Re: Tip for OPEN MINDED Audiophiles


Sander deWaal wrote:

soundhaspriority@xxxxxxxxx said:

You mean you weren't serious all this time about running your mains
cable without insulation? Well gee whiz. I could have avoided
electrocuting myself if I had known that.


I was counting on a smidgeon of common sense with you and the other
people reading this thread :-)

Perhaps, but I wanted to be sure of that by specifying that some form
of insulation on mains cables is necessary. Because "common sense" is
not quite as common as you may think. "Common sense" can be a crutch,
and I try not to let it get in the way in my pursuit of knowledge. For
example, many would argue that it is "common sense" to believe that
cutting the corners off of your clothing labels could not possibly have
an audible effect on your sound system. But it does. And it's not just
me saying that, or that has observed the effect. My point is that there
are boundaries of reason one should adhere to, such as the fact that we
already have a scientific explanation for what will happen when you
allow the + / - currents of a mains cable to come into contact with
each other. But don't let the crutch of "common sense" limit your
knowledge of science and the world we live in.

Let me add that I'm an audio hobbyist from when I was a little boy,
and started out in high end audio in the '80s.

I was an audio hobbyist since early teens, and also started out in high
end in the 80s. I believe the Harman Kardon tape decks was my first
high end treasure. I still have fond memories of my JPW AP3 speakers
and my little British Fidelity A1. With just the right dark quiet room
and some Dreaming from Kate Bush, it was all a magical combination...

I wouldn't know how to describe the level of knowledge and skills I
possess wrt. designing, redesigning and tweaking audio gear.
What I *do* know is that whatever I do, seems to be worthwile enough
for people to find my door and drop their stuff for an overhaul :-)

I suppose my specialty if I had one, is taking cheap gear and tweaking
it up until it sounds as good or better as audiophile gear. Because
that's more challenging than starting with gear that already sounds
good. I remember once tweaking up an old 16bit Phillips portable cd
player to the extent where I walked into a shop, listened to a $1,000
home player by Sony (with audiophile features like an anti-resonance cd
tray), and was dismayed by the fact that it didn't sound nearly as
musical as the portable that I had been tweaking.

It's a sorry fact that most audiophiles don't realize that changing
components until you get lucky is not always the best path to audio
nirvana.

However, I _do_ believe that there is a flow of energy all around us in
our home environment, which has effects on our (primal) senses. This
would be the "morphic resonance" I was referring to earlier. Many of
the tweaks that I talked about (ie. the pinhole paper and aspirin)
attempt to manipulate this energy, and reduce the negative effects it
has on our senses, in order to help us improve our perception of sight
and sound.
It works out to be an alternative way of achieving more or less the
same thing that you try to do, which is to improve perception of sound
by changing the components that produce the sound.


As a technician, I have learned to think that all of the above is
sheer BS.

Except that "sheer BS" is actually based on principles of quantum
mechanics. A little understood field of science I believe, but science
nonetheless. Now problems arise from the fact that people tend to only
believe what they've been taught, and what is within the confines of
their fields of knowledge. And then they dismiss what isn't, out of
hand.

The Chinese have their "chi", which is another type of energy force. I
would be foolish to say that billions of Chinese for thousands of years
have believed in sheer BS, simply because it doesn't fit in with the
Western doctrines of science that I've been taught. Particularly when
the Chinese are a far wiser culture on the whole, than the Western
ones.

However, from experience in life and audio, I know that you're right
about this.

I'm glad that you have discovered that there simply is no substitute
for experience. This is precisely what I keep trying to drum into the
thick taffy heads of so-called "objectivists" like Arny Krueger and
company. Yes, I realize its flogging a dead horse with these
dogmatists, but sometimes, flogging a dead horse can be good excercise.


Seriously speaking, I don't see why conventional and alternative
theories of audio could not live and breath within the same space, so
that we can have a more complete understanding of sound reproduction.
If that's what we're really after, and not simply trumpeting our narrow
world view as the so-called "objectivists" do.

The problem, however, is that things like this can't be measured with
a THD meter or oscilloscope, so science dismisses it beforehand.

Precisely. There may be a way to measure the energy force I spoke about
at some future time, but that will never happen if there isn't enough
interest in it. And if people dismiss the ideas out of hand due to
their willful ignorance, without ever exploring them, it will never
have a hope of being measured or recognized, under accpeted scientific
standards.

But did you realize that whining about "placebo effects" may be the
correct answer for these guys?

I thought the correct answer was a lobotomy? Or maybe that's the
original problem... Anyway, the "placebo" argument has no relevance in
audio. It's a trivial excercise to defeat it.

As I wrote before, the power of the mind (and imagination) is huge; if
one can imagine to feel better when taking sugar pills, why isn't
putting said pills on top of your speakers equally valid?

I'm not sure we're seeing this the same way.... I don't believe the
5-pinhole paper tweak works via the placebo effect, if that's what
you're suggesting here. The aspirin is there because it contains an
ingredient from the bark of the willow, which apparently reduces the
negative energy I spoke of, allowing us to better perceive what we
hear. This "sharpening of the senses" if you will, in turn makes it
seem as though we have tweaked the audio system itself. If you use any
other kind of pill, capsule, or tablet, it is unlikely to have the same
effect (and I _am_ speaking from experience, I _have_ experimented with
other things). Substituting the aspirin for another pill is more likely
to have a detrimental effect, or perhaps no perceptible effect.

It's not that easy to create _positive_ changes using methods of
alternative audio tweaks, as I have described. The only point I wish to
make about all this is that, it _is_ possible to alter and even improve
the sound you are hearing off your hifi in ways that defy conventional
principles of science and technology.


I have no way of knowing how and why things like this work, but I have
observed and experienced that it *works*, period.

That what works?


So, insert here a chorus of objectivists calling me gullible, naive
and deluded.

That's what "objectivists" do, isn't it? It seems to be their raison
d'etre, their reason for living. It doesn't bother me in the slightest
if they call me names or "bad things". It just makes me laugh harder at
ignorant people who would consider me gullible, naive or deluded, when
I know that they're the ones who are gulllible, naive and deluded.

I find that your so-called "objectivists" are a very insecure lot, who
need constant reassuring of who they are, by others around them. Which
is why they often write messages to me as though they are speaking to
an audience (ie. "dear readers", "disinterested readers"... etc.). I
don't need such reassurance, as I know who I am and I know I have a
much more insightful understanding about what is true in audio then
they ever will in their entire misguided lives.

I know that certain things enrich my listening pleasure and my life,
and that's what counts.

I agree. Whenever I read these worthless ramblings of the dogmatic
religious audio techies who insist that everything sounds the same in
audio, and that none of these tweaks have any effect on the sound that
I perceive when listening to my system, I merely have to turn on my
stereo. Everything that I have done to tweak my hifi that should not
have anything but a so-called "placebo" effect gets re-confirmed within
seconds. Not just by me but by anyone who is in the room. It's a sound
so musical , I have trouble writing sometimes when the music is
playing, because I want to go and sit in front of the stereo. I imagine
what the sound of the objectivists' hifi kits are like, and what I
would think of it. It seems like it would be akin to visiting a museum
where all the paintings were made by blind men, insisting they're every
bit as good as a Chagall or a Van Gogh.

I wonder if the know-nothing theorists would finally shut up and "see
the light", if we were able to place my cheap tweaked system next to
theirs, and simply compare "subjectively". It would be hard to argue
that there's no difference in the sound of the two systems, and try to
remain credible. One thing I am sure of, a typical unmodified mid-fi or
techie pro system owned by one of the so-called "objectivists",
carrying as it does their pending philosophies about what does and
doesn't matter in audio, would sound like a typical hifi kit from
Goodman's or Richer Sounds. Whereas my modest 30 year old system, which
has had its "hifi" character greatly reduced due to my advanced tweaks,
would reveal great differences because of this.

By the way, did you know that you can change the sound hundreds of
different ways, by "physically tweaking" your electronic components? I
mean instead swapping out parts like caps and resistors and such as you
do, the sound will change (to a lesser degree) by simply bending the
connections, even a fraction of a millimetre. I mention this because if
you're not aware of it, and you move some parts inadvertently in your
electronic gear while working on other parts, you could end up changing
the sound more than you want to, without realizing it. A small change
can destroy the quality of sound, or it can improve it. It requires
some patience and dedication, but taken as a whole, you can also
transform the sound of a component this way.

Interesting!
The techie in me starts thinking immediately about induction from
heater wires, RFI etc. , but I suspect you mean something different.
I think I observed things like this as well, but I can't recall in
what situations that was.

I don't know the reasoning behind it, because I've never heard of
anyone else observing this phenomenon, besides myself. I wouldn't be
half surprised if I were laughed out of the house for that too, were I
to mention the effect on a techie forum. But I do not suspect it has
anything to do with anything as "mystical" as morphic resonances or the
like, if that's what you're implying. But that there's a more
conventional, tangible explanation for it.

However, I don't see that explanation coming from RFI or heater wires.
After all, what were talking about here is bends in the termination
legs of electronic components that are so minute, as to barely perceive
that you moved anything. And this is _all_ components soldered to the
PCB board, regardless of their location (relative to the power supply,
let's say). My guess, and its only that, is having something to do with
the flow of electrons. Perhaps not unrelated to the fact that I can
bend a wire and in doing so, change the sound of the wire.

Incidentally, I have done a single blind test of different capacitors
in a tube power amp.
I couldn't hear any differences whatsoever.
Listening at night, in a relaxed mood, revealed differences that were
clear as the sun, and most of all: they were repeatable differences.

Exactly. No doubt, you know you're not alone on this. I've also
observed repeatable differences that were not always discernible under
blind conditions. So have many audio journalists, other audio
engineers, and thousands of audio enthusiasts, who've taken the trouble
to do the experiments. This is why blind tests will only lead you into
further darkness, when you're making your decisions about what kind of
a stereo system you want.

There are valid reasons for why the conditions of the blind test change
our ability to perceive, that have nothing to do with seeing or not
seeing the component in question. (I don't have to see the component in
question when I do non-blind testing to discern differences, and I
often don't look at it). Some of those reasons are known, some are not.
Some studies have been done that point to the unique effects of stress
under such abnormal listening conditions, but I feel not enough studies
have been done.


Since long, I stopped trying to explain things like this in terms of
insulation, diëlectrics etc.
I just accept that it is so, and I enjoy it.

That is pretty much where I am with this, as well. While I do find it
interesting to know what causes the otherwise unexplainable but
significant and repeatable effects that I hear when I make this or that
change, I don't _have_ to know in order to enjoy it. Perhaps this, more
than anything, makes so-called "subjectivists" happier people with
better sounding audio systems, than so-called "objectivists".


I know my reputation of a "professional audio technician"is ripped in
pieces with statements like this, but I don't care.

I respect that and believe that's the right attitude. Too many
engineers and journalists in audio are simply afraid to say things that
their peers might consider nonsensical, because it doesn't fit with
applied conventional theory. This is and always has been a very grave
problem in fields of science. Because to ignore observational effects
that do not (yet) have a scientific explanation (known to the observer
or to those who have heard about it), means that you may be ignoring
important new discoveries that will expand our knowledge of science and
life. And like most scientific discoveries, it can be very beneficial
for the community at large to posess that knowledge, instead of it just
staying in the hands of the few who already have that knowledge. So
often, great forces of energy seem to gather up like thunderstorms, in
order to oppose any new phenomena that is discovered, which doesn't
already fit what is already known.

I believe the people that do this in audio are identified as
"objectivists".

.

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