Trust your ears

[March Audio]

1 hour ago, Teresa said:

 

The above quote is from your original post. It is also the reason why I questioned why your thread Trust your ears was in the Objective-Fi forum? As confirmation bias was your conclusion why you heard such a large difference when the inputs were not actually changed. By all logic the sound should have been the same. This shows a limitation of human beings and why I don't believe in jumping to any conclusion about sound quality too soon. To me this is a subjectivist experience and observation and IMHO should not be in the Objective-Fi forum.

 

I do agree with your experience as this has been reported by many others. This subjectivist behavior of trying to find a difference when none exists is well known and this is why what works for me is long term listening with a wide variety of music I like one way for a week and then listening to the same selection of albums the other way for a week and then back to the first way for a week. Then compare notes about what I liked and disliked during each week. Nothing else works for me (see below) and that is why I don't purchase audio equipment unless it has a 30 day money back guarantee with no restocking fee. 

 

In short, I never trust listening impressions from only one or a few sessions. Also I believe many audio products, music files and music discs sound great at first until the newness wears off and I begin to hear their flaws. 

 

I also wanted to explain why back and forth AB'ing doesn't work for me. If I play two different samples, and I think one sounds great and I think the other sounds even better. When I go back to confirm the difference I heard, both samples now sound terrible and I no longer like either one. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, I suspect some do. All I can say is whatever music I use for comparison I can’t listen to again for enjoyment for a very long time.

 

 

Agreed.

 

 

Yes and I still believe this thread doesn't belong here.

 

 

Who is telling you all this stuff? I'm a subjectivist with a 30 year old Adcom GFA-555II amp and no one has told me I must upgrade it. I love my Adcom, it serves my music well. If someone tells you to do such thing, you don't have to listen to them.

 

I don't challenge anyone to prove anything to me as I don't care what equipment they listen to, as only my equipment effects how my music sounds, not their equipment! Also, I don't believe in gambling.

So would I be correct that you are acknowledging the potential fallibility of listening impressions?  That the bias of "newness" can influence your opinion?

 

What about some other potential biases?  Price, brand, aesthetics, what a reviewer or your friend said about the product?  Would those wear off after extended listening, or could they even potentially be re-inforced?

[PeterSt]

38 minutes ago, March Audio said:

Im just here trying to have sensible, intelligent conversations with people on objective subjects.

 

LOL

 

38 minutes ago, March Audio said:

So, as your comments here betray, you and they are simply trolls.

 

Currently there's only one troll around on this forum.

[Teresa]

30 minutes ago, March Audio said:

So would I be correct that you are acknowledging the potential fallibility of listening impressions?  That the bias of "newness" can influence your opinion?

 

What about some other potential biases?  Price, brand, aesthetics, what a reviewer or your mate said about the product?  Would those wear off after extended listening, or could they even be re-inforced?

 

Yes to all.

 

IMHO extended listening with a wide variety of music makes it very hard for biases to be reinforced. While the ear / brain system can be tricked in the short-term, I don't believe it can be tricked in the long-term. False sound can last only so long, eventually one would hear the actual true sound as music is very complex and more one listens the more there is to hear.

 

OTOH price is important to me as I am a poor retired music lover. $1,000 is the most I would ever spend on a component, $500 is more reasonable to me, and finding a $250 giant killer I find thrilling. I'm thrifty.

 

Reviewers don't influence me at all since we all hear differently. I don't subscribe to any audio magazines as most of the equipment they review is way out of my price range. I like to read reviews of high-res music discs and music files, I've discovered a lot of great music this way.

[Confused]

39 minutes ago, March Audio said:

I dont take this from the OP.  Seems like a different (but valid) question to the points being made.

 

The OP seemed to me to be more about the potential fallibility of subjective assessment.  Some appear to take this as a personal affront, when its merely an objectively demonstrable fact.

 

This doesnt really have anything to do with measurement.  Subjective tests are the way forward, but as you allude to, they need controls.

I agree regarding the potential fallibility of subjective assessment. 

 

I also agree that the OP did not mention measurements.  This comes from my own interest in attempting to align what is measured to what my be subjectively observed, and I see no harm in slipping the "M" word into an objective-fi thread.  🙂

[PeterSt]

Just some general OT for those who are interested.

PDI

 

On-topic (I hope):

 

9 minutes ago, Teresa said:

While the ear / brain system can be tricked in the short-term, I don't believe it can be tricked in the long-term.

 

100% agreed.

[March Audio]

20 minutes ago, Confused said:

I agree regarding the potential fallibility of subjective assessment. 

 

I also agree that the OP did not mention measurements.  This comes from my own interest in attempting to align what is measured to what my be subjectively observed, and I see no harm in slipping the "M" word into an objective-fi thread.  🙂

That correlation is the most challenging of tasks. However it can be done.  The Floyd Toole research is a great example.

 

Haha the "m" word is like a knife into the heart of a subjectivist, it's a very dangerous thing to mention. 😉

[March Audio]

46 minutes ago, Teresa said:

 

Yes to all.

 

IMHO extended listening with a wide variety of music makes it very hard for biases to be reinforced. While the ear / brain system can be tricked in the short-term, I don't believe it can be tricked in the long-term. False sound can last only so long, eventually one would hear the actual true sound as music is very complex and more one listens the more there is to hear.

 

OTOH price is important to me as I am a poor retired music lover. $1,000 is the most I would ever spend on a component, $500 is more reasonable to me, and finding a $250 giant killer I find thrilling. I'm thrifty.

 

Reviewers don't influence me at all since we all hear differently. I don't subscribe to any audio magazines as most of the equipment they review is way out of my price range. I like to read reviews of high-res music discs and music files, I've discovered a lot of great music this way.

My comments were meant sort of generically, so whilst reviewers may not influence you, they do influence many.

 

So how would you know if you were/were not being influenced long term?

 

The Toole video I linked talked about the sighted bias professional Harman engineers suffered from.  Those biases wouldn't change over time, they were more fundamental.

[manueljenkin]

3 hours ago, Allan F said:

 And I suppose you are not when you can't resist unnecessarily repeating exactly the same comment three times like an echo chamber. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Lmao. He's just sour that pretty much every assertion he made was successfully refuted by me and few others.

 

List of assertions

1. Junilabs player doesn't copy to memory - shown false

2. Junilabs player doesn't do anything other than copying to memory - shown false

3. His assertions of noise - shown false multiple times with measurements from John Swenson and few other people's valid arguments (last I remember jabbr was getting a dose of March audio therapy).

 

He loves to invoke my name for whatever reason 😂. Sounds like a very objective pursuit.

 

I'm bored of correcting his blank assertions enough times hence not responding to him much further. If he has any interest to make a good sounding product he'll probably take time to go through all the advancements in our understanding of hearing in the last few decades. Else he'll just be memeing sinusoidal results in this forum.

[manueljenkin]

32 minutes ago, March Audio said:

My comments were meant sort of generically, so whilst reviewers may not influence you, they do influence many.

Do you have objective statistics for this?

 

No, not the my friend got influenced by feb31audio reviews channel story.

[idiot_savant]

@manueljenkin - I would contend that randomly writing numbers into a pagefile while copying to memory is right on the edge of "doing nothing" and "doing something pointless".

 

I know John Swenson was talking about doing measurements, but I don't recall seeing any - can you help?

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

[manueljenkin]

2 minutes ago, idiot_savant said:

@manueljenkin - I would contend that randomly writing numbers into a pagefile while copying to memory is right on the edge of "doing nothing" and "doing something pointless".

Pointless or not is your interpretation, audible or not is your experience. But it has a code sequence that objectively does "something"!

 

The links to John Swenson's tests were present in the thread where this discussion happened. It's now buried too deep into one of the dozen obscurium threads created by March audio, so might take some searching to find out.

[March Audio]

35 minutes ago, idiot_savant said:

@manueljenkin - I would contend that randomly writing numbers into a pagefile while copying to memory is right on the edge of "doing nothing" and "doing something pointless".

 

I know John Swenson was talking about doing measurements, but I don't recall seeing any - can you help?

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

We are still waiting for Manuel's revelations on how the Junilabs works and demonstrating how it improves the sound by writing random numbers to the pagefile.

 

Sorry I forgot, his hard drive conveniently failed and he lost all just as he was about to do the reveal. 😉

 

 

Ironically, if anyone wants to see a perfect example of expectation bias in action please review Manuel's threads on Junilabs software.

 

A quick summary;

 

The software claims to "optimise" audio files and improve sound quality.  It has a special process which, by the authors own statements, makes no changes to the audio file.  It also claims to improve sound further if you repeatedly optimise the file.

 

These claims are inexplicable and highly suspect.  The author claims the software "works on an entirely different level" without any explanation.

 

Manuel claims he definitely hears improvements in sound quality.

 

I decided to look further into these claims because frankly I didn't believe them.   They seemed ludicrous.

I listened and found it made zero difference.  I examined the audio files and they were unchanged.

I found all the software did was rename and copy the audio file. 

 

 @idiot_savant subsequently examined the software in detail and found it just wrote some random numbers to the page file during the alleged "file optimisation". It did nothing to the audio file, or affect anything during audio playback.  There is simply no way this can improve sound quality.  Pure fantasy.

 

Yet Manuel still hears differences. Go figure.

[idiot_savant]

Well,

 

pointless in my opinion. Apparently I'm not allowed to express why my opinion may have some weight without "appealing to authority". You were going to explain to me how writing to the page file with a file in memory could change the sound.

 

I'll have a poke about, but certainly on the website for the EtherRegen, there's a white paper with theories but no measurements, but promising to do measurements. This isn't the same as doing measurements... If, indeed there are measurements as you attest, could you link them please?

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

 

 

[March Audio]

48 minutes ago, idiot_savant said:

Well,

 

pointless in my opinion. Apparently I'm not allowed to express why my opinion may have some weight without "appealing to authority". You were going to explain to me how writing to the page file with a file in memory could change the sound.

 

I'll have a poke about, but certainly on the website for the EtherRegen, there's a white paper with theories but no measurements, but promising to do measurements. This isn't the same as doing measurements... If, indeed there are measurements as you attest, could you link them please?

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

 

 

@idiot_savant we really shouldn't give this nonsense any oxygen.  Let's just ignore him and get back on topic.

[idiot_savant]

@March Audio - fair enough - it's just when people make assertions ( i.e. there are loads of measurements that contradict this ), it's worth calling out,

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

[March Audio]

23 minutes ago, idiot_savant said:

@March Audio - fair enough - it's just when people make assertions ( i.e. there are loads of measurements that contradict this ), it's worth calling out,

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

I agree, but it's clear Manuel is going to continue thread crapping (along with the other usual suspects) if he's allowed to. 

[DuckToller]

3 hours ago, Confused said:

although on personal measurement basis, salad would be a better objective choice

So true, as a most of you message... 🙃

[PeterSt]

25 minutes ago, idiot_savant said:

@manueljenkin - I would contend that randomly writing numbers into a pagefile while copying to memory is right on the edge of "doing nothing" and "doing something pointless".

 

You like betting, right ?

What about 10K euros that similar stuff in my playback software is

a. doing things so close to the edge of nothing that it is audible by even you;

b. and is doing it so pointless that when you lose #a, there's another 10K at stake for the case that you can not show this by measurement of any hardware device which can be bought for under 50K euros. Make that GBP so I will be on the safe side of that somewhat more.

 

I will pay for your trip and will treat you with a lot of food, drinks and fun.

Btw, this has been done already by @manisandher and our official late Troll - tagged Troll, but I guess this is well known by now. The Troll lost. Plus his analyser was too cheap (which was my prediction - same as I do now).

 

Something else is that your quite formal predecessor though from mere microwave order, never took up a similar bet. And he was from the UK ... so, strange. Below is an excerpt from him, who always liked to battle for the battle (only ?), but somehow this was from the time when all was more civilized (while it was from the time that A/S almost collapsed from hostility - so go figure.

 

On 8/26/2019 at 2:35 PM, marce said:

I did all the UK City and Guilds exams in analogue TV at the local tech collage on a night, just passed part 3 as digital YV,s came out... LOL

We use this for critical power:

https://www.quadrasol.co.uk/eda/eda-products/cadstar-power-integrity-advance/

 

the rf/microwave stuff is usually comes from microwave office or similar and is transferred to the PCB as a DXF.

Decoupling is fun, with BGA's tend to use caps directly on the pads on the opposite side with filled through via's, its all in the detail and getting a low impedance loop through the cap and pins. I have seen decouplers at the edge of a BGA, connected with 0.1mm tracks several mm's long!

 

Marce was totally sure that nothing-audio could ever change because of his microwave knowledge. But so strange ... a typical example of someone who probably did not even have a stereo.

[brother love]

22 minutes ago, March Audio said:

I agree, but it's clear Manuel is going to continue thread crapping (along with the other usual suspects) if he's allowed to. 

 

Hmmm ...  looking at the past couple of pages, my rough count shows the following OT/ "thread-crapping" score (excluding gang members):

 

@manueljenkin- 5

@March Audio - 10

 

If you two were at a bar & arguing loudly & incessantly, the owner would kick both of you out. They wouldn't care who started it.  Just sayin' ...

[idiot_savant]

@PeterSt - just so I get this right - (a) you want to bet me 10K Euros that I will hear something different, and (b) I can't then measure that.

 

What if I'm deaf? I just rock up and collect 20K Euros I can count whilst I'm in quarantine?

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

 

[Jud]

5 hours ago, March Audio said:

 

Under controlled conditions sure, absolutely.  Otherwise you are saying you have no answer to the question.

But of course this is the exact difficulty with giving supposedly untrained listeners an orientation telling them they ought to listen for a particular sonic characteristic: You’ve lost your control. What you now have is better trained listeners and less thoroughly trained (but not untrained) listeners, because you can’t preclude the possibility the orientation is a source of bias. No good scientific experimental protocol would be set up this way, nor its results thought useful.

 

John Swenson said something about one of these ‘evergreen’ audio arguments once I liked very much, to the effect that both sides were wrong. It’s no wonder we can’t reason our way to a correct conclusion when no one is relying on provably correct (truly objective) premises.

[March Audio]

16 minutes ago, brother love said:

 

Hmmm ...  looking at the past couple of pages, my rough count shows the following OT/ "thread-crapping" score (excluding gang members):

 

@manueljenkin- 5

@March Audio - 10

 

If you two were at a bar & arguing loudly & incessantly, the owner would kick both of you out. They wouldn't care who started it.  Just sayin' ...

Your right I shouldn't rise to the provocations.

[March Audio]

22 minutes ago, Jud said:

But of course this is the exact difficulty with giving supposedly untrained listeners an orientation telling them they ought to listen for a particular sonic characteristic: You’ve lost your control. What you now have is better trained listeners and less thoroughly trained (but not untrained) listeners, because you can’t preclude the possibility the orientation is a source of bias. No good scientific experimental protocol would be set up this way, nor its results thought useful.

 

John Swenson said something about one of these ‘evergreen’ audio arguments once I liked very much, to the effect that both sides were wrong. It’s no wonder we can’t reason our way to a correct conclusion when no one is relying on provably correct (truly objective) premises.

IIRC didn't you talk in another thread about hearing objectionable slew limited distortion?

 

That you now recognise what it is because it was shown to you?  Apologies if that was someone else.

 

Are you now biased to like it?  Of course not.

 

Being able to recognise certain attributes and articulate what they are doesn't mean you are now biased to like them.

 

  The listeners weren't told to look for certain attributes as if those specific things were positives as you imply.

 

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/05/harmans-how-to-listen-new-listener.html?m=1

 

You can find a lot of info in Sean Olives blog.

 

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/?m=1

[The Computer Audiophile]

I will clean up this thread, but it's a real soup sandwich. I'm about to record a podcast and will get to it later today. 

 

If people can't help themselves, I'll just lock it. 

 

Remember, use the IGNORE feature for people you don't get along with. Nobody at home is keeping score. You don't have to respond to everything.

 

 

[pkane2001]

36 minutes ago, Jud said:

But of course this is the exact difficulty with giving supposedly untrained listeners an orientation telling them they ought to listen for a particular sonic characteristic: You’ve lost your control. What you now have is better trained listeners and less thoroughly trained (but not untrained) listeners, because you can’t preclude the possibility the orientation is a source of bias. No good scientific experimental protocol would be set up this way, nor its results thought useful.

 

John Swenson said something about one of these ‘evergreen’ audio arguments once I liked very much, to the effect that both sides were wrong. It’s no wonder we can’t reason our way to a correct conclusion when no one is relying on provably correct (truly objective) premises.

 

There's no reason not to instruct listeners as to what to listen to if the test involves distinguishing those specific characteristics (say amount of bass, or soundstage size, or ...) In fact, this should be required. Or if you want the subjects to rank-compare devices based on these characteristics.

 

On the other hand, if you want to know if any differences are audible, you should not instruct subjects as to what specific differences they should pay attention to, as that can bias the test.