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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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In Reply to: Re: Thanks guys ... posted by kerr on December 19, 2006 at 04:50:10:
> You said it yourself. I am a subjectivist and subjectivists are stupid.Nothing wrong with being a subjectivist. I value my subjective view of many things that lie in the subjective domain. Your problem is holding audiophile beliefs that are incorrect about matters that lie in the scientific domain. That is, it is aspects of your objective view of sound, sound perception and audio equipment that is at fault and not your subjective view.
> I can read what they say but when confronted with their beliefs, they respond with "I
> didn't say that".Based on past dialogues with you and other "subjectivist" audiophiles I suspect there is every chance they did not say what was claimed. The way to keep things honest is to quote.
> You think it's dishonesty that we say they believe all amps sound the same? LOL.If you know they have said nothing of the sort then of course it is dishonest. It only becomes shades of grey if you are unable to tell true from false because you project so strongly what you want to see rather than what is there. I have judged this to have occurred once or twice in discussions with audiophiles but most of the time it looks like dishonesty. Perhaps I am wrong and this is the missing link that enables people to hold audiophile beliefs but, on its own, it seems rather insufficient.
> No, it's just that they weasel around and change direction so often it's hard to
> keep up.I do not recognise this at all. Some examples of changing position please?
> Perhaps if they would state their position, we might find some common ground.
Why do you want to find common ground? Aren't you confident you are right?
> Too much like a secret club.
Nothing secret about science it is simply a case of working at learning what is going on in your field of interest. This of course excludes many people but not because it is a secret but because it requires an effort to obtain.
> The fact is that there are thousands of scientists designing and building audiophile
> equipment while I type this. Talk to them. They have audiophile experiences.Probability suggests there may be a few but I certainly cannot name any. Can you? But I am confident they are advancing effectively zero scientific knowledge in designing and assembling audiophile equipment because there is no requirement. Yes they may well be performing development but the research will almost exclusively involve assembling practical knowledge lacking within the company but not in the theoretical sense in the scientific domain.
> They've done blind testing and components still sound different...
And you get this knowledge from where? Marketing information perhaps, audiophiles posting on this forum or people from industry posting on this asylum? How reliable do you think this information is likely to be?
> I'm not sure I understand your definition of audiophile nor do I know if an audiophile
> possesses all, most, or only some of the "audiophile beliefs" you mentioned but have
> not listed.I have mentioned them often enough and in discussion with you so what am I to make of this statement of yours? Here is an example from a thread in Critic's Corner:
"Preferences are not beliefs. Beliefs refer to things audiophiles consider to be true even though there is no evidence to support them and, in many instances, are in conflict with what has been established by science. Examples are things like a belief that the ear can hear things that cannot be measured, audiophiles have discovered things about sound and sound perception that science cannot yet explain, the brain plays no role in modifying/interpreting sound, distorting a signal makes it more accurate, high levels of distortion are not audible, minute levels of distortion are audible, blinding is fundamentally flawed, A->D->A conversion produces all sorts of (unmeasurable) problems, a realistic soundfield at a live event can be extracted from a 2 channel signal, etc..."
I am sure you can add many more from discussions with audiophiles and Peter Aczels 10 lies article which is useful as a list even if one two statements are a bit wobbly.
Indeed, audiophiles often do not adopt all the latest silliest beliefs until they have been promoted for a while and so there are certainly recognisable degrees of "audiophileness".> I absolutely don't agree that the objectivist POV is never changing.
In that case you can easily supply examples.
The reason an "objectivists POV" has not changed in 25 years is because scientific knowledge on the topics of interest to audiophiles has not changed over that time. The small evolutions that have occurred in, for example, materials, mathematical and computational models, decomposing an audio signal, etc... are not really of interest to audiophiles. Audiophiles tend to be interested in what is marketed to them by the industry and the beliefs that surround this marketing rather than scientific information.
> It's only then that you can hope to gain any converts.
My interest is in audiophiles so why would I want to convert them? Although I would admit to an interest in knowing more about what triggers the collapse of audiophile beliefs when it occurs.
> As for me, I'm sure that the objectivist side holds most of the truths.
Why cann't objectivist be 100% correct about objective matters and subjectivists 100% correct about subjective matters (subject to preference variations) and you be both an objectivist and subjectivist? It is how I think of myself although past experience suggest the figure of 100% is not likely to be correct. Although compared to typical audiophiles on matters concerning sound, sound perception and audio equipment a working figure of 100% is probably not too far off!
> There's just one missing... how does it explain those inconsistencies you mentioned?
> Certain things that shouldn't sound different do. That's a fact. The question is
> why?Science has no problem with a wire being compared with itself being perceived as sounding different if the person being tested receives cues to suggest otherwise. There are even demonstrations like the "McGurk effect" knocking around the internet to demonstrate that the brain plays an active role in interpreting signals from the ears.
Subjectivists have no problem with the same wire sounding different because the experiences are different. Sensible subjectivists do not project into the objective domain and make all sorts of incorrect statements about what is going on.
The only people that have significant problems with the dominant reasons wire sounds different are audiophiles because of their unscientific audiophile beliefs. They "trust their ears" and reject the notion that their brain has a role in interpreting sound and therefore the audio equipment must be audibly changing the sound impinging on their ears (OK the audiophile industry strongly encourages them in this belief but ultimately the responsibility must lie with the individual). When asked to "trust their ears" in an experiment to demonstrate nothing audible is going on they reject the experiment. When measurements are taken to show nothing audible has changed in the sound field they reject the measurements. When predictions based on scientifically established laws and data are performed to show no audible change has occurred they reject science. This rejection of the scientific method in favour of an adopted belief is, as you say, stupid when the subject lies in the objective domain and not the subjective domain.
Now you were saying certain things shouldn't sound different?
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Follow Ups
- Re: Thanks guys ... - andy19191 03:09:00 12/20/06 (1)
- Re: Thanks guys ... - kerr 09:12:26 12/20/06 (0)
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