The Placebo Effect

I believe that you eventually get to a place where there is no significant improvement unless you spend 10’s of thousands of dollars. You need to be real with yourself and ask is a 1% improvement really worth another several thousand dollar outlay, or is what you already have sufficient. I have removed myself from the merry go round and now just focus on attaining more lp’s, cd’s, and cassettes. I've spent at least 20k on my system, as much as a new vehicle. Some would say I am nuts, but some here have spent a lot more. 

mahler has it correct:
 "I have definitely had expectation bias, wanting to hear something that is a revelation, and then over time realizing that while the change made made things sound different, but not necessarily better."

-That is exactly what tweeks, cables, etc. do. Then, as in evaluating any component in your system, YOU decide, over time, if it suits your needs and to your liking. I don't think the placebo effect is a correct description because we do the same type of evaluations with all the audio gear, amps, preamps, (tubes - solid state), sources and speakers.

First, I have to get MC’s last sentence out of my system because I can’t stop laughing long enough to type:

“The important thing when pretending to be a serious audiophile is to overthink everything, preferably to the point your thinking becomes indistinguishable from mindlessness.”

Bahahaha! Love that guy.

Ok, phew… One of the biggest challenges in all human thought is that we understand there is some kind of objective reality and that we can, in most cases, consistently measure it; and there’s also the subjective experience of that objective reality that our physical bodies construct, our consciousness experiences, and is very similar but not exactly the same from person to person.

Much of the history of philosophy and science is about trying to determine “where is the line” between the objective and the subjective. In fact, it’s safe to argue wars have been fought over this divide. Consider this thread! Thus the philosophical and scientific fields of Philosophy of Mind, Neuroscience and Behaviorism, and all that flows from them.

What does this mean? It means scientific methods do a good job, in most cases, of quantifying objective reality, but often aren’t able to quantify or describe subjective experience.

What does this mean practically? It means we live in a world where we’re forced to either live in tension between the objective and subjective, and do our best to reconcile that tension, or back ourselves into the limited, lopsided corner of one side or the other and enforce the idea that our side is somehow more “real” or offers a more “truthful” picture of reality.

So: Yes, some reported improvements from cables, fuses, vibration dampeners and such are likely placebo effects. And yes, some reported improvements are likely truly heard and experienced as real, permanent change by the listener.

This isn’t exactly news, if you know what I mean. But I certainly respect the OPs point about the placebo effect.

Finally, we’re not even close to the limits of scientific discovery, and arguing that today’s science has solved everything is like a caveman arguing the world is flat because it’s so obviously the case to him. Who knows what we will discover that becomes a measurable, objective basis for what people say they hear with fuses and BDR cones, etc?

Muon spin, anybody? Quantum entanglement? Oh, so it’s “proven” there’s no free energy available outside the four forces because we haven’t detected anything else yet? Start looking at the list of things the scientific method HASN’T solved and you’ll be amazed; it’s enormous. There’s so much ahead of us to discover!

This is the world we live in. What to choose? Back into some corner and fight, or live in the tension and strive to understand.

Bahahahahaha!! MC!

So: Yes, some reported improvements from cables, fuses, vibration dampeners and such are likely placebo effects

Which can be verified.

And yes, some reported improvements are likely truly heard and experienced as real, permanent change by the listener.

Which could also be verified using the same procedure used to verify the former.

To argue we haven't reached the limits of scientific discovery is far fetched in the context of the placebo effect. We aren't measuring the device but the perceived human response. 

Nobody tune a piano with placebo effect....the tuning is a series of small incremental additive changes...

I have tuned my room in hundreds of change in a 2 months period and explaining everything with placebo is only possible by those who dont have developed any hearing experiments to help them...

They are like a boat without a rudder? Am i here or there? Why the ocean currents put me here and not there? Where did i travel ? Is my destination an illusion?

And because they are lost in the sea they think all boats they crossed are without rudder....

We are all susceptible to be lost at sea but not always without a compass, mine is acoustic control , control of vibration and control of the noise floor electrical level...No unreal change can fool you and stay long beside the real changes.... The two types of change exist at different level of existence and magnitude...

But changing arbitrarily what we think is a bad piece of gear and UPGRADING it, is often an illusion and a placebo effect at work.... Especially if we dont know how to embed our system in machanical, electrical and acoustical dimensions by ourself....When we are not ourself at the SOURCE of the change experimenting, we fool ourself with ready made costly sometimes illusory placebo change...

Stay away from cables or fuses upgrades especially in the first 7 years of your listening experiments.... 😁😊 They can induce the disease: placeno effect and chasing the tail or worst the moon...

Real change dont need test.... Because when the listener ITSELF is changed this is real most of the times.... When the listener interrogate himself this is unreal....He is not changed at all at this time but look and EXPECT for an external change that is unable and powerless to change him first, than  this change is unable to exist by itself....

When the change is real, the sound affect the body by emotion and objective EXPLANABLE cause most of the times, coming from basic science; when it is an unreal change it trick the mind to doubt but is unable to fool the body.... It is the reason why most people upgrade without satisfaction.... They dont know where they go.....Listen not the ears of your mind, but to the body ears.... Experiment....Being in active experiment is very different than being a passive consumers....This is the way to determine how to learn where you must go.... Acoustic basic science can help here and could guide us...


Then, save for exceptional experiment unexplanable but very rare in usual audio life , appealing to unknown science fact is often illusory.... Most change are explanable....But not all for sure.... But the main one are simple based science fact.... Easy to verify....The unexplainable also exist and it is very stupid to think that none exist...It is very simple to EXPERIMENT....At no cost....