Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts

Well @prof I am sorry. You are wrong 😆. You have said it yourself: if you share any listening experience that is not backed by either measurements or double blind ABX tests certified by a panel of independent third party individuals (preferably both). you are simply making baseless claims. Such obnoxious behavior will not be tolerated 😉

thyname, if you are trying to catch me in self-contradiction, you haven’t really understood what I’ve been writing.

Here it is again:

There is "noise" in our perceptual system - forms of bias that influence our perception, which can also lead us to hear things that aren’t there.

But...as I always point out on ASR...that does NOT mean that our perception is therefore wholly unreliable and useless. Clearly it can’t mean that, since we use our perception successfully to get us through the day, hearing included. So we have to acknowledge that our senses and perception is to some significant degree, reliable.

But, just as you can’t go too far towards "our perception is wholly unreliable" you also can’t go too far towards "our perception is wholly RELIABLE." Because we know our perception is fallible to some degree. We can be fooled.

Clearly some middle-ground has to be found between the two, to make sense.

And the line will be drawn depending on how reliable you want your conclusion to be. So, as I’ve given in the example of cooking: taking adding salt to make a dish taste more salty. if you want to be REALLY sure that the amount of salt IS detectable by your taste buds as "more salty," then you could take a scientific approach to control the variables involved including bias. So you could use measurements of chemical properties and blind testing to weed out what could be mere bias (e.g. "I added more salt, and my expectation leads me to ’taste it as more salty’), and establish more reliable thresholds where the salt is detectable in a dish.

But the fact you can get more certain, reliable information that way DOES NOT entail that normal sighted cooking tests are wholly unreliable and useless. Why not? Because we know adding salt CAN quite plausibly increase the taste of saltiness. So in a practical sense, experimenting with our recipe isn’t producing scientific level certainties (caveats about the word "certain" in science...), but it’s still reasonable given the inherent plausibility that introducing ingredients will change the taste.

But the reasonableness will always rest on the plausibility of what we are doing. That is where "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" comes in to help out. If for instance someone claimed to be practicing a homeopathic version of cooking, where adding a thimble of water that "once had a molecule of salt" but now has no detectable salt molecules is still claimed to make the dish taste "more salty..." then that’s a whole different ballgame. That claim should rightly be held with suspicion, and if those practitioners are claiming the dish tastes ’more salty’ after adding their homeopathic ’salt,’ it’s reasonable to presume in the absence of rigorous testing that it’s more likely their imagination.

I apply just this type of reasoning in audio. Yes there is noise in the system of our subjective perception. But we can still sift reliable-enough information out of the system, where there are ACTUALLY THINGS TO HEAR.

Different speaker designs, for instance we know from both engineering and studies of human hearing, to sound audibly different from one another.

My work in post production sound is in the same category: we are hearing and altering sounds in ways that are utterly uncontroversial in terms of audibility.

But some claims fall in to the "controversial" category based on their dubious plausibility, pointed out by relevant experts (or even identifiable as dubious simply by applying critical thinking to the claim). Plenty of audiophile beliefs fall in to such categories. So if an audiophile wants to describe the sound of speakers, like I’ve said, I’m all ears. If he wants to say an expensive USB cable altered the sound over a cheaper functioning, properly spec’d USB cable, based on the claims made by the marketing, then I am justified in wanting stronger evidence than an anecdote.

And, like I’ve said, NO audiophile needs to justify his purchase or engage in measurements or controlled testing. To each his own. I’m just describing the reasons for MY skepticism in the face of some claims rather than others.

The problem with some at ASR, like the fellow I was currently having an exchange with, is that I argue they go too far in the direction of "subjective reports are utterly worthless and meaningless." The claim makes no exceptions, even for cases where audible differences are entirely plausible and likely (e.g. speakers). That level of generalization is incoherent, unless you acknowledge all the caveats I have argued for above.

I am all for middle ground. It’s just some don’t like that, my way or the highway sort of thing. Not me. And:

NO audiophile needs to justify his purchase or engage in measurements or controlled testing. To each his own.

Yup! Exactly.

But:

But some claims fall in to the "controversial" category based on their dubious plausibility, pointed out by relevant experts (or even identifiable as dubious simply by applying critical thinking to the claim). Plenty of audiophile beliefs fall in to such categories. So if an audiophile wants to describe the sound of speakers, like I’ve said, I’m all ears. If he wants to say an expensive USB cable altered the sound over a cheaper functioning, properly spec’d USB cable, based on the claims made by the marketing, then I am justified in wanting stronger evidence than an anecdote.

Or, you can just ignore those posts. One should not ask people to only post selectively about their subjective findings only on stuff that you believe have merit. They should feel free to post about anything. Then, we, the readers, can sort through the maze of posts, and only read what catches our interests. No?

Or, you can just ignore those posts. One should not ask people to only post selectively about their subjective findings only on stuff that you believe have merit. They should feel free to post about anything. Then, we, the readers, can sort through the maze of posts, and only read what catches our interests. No?

Sure that could be someone's approach.

But it's not so simple as that.

After all, you've been in these threads making arguments.  You could have just skipped them, but you didn't.  Why?  Because you see some audiophiles making claims or arguments you disagree with, and you think it's worthwhile to present another viewpoint, presumably. 

It's the same for anything we post in audioforums.  You could see a post that says, say, that Thiel speakers require TONS of power and will ONLY sound good with super high wattage solid state amps.  But if you have reasons to think that claim is false or misleading - e.g. you've heard Thiels sound fantastic with tube amps - then naturally you may want to reply "Hold on, I haven't found that to be the case...here are the reasons why I think Thiel's don't necessarily require the amplification that person claimed."

This is how we hammer ideas around in forums, right?  Exchanging different points of view, giving support for our point of view, which can help someone get a bigger picture of an issue, to decide for themselves which avenues to pursue.

After all, you've been in these threads making arguments.  You could have just skipped them, but you didn't.  Why? 

That's true. And honestly, I shouldn't. 

prof

3,131 posts

10-20-2022 at 05:18pm 

Or, you can just ignore those posts. One should not ask people to only post selectively about their subjective findings only on stuff that you believe have merit. They should feel free to post about anything. Then, we, the readers, can sort through the maze of posts, and only read what catches our interests. No?

Sure that could be someone's approach.

But it's not so simple as that.

Yes. It's as simple as that. Meaning, I believe everyone should be free to share their experiences in a public forum, subjective or not, and let the readers be the judge. The reader(s) then can determine what interests them and what doesn't. Read & participate in threads of interest, ignore the threads with no interest.