Synergistic calls out Audioholics

@phasemonger
“This paper approaches auditory analysis from the standpoint of sound production. It argues that although air vibration produces sound, sound is not air vibration; and that exploitation of features of air vibration can hardly (if ever) lead to accurate understanding of the principle of the auditory mechanism in speech or music perception.”

phrasemonger, thank you for the information!Here is a direct link to the article - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267327268_The_Body-Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Appr...

So scientists don't understand what sound is, just as they don't understand what electricity is. This obviously follows from this article. Those who are sure that everything can be measured, and everything immeasurable is just snake oil should read the article carefully.

Well, suggesting they are clowns, is giving them too much credit as that would require they be creative and have imagination - something that is clearly lacking.

@georgehifi

”I know you are, but what am I...” - classic childish response.

@prof 

Comparing swapping a cable and listening for the difference is nothing like homeopathy or astrology. The result is tangible, and immediate. A singular variable.
Problem is, when you are incapable of deciding for yourself if it makes a difference, be that for the better or worse, that shows a complete lack of confidence in your own judgement. It speaks to a insecurity of your own abilities.

If you were to arrive in someone’s listening room, and be blown away by the sound quality of the system, would you ask for specs and measurements in order toco firm what you are hearing?

imaginewhat innovations would exist in the world if people all thought as you. There would be very few. Sorry, I forgot, imagination is something you have been deprived of.
This refusal to be open minded about possibilities beyond your own myopic outlook on the world is the kind of closed minded, fearful thinking that had women burned at the stake for being “witches”
How many of the technological advancements that we take for granted now would’ve viewed as magic a few centuries ago?
I’m a pragmatist at heart. Science and math were at the core of my education. I however dropped out of pre med to pursue a career in the creative world. Left and right sides of my brain are in balance. My first child really suffered with teething. Loads of crying and fevers. When the second arrived, someone suggested them wear an amber necklace to help alleviate the pain. So, bought the $20 necklace and had them wear it. No teething issues. Perhaps he would have been spared the pain just because of his make up. Perhaps the necklace helped. Either way, I don’t care. He was spared the pain for whatever reason. When someone has a child who is starting teething, I share my story with the caveat I have no idea if it works or not, but it’s harmless and is $20. Not one child that tried the necklace suffered from the teething. Again, who knows what the cause was, could all be a fluke.
I suppose you have zero faith in Shiatsu, Acupuncture, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Biodynamic Farming either?  

Again, I have yet to see a single post where someone who bought SR’s product were slamming it and claiming they were ripped off.

My suggestion would be to steer clear of the two clowns :-)

Disruption is the aim of the game, off-topics comments and when all else fails, they stoop down to their usual condescending tone.

My posts have stayed on topic, both the topic of the thread and addressing the arguments other posters have given, and my posts contain no abuse.  I also posted that I would be happy to see SR's products validated.

On the other hand, you drop in only to sling ad hominem and name calling, which others are now adopting, and you claim it's "the other guy" who's game is off-topic insulting posts?

What's that thing about pots and kettles again...?

Here's a hint: if you really care about keeping the level of discourse higher,  if someone has a point of view different from your own, try actually explaining why you disagree rather than simply slinging insults.

perkri

First this:

Well, suggesting they are clowns, is giving them too much credit as that would require they be creative and have imagination - something that is clearly lacking.

Perhaps ask yourself why you are resorting to such insults. Does it really help in discussions like these? For my part, I’ve been addressing the character of your arguments, not your character.

Comparing swapping a cable and listening for the difference is nothing like homeopathy or astrology. The result is tangible, and immediate. A singular variable.

No, your impression that you are hearing a difference between cables is no more or less "tangible" than someone’s impression they feel better after taking a homeopathic pill. It’s simply a subjective impression in both cases. Which is open to the question: what is *causing* that subjective impression.

You are leaping to the conclusion that your impression of hearing a difference was due to the efficacy of the cable altering the audio signal, just as the person taking the homeopathic (inert) pill leaps to the conclusion that their feeling better was caused by the objective efficacy of the homeopathic pill.

You say you are a pragmatics with some education in science and math, so it is quite surprising that you do not seem to recognize the influence of uncontrolled variables here, PARTICULARLY that of human bias and imagination, something that is well documented.

Here’s a list of cognitive biases (which by nature skew interpretation of experience/data):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Example of bias in action, where wine experts described the "differences" between a red and a white wine they were tasting, but it was in fact the same wine, simply colored different to make them believe they were tasting two different wines:


https://lions-talk-science.org/2014/12/08/how-fancy-labels-fool-us-the-neuroscience-behind-bias/



Do you think somehow that you are not prone to cognitive bias, or that audio is somehow magically immune from the variable?

It’s not:

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/dishonesty-of-sighted-audio-product.html

And if you’ve ever been involved in blind testing, it can be very educational in that aspect. I have had many different cables in my system and have done blind testing: you can pretend to someone in such a test that you are switching devices or cables and ask them to rate which one they like better, while not changing a thing. The mere fact they believe a different cable is now in use, and listening for a difference, can cause them to rate one cable higher over another, hear differences that aren’t there. I’ve done similar blind tests with plenty of people with video cables too, where they are just SURE that one cable is producing a sharper, better picture over the other, yet their guesses are pure random chance.

In other words: if you have two cables that are identical in performance, so long as we are assuming they will sound different, or even simply "seeing if we can hear the difference," we can end up "hearing" a difference that isn’t objectively there. Sorry, but that really is a bug in human psychology. Bias distortion is such an important feature of our psychology that science has adopted in to it’s core methods ways of controlling for bias! Which, again, makes it strange to me that you have some background in science, yet don’t seem to recognize this issue when it comes to audio evaluations.

Further: you have depicted me as the one who is dogmatic and close minded. And yet in my very first post, to use Synergistic Research as an example, I expressed that I am both OPEN to SR’s products working as claimed, I explain what type of evidence would open up my belief in the claims, and that I would be HAPPY to have the claims demonstrated as true.

Does that actually, really strike you as close-minded?


Meanwhile, you never answered my question as to what could change YOUR mind about a subjective-based claim that "X tweak makes a difference," whether for instance you’d accept evidence based on measurements or listening tests controlling for bias.

What is your answer? Are you open minded to such evidence your subjective impression could be wrong? And can you reply, I hope, without insults, please? Thank you.

So scientists don't understand what sound is, just as they don't understand what electricity is. This obviously follows from this article. Those who are sure that everything can be measured, and everything immeasurable is just snake oil should read the article carefully. 

The answer is very simple. Once you get your mind around it.  

https://youtu.be/5FELdBsixGg?t=110