Bits-are-bits-brigade and why they are wrong

[tony]

I think the moderators need to impose a six month sentence posting on hydrogen audio for Simon.
Hope you didn't get that gin in Ivors?

[Diapason]

Duty Free Tanqueray Ten in this case. Very tasty it was too!

It's too long since I've been to Ivor's, though. When will your quest for global domination bring you to South County Dublin, Ivor??

[tony]

One thing Simon the night you brought your wadia over the placebo for me would have been the CA set up and on the night the wadia was identified as being all round the better.

I know when we do any messing with the CA stuff it will be a considerable time or effort before one posts anything positive. On plenty of occasions no improvements have been heard.

But of course you are right also about the placebo effect and I am sure we can all be guilty of it. Well we all are only human. Would agree extremists on any side of that argument are painful. At the end of the day it is only a hobby.

[maxflinn]

The Science Of Why We Don't Believe Science.

https://medium.com/editors-picks/adfa0d026a7e

[mick]

It would appear that the listening experience can be different between listeners. On one occasion myself and two friends were listening to Nordost cables. Two of us were into hi fi and one had no real interest. We heard big differences between the SPM and Quatrofil. The other friend could not hear any difference between any of the cables..
In my case I did not have a bias so was not leaning to one cable or the other. In the end I got the SPM which was the cheaper of the two.
I have quad ESL speakers which are powered. I had Nordost cable into them. I tried Van Den Hul cable which was as detailed but gave a fuller sound. However they gave me a headache after about twenty mins. They were better than Nordost in some equipment but not in the speakers.
I owned the cables so I was not trying to justify a purchase. In my listening I have often preferred a cheaper cable or power cord to more expensive ones so I really thing I listen with an open mind. If something sounds better to me it just sounds better.
This is my experience with equipment and cables. I was always of the opinion that if you are upgrading a piece of equipment and you have to start switching back and forward to try and hear an improvement then there is no point changing. Improvements should be obvious to make a change worth while.
Just my two cents worth.

[Diapason]

Well it should also be said that expectation bias works both ways, and as a consequence the objectivist reports of hearing no difference should carry no more weight than the subjectivist reports of hearing said differences.

As you can see, I'm torn on the whole question. Like most of you, I'm perfectly happy to trust my ears, and I'm happy enough that my ears will sometimes fool me, but that's ok.

[jkeny]

Good post Simon.
We are all subjectivists as I don't know anyone (except one whom I really didn't believe anyway) who chooses their audio equipment on specifications alone. The subjective element is rife in every aspect of our ultimate choice. There really are no pure subjectivists or objectivists - we are all somewhere along that spectrum so I agree that polarising views are really fabrications of forum debates.

Our difficulties in this hobby are many & varied in that we are ultimately dealing with an illusion - the illusion of playback of music & how it makes us feel, connects us emotionally to the performance. We all agree that our playback systems do not sound like a live music event but yet we suspend this understanding in order that we can enjoy the performance.

The number of variables in this illusion are vast - starting with the mics used & mic techniques - the recording process, mastering process, formats used, storage medium/format, etc. even before we look at the variables in our own playback systems, our hearing, our listening abilities/training, the malleability of our ear/brain perceptual mechanism, our mood, our biases, etc.

The amazing thing is that this whole hill of beans actually produces an illusion that we roughly & generally agree on, I believe. A lot of this has to do with the fact that audio has reached a fairly good level of acceptable reproduction. Science, engineering, psychoacoustics & probably some amount of chance/experimentation has got us to this stage. What tends to be discussed/argued over in this area are the finer points of this reproduction - the last X% But like a lot of hobbies it's this last percentage point(s) that exercises some & attracts the most debate.

So when two people hear different things, it's really not surprising given the above. What is surprising is when a number of people independently hear pretty much the same characteristics in the sound. Now this is surprising if it is a delusion & NOT actually in the audio signal. The only way to explain this is through mass delusion where people confer on what they hear before they actually articulate it. I guess one could make the case that the descriptions of what they hear are not specific enough & therefore open to various interpretations - a bit like the generalisations used in fortune telling or horoscopes.

But my experience is that there is enough precision in descriptions we use such as body, harmonic richness, sound stage - terms that we often have used here in our descriptions of what we hear when we meet & audition gear. Again, maybe these terms just have specific meanings to our group & they may sound wishy-washy & non-specific to others outside of the group? Maybe that's because we have developed this roughly agreed lexicon of terms because we have sat & analysed as a group the essential elements of what we hear & we therefore have actual points of reference to what the description means in the sound?

I agree with Simon & others on the fact that perception is fallible. And I also agree with Mick - if the difference heard is not fairly evident then it's not really of importance (unless you are a developer/tester of changes). I can say that the differences between the various close versions of MQN are small but between versions that are far apart are pretty noticeable. Nige will probably concur with this. So the developer of this software is listening for small improvements with each version which over time add up to a larger improvement - that's how devices/software gets improved. Yes our senses are fallible & sometimes the wrong choice is made in whether a new version sounds better than a previous one but after some time this is sensed.

Here's my take on the fallibility of our senses (all our sense) which can often be used as the argument to dismiss what we report hearing. Think to yourself how many times in your daily life can you remember being fooled/let down by your senses? Just because there are famous examples of illusions & you can be taken in by the ventriloquism illusion (the McGurk effect) or stage magic/illusionists (misdirection), doesn't mean that our senses are untrustworthy - these are very contrived & controlled activities & therefore very specific - they are not generalisable.

We all live with uncertainty in life & manage to cope, somehow. Why does audio have to be so black & white - yes we could all be enjoying a placebo effect (including those who think they are objective) - does it make the illusion any less enjoyable?

[Diapason]

Bravo, John. That's as fine a piece of writing on the subject as I've come across.

[jkeny]

Simon, you also mentioned "experts".
I know it might be popular to discredit/debunk "experts" expertise but here's two examples that I find fascinating.

One a posted statement from an expert in the field of psychoacoustics, JJ Johnston in reply to my question about hearing differences between different bit-perfect digital sources http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthrea ... post201772
"If there is a testable difference with different sources fed from the same bits, there is either a hardware problem or a gain error, or something of that sort. I'm not going to get into arguments about expectation and unintended biases, because frankly there is zero, and I mean ZERO doubt about the accuracy of the science surrounding it. If you can't find it in a blind test, it is not due to the audio stimuli."
So basically he is saying there can be NO difference heard unless something is broken.

The second is a more general one - it's a statement by the developer of MQN who is not a programmer i.e isn't shackled by pre-cast thinking "The aim was to see what an absolute bare bones player would sound like and I was more than surprised to find that by reducing functionality to a minimum and optimising the memory and render loop the sound quality improved and the hard digital sound disappeared"
"your average developer is pretty set in his ways and if it is fast enough that is all that matters, I examined every setting and step of the coding for effect on the sound."

Sometimes thinking outside the box or ignoring the accepted wisdom can reap benefits - it's not a PhD endeavour, just a different perspective - doesn't mean the expert is wrong in everything, just hasn't considered that particular perspective. We could go into a discussion on the whole financial, political, personal pressures involved in science & how it might limit/curtail it's investigations but that's a whole bigger discussion. Suffice to say that science is a system that involves humans & all their foibles - it is therefore limited & not infallible.
EDIT: We could summarise it by saying science is subjective :)

So yes, skepticism in all things, including the opinions of experts

[tony]

So yes, skepticism in all things, including the opinions of experts

Is that not the nub of it for people on these particular threads. The argument goes on to infinity.
What I find so depressing about it is none of them have the breadth of experience of somebody like John.
Which ever side they are on they just keep repeating a narrow view point hence I believe getting an opposite reaction is just an addiction to them. That is where the supposed enjoyment rests. Have never seen anyone on the forums we are talking about conversing as John has articulated above. If he could only just channel that into a nice looking dac box that would be great!