Only $2,000 to improve your amp's performance

[Richard Lindsey]

No.

2+2=4, even if you very firmly believe it is 5.

Yep, pretty much. Besides, from one POV, it might not even matter whether you've "closed your mind to potential outcome deltas" as long as you haven't designed your experiment in such a way as to yield distorted results. IOW, no matter how sure you are that the answer will be 5 and how unwilling you are to entertain any other possibilities, if you've designed your calculation correctly, you're going to be presented with a big fat 4 anyway, like it or not.

 

[Limeman]

All you're saying is that if a person is a bad scientist, they're likely to do bad science. What does that have to do with anything? People who are not by any stretch of the imagination scientists at all are likely to do even worse science. No offense, but so what? Neither example says anything about the value of scientific methodology for settling questions like the ones we're supposed to be talking about.

I am not attacking scientific methodology. Merely implying that a person can "hide" behind it, good science be damned, and say whatever they want. Intellectual honestly is critical, and the person that says "it can't be" does not appear to me to be intellectually honest.

Having said that, there are over 20 professional reviews of the ESP products that state they do indeed make a discernible difference. And unlike us, who can pontificate ad-nausea online without impact to our livelihood, these reviewers have reputations to uphold. Can they all be delusional?

 

[Limeman]

Yep, pretty much. Besides, from one POV, it might not even matter whether you've "closed your mind to potential outcome deltas" as long as you haven't designed your experiment in such a way as to yield distorted results. IOW, no matter how sure you are that the answer will be 5 and how unwilling you are to entertain any other possibilities, if you've designed your calculation correctly, you're going to be presented with a big fat 4 anyway, like it or not.

Again... the question is can a person who has a closed mind truly develop a testing procedure that WON'T yield distorted results?

 

[johnk_10]

for me, rather than talking (or debating/arguing) about it, i think that it comes down to this:

if you believe that a more expensive AC cord makes your amp sound better, and you can justify its price, buy it.

if you don't think that it makes any difference (or not a big enough difference), don't.

 

[Limeman]

for me, rather than talking (or debating/arguing) about it, i think that it comes down to this:

if you believe that a more expensive AC cord makes your amp sound better, and you can justify its price, buy it.

if you don't think that it makes any difference (or not a big enough difference), don't.

Agreed and point brought up several pages back.

 

[seamonkey]

No.

2+2=4, even if you very firmly believe it is 5.

Oh no - are we talking tube watts again?

The entire "audiophile" industry is an arguably successful attempt at profiting from the placebo effect. Until a reputable, scientific test which negates the placebo affect (such as a double blind test, or a purely physical/electrical measurement) can prove otherwise, and withstand scrutiny, then it is a simply the placebo effect put to profit. There is an abundance of evidence supporting this conclusion and nothing to refute it except anecdotes ("I know what I hear, and I hear a difference") from the people who are usually the ones most likely to be under the influence of the placebo (i.e., those who fear that they have been duped into buying placebos).

In the home audio industry the FTC has had to step in and setup guidelines like for amplifier power. Too many manufacturers were just lying and exaggerating wattage ratings. FTC steps in to protect consumers.

There's still plenty of room for snake oil outside of FTC guidelines like for cables. I couldn't believe how much some HDMI cables were going for. It's just plain nuts - there's a standard and you can't put HDMI on the cable if it doesn't meet the standard - and yet some cable manufacturers would have you believe theirs are better.

 

[Queg]

I'm afraid this is a straw man argument. No one is saying what you claim they're saying. I haven't really seen this scientism applied to this thread. What people are saying is that if a perceptible difference exists, in apparent contradiction of what is known or is supported by the best currently available evidence, then people ought to be able to prove they can perceive it, and if they can't prove it, there's no good reason, at least for the time being, to believe they can perceive it.\.

Lol, your response is pure scientism. Actually, there is no reason at all for those who claim to hear differences to prove it to those who don't perceive it. Most snake oil cable peddlers seem to be doing just fine, even with liberal return policies. The consumers of their products are happy... few legal issues (I did hear of one company that was re-branding and marking up bulk Mogami cable). Regardless, no tests or proof required.

We certainly have a highly individual and emotional response to sound, as we do with smell, taste, etc. The complexities and subtle nuances involved in how we each perceive, process and respond to sound and music haven't been deciphered by electrical engineers, audio engineers or neurologists.. it stumbles into the realm of philosophy and yes, religion.

Now, as far-fetched as it seems, we are actually discussing an extension of a musical instrument in this thread.. which means we are free to transcend the scientific method ..we may even speak of magic.

I personally don't believe these cables are worth it... all the distortions inherent to a bass amp rig.. any subtle difference would be lost in a real-world live environment. Regardless, you can make one just as good or better for way less by DIY.

But if you believe there is absolutely no audible difference between various (correctly spec'd) power cables... it's really worth trying it for yourself.

 

[BassyBill]

Actually, there is no reason at all for those who claim to hear differences to prove it to those who don't perceive it.

Even so, could you get a friend to come around and help you conduct a proper blind test on your power cords, as described earlier in the thread? It might take maybe an hour or so.

The results would be a really helpful contribution to this discussion.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

I am not attacking scientific methodology. Merely implying that a person can "hide" behind it, good science be damned, and say whatever they want. Intellectual honestly is critical, and the person that says "it can't be" does not appear to me to be intellectually honest.

Having said that, there are over 20 professional reviews of the ESP products that state they do indeed make a discernible difference. And unlike us, who can pontificate ad-nausea online without impact to our livelihood, these reviewers have reputations to uphold. Can they all be delusional?

You're putting words in my mouth. Yes, you can lie about results, and yes, you can distort your testing if you lie about what you're actually doing (i.e., your methods). The point is that because of the methodology, there's a very good chance that the lies won't hold up, because, by the very nature of scientific inquiry, if the issue you're studying is important or interesting enough, someone will come along to try to reproduce your results. When things turn out different, that then has to be explained, and the initial lies tend to be invalidated. And the initial study won't have been taken seriously in the first place if the methodology were clearly flawed from the get-go.

The number of "professional" reviews means less than nothing if their testing methodology was no good. Yes, in fact they CAN all be delusional. There are lots of delusions that have millions of adherents, so no one should have any difficulty believing in the possiblility of a delusion that has a few dozen or hundred.

 

[Implosion]

Having said that, there are over 20 professional reviews of the ESP products that state they do indeed make a discernible difference. And unlike us, who can pontificate ad-nausea online without impact to our livelihood, these reviewers have reputations to uphold. Can they all be delusional?

Professional publications are peer reviewed. These aren't.

Again... the question is can a person who has a closed mind truly develop a testing procedure that WON'T yield distorted results?

And the other way around: how can a person who believes to own a pair of "golden ears" develop an un-biased testing procedure?

In science there are no right or wrong results. Only results. Mesurements can produce flawed results due to a measurement error, but it doesn't matter because you can always repeat the measurement. One of the corner stones of science is repeatability.

We certainly have a highly individual and emotional response to sound, as we do with smell, taste, etc. The complexities and subtle nuances involved in how we each perceive, process and respond to sound and music haven't been deciphered by electrical engineers, audio engineers or neurologists.. it stumbles into the realm of philosophy and yes, religion.

With sound, smell, taste etc. the differencies can be analyzed so we know why they are different apart. If there is a difference between two items, then we percieve those differently. We may not be able to pin-point why they cause a difference in our perception (because of the complexities and subtle nuances involved), but we can pin-point what is the difference between the items.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

Lol, your response is pure scientism.

LOL, if you think so, you don't really know what the word means. Some things are eminently testable, others not so much. How do you twist that into "science has the answers to everything"?

Actually, there is no reason at all for those who claim to hear differences to prove it to those who don't perceive it. Most snake oil cable peddlers seem to be doing just fine, even with liberal return policies. The consumers of their products are happy... few legal issues (I did hear of one company that was re-branding and marking up bulk Mogami cable). Regardless, no tests or proof required.

From the POV of self-interest, perhaps not.

We certainly have a highly individual and emotional response to sound, as we do with smell, taste, etc. The complexities and subtle nuances involved in how we each perceive, process and respond to sound and music haven't been deciphered by electrical engineers, audio engineers or neurologists.. it stumbles into the realm of philosophy and yes, religion.

No, it actually doesn't have anything at all to do with philosophy or religion. Not the part we're talking about. You're fuzzing up the issue by bringing in irrelevancies. We're not talking about how people perceive sound. We're not talking about how they feel about it or how they react to it. We're not talking about spiritual ecstasy. Those are all interesting and worthy of study, but they're beside the point. The question is very simply this: can you hear a difference, period? It's not how, it's whether. This is something that's eminently testable. I have no idea how a hummingbird manages to fly, but I know everything I need to know to determine whether it does.

Now, as far-fetched as it seems, we are actually discussing an extension of a musical instrument in this thread.. which means we are free to transcend the scientific method ..we may even speak of magic.

We really shouldn't, because it's irrelevant here. If you want to talk about how you feel when you hear the tone of your favorite bass, or after you take in a brilliant Jimmy Haslip solo, then sure, it can be magic. But not this.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

Again... the question is can a person who has a closed mind truly develop a testing procedure that WON'T yield distorted results?

I assume that by closed-minded people you mean those in the audiophile community who refuse to use the one method that has been shown to be the LEAST subject to distortion in this setting, namely double-blind testing?

What you don't get is that in a sense, it's the scientists who are actually more open-minded, because they bind themselves to deal with the evidence they get from proper testing, whether they like it or not. Many of the audiophile types refuse to do this kind of testing, because they've already got the results they want from their unscientific tests, and they're apparently afraid that more rigorous testing will show their claims to be spurious. This makes them the closed-minded ones. If they were open-minded, they'd be open to the possibility of being proven wrong. They would welcome further testing. Instead they often try to discredit the methodology that they know might disprove their claims.

EDIT: And to return to your question: yes, in fact they can, if they follow the procedures laid out for doing so. You seem to be under the impression that every time scientists do a test, they just randomly make up their own testing procedures on an ad hoc basis. They don't. There are standards for these things; experimenters aren't reinventing the wheel every time out. For instance, in medicine (and elsewhere) there is something called a prospective, randomized, controlled, double-blind test. If you are doing one of these, you are constrained to do it a certain way, regardless of what your bias is. The details differ, but the fundamental methodology doesn't. For a controlled test, you need a control group; for a double-blind test, both testers and subjects must be blinded; and so forth. And when you publish your results in any serious periodical, you have to describe your materials and methods (no one will even look at your paper if you don't), and you have to describe your results carefully and accurately and evaluate their statistical significance or lack thereof. And you then have to let your peers go over all this with a fine toothcomb and poke holes when they find something suspect.

Here's what you need to keep in mind: scientific testing methodology was not designed to make the testers unbiased, and it does not even require them to be so. It was designed to insulate experiments from possible bias. In other words, the whole purpose of, for example, double-blind testing is to ensure that even if the tester or the subject is biased, their biases have no way of affecting the process and the results. It's as if you were behind a soundproof, impactproof, completely opaque wall--you can pound on it as much as you want, or NOT pound on it for that matter, and either way you won't be able to affect what's happening on the other side. So if the process is right, it doesn't matter if the tester is biased, because the experiment is insulated from that bias. This is the point, and if you don't get this, you don't really have any basis from which to criticize the process.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

we can pin-point what is the difference between the items.

+1. Or even more simply, whether there is a perceptible difference at all.

 

[Implosion]

This post will probably throw me straight to the "biased-in-favor-of-science" camp but I'll post it anyway. Regarding the science vs layman conversation:

And the caption text:

"I mean, what's more likely -- that I have uncovered fundamental laws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more? Hint: it's the one that involves less work."


For a layman, what would seem to be more probable?

 

[fdeck]

We certainly have a highly individual and emotional response to sound, as we do with smell, taste, etc. The complexities and subtle nuances involved in how we each perceive, process and respond to sound and music haven't been deciphered by electrical engineers, audio engineers or neurologists.. it stumbles into the realm of philosophy and yes, religion.

Now, as far-fetched as it seems, we are actually discussing an extension of a musical instrument in this thread.. which means we are free to transcend the scientific method ..we may even speak of magic.

Why don't we all simply agree that cable effects are in the realm of philosophy, religion, and magic? I have no problem with that. The beauty of those areas of inquiry is that multiple people can hold multiple conflicting viewpoints with no need for reconciliation. All we need to say is that each person believes in their own cables, or lack of cables, and we're done.

 

[billfitzmaurice]

Why don't we all simply agree that cable effects are in the realm of philosophy, religion, and magic?

Agreed, and to paraphrase Asimov any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. How unfortunate that the public's general level of technical knowledge is so abysmally low that with such a simple concept as the passage of electrons through wire marketing magicians with their smoke and mirrors and gobbledygook in quest of obscene profits are taken at their word, while engineers with nothing to gain by revealing the truth are the ones assumed to have ulterior motives.
Beam me up, Scotty...

 

[LarryO]

Maybe it won't improve your sound but what if you connected it to your Delorean's alternator? Huh? 88 mph? Que Huwey Lewis

 

[Nikoubis]

Agreed, and to paraphrase Asimov any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. How unfortunate that the public's general level of technical knowledge is so abysmally low that with such a simple concept as the passage of electrons through wire marketing magicians with their smoke and mirrors and gobbledygook in quest of obscene profits are taken at their word, while engineers with nothing to gain by revealing the truth are the ones assumed to have ulterior motives.
Beam me up, Scotty...

 

[lomo]

Sigh. The double blind testing concept is not "Scientism", but simple logic. It should be offensive or frightening only to those who fear the truth. For those who invent the word Scientism as a way to liken scientific investigation to a belief without reason, I suggest you stop putting your faith in those aspects of your daily life that exist purely as a result of science, such as electricity, the internal combustion engine, antibiotics and your computer. So many are prepared to endorse logic when it suits them, only to flout it when it threatens their belief system. Save the humans.......

 

[SMASH]

It's a shame some of you intelligent, rational people are still wasting your time on deluders and the self-deluded.

Maybe these will save you some wasted effort. Nothing else should be required beyond these links to end bogus claims of the 'golden eared', IMO, but of course they'll prattle on rather than claim the million and we'll get the kibosh from mods if calling them on it.

Trust your ears? Might as well trust your eyes too - [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Still hearing things? Step up and claim the million ! Invalid Link Removed