Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts

@milpai ,

I will be truly amazed when you can find 1, factual, independent report of Veronica Seider’s abilities. Something so truly amazing would be studied with published research. It would show how she is able to accomplish this, either by having a grossly curved lens, which could achieve high magnification, but would make every day life exceptionally difficult, or an extremely large central eye region, which would require about 10 other birth defects all at once to make this work. This is real life though, not X-men.

It is a tall tale, one that seems to grow, including claims such as "In a demonstration before a group of Stuttgart University professors, Veronica Seider cut out a piece of paper the exact size of her thumb nail, and wrote on it — neatly set out — 20 verses of a poem; without any magnifying glass."

I do not need to have been there to know this is a fake report. It would be impossible to put 20 verses of a poem on a thumbnail sized piece of paper for 2 reasons. The first, is the size of fibers in paper would make this impossible. The second is no device a human could hold with a working stylus small enough to accomplish the task.

I think there was a bit too much beer in the guinness article. It does not say they observed it does it? The picture often associated is of a German actress. Check enough sites and it appears there was no record of this student either.

The only parallel between Veronica and much of what is discussed in audio is that neither of them exist in anything but some writings on the internet.

This ASR (Science=Measurement=Infallible) argument reminds me somewhat of selling Audio in the late 70's, early 80's and the SPECIFICATION WARS.

Customer enters the store...meet and greet... several open ended questions later... no SAE, Harman Kardon, Apt-Holman or B&O for this guy.... Too much distortion (on paper)...Customer is ALWAYS RIGHT (no matter how WRONG he is)...Biggest Technics receiver (with .001% THD) and a set of Advents (or Cerwin Vega if a youngster) is what he wants and what he is going to get. Yup, that's the Best Sound (your) Money Can Buy, Sir. Almost Zero Distortion...No Musicality... Perfect (for you)...

Next...

@ticat 

+1, splitting my sides laughing…

He is going to light it up here before all said and done

@thyname , you are so right. And he keeps forgetting to take his medication🙄

As usual, you science guys always go to the extreme.

When there is some basic disagreement, sometimes you have to start on some example we would agree upon, to establish a principle. Then the argument can apply that principle to specific subjects at hand.

We have established that appealing to the idea that humans vary in acuity can not be used in support of highly dubious claims, like hearing distortion differences well known to be below audible thresholds. We can’t just presume "maybe somebody happens to have Super Duper Rare Hearing Ability!!"

That would need to be ESTABLISHED, not assumed.  Just raising the very "possibility" doesn't make it probable.

So us normal being are saying that no humans can do bat hearing. We agree with the super minds at ASR. But how difficult is it for the super intelligent beings at ASR to understand that there are people whose hearing could be so much better than people who cannot hear the difference in sound quality. You cannot measure this variation because there is currently no instrument to measure it.

Everyone at ASR would acknowledge variations in hearing acuity! Could there be anything more obvious? The point is what type of claim is being made? If you claim to be hearing differences in, say, cables, where measured differences are well below established human hearing thresholds...sorry...no...you don’t get to just claim you are special. That claim would require more evidence; ideally some plausible, testable hypothesis for what is happening technically, or at the very least, showing these differences can be discerned under conditions controlling for sighted bias.

Whether your Veronica Seider" example is bogus or not, it only serves to re-enforce this point! If for instance a number of reviewers and audiophiles think they hear differences between expensive and cheaper properly functioning USB cables, that is implausible given how USB cables work, and for instance Amir showed the measurements in the case of one such USB Nordost cable. No detectable change to the signal vs a cheaper USB cable. And yet you will find audiophiles who claim to hear differences in just these situations!

So what is more LIKELY in such cases?

That any individual, or group of such audiophiles are "Super Hearers" - incredibly rare outliers in human hearing? That would be VERY RARE if possible at all.

But what ISN’T RARE is standard human bias effects on perception. Super Hearing is rare: Biased-influenced perception is routine, and EVERYONE carries this around with them.

Therefore it’s entirely reasonable to hold dubious technical claims with skepticism, and to hold claims that are extraordinary should require stronger evidence than "some audiophile’s say-so or belief."

You see, that’s the problem. It isn’t simply that many audiophiles claim to hear Big Differences. Sometimes that’s quite plausible. But many claim to hear Big Differences in scenarios that are DEEPLY IMPLAUSIBLE given how the technology works, and given known hearing thresholds!