rvpiano,
I believe you regard science as a kind of religion in itself.
Then you believe wrong. Science, and my attitude towards it, is the furthest thing from religion; it’s an anti-dogma stance. (Dogma is pretty much antithetical to learning and knew knowledge). Scientific knowledge is provisional, always ready to be revised on new evidence; the opposite of unquestioned knowledge held dogmatically.
Unquestioning faith in current science leaves no room for discovery.
I have no such "unquestioning faith" and in fact my views on science are born of questioning, as is science itself. The idea that this leaves no room for discovery is incorrect, to say the least. As if we’ve learned everything there is to learn? Who would hold such an absurd notion. May as well tell scientists and engineers to must pack it in and go home then.
The fact is, the long hard road to science has taught us a lot about our foibles and science is our best attempt to correct for them (not perfect...just our best method so far). Nothing science tells us is Absolutely True - it’s all provisional, ready for revision should new evidence arise, and it’s all ready for new discoveries (which of course are made all the time).
So the ideas you are imputing to me are your own concoctions, and certainly don’t represent my view.
You ignore the possibility that the tools of measument may not yet be sensitive enough to assess what a large community of audiophiles recognize.
Amazing.
Once again: YES perhaps some (or many) people are hearing things like differences with cables, AC cables, capacitors, burn in etc. I’ve simply pointed out that there are *some reasons* for caution about many of the claims and that there are *variables involved* that many audiophiles are not taking into consideration when declaring such differences.
If you flip a coin and say "Well, it landed heads so that means it’s raining outside now" I am not going to say IT IS NOT RAINING, because it may well be raining outside. But I will rightly point out "that’s not a reliable method of determining the weather."
Similarly, if you are just putting new cables in to your system and declaring they make an obvious sonic difference, I’m not declaring "WHAT YOU HEARD WAS FALSE" but rather: there are some problems with that method that make such inferences unreliable." (E.g. sighted bias, and other issues). And the further we get in to areas of controversy, that are disputed by people with relevant technical expertise, the more caution is warranted in such subjective reports.
Now...could audiophiles be hearing things that science can’t yet measure? That’s always a possibility. But the problem is EVERY fringe belief system says the same thing. Talk to psychics, or New Age religions, or any of the countless unscientific medical claims (homeopathy etc) will tell you the same thing. They think based on their subjective experience their claims are true, but "science can’t currently demonstrate these things." It is the calling card of quackery and crackpots everywhere.
So in order to ascertain whether it’s *more* than quackery (which it could be) it makes sense to ask things like "what is the technical explanation and does it make sense?" and "how have these claims been tested? Any control for bias effects? etc.
And if an audiophile is going to claim "I can hear things that science can't measure" then he would have a burden of proof. You don't walk out of a hearing exam only having scored up to hearing to 13K, but still declaring "I can hear to 22K, you just couldn't measure my hearing acuity." That won't fly. If an audiophile makes any similar "this is true but you can't measure it" claim, and the only basis he has was "I'm sure I heard it" then...there are problems with this. It doesn't separate itself from the possible-quackery crowd.
I do agree there is a degree of self-delusion and hype in the hobby.
Then tell me, please, what a good method would be to separate hype and self delusion from reality.
If not by asking for compelling technical explanations/measurements or controlling for known variables...how? Will it just be your word against the other guy?
But you carry that to an unreasonable extreme.
So you say, but you haven’t demonstrated anything unreasonable about it, yet. How would you suggest we evaluate "hype" claims from plausible claims, and whether a sonic difference is due to self-delusion (or bias effects) vs being "real?"
(And I wonder if you think the standard medical study controls - which take human bias seriously in their methods - are "too extreme.")
Your disclaimer at the end does not really counteract the main thrust of your argument.
Well, since you did not seem to understand the main thrust of my argument, it’s hard to give your statement much credence.
Everything I argued is consistent with my final statement, that I was not claiming any definitive views or demonstrations about the audibility of the claims made in this thread.
Please, try not to think in black or white. It’s possible for people to have nuanced views on these things that don’t just fall into dogmatism of one kind or another.
