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Investigating Role of Placebo in Audio

wgscott

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Another explanation for why the tiny Synergistic "sticky tabs" changed the sound is fraud.

That was the first explanation that came to mind for me, knowing none of the history you mention.

I am beginning to conclude that all of this audiophoolry, where so much money is at stake, isn't entirely innocent. If I were a fraudster, I would consider this a perfect demographic: rich, superstitious old men with failing hearing who want to believe, and who are willing to go to the mat defending the veracity of the huckster's claims.
 
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Phelonious Ponk

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That was the first explanation that came to mind for me, knowing none of the history you mention.

I am beginning to conclude that all of this audiophoolry, where so much money is at stake, isn't entirely innocent. If I were a fraudster, I would consider this a perfect demographic: rich, superstitious old men with failing hearing who want to believe, and who are willing to go to the mat defending the veracity of the huckster's claims.

Yes, a target rich environment for a con. And I don't think the guilt just lies in the tweak zone. I think the hobby is fraught with pricing that is so outrageous it is on the cusp of fraud, and there's a ton of wishful thinking in the marketing language. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are audiophile subjectivists themselves, and actually believe what they are saying, but I doubt that's always the case.

Tim
 
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amirm

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Unfortunately he makes some serious technical errors in his argument:

"The other really great thing about a digital system like HDMI is that digital signals don't degrade. A digital system takes a signal, and reduces it to a series of bits - signals that can be interpreted as 1s and 0s. That series of bits is divided into bundles called packets. Each packet is transmitted with a checksum - an additional number that allows the receiver to check that it received the packet correctly. So for a given packet of information, you've either received it correctly, or you didn't. If you didn't, you request the sender to re-send it. So you either got it, or you didn't. There's no in-between. In terms of video quality, what that means is that the cable really doesn't matter very much. It's either getting the signal there, or it isn't. If the cable is really terrible, then it just won't work - you'll get gaps in the signal where the bad packets dropped out - which will produce a gap in the audio or video."

HDMI specification is confidential. You have to become a member to know what is in it. As such, a lot of folklore has been created around what it is, and isn't. The above is one of them. He is confusing HDMI with networking protocols. It does not work that way at all.

HDMI is a real-time stream of data. Most of that the time what it sends is the value of the video pixel to be displayed. Each piece of data arrives to be displayed. It is not part of a "packet" nor does it have any checksum. If the data comes across wrong, it gets displayed wrong or shows up as sparkles, hashes, etc. If we had checksums, the receiver could put up an error. We don't see that because there is no checksum for validity of data. Just about any value, right or wrong, could be the real deal from receivers point of view.

When HDMI gets to the end of a video line, it then switches to sending auxiliary data. One of those axillary data is audio. Audio does have a checksum because if you try to output screwed up audio data, you could produce DC or other serious static that could damage equipment, or make you go deaf. If the checksum indicates data corruption however, unlike most networking protocols, there is no retransmission. The sound will most likely mute and we go about our business.

In no case will the system try to re-capture lost data. The time for displaying that pixel or playing that snippet of sound has come and gone. The receiver has done with it what it can and has moved on. It can't go back in time and fix two frames back from what it is displaying now.

As Opus mentioned, he is also wrong about nature of transmission. Capturing data is one thing. Knowing when to output it is another. The latter is the timing for said audio/video samples. In the case of video there is no problem in that each pixel location is digital in nature in today's displays. So when told to light up pixel 105 as red, we know where it is regardless of whether the data for it came 0.1 pixel value sooner or later.

For audio, it is a different animal altogether. The receiver must extract the timing if the incoming data in order to create its clock for the DAC. Any vagaries in that calculation will cause jitter and lots of it in the case of HDMI. Here is a comparison of HDMI and S/PDIF input on the same AVR and hence DAC:

i-Rd4Tsrr.png


This is showing the *analog* output of the AVR DAC. Purple is S/PDIF. Yellow is HDMI. Identical digital data was sent to each input. Yet what came out of the DAC was much more distorted in the case of HDMI.

Now all of this said, it is not clear HDMI cables can influence this picture much. I ran some quick test and could not cause this output to change meaningfully when using a short cable versus a very long HDMI cable. But the possibility exists.

This got long so I should make it its own thread elsewhere :).
 

Ethan Winer

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Ethan Winer

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I found all of Ted's original graphs, which I had saved at the time. According to Ted, the green graph shows a large room with no treatment and the purple is after adding these nonsense room treatment products he sells:

8 Magnetron Satellites
1 Gravitron Satellite
1 Vibratron
4 Bass Stations

I have many other graphs Ted had online showing different frequency ranges, all just as nonsensical as these two.

--Ethan
 

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Don Hills

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Man, took me half hour just to get to page 2 :).

If you can't blind 'em with science, baffle 'em with bulls**t.
 

Mivera

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I have a really funny story about placebo effects. One time, a client of mine was describing how much he loves his DAC, and how much of an improvement it was over the DAC built into his CD player. So I went over there to audition this DAC and to see what all the fuss was about. To me it didn't sound all that great. So I took a look at the back to see how everything was connected. I noticed that the SPDIF cable was connected correctly, however he didn't bother removing the analog out cables going from CD player to the preamp. Then I looked at the input setting the preamp was set to and noticed it was the input that the CD player analog outs were connected to. I asked him if that's the setting that he always uses when he listens to his DAC and he said yes. Boy was he embarrassed when I explained he had never heard his DAC yet. :)
 

Thomas savage

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that is embarrassing, i have a cringe worthy tale but its not placebo related. a dealer installing a preamp at a customer house cant get any sound out of the unit, phones the distributor in a foul mood and demands the guy drive 100 miles to fix it. distributor gets there takes one look and sees the red mute button on the preamp is lit:D though he is tactful and takes it apart and pretends to fix it so the dealer does not lose face..

welcome to the U.K hifi dealer network :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::D
 

Mivera

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that is embarrassing, i have a cringe worthy tale but its not placebo related. a dealer installing a preamp at a customer house cant get any sound out of the unit, phones the distributor in a foul mood and demands the guy drive 100 miles to fix it. distributor gets there takes one look and sees the red mute button on the preamp is lit:D though he is tactful and takes it apart and pretends to fix it so the dealer does not lose face..

welcome to the U.K hifi dealer network :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::D

That tactfulness would only serve to make the product look incompetent rather than the dealer.

I've had several situations like that and it's a good reason why sticking to the K.I.S.S principal is the only way to go. Everything should have a "reset to default" button. And any feature that has a chance to make the product not work any more shouldn't exist.
 
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Fitzcaraldo215

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I am sure we have all heard many stories. One of the best is about a system setup at a show years ago. People come into the room and the turntable is spinning an LP. They sit down, listen and comment on the beauty, the "musicality", the "liquidity", the PRaT or whatever of the glorious vinyl sound, always better than digital. But, then jaws drop as the demonstrator stops the turntable and removes the record. But, the music is still playing! Turns out it was digital playback all along.
 

Mivera

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I am sure we have all heard many stories. One of the best is about a system setup at a show years ago. People come into the room and the turntable is spinning an LP. They sit down, listen and comment on the beauty, the "musicality", the "liquidity", the PRaT or whatever of the glorious vinyl sound, always better than digital. But, then jaws drop as the demonstrator stops the turntable and removes the record. But, the music is still playing! Turns out it was digital playback all along.

You could easily fool 99 out of 100 with that technique. Even if something like an iPhone was used as the source.
 

NorthSky

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I am sure we have all heard many stories. One of the best is about a system setup at a show years ago. People come into the room and the turntable is spinning an LP. They sit down, listen and comment on the beauty, the "musicality", the "liquidity", the PRaT or whatever of the glorious vinyl sound, always better than digital. But, then jaws drop as the demonstrator stops the turntable and removes the record. But, the music is still playing! Turns out it was digital playback all along.

Good post, I like that. :cool:

* Could also be the other way around.
 

FrantzM

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I am sure we have all heard many stories. One of the best is about a system setup at a show years ago. People come into the room and the turntable is spinning an LP. They sit down, listen and comment on the beauty, the "musicality", the "liquidity", the PRaT or whatever of the glorious vinyl sound, always better than digital. But, then jaws drop as the demonstrator stops the turntable and removes the record. But, the music is still playing! Turns out it was digital playback all along.


lol
 

tomelex

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Placebo works every time when you play the music the second time after you make your change. In fact, just listen to a song once right now, knowing what I am saying, and the second time you play the music, you will hear new details. Its not even placebo, its just the way our brain works, now play it a third time or fourth, and now you don't "hear" any differences, you become a bit bored with it. A lot of audiophiles are simply bored with their kit, and they want a change, they don't care if its better or not, just want a change. I do that by changing the genre of music, or its real simple to do by changing to a different headphone.
 

Chuck Gerlach

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The whole area is really tricky, even if there is a difference it may not be an improvement.
Now I want to hear huge undeniable improvements to the sound, if I can't detect it unsighted or only think there may be the slightest difference then why bother?
Keith.

AMEN! Why bother.

I have an audio buddy and we call it the "squint test". If we have to "squint our eyes" real hard to see/hear if there is a difference, we have no interest in paying for it, even if it is an improvement.
 

TitaniumTroy

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I've been in similar situations at AXPONA but for some reason I didn't fall for it, I agree with the comments on the first page. If it is a minute difference I couldn't crap, I like large differences, as in using different speakers, different speaker position in the room, or room acoustics.
 
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