Synergistic Research: SCAM

[fas42]

37 minutes ago, Confused said:

How did you do an equivalent type -60dB test with a CD player? 

 

By using a Denon CD, full of test tracks - have had this one since the 80s. Some classical music, at 0, -20, -40, -60dbs, on successive tracks.

 

[fas42]

9 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Really? That hurts my golden ears.

 

News bulletin: Live instruments produce high impact sound - that's why musicians like playing them, and being in bands, orchestras, etc. If you want the baby food version of what they're like, that's fine - but it ain't accuracy ...

[pkane2001]

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

In some cases, a simple mind trick. But not in all.

 

Of course. The real "trick" is to be able to tell in what cases it is and in what cases it isn't. Unfortunately, it's the same brain that's tricking you that you're trying to use to judge if it's tricking you -- a bit circular and very unreliable. Which is why a controlled test is needed to know for sure.

 

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

If you spend decades thinking a certain way, it's hard to change. The difference for me is that I started thinking differently decades ago, and everything since has continually confirmed, and evolved that set of ideas.

 

Ever hear of confirmation bias? ;)

 

[pkane2001]

4 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

So let’s see what would be involved in actually making this happen. Firstly I’d need to be able to imagine a deeper, wider soundstage, increased 3 dimensional specificity, greater timbral accuracy and information, increased pace, rhythm and timing, clearer, sweeter, purer treble, deeper more sonorous bass, increased musically correlated harmonics, greater air and ambience, a better rendition of the recording venue, greater intensity, increased emotional response, listener involvement and joy.   And I’d have to do all that day in and day out, with perfect reproducibility, across all recordings.  Doesn’t sounds like listening to music would be very relaxing, not with all that super skilled, high intensity brain activity going on. I could imagine that listening to music would be exhausting, more like writing a maths exam than sinking into a immersive soundscape and letting the music take over.  No, according to your hypothesis, my brain would be cooking.  

 

Actually, what I think is really going on is that some systems are so swamped in noise and other problems that small improvements cannot be picked out of all the noise and resulting loss of detail, so differences become minuscule, so small and insignificant that they could easily be imagined with very little effort. The result would then of course be doubt…is this change real or am I just imagining it? 

 

No, all you need is to listen intently and analytically trying to compare it to something else to start hearing differences. Why do you think there's a break-in period to any tweak? Because when you first listen to it very intently and analytically, you will hear differences. When you later relax and start to forget to pay attention is when the difference goes away. Or, if you simply hide the identity of the gadget in the circuit -- the amazing differences vanish. 

 

All the stuff you describe (timbral accuracy, increased pace, rhythm and timing, spatial qualities) are all reproduced by your brain. In fact, most of the stuff you hear is filled in by the brain through interpretation and memory, it's not a true representation of the sound at the ears. 

 

Noise is very easy to measure with simple devices, and these are much more sensitive than the human ear. Postulating that systems are "swamped with noise" with no measurable noise seems like a good indication of imagination at play.

 

 

[dericchan1]

25 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Why do you think there's a break-in period to any tweak? Because when you first listen to it very intently and analytically, you will hear differences. When you later relax and start to forget to pay attention is when the difference goes away. Or, if you simply hide the identity of the gadget in the circuit -- the amazing differences vanish. 

 

 

Hi Paul, let me first of all declare I am not a believe of any synergistic research tweaks, be it fuses, vibration, ethernet switch, or their cable risers that sell for $600USD.......

 

You mentioned about break-in period, I did not use to believe audio gear needs time to burn in but I can't quite explain my recent experience with my Schiit Freya + tube preamp I bought back in April. 

 

For the first couple of months I played my digital albums in the tube mode and I had to crank up the volume to 2 o'clock to get to my normal listening volume, I used my iphone app to measure in the listening position to be about 75db.

 

All good until the past week, I realized for the same digital albums, setting volume at 2 o'clock music played significantly louder than my normal listening volume, I had to crank down the volume to 12 o'clock to get to my normal listening volume at about 75db. And this seems to be permanent now that for the same digital albums, 12 o'clock becomes my normal listening volume.

 

I have to say, I did not really notice if it sounds better or worse in terms of sound quality, but it just plays louder at a fixed volume after 2.5 months of use.

 

 

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, dericchan1 said:

Hi Paul, let me first of all declare I am not a believe of any synergistic research tweaks, be it fuses, vibration, ethernet switch, or their cable risers that sell for $600USD.......

 

You mentioned about break-in period, I did not use to believe audio gear needs time to burn in but I can't quite explain my recent experience with my Schiit Freya + tube preamp I bought back in April. 

 

For the first couple of months I played my digital albums in the tube mode and I had to crank up the volume to 2 o'clock to get to my normal listening volume, I used my iphone app to measure in the listening position to be about 75db.

 

All good until the past week, I realized for the same digital albums, setting volume at 2 o'clock music played significantly louder than my normal listening volume, I had to crank down the volume to 12 o'clock to get to my normal listening volume at about 75db. And this seems to be permanent now that for the same digital albums, 12 o'clock becomes my normal listening volume.

 

I have to say, I did not really notice if it sounds better or worse in terms of sound quality, but it just plays louder at a fixed volume after 2.5 months of use.

 

That may just be something else that's changed in your system that you didn't realize (source volume control, PC sound settings,  DSP, etc., for example). Or it could be a fault in the DAC. This is one reason I measure all the devices I use -- I want a quick way to determine where the fault lies when things suddenly don't work as expected.

 

[Confused]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

By using a Denon CD, full of test tracks - have had this one since the 80s. Some classical music, at 0, -20, -40, -60dbs, on successive tracks.

 

 

Did you have this one?

 

https://www.discogs.com/release/5794742-No-Artist-Denon-Audio-Technical-CD

 

I thought that my -60dBFS idea was pure genius, but I see Denon beat me to it by 38 years. 🙁

 

Definitely a useful tool for tracking down noise issues.

[dericchan1]

9 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

That may just be something else that's changed in your system that you didn't realize (source volume control, PC sound settings,  DSP, etc., for example). Or it could be a fault in the DAC. This is one reason I measure all the devices I use -- I want a quick way to determine where the fault lies when things suddenly don't work as expected.

 

That does not sound right to me. I have not made any changes to anything in my system or my PC or DAC, especially my DAC is not connected to my windows PC directly. 

 

My set up goes from Windows PC running HQPlayer upsampling and digital filter, then pass the processed digital album to a raspberry pi NAA endpoint through ethernet, then the Raspberry pi is connected to the DAC through usb. My DAC is set to fixed volume mode (max volume) and connected to the Schiit Freya + preamp through XLR. But absolutely no change in any cabling, power supply, settings.......

 

 

[Iving]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

No, all you need is to listen intently and analytically trying to compare it to something else to start hearing differences. Why do you think there's a break-in period to any tweak? Because when you first listen to it very intently and analytically, you will hear differences. When you later relax and start to forget to pay attention is when the difference goes away. Or, if you simply hide the identity of the gadget in the circuit -- the amazing differences vanish. 

 

All the stuff you describe (timbral accuracy, increased pace, rhythm and timing, spatial qualities) are all reproduced by your brain. In fact, most of the stuff you hear is filled in by the brain through interpretation and memory,

 

OK - new gear may be like new spectacles ... those of us who wear them know that it takes the brain a few hours to adjust ... at first the visual field seems odd ... later entirely "normal" again (except that we can, in fact, see better than we did before the eye test if our optician is competent).

 

Yes the human brain is a most amazing, adaptive thing. Perhaps *the* most amazing thing humans know (a little) about.

 

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

All the stuff you describe (timbral accuracy, increased pace, rhythm and timing, spatial qualities) ... not a true representation of the sound at the ears. 

 

Noise is very easy to measure with simple devices, and these are much more sensitive than the human ear.

 

Even if we accept carte blanche that "noise" (chosen dimensions of sound plotted against time) can be measured more sensitively than the human ear by bench instruments, have we not understood that "sound at the ears" is not equivalent to music in the brain?

 

The brain (in fact the afferent nervous system starting right at the ear) does "mathematics" - even Gestalt gymnastics with (aspects/components of) incoming stimuli over time (= ultimately change or variation per se). God knows what exactly - and indeed with what subtlety. Such epiphenomena of neural/brain activity as audiophiles (or any listeners for that matter) experience subjectively - what we call music - bench instruments cannot hope to measure. Advanced brain-imaging equipment not even off the starting blocks.

[pkane2001]

40 minutes ago, dericchan1 said:

That does not sound right to me. I have not made any changes to anything in my system or my PC or DAC, especially my DAC is not connected to my windows PC directly. 

 

My set up goes from Windows PC running HQPlayer upsampling and digital filter, then pass the processed digital album to a raspberry pi NAA endpoint through ethernet, then the Raspberry pi is connected to the DAC through usb. My DAC is set to fixed volume mode (max volume) and connected to the Schiit Freya + preamp through XLR. But absolutely no change in any cabling, power supply, settings.......

 

I can only guess, considering I have no way to check your settings or equipment. Did you change any HQP settings, anything at all? Are you trying to play PCM instead of DSD? Did you have some wax stuck in your ears that cleared ;)? Did you measure SPL at the sitting position before and after? 

 

[pkane2001]

33 minutes ago, Iving said:

 

OK - new gear may be like new spectacles ... those of us who wear them know that it takes the brain a few hours to adjust ... at first the visual field seems odd ... later entirely "normal" again (except that we can, in fact, see better than we did before the eye test if our optician is competent).

 

Yes the human brain is a most amazing, adaptive thing. Perhaps *the* most amazing thing humans know (a little) about.

 

 

Even if we accept carte blanche that "noise" (chosen dimensions of sound plotted against time) can be measured more sensitively than the human ear by bench instruments, have we not understood that "sound at the ears" is not equivalent to music in the brain?

 

The brain (in fact the afferent nervous system starting right at the ear) does "mathematics" - even Gestalt gymnastics with (aspects/components of) incoming stimuli over time (= ultimately change or variation per se). God knows what exactly - and indeed with what subtlety. Such epiphenomena of neural/brain activity as audiophiles (or any listeners for that matter) experience subjectively - what we call music - bench instruments cannot hope to measure. Advanced brain-imaging equipment not even off the starting blocks.

 

Sure, the brain is a very complex instrument, plus it works differently for all of us. Thankfully, there are simple ways to test it without a full MRI machine to see if it is making things up about audible differences or not.

[Iving]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Sure, the brain is a very complex instrument, plus it works differently for all of us. Thankfully, there are simple ways to test it without a full MRI machine to see if it is making things up about audible differences or not.

 

... but not as conclusively as some people would like to think!

[pkane2001]

5 minutes ago, Iving said:

 

... but not as conclusively as some people would like to think!

 

...but much more conclusively than those who don't bother with controlled testing.

 

[dericchan1]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I can only guess, considering I have no way to check your settings or equipment. Did you change any HQP settings, anything at all? Are you trying to play PCM instead of DSD? Did you have some wax stuck in your ears that cleared ;)? Did you measure SPL at the sitting position before and after? 

 

Nah, none of that.  I will leave that as a mystery as there is no harm done having more volume. :)

[Iving]

57 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

...but much more conclusively than those who don't bother with controlled testing.

 

Leaving aside my drift about fathomability of brain - the sheer scope of what we cannot reach - here are some reflections on obsession with avoidance of Type 1 error (false positive) at the expense of avoidance of Type 2 (false negative) - in relation to what we can reach:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799956/

[pkane2001]

10 minutes ago, Iving said:

 

Leaving aside my drift about fathomability of brain - the sheer scope of what we cannot reach - here are some reflections on obsession with avoidance of Type 1 error (false positive) at the expense of avoidance of Type 2 (false negative) - in relation to what we can reach:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799956/

 

Not surprisingly, scientists have come up with ways to deal with Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Blind tests can be set up to detect both with anchors and hidden references, for example. Such tests have well-known standardized forms in audio industry.

 

[Iving]

1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

Not surprisingly, scientists have come up with ways to deal with Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Blind tests can be set up to detect both with anchors and hidden references, for example. Such tests have well-known standardized forms in audio industry.

 

You had time to read the article and reflect with an open mind on its implications for garden path false negatives in audio "controlled testing". OK  

[The Computer Audiophile]

I'm feeling lucky today, I really think some conclusions and agreements are within reach, in this thread. 

 

Only kidding. 

[Blackmorec]

1 hour ago, Iving said:

 

OK - new gear may be like new spectacles ... those of us who wear them know that it takes the brain a few hours to adjust ... at first the visual field seems odd ... later entirely "normal" again (except that we can, in fact, see better than we did before the eye test if our optician is competent).

Nice post….I’d just like to mention one big sensory difference between new spectacles and audio gear upgrades.  

With spectacles, the subject always stays the same while what we use to look at the subject changes…..  everything we look at appears normal, because that’s what we are accustomed to, then suddenly it doesn’t. 

 

In audio its the opposite. What we listen with always remains the same (unless we have our ears cleaned) but what we listen to changes. 

But in both cases, repetition and familiarisation simply establish a new normal.  BUT, while the novelty wears off i.e the awareness that something has changed, the  quality of what we see or hear HAS changed in that it has moved to a higher level of clarity and resolution and while you may not be aware of this consciously, your subconscious is extremely aware of the improvements.  Whereas before you may have been consciously struggling to focus and resolve views, post new glasses you can simply enjoy and respond to the beautiful scenery, chrystal clear book page or whatever. Similarly in audio, you may have struggled to hear the lyrics, separate venue sounds from music,  understand the musical message or understand the subtleties of the musicianship, whereas post upgrade the music has more meaning and the feelings and emotion it subconsciously generates are stronger and more profound and the disturbances that detract from the music are fewer and less. 

 

So all this listening analytically and trying to compare before and after based on memory is of course potentially error prone. But what can’t be fooled are your subconscious reactions to the music. If its making you more emotional and generating more intense feelings, this isn't something you can consciously decide to do. Its an unbidden reaction from your subconscious, based on closer communication with the music. 

 

 

[pkane2001]

15 minutes ago, Iving said:

 

You had time to read the article and reflect with an open mind on its implications for garden path false negatives in audio "controlled testing". OK  

 

Sure, false negatives are possible. And sure, they can be controlled for in a blind test. Which implication did you want me to reflect on?

 

[Confused]

40 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I'm feeling lucky today, I really think some conclusions and agreements are within reach, in this thread. 

 

Only kidding. 

Can we agree that with audio, for any view, any opinion on a particular piece of kit, any idea for improving a system, you will without question find someone who disagrees with that view?

 

I bet someone will come along an disagree with the above before too long ....

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Confused said:

Can we agree that with audio, for any view, any opinion on a particular piece of kit, any idea for improving a system, you will without question find someone who disagrees with that view?

 

I bet someone will come along an disagree with the above before too long ....

100%
 

Not just audio either :~)

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

Can we agree that with audio, for any view, any opinion on a particular piece of kit, any idea for improving a system, you will without question find someone who disagrees with that view?

 

I bet someone will come along an disagree with the above before too long ....

 

Just wanted to grant your wish :)

[Blackmorec]

4 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

No, all you need is to listen intently and analytically trying to compare it to something else to start hearing differences. Why do you think there's a break-in period to any tweak? Because when you first listen to it very intently and analytically, you will hear differences. When you later relax and start to forget to pay attention is when the difference goes away. Or, if you simply hide the identity of the gadget in the circuit -- the amazing differences vanish. 

 

All the stuff you describe (timbral accuracy, increased pace, rhythm and timing, spatial qualities) are all reproduced by your brain. In fact, most of the stuff you hear is filled in by the brain through interpretation and memory, it's not a true representation of the sound at the ears. 

 

Noise is very easy to measure with simple devices, and these are much more sensitive than the human ear. Postulating that systems are "swamped with noise" with no measurable noise seems like a good indication of imagination at play.

 

 

Hi pkane,

 

Firstly analytical listening. Not a good idea….much too effortful. The best is just to keep a notepad and pen handy, then just listen to the music and write stuff down spontaneously as it occurs good and bad. 

When you are listening to music, your brain is subconciously comparing the new sounds to what it carries subconciously which is what it has become used to.  It will highlight discrepancies, which is what you are noting.

Eventually further listening replaces the old memories, so the new sound becomes the norm and you stop noticing improvements, but the improvements are still there and are still noticed by your subconcious which consistently produces stronger feelings and emotions.  This is how you know you’re making progress 

 

The loudspeakers generate sound pressure waves. The ears pick up those soundwaves and convert them into nerve impulses.  Its only once the brain has processed those nerve impulses that they become concious music with qualities such as I mentioned. That’s clear

However, the quality of the picture the brain creates is governed by the completeness and accuracy of the sound pressure waves reaching the ears. The less the brain has to do, the more it can relax and the more natural and enjoyable the music it creates. The easier you make the brain’s job, the better the music sounds and the more enjoyment you get from it.  The brain makes the music but it uses the waves and impulses to do so. 

Regarding noise, you are the one saying there’s no measurable noise.  All im inferring is that there is noise, because as we all know, noise in our modern world is intrinsic. 

[fas42]

 

 

13 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

 

Ever hear of confirmation bias? ;)

 

 

Ah, yes ... it goes something like this:

 

Someone thinks they have a rather special audio system- but, it's actually a bit mediocre, in some areas. But they have measured everything, using conventional means, and everything comes up trumps. Therefore, they confirmed that it's "as good as it gets". And they are content

 

But then they hear a rig, that to their ears, sounds "a bit better" than theirs. Ah hah!! They know what to do in this situation - it must be euphonic distortion; because they have confirmed that what they have can't get better - the numbers were there! So, they will dig, dig, dig to find a bit of distortion that the other rig must be prone to, which only has to be slightly worse than the best; they find it, and feel triumphant ... they have, umm, confirmed why that other setup sounds better ...

 

It's quite beautiful how it all falls neatly in place, don't you think?