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

[jkeny]

Jaysus they are.... EVERYWHERE...!
Sorry to bring it up, I of course never intended this to be a thread for the actual debate. I was merely wondering about the theory behind it. I also heard John talk about developing a way to measure some of these things, but I don't know how far he has come with that project?

Claus, I have been working on these measurements on & off when I get time - it's a long process which needs care in controlling the variables & also getting familiar with the measuring tools & measuring process!

[tony]

Hope for your sake the work you are doing John can be used in your audio work and not just to try and convince 5-6 people on a couple of forums. It would be an awful waste of valuable time to go down that road.

[jkeny]

Hope for your sake the work you are doing John can be used in your audio work and not just to try and convince 5-6 people on a couple of forums. It would be an awful waste of valuable time to go down that road.

Tony, some things are just interesting in themselves to investigate - don't know what, if any benefit it will be to what I do but a better correlation between what we hear & measurements would be of use to all. I've no doubt that those 5 or 6 you mention will still have issues as measurements are not facts - they need interpretation & analysis & this is where bias can enter the picture. There will always be those who don't trust what they hear, citing all the usual perceptual illusions that are available on the internet. The interesting thing is that these people don't understand the first thing about the perceptual illusion they are citing & usually use it as proof-positive that we don't hear what we think we hear - trying to generalise the specific & all in the name of "science" - they are so far away from real science that it is flattering even to call them pseudo-scientists - they are more like scientific anti-matter in that any real investigation that they come into contact with they neutralise it & like all anti-matter/matter collisions they generate heat - the heat of argument.

I'm liking this analogy more & more :)

[Ivor]

like all anti-matter/matter collisions they generate heat - the heat of argument.

But very little light.

[nige2000]

i think its funny

i always thought of science as a voyage of discovery and explanation
these guys seem to think theres nothing left to discover or explain
its really all a bit tragic

[tony]

Hope for your sake the work you are doing John can be used in your audio work and not just to try and convince 5-6 people on a couple of forums. It would be an awful waste of valuable time to go down that road.

Tony, some things are just interesting in themselves to investigate - don't know what, if any benefit it will be to what I do but a better correlation between what we hear & measurements would be of use to all. I've no doubt that those 5 or 6 you mention will still have issues as measurements are not facts - they need interpretation & analysis & this is where bias can enter the picture. There will always be those who don't trust what they hear, citing all the usual perceptual illusions that are available on the internet. The interesting thing is that these people don't understand the first thing about the perceptual illusion they are citing & usually use it as proof-positive that we don't hear what we think we hear - trying to generalise the specific & all in the name of "science" - they are so far away from real science that it is flattering even to call them pseudo-scientists - they are more like scientific anti-matter in that any real investigation that they come into contact with they neutralise it & like all anti-matter/matter collisions they generate heat - the heat of argument.

I'm liking this analogy more & more :)

Eh! I think you might just have the lyrics for Randy Newman's come back song there. Though it does have a kind of star trekish feel to it.

[Rocker]

The OP holds a view that is very prevalent on Internet Forums. In essence this is that something can't be so it isn't. The usual arguments about measurements [inductance, capacitance and resistance] is put forward to 'prove' that anyone who actually hears a difference in [for example] a cable is completely deluded.

Having worked as an electrician in industry, I am not surprised that cables have an effect on the sound of a hi-fi system. I would go as far as saying that I would be surprised if they did not. In my system the choice of cables used have a profound effect on what I hear from the system. I feel that as the sound quality goes up, the system sounds less impressive. And more like the music on the disk, tape, radio or hard drive. In other words the better the system the closer you get to the music - the system hardware is only the conduit to the music. And nothing more.

Digital cables have an unexpectedly significant influence on what you hear from your system. To my ears every cable has an effect but I rank their importance in a hi-fi system as follows: mains, digital, speaker, interconnects. A digital signal is often described as 'ones' and 'zeros'. Of course this is absolute nonsense. A digital signal is a series of electrical pulses. These can be considered as square waves with a sharp rise and fall. In the past I have described how I ended up with the digital cable I use [between a Squeezebox and the digital input of my Resolution Audio CD player]. To recap, my friend, on a visit, brought with him a handful of digital cables and we tried them all in turn on my system. The cable I was using was the starting point and thus the 'reference'. And as it turned out, it was the poorest of the six cables tried. Three others were all better than the reference and basically similar in sound quality. The cable I ended up with [a Stereovox XV11] was considerably better than the three and the best of the test was a Nordost Valhalla which absolutely trounced everything. The naysayers claim that this is rubbish [and worse], but if they were to sit down and listen to the same few songs through all the cables we used, I would be surprised if they came to a different conclusion than I did.

A pet theory of mine is that there might be other electrical characteristic(s) that we are not measuring as it/they still remain to be discovered. I can't help thinking that the inevitable mechanical coupling of kit [using wires] must affect the sound we hear as vibration and noise from one component is transferred to another in the chain. Minimizing this vibration transfer simply has to have an effect, how to do it is beyond me though. Maybe that is one of the secret ingredients in the Nordost Valhalla cables!!!!

We are not all wealthy individuals who can throw money at a problem. It is only as a result of rigorous listening sessions that we arrive at our desired sound quality. Not by peering at a 'scope screen but by using our ears. Hopefully sometime in the future we will have instruments that can correlate measurements and sound quality. In the meantime, listening is still the best way for hearing differences if they exist.

[tony]

Nicely said Tom and the experience and suggestions you put forward are probably very much a large part of what happens. If I didn't agree or had an opposing view point I would very much feel that I would have to work in the digital transmission industry to put up valid technical arguments to disprove your experience. While I am aware from my work all the technical network issues that occur transmitting voice/data and video/tv and the myriad of issues that can be caused by simple things like dirty fibre, network connection, intermittent faults on network cards, timing issues with certain equipment on data transmission I don't have a good enough technical electronic/IT engineering background to understand the technology fully or advance reasons for why these people are so wrong.

Anybody on an internet forum who comes up with these negative arguments really needs to work in that field. Their debate should be with people of similar background and experience. If you have a look at the debaters/posters on these sites it is very clear they have none of these qualifications. Abuse,ridicule,pseudo science, inane simplistic statements passed off as fact are their stock in trade. Simply the argument and endless thread repeating the same mantra with a closed mind is always the modus operandi. A sense of superiority and knowledge and wider experience of the world is what they try to convey.

When you dig a little deeper you find they have the most basic of equipment. Don't work in the field. Have no intention of ever meeting anyone or trying any product or idea that is raised. I had a brief go in the hope that the majority who might be interested in hearing how to go about computer audio might start posting. Realised very quickly they just go to jplay or the myriad of diy or computer audio support forums and bypass these people.

BTW Claus is not one of them he was just looking for the magic formula to help him engage these people.

[Diapason]

Hmmm, should I post on this thread? Probably not!

[Diapason]

Ah sure feck it, I've had a gin now so maybe I can risk alienating everyone on the site!

I'm not necessarily a "bits is bits" man, but I utterly detest how the internet now dictates that if you're not a non-believer, then you're by definition an "everything makes a difference" guy. So, my view in a nutshell is quite emphatically that NOT everything makes a difference, but plenty of people will persuade themselves that a difference exists. Where's the line on this? I don't know, and I wouldn't presume to tell anyone where to place it, but I think both sides of this argument do themselves no favours. The open mind that we all say we crave would be desirable on all sides, nobody has the monopoly on closed minds, and ego often wins the day instead of rational discussion.

For example, and if I can play devil's advocate for a second, the common cry is that if the objectivists would only use their ears and LISTEN, they'd surely hear all the effects the subjectivists notice in different cables or whatever. Except, when people report that they really HAVE listened, and that they didn't hear anything, the response is generally either that the person in question is deaf, or doesn't have a good enough system. This is just as disingenuous a shut-down as those favoured by the other side, and it helps nobody. For example, Rocker has posted above that he would put mains cables at the top of the cable heap. However, my experience is the exact opposite: I have NEVER heard a mains cable make a difference in my system, not even once. I'm not saying Rocker's wrong, but we can't get around the fact that my experience is different to his own. I'm no longer interested in arguing the fact with anybody, least of all the good people on this site, but you can see how we'd be immediately into problems if we were of an argumentative bent!

Here's the thing, there's plenty of evidence, and I mean PLENTY of evidence, that when people don't know what's playing all those perceived night and day differences vanish into thin air. We can't wave this away and pretend it doesn't matter, for me it sure as shit does matter if you're trying to argue your corner and be convincing to others. I know blind tests and discussions thereof are universally hated and I've no real interest in getting into it either, but continued denial on the part of subjectivists of well-known, well-understood psychological effects doesn't do the viewpoint any favours. We could possibly get past this if the lines weren't so firmly drawn but seriously, in the private and comfort of your own home some time, ask yourself some really hard questions and try to find a way of doing a test without knowing what's playing. Trust me, it's eye-opening. Differences I was sure I heard just went away. This is the old "I upgraded from x ages ago, but I've just put it back in and it sounds great" scenario. The ear/brain interface is a really complicated machine, far more complicated than your average cable, and it plays tricks. It really really does.

Now of course, none of this would matter if we were happy in our own skin and just got on with our lives. As I said elsewhere recently, I don't even care if some of this stuff really makes a difference because I'm having fun, and if I'm deluded or merely enjoying the placebo effect or whatever else, it's all entirely harmless and keeps me off the streets. However, internet forums being what they are, we all get drawn into these discussions from time to time and feel compelled to fight our corner. And when we fight, all we do is try to explain our subjective viewpoint without any real ability to explain it, because we're not experts. Those who *are* experts are going to have their views discounted anyway, so it's all just a bit pointless.

I've said before that a poorly misunderstood "scientific" explanation that is patently false is about as annoying as it gets, and yet you still see it all over the place (on both sides of the equation), and people just won't be swayed by whatever expertise somebody else brings to the table. So are bits bits? I have no idea, but I can promise you that any potential explanation put forward here will not be accepted by those on the other side. The problem is that IF there are flaws in your scientific argument, then simple exposure of those flaws loses you the argument immediately. Science can't explain everything, and it can "prove" virtually nothing beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it doesn't mean that some things aren't well-understood. Maybe not well-understood by everyone, but that doesn't matter. Hifi charlatans make demonstrably outrageous claims all the time and base them on explanations that sound like science, but just aren't. Not close. Most people don't have the training or knowledge to know this, so they get away with it. A proper hifi press would sit on that straight away, but they're no better than the rest of us.

Here's what's far more compelling: find some way of persuading yourself that you really CAN hear a difference when you don't know what's playing. If you can do this, you don't need to come up with scientific explanations, you don't need to understand the ins and outs, you don't need a Nobel prize. Get some friends to call around and see how you get on. Trust your ears, but ONLY your ears and just make sure, just make totally totally sure, that the objectivists aren't right. Because having an open mind means entertaining the notion, even fleetingly, that they are.

Or alternatively you can forget about trying to persuade people on the internet about anything, and live happily ever after! :)