Why HiFi Gear Measurements Are Misleading (yes ASR talking to you…)

@alexatpos 

@prof I think we may have very different view on how science works, If something cant be 'scientifically' proven and yet, 'existst' (at least by testimonials of so many) than perhaps 'the scinece' (or better the people who claim that they are 'scientists') should try to find new methods or tools to examine those 'events'.

If you say aliens land in your backyard every night, you don't get to claim that we need better radars to detect their arrival.  You need to first prove what you claim to be there, really is.  Science has provided that mechanism for that.  It is called controlled testing where the only variable is sound.  You involve many other factors and senses and then ask that science go and prove based on sound alone, that what you heard is real?  You have to be joking.

There is currently no research going on to validate what you all claim to hear.  None.  Why?  Because you have not provided any evidence of something real.  Do that and science will happily investigate.  Stick to your biased testing and we know why you arrive and wrong conclusions.  We don't need to advance the science any more.  We have known for decades that people say they hear things sighted that vanish when tested blind.  And that is that.

Put more directly, you need to advance your testing methods.  Science is years and years ahead of you.  To the extent you have no use for such science, then science doesn't owe you more work.  It certainly doesn't need to spend money chasing people's imagined effects.

@prof I think we may have very different view on how science works,

That’s quite clear.

If something cant be ’scientifically’ proven and yet, ’existst’ (at least by testimonials of so many) than perhaps ’the scinece’ (or better the people who claim that they are ’scientists’) should try to find new methods or tools to examine those ’events’.

"Testimonials" are often not reliable. That’s why the scientific enterprise arose, why it overcame thousands of years of "he-said-she-said" testimonials to actually hugely improve our understanding (and predictions) of the world.

You can find many "testimonials" for literally every pseudoscience, cult, religious, new age, extreme belief that anyone has ever dreamed up. The whole point of science is to lift reliable evidence out of the morass of competing "testimonies."

You are approaching things backwards in this sense - assuming first that people are "hearing things" and then presuming that true, so science has to "catch up" to what you can hear. Whereas science would say first we need to control for variables like sighted bias to FIRST establish you actually CAN hear these things...when you don’t know what is playing.

And, yet, ’your camp’ (as A.would say) chooses the easy road by calling those claims as non existent.

No it’s not an "easy road." It’s often a very hard won road. You seem to imagine that being skeptical of a claim just comes out of nowhere, like it’s a whim. The reason many are skeptical about, for instance, high end cable claims is based on hundreds of years of electrical theory and practice, and similar lengths of times in which cables have been produced along accepted lines of theory.

There are videophiles for instance who claim to see obvious differences in color saturation, contrast, sharpness etc with "high end" HDMI cables over capable cheap HDMI cables. It’s not just a whim to be skeptical about this. HDMI cables literally do not work like that - they would not have worked as they have worked, if the theory behind them was THAT wrong. And of course, we have no measurable evidence, just the claims of people who are "sure" they see these things. Science doesn’t have to "catch up" to what some videophiles see. First they need to demonstrate in controlled tests, or show measurements, indicating their claim is actually TRUE. THEN you go looking for the explanation.

Same for claims about various types of audio cables.

You want to talk about "taking the easy route?"

How about "I’m just going on what I think I hear, and that’s that. And even if I’m not an expert, what I think I hear trumps any expert argument to the contrary. I don’t have to explain how I hear this. The expert needs to do all the work ’catching up’ to what I claim to hear."

That’s about as "easy" and lazy a route as can be imagined.

@prof I think we may have very different view on how science works, If something cant be 'scientifically' proven and yet, 'existst' (at least by testimonials of so many) than perhaps 'the scinece' (or better the people who claim that they are 'scientists') should try to find new methods or tools to examine those 'events'.

The first thing science will always do is validate the claim. The claim will never be assumed to be correct without validation. 

Blind testing is used in audio product development to validate results and improve the quality of listening tests.

@thespeakerdude 

The first thing science will always do is validate the claim.

This is a step in the right direction, you need to validate your claims. You should start by using links when you make claims as a third party validation. Of course the first step is to validate your claim that you even have a system. Start by listing it in the virtual system. Otherwise you aren't being scientific AND:

The claim will never be assumed to be correct without validation. 

​​​​@thespeakerdude , this is the first step to becoming credible, start validating stuff in future posts. I will overlook your previous claims that were never validated.

When compact disc came to the masses in the early 80’s, it seems to me that audiophiles heard problems with it, before it was identified to be jitter.