Of significant interest .....

"Question:
You play two identical samples of the same piece of music, sit in the same place, keep the volume the same, and therefore don't change the frequency response or amplitude at your ears. Can you actually hear a difference between them?
Answer:
No, you might think you can, but actually can't.


This is pretty basic isn't it?"



...a little bit too basic.

I beleive you can.

 

Hi david

If you don't change any of the information reaching your ears (and body in the case of low bass) how can you detect a difference?

Or do you mean that you brain rejects the impulse from the ears saying 'this is the same' (hark at my laughably basic terminology) and decides it can hear a difference because you've done something?

I'm not being a cock or about to go all postal, I'm just curious.

 

don't know!

don't know!

......and quite correctly.......(curious I mean )


hi, Scott.

Thee are better men (than me)out there to theorise over the workings of these things.

i've tested several cables from zanash in the last year or so.....I beleive each has gibven a slightly different presentation; I'm talking of i/cs specifically here.

I tested petes platalloys directly after my silver and gold and the presentation WAS, imo , different. Not quite night/day but a subtle increase in resuolution of instruments that (the memory of) has remained with me.

No, I'm not a medical man of any description (or a chemist or a metaligist), so I can't explain the hows and whys......but that would be my opnion.

WE didn't change anything esle between the silver /gold then the platalloys...straight from one to the other.













D.

 

good question !

 

See this (nicked from another forum)

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect

 

Very impressive allthough IMO not really related to the question at hand...unless the McGurk effect extends to seeing a huge fat speaker cable and it's associated megabucks price tag modulating your hearing to such an extent that you detect a jaw-dropping improvement

Michael.

 

Not jaw dropping but you have to think that if you know " i've got a super dopper wanky wire" then it must sound better and therefore it does?

 

Hi,

Well, either that or the reverse.

No, it was graphic!

You claimed, according to your writing, that the simple fact that a given thesis, contention or observation is in dispute prooves that it is irelevant/false.

I simply applied your methode to a field of endeavour other than audio. Surely the same scientific principles apply to audio as well as to other fields?

Yet one thing cannot be two different things at the same time. This agreement is simply saying "we got no clue" in a way that makes less educated people believe the "cognescenti" actually understand this and have answers.

That is a bad case of DejaMoo.

If the observation changes the nature of a thing observed the observation illusion or delusion.

Applying Occams Razor suggests that a photon is NEITHER but something we do not understand sufficiently to explain.

Otherwise we may as well claim that differences between cables exist but their apparency depends on how we choose to observe them. Or that differences that are real and aparent in sighted testing disappear if we choose blind testing instead.

Given that you decided unwisely to bring this subject up again, let me again be ruse by referencing myself:

If the basis for dispute was an experiment like the one I outlined quoting myself, there would be no dispute, just loud and echoing laughter shooing the experimenter out of the hallowed halls of science. Yet, what is unfair/unapplicable/unscientific in any field other than audio suddely becomes the pinaccle of science in an act of transsubstantiation which will leave the priest in your local church (who routinely transsubstatiates bread and wine into the flesh and blood of crist for a bit of symbolic canibalism) gasping for breath.

And likely 100% of the subjects will take it (or want to - anyone remember Herceptin) and hence what will help 1% of patients will make profit for the pharmaceutical company from 100% of them.

Of course, unlike Cable manufacturers, who are despicable frauds and frauds (even their products make a real difference for 1% of the people they market to), the pharmaceutical industry acts purely out of the good of their hearts, seeking only to help poor sick people and be him counted a knave who sees any parallels between the two.

That given and noting that you still defend a significance of .05 and a "pass or fail" criteria for a DBT/ABXT using a single subject and very few samples I am sure your professor is by now in severe distress, should he notice, about how poorely he taught you.

Ciao T

 

'of significant interest'

this thread title is not true!!!

 

By the way there was simialr research on the telly the other day about "taste" - peopole who bought brand name foods instead of the supermarket own brand felt they "tasted much better" but when they were not told what they were eating inmost cases they either had no preference or preferred the own brand....so psychology does come into it.

Everything is not as may seem at first appearances.

 

Hi,

I agree, of NO significant interrest is much closer.

BTB, most freeview channels are so rubbish because they are "Freeview". They are worth exactly what you paid for them....

Ciao T

 

I actually never said any such thing. I do defend a significance of .05 for audio DBT testing but I never said anything about a single subject or sample size, it was you who brought them up. Obviously when using a .05 significance level you have to use a suitably large sample size (as is done in the pharmaceutical industry).

Tests with small sample sizes and larger significance levels are essentially worthless. If it was possible to reach meaningful conclusions using small samples and larger confidence intervals the pharma industry would save a fortune by doing drug trials with a handful of participants!

No I didn't. I explained your basic misunderstanding in my previous post so I won't go over it again.

You clearly haven't got the faintest idea about quantum mechanics.

I can't really bothered to respond to the rest of your irrelevant and misinformed banter.

Michael.

 

fumf.

I could change it to ''why are all television channels so rubbish"?

 

Hi,

Actually, the significance level mentioned is the one applied by those who I call the ABX Mafia (and also actually in the challenge by the great illusionist called Randi) for a SINGLE subject and for a rather small number of trials AND under usually high pressure conditions.

If you defend their work, you defend their statistics.

Yet what does not work in Pharmaceutical research is standard among the Audio Debunkers.

So, do you actually suggest that all the published audio DBT/ABXT are worthless due to bad statistics? You are actually agreeing with me?

How about responding to the main points I made, which I notice you have studiously avoided in favour of banter?

Kind regards T

 

In my caser (above) this was NOT the case.....I had to admit petes cable sounded good with a deal of reluctance......simply because I didn't want any more expenses!!

 

mmm medical tests, the big difference here is they dont friggen well ask the medical subjects how they feel, there is no opinion in medical trials, just objective measurement.

in medical trials where a post hoc patient follow up 'is' undertaken it's not out of the ordinary for patients who were on the placebo to state they felt an improvement.

hell, in most trials, and i've read a good few 100 in my time as pharma rep manager in a previous life, 5-20% improvement in placebo arm patients is commonplace.

i don't believe there is anything in audio that can't be measured, i just don't think we are measuring it..

 

Any opinions on why 'worse' is easier to identify than 'better' where your hard earned is involved?
Another thing to me at least is that everyone on this forum has made subjective based decisions in the gear they choose to buy/listen to-who's to say they haven't convinced themselves or imagined what they heard at the time?
Human acoustic memory is very poor and unreliable-all DBT 's do is illustrate just how bad-transfer that logic to equipment choice and we're all fools

 

In a sense, if you can't trust your ears ,why are you bothering listening at all?

AS I say, in my case, I really din't want to be tempted to spend more money.....so it was against my interestes to find sonic benefits in the cable.

I agree, these things can be subjective.......but I think my assessment was reaonable accurate.

 

For the record, it was a rhetorical question designed to bring this don't trust your ears to its logical conclusion.

 

fair enough.