What are we objectivists missing?

"I figure subjectivists are like religious people and objectivists are the scientists. There is no proof that a new cable, silver fuse, etc improves the sound, but they believe it does As @djones51 said, until you take vision out of any audio testing, there's going to be bias."

mrskeptic, you are assuming objectivists are scientists.  Bad assumption.  Both are subjectivists.  What is subjective about science?  Too much blind faith in current knowledge.  In audio, that is that the equations are good enough to measure everything, and if it can be measured by current knowledge, then it cannot exist.

Real world, unrelated example that I've brought up before.  Kepler's laws of planetary motion could predict the motion of all the planets--except Mercury.  Why?  The mass of the Sun is so great in comparison to mercury that you need to make relativistic corrections (ie Einstein's general relativity theory) to get accurate predictions for mercury.  Newton's theories work fine for the other planets, and Kepler used Newton's work to predict planetary motion of most planets.

The point?  Blind faith in science is a form of religion.  If Newton's equations (via Kepler in this case) can be limited to specific parameters, then show me the person smarter than Newton that has all the answers.

If anyone thinks that science is some objective monolith without emotional decision making, then they are showing the same blind faith that people today think is reserved for religion.

You can hear things that the physics of sound does not model.  And with current knowledge, cannot model.

Refreshing to read wise post...

Thanks very much....

My best to you....

Well, this did not go in the direction I had intended, but I suppose I should not be surprised. I guess the take away for me is "We don’t know what we don’t know".

@jtucker

There is a simple way out of this. Usually the problem is sorting out how to make the measurement needed. I’m sure you’re aware of the idea of ’if you can’t hear it, you’re probably measuring the wrong thing’.

So if someone claims a particular cable plays bass better, which not do a pink noise test and distortion vs frequency between the two cables of such a comparison? Do it with a microphone so the system in question is part of the equation. After that you can try to sort out why there is a difference if one if present. In this way you can see if expectation bias is thing or not.

I had a customer do exactly this and he found that a certain capacitor did affect distortion at various frequencies, verifying what he was hearing.

All you need to do is get the best pure silver cables you can afford.