Re: Got to laugh
- From: "Paul" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:52:42 -0000
Thus spake Mark R Penn:
> BTW, the part that brings home just how ridiculous this all is is
> when they say that to test the clever little clock, you have to move
> it out of the house, not just to another room, but NOT into "the
> family car" !!!!!!!!
> So, if I move it to the front steps, I remove the effect, but if I
> take it down the drive and put it in the car, the effect comes back?
> What about if I get my wife to drive the car, with clock, to Asda? Or
> if I put it in my van instead of my car, or even into a metal skip?
> Will it still work then?
> The only reason you have to take it outside the house is to give you
> time to forget exactly what you were hearing with the clock in the
> room, so you can let your mind convince itself there is a difference!
>
> I won't use the appropriate word here, but male dogs have two of them.
Indeed!
Audio appears to be one of those subjects that's wide open to subjective
bollocks quite like no other I can currently think of. Visual quality
garners far more consistent opinions from people but audio has always
attracted controversy by the bucket load.
There seems to be two extremes of opposing views: the subjectivists where a
well turned out ear is the only arbiter & the scientifically "pure" approach
where if an effect doesn't have a repeatable & sound scientific explanation,
that effect must be bogus. Scientists as a breed tend to be
ultra-conservative & don't like change which is mostly upsetting. This less
than complimentary view of science has actually served us all fairly well.
Problems arise when someone wants to study a field which is considered by
the majority to be too outlandish. At least science in general can accept
certain ideas without a complete theory as to how they work, one being
acupuncture.
25yrs ago, a friend & I visited someone with a Linn LP12 who conducted an
experiment that simply consisted of attaching a 30mm length of cellotape to
the side of the platter. Could I tell any difference? Yes I could. Was that
difference actually better? Yes it was! Did this experiment prove anything
apart from my own possible gullibility? Probably not.
For starters, I was told in advance so was expecting to hear something,
there are social pressures such as not wanting to appear to be cloth-eared &
the experiment would have had to have been repeated to the point of extreme
boredom with & without the tape several times to gain any credence. Then
there's endless variations on the type of tape & how many pieces. Without
some sort of scientific method, experiments like this one are meaningless &
don't allow for any real progression throughout the experimental stage apart
from random tinkering with nearly infinite combinations. In other words,
where do you stop & draw conclusions?
As for the purely subjectivist view, where is the starting point? I don't
know about anyone else but my hearing is far from consistent which will be
influenced by how tired I feel, my state of happiness, lack of stress or
sobriety & heaven knows what other factors. Then there's the reliability of
memory. My point is that placing cones, graphite slabs, beads, spending a
fortune on cables may or may not effect the sound but will still be well
within the general noise of the variation of our hearing. What really made
me snort once was reading that some people "blessed" with golden ears could
tell the make of connectors on interconnects. IMO, the best purveyor of
audio snake oil still has to be Peter Belt.
.
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