Do you believe in Magic?

01-23-12: Mrtennis
no one has defined magic.

I did. It was the second sentence in the OP: "Let's say that Magic is any effect not explainable by known physical laws." That is a definition. It may not be a definition you like.

i suppose in audio "things", which seem on the surface have no reason to have an effect upon the sound of a stereo system, might be construed as magic...

i doubt magic is the apt word to use to describe such a product.

Ahh... literalism. MrT, the use of the word 'magic' is ironic. I said as much in an earlier post. Tubegroover was exactly correct in his interpretation of my remarks. I'm using the word 'magic' to refer to an effect about which there is little understanding, even among experts.

The contrast to magic is mechanism. So that I'm not accused of failing to define 'mechanism,' let's say that a mechanism is any physical entity, property, or law that explains an observable effect.

That brings me to an observation about magic and mechanism that I hope will constructively contribute to this thread...

One man's magic is another man's mechanism.

That is to say, the understanding of physical laws varies from individual to individual. Al has an expert's understanding of physical laws. I have a layman's understanding. As a consequence, some things that are magic to me may be nothing more than mechanisms to Al. Put another way, magic isn't magic to a magician.

Which brings me to Geoff's reference to the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technologies being indistinguishable from magic. The essence of that insight is identical to the observation that one man's magic is another man's mechanism.

Which brings me back to magic in audio. No doubt there are some observable effects that are unexplainable to me but are explainable to experts. But there are other observable effects that are unexplainable EVEN TO EXPERTS.

And that is why I call it Magic.

Bryon

"Any sufficiently advanced self delusion is indistinguishable from marketing hyperbole."

Ken

a connotation of magic might be something which is perceived but has no objective basis.

i don't believe that magic exists in the empirical world. i believe there are perceptions which cannot be explained, using scientific principles. either the perception is erroneous, or engineers and "scientists" have not yet discovered the parameters necessary to measure or explain the perception , objectively.

the problem with subjective judgment and sense perception is the possibility of hearing that which is not present , or failing to hear that which is.

.

so, it would seem that magic is a term which may be used, when someone has no explanation as to the occurrence of an event.

there is an explanation. however, it remains to be discovered by a brilliant person.

One major problem with a lot of these tweaks is the fact that they are being used on equipment designed by Engineers with known scientific knowledge about how these things work.

If they didn't have this known and proven knowledge, we wouldn't have audio systems with analog, digital, and all kinds of other equipment involved in the process, used to make this reproduction happen.

If these Engineers go outside the limits of these known and proven scientifically proven facts, things don't work.

With the fact that they design these things with this known and proven scientific knowledge, and they say some of these things cannot work like this because it is outside the range of working proven parameters, it would make total sense to accept this. Don't forget, they designed, and made these products possible.

If it wasn't for these people with this knowledge, we wouldn't be able to discuss it here either. A lot of these tweak guys couldn't make any of this happen. These are just facts.

These tweaks, if one assumes they work, seem to indicate that the knowledge of the design engineers is either not perfect or there are other factors one must consider besides electronics circuit design and speaker design, such as room acoustics and elimination of vibration, that are either overlooked or can't be addressed by the design engineers. Knowledge is not an absolute and continues to evolve. They do the best they can under the circumstances. :-)