From: shetline@bbn.com (Kerry Shetline)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Audio triage: the reasonable, the questionable, and the absurd
Followup-To: rec.audio
Date: 7 Jan 1993 05:48:41 GMT
Organization: BBN
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com

In article <1if0ohINNdpl@transfer.stratus.com>, rsud@sw.stratus.com (Rajiv
Sud) wrote:
> Kerry,
>  	As far as your saying that hearing phase is in my head my retort
> would be where else would it be? The way people acquire any skill,
> whether it be basketball, painting, etc., is to practice. I suppose you
> will tell me its impossible to throw a three pointer because the brain
> can never accurately control your muscles because the forces that need
> to be applied are subjective. pure and utter bullshit. What is missing
> from your post as is missing with all other posts who disbelive that
> components, wires, etc sound different is that you have never actually
> experimented and tried to learn to use your sense of hearing.

I hate to get so flamed-up, but...

You've utterly misrepresented what I've said. You've built straw men and
then knocked them down, acting as if you've really made a point. How does
one get from my talk about the susceptiblility of hearing to suggestion, to
a silly list of things like basketball and painting being impossible? That
is neither implied nor remotely derivable from my argument.

All senses are, of course, ultimately 'in the head'. The obvious, and
common use of the phrase is to connote that a given perception arises
within the brain and not directly as a result of an external stimulus.

Your viewpoint (and I believe that I am being fair and accurate in
representing it, not just going for debating points as you seem to be)
appears to be this: Some people, through exposure to various experiences,
experimentation, and practice, can hone their perceptive skills in order to
detect sonic effects that elude others.

I agree completely.

It would be silly to argue this, and I never have. I would also add that
some people are lucky enough to be born with better perceptive skill as
well. What I have said is this, however:

Some perceived differences in products, processes, tweaks, etc., can be
attributed to listener skill, BUT NOT ALL. Regardless of your opinion of
double-blind AB testing and the like, there is one type of AB test that is
difficult to deny the credibility of: The one where EVERYTHING is equal.
(Okay, EVERYTHING is never equal, but I mean aside from things beyond
experimenter control, like the phase of the moon or the number of hot dogs
being eaten worldwide at each moment of the experiment.) When you compare
one thing to the very same thing, at all the same levels, in the same room,
with all the same equipment, etc., people will still tell you that they
hear differences. Why? Because the experimenter suggests that there are
differences. And when people try hard to find differences, they often
succeed, even when the differences aren't really there.

I don't think that many people would deny this. I don't think that you
would deny this. Yet the very mention of the suggestibility argument
infuriates some people. It seems to create in their minds some image of an
evil that denies the existence of all special perceptive skill to anyone.

Well, that isn't me.

I know that I do better than some people (like my father who is quite
content with cassette tapes he records on a boom box from distant FM
stations). And I've known people with better perceptive skill than I have
as well.

So please don't naively reduce my argument to some imagined dismissal of
all differences between all types of components and accessories. I happen
to believe there are differences between CD players, for instance. I'm not
going to pretend that the difference seem very big to me, but I will
certainly allow that such differences could have much greater impact on
other listeners. There is certainly a lot of room for difference in the
quality analog filters and DACs. It makes sense, and it has been borne out
in controlled testing.

That does not mean that it is not perfectly reasonable for me to have
technical and theoretical standards to judge certain other claims by. And
my judgement are no less valid because I do not methodically test each and
every claim before dismissing it. Time and resources are limited, so WE ALL
DISMISS SOME THINGS OUT OF HAND.

If I told you that your CDs would sound better if you bathed them in mango
juice, rinsed them with Dom Perignon, rinsed them again with distilled
water, and then hiked to the top of Mount Everest to expose them to the
light of a full moon, you would be perfectly justified to tell me that I
was out of my mind. You could in completely clear conscience decide that
the mango-moonlight procedure HAS NO VALID REASON TO WORK, and that it
would be a complete waste of your time and effort to try to test it. I,
having (hypothetically, please!) wasted some sizeable amount of money and a
chunk of my life in this stupid endeavor might very well scoff at your
closed-minded attitude and your lack willingness to put your beliefs to the
test. I would be totally unjustified.

So, we all have theories about what makes sense and what doesn't. We all
perform a mental triage on the ideas presented to us: What sounds
reasonable, what sounds questionable, and what sounds absurd.

The most fruitful debate, then, is on the standards by which we perform
this triage. Rather than characature my position, try to understand it and
present reasonable counterarguments. That way, if you've got something to
teach me, maybe I can learn was it is.

-Kerry
Newsgroups: rec.audio