Why Do People Come To Computer Audiophile To Display Their Contempt For Audiophiles?

[Ralf11]

6 hours ago, Jud said:

 

I wonder if the perception of stress comes from trying to do the impossible, employ echoic memory over spans of time longer than just several seconds.  

 

 

No one needs to do that.  The mind is perfectly capable of extracting important features from any sensory input and recalling them much later.

 

The perception of stress is most likely the result of knowing one is being tested.

[Ralf11]

4 hours ago, Dragonfyr said:

Did anyone watch this excellent video? 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqJmqhu2ga0

 

No, after a few seconds I decided to listen to music instead.

[Ralf11]

2 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

What Karl Popper used to describe a tendency in the social sciences to slavishly emulate what they (wrongly) perceived as being the aims and methods of the physical sciences.

 

Feynman used the term Cargo Cult Sciences.

 

Biologists have called it "Physics Envy" to analogize with Penis Envy.

 

Then a segment of those biologists found out that all the psychos and anthros they had tried to drill evolutionary thinking into, had adopted (some of) it and had created fields like "Evolutionary Psychology" making the biologists aghast at the proliferation of untested and untestable BS.

 

Science is a tool that can be applied to a wide range of phenomena, and sometimes you are using a wrench when a screwdriver is what's needed.  Because the evaluation & improvement of SQ to an observer requires knowledge in analog & digital electronics, acoustics, biology and psychology, it is going to be a very difficult task to understand.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

^^^  wow...i took a nap at the right time...getting hot in here!

 

did you dream of liquid metal filled cables?

[Ralf11]

how about 2 of them in a hot springs?

[Ralf11]

actual event - you triggered an old memory trace

 

Environmental Biophysics was involved

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

 

I take it that if you had the presence of mind  not to be too critical of any particular field of study, that a good memory trace was laid down...?

 

(gulp)

 

one was at Stanford, the other at Berkeley & while both were physiologists*, I tried to convince the Stanford one to revisit the old saw established in the early 1900's that fat is only burned in the flames of carbohydrates - but must have decided that would be a career killer...

 

 

* so it's not like they were chemists in drag or something

[Ralf11]

56 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Do you prefer it to all other means of human knowledge? Do you think it is superior and should be the guiding light to all other fields of knowledge? This is what I understand to be generally intended by scientism. It is my opinion that this generally leads to intolerance of other approaches. I think we see some of that here at times. Never quite sure. And of course we see a cornicopia of intolerance from a number of perspectives at times. 

 

As to fondness, you do fucking love science don't you, whereas I tend to hate fucking science. Working on it.

 

I think that fucking science is great and worthy of deep study.

 

Moreover, there are different types of science, which I usually categorized by the types of difficulties involved in doing science.  e.g. some sciences require very large and costly machines - you could start maybe with a mass spec. and end the range with the Super Conducting Super Collider 

 

other sciences (I call them the complex sciences) require quantitative analyses of many factors, any or all of which might determine the outcomes - these sciences (e.g. behavior) can make headway thru suitable experimental designs [details on request - text "Sherman Squirrels" to WTF?.com]

 

I'm not a cognitive psychologist but read one of their textbooks recently and was impressed with the clever way they designed experiments to get at seemingly insoluble questions

 

Science however does not apply to all aspects of human endeavor (I won't say knowledge here).  For example, science offers a clear answer to the fundamental question of "Why are we here?"

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

...when the FDA approves a drug, it is on the basis of a "scientific" study. Subsequent prescription of the drug I don't call scientific, but hopefully based on science.

 

this is a good one

 

there are 3 levels here

 

1. scientific studies (say, in vitro) to approve the drug

2. clinical studies

3. then the clinical experience of an expert for prescribing (and maybe followup evaluations)

 

this example points up scientific method vs. expert evaluation - you need both if the outcome is important

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

some folks like to "collect" aspects of some scientific experiments without a great understanding of the role those aspects play.

 

 

How true!

 

Yet how ironic!  (echoically)

 

at least people try 

[Ralf11]

3 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I fucking love science but it's not the way I obtain knowledge about many things. For example the knowledge that I fucking love science. Or Van Gogh or music or other things that I love  

 

IS this a good time to have Dylan and Patti Smith shout "Go Rimbaud!" ??

[Ralf11]

10 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

No, it proves what I have been saying for decades that AB’ing either sighted or blind doesn’t work.

 

Floyd Toole and others have proven it works.

 

What is your def'n of "work"?

[Ralf11]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

As I've said from time to time, you could handwrite the values (might take a while), transcribe and input them via keyboard into a buffer, and it would work perfectly well.

 

good example

 

lots of people don't understand digital electronics... this should be scribed on their foreheads

[Ralf11]

44 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Toole's listeners were comparing loudspeaker frequency response and if you look at the measurements he published you'll see wildly varying response between samples.

Big differences are easy to spot.

 

I think you are either talking about a different study or have missed the point.

[Ralf11]

10 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

No Toole hasn't.

 

I define working as showing a statistical difference in how two things sound. So far only very large differences such as level differences have been revealed in A/B or A/B/X blind tests. As far as I can see blind A/B'ing is guessing, and sighted A/B'ing is guessing.

 

It appears you are not familiar with his publications.

 

There is also way too much hoopla about different ear/brain systems, both here and on other threads.

[Ralf11]

6 hours ago, mansr said:

Then you realise that since audio signals are alternating currents, the micro-diode theory makes no sense at all.

 

no no the glory of it is to prevent all music transmission

[Ralf11]

If a properly conducted blind test shows that there is a difference between components A & B, then you either return the lesser performing item or keep it if it is the pretty, shiny one and that outweighs your interest in SQ (and price)

 

there is nothing wrong with favoring ergonomics or visual esthetics, it just isn't the straight approach to the audiophile goal of best SQ

 

e.g. I like the ergonomics and esthetics (and euphonics) or ARC tubed gear, and have an LS25 Mk II in my system - maybe an Ayre would sound better, but so far I have not changed

 

 

and BTW, science is not just speculation - speculation is not publishable; the best one can say is that it could lead to hypothesis formation 

[Ralf11]

it's possible there are aspect of sound and of human perception thereof that cannot be measured yet, and also possible we don't yet know what they are

 

the proof is in the pudding however

[Ralf11]

19 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The very interesting one to me, is that high quality reproduction can cause the mechanism producing the sound to become "invisible" - that is, it becomes impossible to locate the source just using one's ears. In a completely conventional playback setup this translates to the listener not being able to "hear the drivers", no matter how hard he tries to do so - a quite facinating behaviour.

 

In normal audio this happens extremely rarely, so almost never talked about - some people may not be able to register this "illusion" for various reasons.

 

just posted a wiki with some studies in it on another thread a few minutes ago

 

beyond that, a Google Scholar search or a search in scientific databases (done at your local university library) will produce almost everything published, or presented at most meetings

[Ralf11]

you can now buy speakers with cabinets made of Al, to reduce or eliminate resonances

 

re pattern processing & matching

 

whatever is occurring in several minutes of A/B MAY NOT have to do with your brain learning to do pattern matching in that amount of time, as some pattern matching is innate, BUT it can also be a learned behavior, AND learning can affect and alter innate pattern matching

 

also, pattern matching is one way to do pattern processing, but not the only way

 

finally, there are different mechanisms of pattern matching

 

I know the above is true because my perceptron told me so

[Ralf11]

I wonder if we can design an AI system to monitor the output and tell us if it is accurate...

[Ralf11]

Sal, not all guesses are equal

 

an educated guess is usually more valuable than others

 

OTOH, if one has a lot of knowledge of different circuit designs in A & B, then confirmation bias could affect the guess (!)

 

a suitable blind test is always preferable, but not always worth the effort

[Ralf11]

as Billy said:

 

"when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."

[Ralf11]

BTW, Billy is Wm. Thomson, Lord Kelvin

[Ralf11]

in the last 2-3 centuries, science has steadily eaten away at philosophy

 

oddly, the 2 philosophy PhD's I know hate to hear that