Almaty said,
"The opinions of EE's will differ on these kinds of questions just as they will among the general population. Keep in mind that the majority of the general population would probably consider all high end audiophiles to be at least a little bit wacko :-)
For example, many EE's would assert that all cables, and even all amplifiers, sound exactly the same. Whereas one EE in this thread (me) asserted early on that Bryon's findings with the ERS paper, although not readily and precisely explainable, were certainly not outside the bounds of plausibility.
The real issue, as both of you alluded to, is where to draw the line between plausibility and implausibility. Obviously the choice of where to draw that line will generally be subjective, debatable, and imprecise. For that reason, among others, I said that "broad latitude should be allowed for the possibility that subtle and counter-intuitive phenomena may be at play." That is the antithesis of "defaulting to the most skeptical opinions."
While EEs by training should have no trouble with many audio related issuses, the wide wide world of controversial tweaks presents different problems for them to get their heads around, as it were. I suspect even ERS paper may give some EEs conniptions, since its effects are so unpredictable. But when an EE wonders into the world of other controversial tweaks, it is often the case that the devices do not lend themselves to easy analysis by those with a strong electronics and engineering background. I actually would not place ERS paper in the same category as the Tice Clock, Mpingo Discs, the Green Pen, Schumann frequency generator, intelligent chip, Demagnetizing and ionization of CDs and LPs, quartz crystals and Silver Rainbow Foil. This is the big paradigm shift that has occurred - we can no longer rely (exclusively) on what we learned in engineering school to correctly assess the "plausibility" of many of these newfangled devices, the operational mechanisms of which appear to lie outside of the relative comfort of the concepts and mathematical formulas found in EE textbooks, or in any textbooks! This is actually the reason these things are called controversial, and why they stir up such, uh, controversy. :-)
"The opinions of EE's will differ on these kinds of questions just as they will among the general population. Keep in mind that the majority of the general population would probably consider all high end audiophiles to be at least a little bit wacko :-)
For example, many EE's would assert that all cables, and even all amplifiers, sound exactly the same. Whereas one EE in this thread (me) asserted early on that Bryon's findings with the ERS paper, although not readily and precisely explainable, were certainly not outside the bounds of plausibility.
The real issue, as both of you alluded to, is where to draw the line between plausibility and implausibility. Obviously the choice of where to draw that line will generally be subjective, debatable, and imprecise. For that reason, among others, I said that "broad latitude should be allowed for the possibility that subtle and counter-intuitive phenomena may be at play." That is the antithesis of "defaulting to the most skeptical opinions."
While EEs by training should have no trouble with many audio related issuses, the wide wide world of controversial tweaks presents different problems for them to get their heads around, as it were. I suspect even ERS paper may give some EEs conniptions, since its effects are so unpredictable. But when an EE wonders into the world of other controversial tweaks, it is often the case that the devices do not lend themselves to easy analysis by those with a strong electronics and engineering background. I actually would not place ERS paper in the same category as the Tice Clock, Mpingo Discs, the Green Pen, Schumann frequency generator, intelligent chip, Demagnetizing and ionization of CDs and LPs, quartz crystals and Silver Rainbow Foil. This is the big paradigm shift that has occurred - we can no longer rely (exclusively) on what we learned in engineering school to correctly assess the "plausibility" of many of these newfangled devices, the operational mechanisms of which appear to lie outside of the relative comfort of the concepts and mathematical formulas found in EE textbooks, or in any textbooks! This is actually the reason these things are called controversial, and why they stir up such, uh, controversy. :-)