bill333,
I have no technical explanations for this, and no interest in finding any. There may be people out there who enjoy observing scientifically unexplained phenomena and constructing theories to fit them, but that’s not the hobby I’m engaged in.
Ok.
But would you agree that, just because you don’t find such inquiry interesting, there’s no reason to disparage others who do? Yet if someone starts asking for explanations...and even dares point out an explanation didn’t seem to be a good one....you and people like Michael seem to get very negative on them pretty quickly.
Personally, I don’t disparage anyone for buying whatever they wish, or for playing around in any way with his system, rendering improvements as he sees them. I do it. We all do it. If someone wants to pay lots of money for something I think is likely nonsense...that is of course entirely up to them. I buy things that no doubt others think are nonsense.
But when someone starts to make CLAIMS of some objective nature - e.g. that altering X produces objective differences that we can perceive - then I reserve the right to think critically about those claims and give a reasoned argument for my skepticism. That’s especially the case when someone would want to SELL me something based on those claims.
Do you actually see anything wrong with this? Or should I and anyone else here be simply gullably open to any claim anyone wants to make in high end audio?
Simply put, I don’t see how having a well explained system is going to give me better sound.
Really? You don’t see the relevance of knowing what you are doing?
The more you understand, the better placed you are to prioritize your time and money and the more likely you are to achieve your goals.
In my case there’s still a lot I don’t understand. But when relevant, I try to learn something about what I’m doing so I’m not just thrashing around in the dark - e.g. understanding room acoustics and other issues in integrating my new subwoofers. (I also renovated my room consulting with an acoustician).
OTOH, if you have practical ideas on how to get better sound from my system, I’d be glad to hear them...
I’m not posing as an audio guru dispensing such advice (let alone asking people to pay me for my services). I’m a consumer like you are, and I’m just assessing the claims being made as I see fit.
But if you want any advice: You are much more likely to realize sonic benefits from proper speaker placement and paying attention to room acoustics, than from spending time untying capacitors or raising wires on wood blocks, etc. There’s a TON of research supporting the effects of the former; virtually none that I’m aware of for the latter.
But let’s get to the point of your post.
I’d love if you or Michael actually did that!
My original reply to Michael, and the theme of my follow up replies, has been:
1. To point out that it is both poor form and deleterious to honest discourse to appear on a forum, create a thread declaring that some proportion of the members are "faking it" - without giving any examples to support that aspersion - and then ignore pertinent questions and challenges to his statements, brushing people off as being part of the problem or "trolls" without lifting a finger to justify all those additional insults. All the while pretending to be the Nice Guy who doesn’t want to ruffle feathers. Not to mention, creating a thread with false pretenses that it was a discussion about empirical testing, while in fact (acknowledged later) it was another way to self-promote his tuneland stuff.
Do you really not see a problem with that?
2. As a consumer, and someone interested in high end audio, I’ve been exercising my right to critical thinking, asking completely reasonable questions about Michael’s claims, which he has done nothing but evade.
Please, explain to me, what is actually wrong with any of that.
You’re here to cast aspersions on anyone whose methods who don’t fit into your mental model of how things work.
Not at all. I’ve only cast aspersions on someone who has interacted dishonestly in a thread like this, as Michael has here. I think someone who ignores substantive questions and arguments challenging his position and replies only with denigrating dismissals with no substance, deserves to be called on this. Don’t you?
And talk about casting aspersions on people who don’t fit a mental model of how things work! Are you not aware of how often, and vociferously, Michael Green has done this himself? He’s continually evangelizing through his Tuning mental model, and castigating other popular high end audio methods, and people who dare say a recording can be revealed as bad, as liars and scammers!
Why don’t you apply your criticism evenhandedly to him, I wonder?
Let me be clear in saying that my experiences are my own, and are posted here in the hope that others can benefit from them.
And you will find tons of such posts from me too. For instance, many seemed to appreciate my reports on various speakers I’ve heard here:
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/contemplating-devore-speakers-and-others-long-audition-report...Do I have to put everything I ever wrote into this one thread, to show I contribute what I can as well? Do you think maybe you are jumping to some harsher conclusions than you ought to?
But I have no interest in trying to fit my experiences into your dogmatic belief system.
You are falling into the very model set by Michael Green: castigate someone’s view, instead of properly represent and respond to it.
My "belief system" is anything but dogmatic. It is entirely against dogma - in the sense of simply accepting as true what an authority would tell me, or accepting principles as simply true and unchallenged"
Dogma is one of the worst blights there is, in human thought.
Rather, I believe in taking in to account everyone’s fallibility including my own. So any assumptions I may have ought to be challengeable, re-visited, scrutinized, and ready for revision. And even THAT principle...I’m open to revising if someone could argue otherwise.
And I apply this lack of accepting dogma to claims in high end audio.
I’m not going to believe something just because someone claims to be authoritative on the subject - certainly not someone trying to sell me something. I’m going to look at whether that person’s claims make sense in light of all the other information I’m aware of. Have you not noticed that, when I interact with claims made by someone here, I don’t simply dismiss them - I supply an argument, supporting REASONS for my view over the claim . That’s interacting with intellectual honesty. That’s the opposite of trolling.
Now that my position is, I hope, more clear to you: do you find this unreasonable?
And if not...it’s essentially the basis on which I’ve been posting in this entire thread....and yet Michael Green has not interacted with ANY of it, and only dismisses my concerns as being that of a troll.
Do you really think Green’s interaction, especially with me, has been that intellectually honest?
