What’s your vote for the most ridiculous, overpriced, and useless tweak?

I tried some of the PWB Electronics free tweaks. You shamed me into it. I found that I was able to perceive a difference. However, it was more in line with what May Belt herself claims for the PWB tweaks. She asks you to "see if you can listen to the same music with the same pleasure" without the tweak in place. She does not claim that it improves the sound, only the pleasure. She specifically states that the PWB tweaks do not change the sound, which is already in the room. I found that the presence of the tweaks did increase my listening pleasure. However, afterwards, I was able to train myself to experience the same pleasure without the tweak in place, through relaxation and concentration. And when my niece poured scorn on the PWB tweak (in the nicest possible way), it killed all the listening pleasure of the tweak and I shuffled off to bed crestfallen. Maybe I should try a more potent and expensive PWB cream tweak, but how would I ever choose between Green Cream and Cream Electret? Both sound so delicious.

When May says pleasure she is referring to the sound. “Sound,” “the perception of sound,” “our sense of sound” are all equivalent. You cannot separate them. One would experience more pleasure from a more musical sound, no? Your perception of sound changes. That’s really equivalent to saying the sound itself changes. Music soothes the savage breast. You could say the sound is on the CD but the sound changes when some tweaks are applied. It’s kind of the same argument inasmuch as the data on the CD cannot be altered. If you drink a couple of beers your perception of the sound probably changes, too,

Could there be two broad categories of tweak? One which reveals something new in the sound/music which you have never noticed before, and one which increases pleasure but does not necessarily reveal anything new or previously un-noticed. I don't think the PWB free tweaks revealed anything new to me about the recording, even though I was enjoying the listening experience more than usual. A more traditional tweak usually jumps right out and hits you with something you never heard before. The resulting stimulus is not necessarily pleasure, it could be excitement, interest or anticipation.

As for sound and pleasure being equivalent enough to use interchangeably, I think that may be a stretch. I could probably judge the sound (quality) of a system using source material which gave me no pleasure at all. Such as a dog vomiting, if it was really well recorded.

Listening to the same J.S. Bach or Mozart piece twice in a row increases my pleasure in hearing it, as I better understand it. And it’s free!

whostolethebatmobile
Could there be two broad categories of tweak? One which reveals something new in the sound/music which you have never noticed before, and one which increases pleasure but does not necessarily reveal anything new or previously un-noticed. I don’t think the PWB free tweaks revealed anything new to me about the recording, even though I was enjoying the listening experience more than usual.

>>>>The short answer is yes, you could have tweaks that affect the audio signal directly and those that affect the sound indirectly or subconsciously. But there is no difference *subjectively* between a PWB tweak and a amplifier or a better speaker cable or room treatment. I’m not sure I agree tweaks are supposed to hit you over the head. Wouldn’t it be great if they always did? A lot is system and listener dependent. An experienced audiophile would be hard pressed to determine what produced changed in sound X. Was it a better cable, better fuse, room treatment, CD treatment or PWB tweak? We all have our own ideas of what SHOULD produce big results and those that won’t produce any results, or very subtle results. There isn’t any difference between “the sound” and “the perception of the sound.” There’re the same thing. It’s not that easy to define musicality. We all have our theories of what that means.

If you did not hear a change in the sound why else would you experience the experience as better? Were you high?

When May says the sound was in the room all the time and that you just couldn’t hear it completely or accurately until you trying PWB Tweak X it because your subconscious is involved with how you hear, I.e., your sensory perception of sound. Thus, hearing is not (rpt not) simply the result of acoustic waves in the air striking the ear and traveling up to the brain. It’s much more complex than that. That’s so mundane. Much of it involves the subconscious, which is how most PWB tweaks work. They do not affect the audio signal somewhere in the system or room like almost all tweaks. PWB tweaks affect the sound indirectly, you could say. It’s not “psychological” or random because PWB tweaks are repeatable and transferable. That’s a very quick summary of a concept that is very complicated, so please cut me some slack. 😛