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Topic: Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different (Read 119454 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #125 –
Audiophiles, high end audio, golden ear people, they are all the same and their products are all snake oil. If they could hear a difference in cables then why are they not taking up the 1 million dollar prize that is being offered?

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #126 –
Quote from: randal1013 on
Quote
Sure you do. Bias effects is a reason. there are other possible reasons.Thngs related to state of mind and body.

but once you know there is no difference, your bias is gone.



EDIT
another thing: if you can still perceive a difference even with the knowledge that the change you made had no audible effect, then your perception does not rely on making changes to the system. if you can improve your perceived quality of your system at will, then you have no need to upgrade any part of your system, ever.



No. it is not gone. it *may* be altered but it is not gone. You as a human being will always be strapped with your biases whatever they may be at the time. that's life. oh and yes some folks actually do just what you are saying. if you check with the Belts they fully acknoweledge that their tweaks don't affect the actual sound of any system. They claim their products create some sort of "relaxing friendly energy pattern" that affects the listener. It seems that they are almost admitting that their products work by bias effects without calling it bias effects. and yet it seems to work for them quite effectively.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #127 –
in other words, some people have turned music listening into a religion.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #128 –
Obviously, any anecdotal statements I make about my own experiences are, at best, completely and totally subjective. My point was that I have trained myself to provide objectively-validated results through simple subjective analysis, nothing more. Extending this beyond identifying lossy tracks (which was the focus) would be a bit of a fallacy. I'm training my ear to hear with scientific accuracy in certain applications. That's obviously wildly subjective, but it is providing quantitative, objective results that cannot be argued with. I am verifying my subjective experiences objectively. It's like learning to measure an object by looking at it. With practice, your estimates eventually reflect reality. However, if I can do this in one domain, I can do it in another.

I am not claiming that my subjective experience is a replacement for objective analysis, as you misinterpret what I am writing to read. It is simply a useful technique to assist my objective analyses.

Quote
I'm not sure what you mean by arbitrary accuracy
DBT results provide, at best, a probability that you are not guessing. That is what I mean by "arbitrary accuracy", I can get that probability arbitrarily low.

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many of your beliefs run contrary to science
Point 'em out. Be precise, rather than this ambiguous hand-waving you're doing right now.

Quote
How do you know you don't actually hear them?
Can one "hear" a sound but not be consciously aware he heard it? If I am never consciously aware I heard a thing, could I be said to have heard it at all? I'm not consciously aware of it, so I haven't heard it.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #129 –
Quote from: randal1013 on
in other words, some people have turned music listening into a religion.



While I think you might be saying this as a criticism I think you may be onto something here. It does seem that "spirituality" or more accurately a sense of spirituality does have a physiological manifestation in our brains. I certainly feel this more so with music and art than any other stimulus. Maybe it is, in a way, religion for many devoted audiophile/music lovers. There may be some similar roots to all the baggage that goes with religion and audiophilia.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #130 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: randal1013 on
in other words, some people have turned music listening into a religion.

While I think you might be saying this as a criticism I think you may be onto something here. It does seem that "spirituality" or more accurately a sense of spirituality does have a physiological manifestation in our brains. I certainly feel this more so with music and art than any other stimulus. Maybe it is, in a way, religion for many devoted audiophile/music lovers. There may be some similar roots to all the baggage that goes with religion and audiophilia.

it mostly definitely is a criticism. the baggage  is delusion, irrational belief, and if i may be frank, stupidity. these things get in the way of science, truth and progress.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #131 –
I think religion is probably not the right word to use here. All joking aside, there are few sacred cows or shrines involved.

I'm specifically thinking more along the lines of esotericism, obscurantism, or even gnosticism... that there is hidden knowledge, powerful knowledge - about music and audio - which can only be obtained through the proper means, and is not something which is advanced by science. The intensely subjective knowledge of sighted listening fulfills the role here of "hidden knowledge". And those who do not engage in such listening do not have such knowledge, and therefore are not qualified to discuss audio matters.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #132 –
Quote from: Axon on
I think religion is probably not the right word to use here. All joking aside, there are few sacred cows or shrines involved.

I'm specifically thinking more along the lines of esotericism, obscurantism, or even gnosticism... that there is hidden knowledge, powerful knowledge - about music and audio - which can only be obtained through the proper means, and is not something which is advanced by science. The intensely subjective knowledge of sighted listening fulfills the role here of "hidden knowledge". And those who do not engage in such listening do not have such knowledge, and therefore are not qualified to discuss audio matters.

your second paragraph is rather befitting of the word religion.

Quote
And those who do not engage in such listening do not have such  knowledge, and therefore are not qualified to discuss audio matters.

to be fair, the exploration of "hidden, powerful" knowledge doesn't really have to do with audio matters so much as introspection, with audio being the catalyst in this case. tripping on acid does not give one authoritative knowledge of chemistry.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #133 –
Quote from: analog scott on
It seems that they are almost admitting that their products work by bias effects without calling it bias effects. and yet it seems to work for them quite effectively.
Sorta. jj quite adroitly hung Frog by his own petard on the Stereophile forums by mentioning how a lot of Beltist thinking revolves around morphic fields, a concept absolutely unrelated to the biases we are talking about. (In fact, the concept is pure snake oil.)

I will say that subjective factors that influence bias should not be entirely ignored, insofar as they often represent real influences on perception and emotion. (Just like a hospital that faithfully followed all evidence-based medicine without paying any attention to bedside manner would kinda suck.) But insofar as those biases are subjective, and not necessarily reflective of an objective reality or a common truth among people, the means to manipulate such factors is similarly subjective. It is entirely reasonable to do like Canar (and I) do and just try to minimize its existence as much as possible. But clearly one's personality influences this sort of thing.

Such discussions, I suppose, are not discussed here, but ought to be perfectly allowable, as long as people are careful to describe their perceptions in such a way that does not illogically assume that perceptual differences are attributable to differences in the physical world.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #134 –
Quote from: analog scott on
There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects. They eliminate them for that test *if* they are actually being done well to begin with. Bias effects come back into play as soon as you go back to listening under sighted conditions. There is no cure. It is not an illness. It is a fact of life.



'Treatment doesn't mean 'cure', and the illness, btw, is not bias, it's the unquestioned *belief* in one's subjective 'truth' , unmoored from any consideration of bias.  In such case, the treatment leaves the patient with sobering evidence of its power, and that their subjective 'truth' might be false.  Healthy recalibration of priorities -- and new caution about making truth claims from sighted comporisons --may ensue. Or, in the case of the more hopeless branch of audiophilia, what ensues is defensive retreat further into denial and concoction of ever-more-contrived reasons why "blind tests don't work".

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #135 –
Didn't read most of the thread so I'm responding to the OP

The answer is pretty simple, really.

He's become obsessed with the machine. When you're obsessed with something, be it a sound machine, a phone, a watch, a computer, bicycles, etc, you enter into a little world where there is a "god" (the manuf's of the devices) which makes things simple. For computers, the warring gods are AMD and intel, for phones it's motorola and apple, bicycles it's shimano and sram, etc.

The process of shopping and upgrading is as enjoyable for him as is the actual practice of listening to music. B/c, truth be told, a $5 quartz watch can keep time just as well as a $25k Swiss watch, a netbook often is just as good as a Macbook pro for tasks actually done, and for me, the zune and the zune v2 earbuds provide the best sound I've ever heard (and enjoyment too, since music really is about a melody in your head, not the minute details of a trumphet) but a lot of the fun is derived from maintaining the machine. To my eyes, clothes from low-end retailers is just as good as clothes from brand names. Some of the best shirts I have were bought for under $10 from walmart. Yet, to my fashionista female friend, the designer stuff "has better stitching" even though to me, it's all made in the same factory.

So to conclude, it's an obsession, plain and simple, one that makes life simple, b/c the shopping process is fun. New things to change the world, which otherwise is sorta dreary and uneventful, no?

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #136 –
Quote from: Canar on
Obviously, any anecdotal statements I make about my own experiences are, at best, completely and totally subjective. My point was that I have trained myself to provide objectively-validated results through simple subjective analysis, nothing more. Extending this beyond identifying lossy tracks (which was the focus) would be a bit of a fallacy. I'm training my ear to hear with scientific accuracy in certain applications. That's obviously wildly subjective, but it is providing quantitative, objective results that cannot be argued with. I am verifying my subjective experiences objectively. It's like learning to measure an object by looking at it. With practice, your estimates eventually reflect reality. However, if I can do this in one domain, I can do it in another.

I am not claiming that my subjective experience is a replacement for objective analysis, as you misinterpret what I am writing to read. It is simply a useful technique to assist my objective analyses.

Quote
I'm not sure what you mean by arbitrary accuracy
DBT results provide, at best, a probability that you are not guessing. That is what I mean by "arbitrary accuracy", I can get that probability arbitrarily low.

Quote
many of your beliefs run contrary to science
Point 'em out. Be precise, rather than this ambiguous hand-waving you're doing right now.

Quote
How do you know you don't actually hear them?
Can one "hear" a sound but not be consciously aware he heard it? If I am never consciously aware I heard a thing, could I be said to have heard it at all? I'm not consciously aware of it, so I haven't heard it.


"Point em out. be precise."

"Bias is not a fact of life. You can train yourself to be resilient to it."
"Bias is not a fact of life if you're the sort of person who cares enough about getting accurate results to train yourself to be resistant to it. Again, bias effects are a mental condition that can be treated to some degree, at least in my own experience. Easy solution: err on the side of caution. Of course, then you trade false positives for missed true positives, but claiming that it cannot be treated is a fallacy."

"Can one hear a  sound but not be consiously aware he heard it?"

Yes. Don't confuse what the ear does with what the brain does. One can fail to identify what one *is hearing* for a variety of reasons including bias effects.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #137 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: krabapple on
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Canar on
I don't care how you cut it, spending $2000 on cables is always problem behaviour. There are a lot of untreated individuals out there...

Edit: based on the negative-consequences criterion above, there are two: inappropriate use of resources, and hallucination of things that are not there.



I'm a bit confused here.



Yeah, right.

Quote
Are you saying that 2,000 dollar cables don't exist and audiophiles are just imagining them? What is the "treatment" for buying 2,000 dollar cables? (that may or may not exist???). Where exactly is the "rule book" on appropriate and inapporpraite use of any individual's personal reseources?



The 'treatment' for a belief in an unlikely audible difference is a good bias-controlled listening test.  But that's bitter medicine to the sort of audiophile who actually buys $2000 cables.



There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects.


Straw man argument. Nobody ever said that Bias controlled listening tests "cure" bias effects except you.

Bias controlled listening tests may cure people of wasting money on alleged benefts that are the consequences of listener bias, as opposed to benfits that are not the consequence of listener bias.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #138 –
Quote from: Canar on
Bias is not a fact of life. You can train yourself to be resilient to it. I haven't claimed I heard a difference when none existed in years, basically since I discovered the methodologies described by the people here. There are cases where I am unsure, definitely. In those cases, I switch to proper blind testing and can be certain to within some confidence interval. There are also cases where I am certain, and I have not been wrong about those assessments in years.

I doubt you trained yourself out of bias. 

I suspect you trained yourself to not automatically accept what seems to be the case...this is not the same as being free from bias.  You trained yourself to be critical of your impressions, because you are aware bias exists.

The term 'bias' as used in this psychological setting doesn't mean only conscious choice -- it's an 'unthinking' choice too.  We are far from rational automatons who dispassionately weigh evidence.  The 'unthinking'n response is still there, even if we realize that it may be erroneous.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #139 –
Quote from: krabapple on
'Treatment doesn't mean 'cure', and the illness, btw, is not bias, it's the unquestioned *belief* in one's subjective 'truth' , unmoored from any consideration of bias.  In such case, the treatment leaves the patient with sobering evidence of its power, and that their subjective 'truth' might be false.  Healthy recalibration of priorities -- and new caution about making truth claims from sighted comporisons --may ensue. Or, in the case of the more hopeless branch of audiophilia, what ensues is defensive retreat further into denial and concoction of ever-more-contrived reasons why "blind tests don't work".


There's a little bit of a disconnect in thinking here. What is being optimized in a skeptical/positivist worldview is objective or psychoacoustic sound quality, while what is being optimized in a traditional audiophile worldview is the subjective, perceptual evaluation of sound quality. It simply does not follow that accepting the former can necessarily allow the latter. That is, Canar (and I, and I guess you) might simply be special cases of people whose subjective evaluations - of our inherently biased perceptions - have trended to match objective evaluations.

Such a disconnect makes it easy for audiophiles to respond by saying that "true" happiness in the hobby - reflecting "true" sound quality - requires a certain lack of concern given to verifiable evidence. As knutinh said, "life as a skeptic can seem grey". I suspect many people would have no problem at all jettisoning such a philosophy, even if it were provably true, if it implied such an outlook.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #140 –


Quote from: krabapple on
'Treatment doesn't mean 'cure',



Indeed it doesn't which points to the utter futility and in some cases self dellusion for those who seek a cure for bias effects in DBTs.


Quote from: krabapple on
and the illness, btw, is not bias, it's the unquestioned *belief* in one's subjective 'truth' , unmoored from any consideration of bias.



One can find folks aflicted with such a state of mind (not an illness by the way) on both sides of the subjectivist/objectivist aisle.


Quote from: krabapple on
In such case, the treatment leaves the patient with sobering evidence of its power, and that their subjective 'truth' might be false.



Subjective truth can't be false. One can not falsify perceptions. They are what they are. 


Quote from: krabapple on
Healthy recalibration of priorities -- and new caution about making truth claims from sighted comporisons --may ensue.




I see nothing "healthy" about challenging other peoples' percpetions or values. Priorities are, in and of themselves, subjective in nature. Perhaps an understanding of that fact might lead to some "healthy" recalibration of attitudes in those who are in need but unaware of said need.


Quote from: krabapple on
Or, in the case of the more hopeless branch of audiophilia, what ensues is defensive retreat further into denial and concoction of ever-more-contrived reasons why "blind tests don't work".



Well sure. Both sides become quite irrational and nasty when the "debate" devolves into a pissing contest. Not sure what the rationale for inciting such things is, unless one is invested in the so called "debate."

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #141 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: krabapple on
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Canar on
I don't care how you cut it, spending $2000 on cables is always problem behaviour. There are a lot of untreated individuals out there...

Edit: based on the negative-consequences criterion above, there are two: inappropriate use of resources, and hallucination of things that are not there.



I'm a bit confused here.



Yeah, right.

Quote
Are you saying that 2,000 dollar cables don't exist and audiophiles are just imagining them? What is the "treatment" for buying 2,000 dollar cables? (that may or may not exist???). Where exactly is the "rule book" on appropriate and inapporpraite use of any individual's personal reseources?



The 'treatment' for a belief in an unlikely audible difference is a good bias-controlled listening test.  But that's bitter medicine to the sort of audiophile who actually buys $2000 cables.



There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects.


Straw man argument. Nobody ever said that Bias controlled listening tests "cure" bias effects except you.

Bias controlled listening tests may cure people of wasting money on alleged benefts that are the consequences of listener bias, as opposed to benfits that are not the consequence of listener bias.


It seems that some here think they have actually "cured" themselves of bias effects through DBTs so it isn't a straw man. But you make an interesting assertion about value. There is nothing "alleged" about percieved improvements. If some one percieves better sound they percieve better sound regardless of why. So why is a percieved improvement less or more valuable than another depending on the cause? If some one spends money on things that give them the perception of better sound how on earth in a hobby based on getting better percieved sound would that be a waste of money?

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #142 –
Quote from: randal1013 on
Sure you do. Bias effects is a reason. there are other possible reasons.Thngs related to state of mind and body.
but once you know there is no difference, your bias is gone.



Well, no.  What's gone (MAYBE!) is the faith in your subjective impression.  The bias (the unconscious predisposal to believe in a difference) -- and its effect, (the impression that B sounds different from (better/worse than) A) -- may still be there.  But you now have a counterbelief.

Here as HA, we typically act on the counterbelief that derived from objective evidence, not on the belief derived from subjective impression, and feel satisfied we've done the intelligent thing.  But not everyone rolls that way.

Rather infamously, Stereophile editor John Atkinson's experience with blind comparison of amplifiers led him to embrace the subjective, not objective, evidence.  His blind test told him the expensive amp he preferred sounded the same as the more affordable one.  And in the course of living with the 'objective' choice, his choice gnawed at him; he found himself dissatisfied with the sound.  He wasn't happy again until he switched back to the expensive amp.

People can sincerely believe they aren't the least bit racist/xenophobic, but tests generally reveal they still harbor some unconscious bias that way.  Same with sighted bias.  It doesn't go away, it just gets relegated to something to be guarded against consciously...or not, depending on your philosophy. 




Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #143 –
Quote from: Axon on
There's a little bit of a disconnect in thinking here. What is being optimized in a skeptical/positivist worldview is objective or psychoacoustic sound quality, while what is being optimized in a traditional audiophile worldview is the subjective, perceptual evaluation of sound quality. It simply does not follow that accepting the former can necessarily allow the latter. That is, Canar (and I, and I guess you) might simply be special cases of people whose subjective evaluations - of our inherently biased perceptions - have trended to match objective evaluations


Not the case with me.  I still encounter plenty of instances in audio where something 'sounds different' to me when it probably won't hold up in an controlled listening test.  I simply take that as evidence I'm still a fallible human, and move on.
I don't say, hmm, maybe all this sciency stuff is nonsense, I should just 'trust my ears'.

THAT, I suspect, is where the difference lies between 'objectivists' and the audiophile mainstream.  Not that our subjective evals are inherently more accurate than theirs -- our *faith* in them is simply much less.



Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #144 –
Quote from: analog scott on
It seems that some here think they have actually "cured" themselves of bias effects through DBTs so it isn't a straw man. But you make an interesting assertion about value. There is nothing "alleged" about percieved improvements. If some one percieves better sound they percieve better sound regardless of why. So why is a percieved improvement less or more valuable than another depending on the cause? If some one spends money on things that give them the perception of better sound how on earth in a hobby based on getting better percieved sound would that be a waste of money?


The answer reflects the amount of meaning we place in the statements and communications of others. If we were truly talking about other's perceptions as being truly subjective - like you propose - they would have no inherent truth to whoever reads them. And then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Of course this is not the case - these comments are taken as representing an objective reality, 99% of the time, on a daily basis, among audiophiles. Not skeptics.

Usually, if you pick up any high-end review, you are not going to read claims exclusively of the form "well I perceived X and Y and had this emotion Z, sooo, there you go.". You'll read those claims, sure, but in the context of objective statements about the characteristics/intrinsics of the device, the engineering concepts involved, etc. In other words, you are going to read objective claims. But they will be rooted in subjective statements.

So if we want to talk strawmen, I'd say the one to be tackling here is the whole idea that mainstream audiophile communication is subjective in character. I posit that while much of it is, the majority of it is stated as, and interpreted as, objective - even when the meaning of the communication is rooted in subjective perception.

With a strawman thus de-strawed it seems pretty self-evident to me as to why calling certain products a waste of money is entirely justified.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #145 –
another thing to consider is that reviewers have to differentiate between products and rank them.

I recently shopped for DSLR cameras, and I ended up with one that many people considered "inferior" for various reasons.

Yet, in actual usage, I found that its weak spots were pretty much inconsequential to me. Thus, the reviewer ranked the cameras from 1-5 on noise levels, but in practice, the noise levels differed by like 5% -- a difference, but no big deal at all.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #146 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: krabapple on
'Treatment doesn't mean 'cure',



Indeed it doesn't which points to the utter futility and in some cases self dellusion for those who seek a cure for bias effects in DBTs.


Since I said nothing of 'cures', but wrote only of treatment for a *belief*, nor do I hold that one can be 'cured' of *bias*,  apparently you had some other axe to grind.


Quote
Quote from: krabapple on
and the illness, btw, is not bias, it's the unquestioned *belief* in one's subjective 'truth' , unmoored from any consideration of bias.



One can find folks aflicted with such a state of mind (not an illness by the way) on both sides of the subjectivist/objectivist aisle.



Thank you ever so much again, Obvious Man.

Quote
Quote from: krabapple on
In such case, the treatment leaves the patient with sobering evidence of its power, and that their subjective 'truth' might be false.



Subjective truth can't be false. One can not falsify perceptions. They are what they are. 



I've had about enough of your sophistry for one session, Scott.  (btw, remind me, are you or are you not the same SWheeler from rahe and Hoffman's forum?  He too was prone to such tedious rhetorical game-playing. The resemblance is uncanny if not).  By 'subjective truth' I mean 'what you conclude to be true *about the objective world*, based only on your impression'.  I don't mean that the perceptions don't exist...or are insincerely believed -- I mean that the conclusions we draw from them can and are often WRONG. Clearly our subjective truth-claims -- our models  -- often turn out to be wrong -- they are INACCURATE models of reality. 


Like, arriving at the 'subjective truth' from a 'sighted' audition that one CD player sounded better than another, when the objective truth was that the same CD player was simply played twice.








Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #147 –
Quote from: analog scott on
It seems that some here think they have actually "cured" themselves of bias effects through DBTs so it isn't a straw man. But you make an interesting assertion about value. There is nothing "alleged" about percieved improvements. If some one percieves better sound they percieve better sound regardless of why. So why is a percieved improvement less or more valuable than another depending on the cause? If some one spends money on things that give them the perception of better sound how on earth in a hobby based on getting better percieved sound would that be a waste of money?

it's a waste of money because of what i established earlier. the 'why' is the core of issue. if someone purchases new equipment and controlled testing proves that the new equipment makes no audible difference, yet the purchaser still perceives an improvement, then the improvement did not come from the new equipment, but the person's mind. since the new equipment did not make a difference and the purchaser can improve the sound with their own mind, the purchase was a waste of money. when one believes that sound can be improved without actually improving the sound, their interest in audio ceases to be a hobby and becomes a religion.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #148 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: ShowsOn on
Quote from: analog scott on
There in lies the great objectivist myth. Bias controlled listening tests do not "cure" bias effects. They eliminate them for that test *if* they are actually being done well to begin with. Bias effects come back into play as soon as you go back to listening under sighted conditions. There is no cure. It is not an illness. It is a fact of life.

But the test has determined whether or not there is a real difference, or if the difference is bias! If the only difference is bias, then the test has proved that there actually is no difference. If a person continues to feel that there is a difference, then they are literally just deluding themselves.

But it does happen. and it does happen to completely normal human beings with no need for any treatment. It is a part of being human. We can not seperate ourselves from bias.

Yes we can, by doing controlled tests.
Quote from: analog scott on
Even when we know bias is in play. You should know that your biases are in play when you listen to your system under sighted conditions.

Of course. So if under sighted conditions I think that I need better speaker cables, but then under controlled conditions I find out that different speaker cables make no difference, I know that when I return to sighted conditions that any desire for different speaker cables is just an effect of bias, which you say no person can escape from.
Quote from: analog scott on
Does that mean you are delluding yourself?  I would think anyone worried about things being "real" would avoid audio altogether and just go to live performances.

Anyone who believes something to be true when they have evidence to the contrary is by definition deluding themselves.

That is the power of the controlled test, to enable a person to find out if something is supported by evidence, or just a product of bias. Once they have determined an effect to be simply bias, then they have no rational reason to continue believing something that is untrue.

Of course the fact some people still buy $2000 speaker cables is just evidence that there are some people who still believe things that are untrue in face of evidence to the contrary.

Why do so many audiophiles think everything sounds different

Reply #149 –
Quote from: analog scott on
No. it is not gone. it *may* be altered but it is not gone. You as a human being will always be strapped with your biases whatever they may be at the time. that's life. oh and yes some folks actually do just what you are saying. if you check with the Belts they fully acknoweledge that their tweaks don't affect the actual sound of any system. They claim their products create some sort of "relaxing friendly energy pattern" that affects the listener. It seems that they are almost admitting that their products work by bias effects without calling it bias effects. and yet it seems to work for them quite effectively.

It doesn't "work for them quite effectively" at all. It just puts a price tag on their own bias.

Why should someone pay for their own bias when they can have it for free?