Synergistic calls out Audioholics

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

And if you’ve ever been involved in blind testing

You blind test idea is completely ridiculous the way you wanted to use it in your audio agenda...

I lived through many hundreds incremental changes in my 2 years full time installation of embeddings controls, in the mechanical electrical and especially acoustical dimensions...


You want to reduce any claim of improvement to a singular borderline change that you could debunk one at a time?

Sorry but i dont needed your blind test fallacy in my audio journey...

Like i already said blind test is a serious STATISTICAL methodology in science not a tool for the disciple of the James Randy sunday club...



There are 2 falsehoods i see percolating in the audio industry...

---One is a sin by OMISSION by the electronic design marketing companies when they suggest: buy our own electronic design and your audiophile experience is assured and warrented...

This is half truth nevermind the real S.Q. value of the product because audiophile experience is ALSO mostly tributary of the controls of many psycho acoustical factors outside the scope of the electronic design of any piece of electronic gear speakers included....

---The other sin is by FALSIFICATION of science by abuse of some aspect of technology... Some tried to convince people that audiophile experience is reducible ONCE AND FOR ALL to the measures of some known chosen parameters... This is completely false because audiophile experience is generally tributary of many psychoacoustical factors outside of the scope of these selected chosen parameters...





I know what i speak about i designed my own listening experiments for 2 years without buying any upgrades nor any tweaks but using peanuts cost materials and products to act on some aspect of these complex psychoacoustical factors...With complete success...I even devised on psychoacoustic principle my own mechanical equalizer inspired by Helmholtz...Peanuts costs....




Psychoacoustic is a science the most important one for audio...

Dr. Floyd Toole noted:

Technical measurements are demonstrably precise, repeatable events. Hearing perception is not. Obviously, the perceived event is definitive – if it does not sound good, it isn’t good. The task is to correlate what we measure with what we perceive – This is psychoacoustics.

I will add that generally this CORRELATION PROCESS cannot be abolished by a once and for all set of measures in engineering because it will be the erasing of psychoacoustical science itself.....Is it not saimple to understand especially for a "prof" ?


😁😊




I will let speak 2 acousticians for me here:

« Since the primary purpose of our music and movie systems is our own entertainment in accurately reproducing the “real” event, ultimately it is our perceptions that become our point of reference. Accuracy is thus defined by our perception of the reproduction of the event, and a microphone can’t tell us that. Sure, the microphone has it’s uses; measuring a room’s response can help integrate and optimize the low-frequency response, at least to a point. While the quality of the low-frequency response is certainly important to our perception of accuracy, it is not all that matters. These measurements will not tell us anything about how the speakers present the soundstage. We will have no clues toward the spaciousness of the soundscape. Capturing that information would require far more sophisticated measurements and a lot more knowledge than the average consumer has access to. In fact, when Dr. Floyd Toole reviewed this article, he summed up the issue with typical consumer room measurements, which use a single Omni-directional microphone and an FFT analyzer as “dumb” relative to human hearing. It lacks the sophisticated signal processing to detect sound and provide us with information that our ears can quickly accommodate. The purpose of this article is not to be damning of measurements, because they have their place, and they can be fun and helpful. However, there is also no denying that there has become an over-reliance on the perceived objectivity of measurements and a diminished reliance on what our own ears tell us about the accuracy of our system. This shift is to the detriment of good sound. Many consumers would be far better served spending time training their ears as to what good sound is. Learning to hear what different room reverberation times sound like, what specific changes in tone sound like, or experiencing the “real” event first hand. How can we know what a trumpet is supposed to sound like if we have never heard one live and unaided by electronic amplification? The key takeaway here should be that a flat in-room response is not a guarantee of good sound; this is not necessarily a desirable trait, and if this is achieved based solely on in-room measurements without regard for many other important factors in good sound reproduction, is more likely to lead to a bad sounding system.»

https://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/accurate-microphone-or-ears




 A final remark about the reason why some people insult you here:

Some are tired of your arrogant pretense and the way you treat adults here like children....
I myself propose arguments not insults  and i will wait for answers...

But to this day save for youre own appropriation of science authority i dont see any serious thinking....Your agenda is classical skeptic sunday class for children....You divided falsely the crowds here in 2 gangs: subjectivist ignorant audiophiles and yourself, enlightened "objectivist" spirits....

This fabricated division has nothing to do with science nor with sound thinking and common sense....

I would like to step away from audio for a moment to address something else raised here. Any parents or grandparents please DO NOT use teething necklaces they have been labeled dangerous by the FDA as children have died from strangulation and choking using these things. There is also absolutely no evidence to suggest they do anything. This has nothing to do with one side or the other in these silly arguments over audio reproduction this is a real and serious issue.
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/fda-warns-against-use-teething-necklaces-b...

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.

Putting aside that rather rash conclusion...

...this speaks to a conundrum that I never see answered once people start resorting to the "things that can’t be measured" defense of tweak products and other gear.

If we are talking about unmeasurable phenomena....how did any company in question identify and solve the problem in the first place?Dreams? Communal trance? Consulting oracles?

The typical audiophile gear, cables included, come with a technical story from the manufacturer. "Here’s a technical problem that can undermine the performance of X item; Here’s how we solve that problem." And you are told about "skin effect," "radiation," "electrical interference," "dielectrics" "active shielding" and on and on. In other words, all type of phenomena that we know through being able to detect with instruments and measure.
Then they lay out some claim about how they have technically addressed the problem.

But then if there is any skepticism of the claim, you get fall backs to "Well, not everything is measurable you know! Stop looking to measurements!"

Well, HOW did the manufacturer know it was the specific technical problem in the first place, if he never could identify and detect it by measuring it? Pure conjecture and imagination? SR for instance talks about how you will hear a significant increase in frequency linearity with one of their cables. That would be measurable, right? Can we not presume they measured these differences?    If you don’t think so, how in the world would they have determined it was an increase in frequency linearity that was causing the perception in the first place?


You can’t have it both ways: claim to identify a technical problem by appeal to measurable phenomena, claim to solve the problem, but then have people throw up their hands on demands for measurements "hey, this stuff can’t be measured!"


Can anyone appealing to the "don’t ask for measurements, this stuff can’t be measured" stuff answer this conundrum?