valid, partially valid or invalid.

I agree. There is the world and there are representations of it. Among those representations are scientific explanations. Among scientific explanations are explanations relevant to audiophiles.

Perhaps, Geoff, you also agree with Sabai. It's difficult to tell from this comment...

If we accept the premise that most devices and tweaks operate in physical reality, I.e., they affect physical, electrical properties that directly or indirectly result in a better audio signal presented to the ears, then there must be a real, physical or electrical explanation for why you hear a change in the sound when evaluating a device or tweak.

My comments about the limits of human knowledge weren't intended to imply that the limits are immutable. There may very well be immutable limits to human knowledge, but that isn't what I was referring to. I was talking about the PRESENT limits to human knowledge - the boundary between what is known and what is guessed. That boundary changes on a daily basis.

Moving on...

In your OP, your attribution of Magic to the ERS paper might have been a bit premature, since the explanation provided by the manufacturer is EMI/RFI absorption, and experiences of many users including other manufacturers seems to bear this explanation out. So one can reasonably conclude that ERS paper is actually not a Magical device in the sense you were using the word.

I am of course aware of the "explanation" offered on the Stillpoints website. But like many explanations for these kinds of things, it leaves a lot to be desired. Even if we were to agree that EMI/RFI diffusion/reflection/absorption is an adequate explanation for the PHYSICAL effects of ERS cloth, the question remains, how does EMI/RFI diffusion/reflection/absorption explain the AUDIBLE effects? About that question, Stillpoints is silent.

Al provided a good conjecture, IMO, about how addressing EMI/RFI might result in the audible effects reported by ERS users, including myself. He speculated that the minimization of RFI results in lower jitter. That may not be an exhaustive explanation, but it's a far cry better than the explanation offered by Stillpoints, because it provides a possible MECHANISM for the audible effects of ERS. Which brings me to...

In contrast to Magic, valid scientific explanations provide mechanisms. And causes. And laws. And predictions. And theories. And evidence. A scientific explanation isn't valid because it's intuitive, or plausible, or satisfying.

In the absence of mechanisms, causes, laws, etc., an explanation isn't worth much, other than the gratification some people derive from it. It's gratifying to believe that we know something, and humbling to acknowledge that we don't. That fundamental human shortcoming makes us overlook explanations that are, upon scrutiny, simply inadequate. It makes us vulnerable to deception, misinformation, and pseudo-explanation.

Bryon

I tend to think that anyone looking for "satisfying" explanations will probably be, uh, unsatisfied by the explanations provided for many of the less conventional audio tweaks and devices that have popped up over the last couple of decades. Let's see...how about silver rainbow foil, Tice Clock, Shakti Stone, Shun Mook mpingo disc, SteinMusic Harmonizer, Schumann Frequency Generator, the Green Pen, LP and CD demagnetizers, ionizers, the tiny little bowls from Tchang and Synergistic Research, liquid cables. Obviously, some of my devices should be on the list, too, including the Intelligent Chip.

my last post in this futile discussion:
- Rather than argue over some "what if concepts" - why don't anyone has yet to agree to a blinded study??

Again - unless anyone, especially Geoff, wants to conduct well control study, let's just stop here.

Byron, you are exactly correct. IMO.

"A scientific explanation isn't valid because it's intuitive, or plausible, or satisfying." There are many commonly accepted scientific theories and propositions that have been proven false. But the latter are often politically incorrect. This has been true through history -- the history or science , the history or audio and indeed throughout human history.

Geoff, you stated:

"... there must be a real, physical or electrical explanation for why you hear a change in the sound when evaluating a device or tweak."

My question is why "must be" there be? IMO there is no reason at all why there "must be". You and others may wish that there be an explanation for everything out there but that does not mean that there is one. And if there is not, or if the explanation is not satisfactory, does that detract from the enjoyment of the music?

Audio is not an intellectual matter -- unless you make it so. The word audio comes from the Latin. It means "I hear". Music is a right hemisphere event. For me the enjoyment of music has nothing whatsoever to do with explanations.

Ether, I think there may be some confusion here. Geoff is referring to the explanations about the products -- not the products themselves and how they perform. This is an intellectual thing. IMO.