Let's share placebo effect anecdotes!

[beagleman]

Realizing the fallibility of our hearing is like the ultimate ego check in audio. You either accept it and laugh at yourself, or you get mad and think it couldn't possibly be you and you go sub to GR Research.

I see the comments on "His" videos from his small base of "Fans", they believe a cap brand change will make some huge alteration in detail and transparency and on and on, but simply explain away that there is NO way to verify those views...Hmmmmm....lol

 

[JeremyFife]

I'm pretty sure that all my early "comparisons" of equipment were demonstrating the placebo effect!

Not an anecdote (not funny) but is "placebo" the correct term for us?
The meaning is very clear and it's universally understood but ... placebos, in a medical setting at least, can actually have a real and measurable effect. Drug trials have shown the placebo group having measurable improvements.

Do we need another word to convey that an audio placebo can only create an imagined effect?
Interestingly, I can't come up with an alternative (BS or audiophoolery miss the mark and are a bit confrontational)

 

[Mnyb]

A simple fallacy I and many have done in the past is hearing more details the second time we listen to a track .

The smart salesperson lets you switch between CD player A and CD player B for example and convince yourself that it was different.

.....But just listening to the same track several times in a row on the same equipment sounds different to us nothing regarding soundwaves has changed

 

[GGroch]

I'm pretty sure that all my early "comparisons" of equipment were demonstrating the placebo effect!

Not an anecdote (not funny) but is "placebo" the correct term for us?
The meaning is very clear and it's universally understood but ... placebos, in a medical setting at least, can actually have a real and measurable effect. Drug trials have shown the placebo group having measurable improvements.

I agree, placebo is not quite right. Cognitive Bias, Expectation Bias are better, but bias has negative connotations. Bias is not inherently bad. Bias (or learned experience) + new sensory stimulation is how cognition works. Brains evolved to be prediction engines that allow for fast decisions, not arbiters of truth.

Understanding our brains as prediction engines can solve dilemmas far more important than spending too much money on a power cable.

This really excellent Tedx Talk by Georg Keller focuses on visual bias but audio works the same way.

 

[Killingbeans]

At some point in my teens I listened to a new CD on a diskman using the crummy earbuds that came in the package.

Not very good sound quality, but the album was intriguing anyway, so I took it home and heard it again on a high quality stereo setup several times.

Later I listened to it once more on the diskman with the same earbuds, and it sounded much better.

I concluded that either my memories of the high quality presentation made my brain "fill in the blanks", or the emotional attachment, I had gotten to the album by hearing it again and again with great joy, was coloring my perception... or both.

Or maybe I was just in a better mood that day. Who knows. In any case, it was a nice lesson in how unreliable our brains are at judging these things

 

[Ktacos]

I don't know if this counts but I keep a tiny speaker in place between my speakers. For whatever reason it really helps my brain pull the center into place. I just used it for fun one to see how it'd work as a center on it's own (pretty damn good actually) but I keep it there now for that imaging improvement. Literally sounds like some song elements are coming from the speaker, brains are neat. Oh god please don't tell Danny about this, he will sell a speaker with no inputs that improves imaging.

 

[Verig]

So I suppose fallibility doesn't dawn on every Ableton user.

Just upgraded to 12 so here I come.

 

[kemmler3D]

Not an anecdote (not funny) but is "placebo" the correct term for us?

No, technically it's not. In fact, you often get nocebo effect in audio too (things get worse instead of better, because of a non-intervention) But I chose it for the title because I figured everyone would know what it means.

I am not sure what the term of art is, but the idea is any story about the cognition (rather than actual sound) affecting what we hear.

 

[kemmler3D]

I don't know if this counts but I keep a tiny speaker in place between my speakers. For whatever reason it really helps my brain pull the center into place. I just used it for fun one to see how it'd work as a center on it's own (pretty damn good actually) but I keep it there now for that imaging improvement. Literally sounds like some song elements are coming from the speaker, brains are neat. Oh god please don't tell Danny about this, he will sell a speaker with no inputs that improves imaging.

View attachment 374572

This is the rare example of someone knowingly and intentionally putting a placebo device in their system - and it works! This might be the most "ascended" or enlightened approach to listening, if you think about it.

 

[Verig]

Do we need another word to convey that an audio placebo can only create an imagined effect?
Interestingly, I can't come up with an alternative (BS or audiophoolery miss the mark and are a bit confrontational)

I don't think we need one.
It's just about what we measure and how. You could send out a form "happier now?" to people who bought Nordost flat cables. Being content aurally and visually will have a positive effect. Perhaps that was the last piece your set "needed" and that project is now done. A feel of accomplishment feels nice for sure. Alleviates stress and frees your mind to other things.

In medicine a positive outcome of placebo is not magic either. There's a mechanism how our body (including mind) works. It's very easy to go to story telling mode about body and mind as separate entities but thinking (and sometimes more importantly not thinking) does have a physical effect - thinking is a physical event inside you.

I think in audio the effect is as real as in medicine. That said, I'm not a doctor so if there's one here I'm happy to hear if there are different categories.

 

[kemmler3D]

thinking is a physical event inside you.

I think in audio the effect is as real as in medicine.

Quoted for emphasis - key points to keep in mind ITT.

When people say they hear a difference due to a non-intervention (like comparing two filters that are actually the same filter, fake ABX tests, etc) they're not imagining they heard a difference - they really heard it. There isn't fake hearing and real hearing, there's only hearing.

From a certain POV the big questions we deal with here are what you heard, and why you heard it - not whether you heard it.

 

[Mnyb]

For good stereo effect I need to close my eyes or keep the room pretty dark , I actually lit the room with small varm light sources rather than from above with strong light .
otherwise the disconnect between what’s seen and heard is to big .
My stereo and speakers has a certain look that influences things and behind them are windows to my patio and garden , a quite busy scenery.
So I bee looking at my garden furniture and the Apple three we can’t have Nora jones in the Apple three

 

[MattHooper]

Sorry, I know this isn't a remark about placebo, but on the issue of bias, sighted in this case...

I have long noted how videos influence my perception of sound. For instance, take a standard guitar tutorial on youtube. If I see the person actually playing the guitar, I have a perception of higher sound quality, like the distinctiveness and timbre and detail I'm hearing about that guitar is particularly real and accurate sounding.

But if I close my eyes then the sound just goes back to the sort of bland, somewhat opaque sound produced by my iMac speakers. Nothing special at all.

I also find the sound is "better" in that way watching instruments being played in my home theater set up.

(This is one reason I usually use close-my-eyes-tests when listening to loudspeakers).

 

[Killingbeans]

I also find the sound is "better" in that way watching instruments being played in my home theater set up.

True. It doesn't even have to be real

 

[MattHooper]

This is the rare example of someone knowingly and intentionally putting a placebo device in their system - and it works! This might be the most "ascended" or enlightened approach to listening, if you think about it.

I’ve done it too.

I think it was in the 90s when I had a Meridian CD player, and I tried out some footers underneath the player. I can’t remember whether they were sorbothane or black diamond racing cones or something .
But I perceived a slight pleasing change in the sound. I looked into it more and found no justification for why that would happen. But I decided for quite a while to leave them under the CD player to enjoy the placebo effect.

 

[Punter]

I'm sure I've related this story before but a good friend of mine who is an experienced tech, has a friend who is a serial audio tragic, let's call him Ted. Much could be written about Ted and his HiFi addiction, especially how much he has spent over the years chasing the perfect speakers. This is a story from the late eighties when the first "high-end" interconnects were coming on the market. At this time my Tech friend and Ted were sharing a house and one day, Ted came home beaming. He had purchased some stupidly expensive RCA interconnects which he proceeded to fit to his system from his CD player to his amp. Ted loaded a disc and settle back to listen. Astounding! veils lifted, blacker blacks, pacing, liveliness....etc, etc. My Tech friend was appalled that Ted would fall for the marketing BS and pay hundreds of dollars for a meter or so of cable. As my Tech mate was in the sound reinforcement business, he had access to a full workshop and so concocted an evil plan. He constructed some RCA cables out of nothing more than a length of Belden 8723.

He mounted a pair of inexpensive RCA connectors on each end and then replaced the magic interconnects with his homebrewed set. The substitute cable was concealed and the high-end interconnects placed in such a way that they still, to a casual glance, appeared to be in circuit. Ted arrived home and put on a CD. Once again he gushed over the improvement with the expensive cables. My Tech mate let him carry on for a while, changing discs and getting all dewy eyed over the quality of the music. Eventually he could stand it no more and revealed the substitution. Ted was unsure how to react and refused to discuss the obvious self-delusion he had been indulging in. Years later when I was having a drink with these two and Tech recounted the story, Ted's response was "Yeah! Those Belden cables sounded great, whatever happened to them?"

 

[DavidMcRoy]

"Hearing something" does not always equate to the sound being changed an equal amount in reality.

We have a way of “creating” our own “reality.”

Stephen Colbert’s “Truthiness”: it seems like it SHOULD be true, I WANT it to be true…so it must be true.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

Sorry, I know this isn't a remark about placebo, but on the issue of bias, sighted in this case...

I have long noted how videos influence my perception of sound. For instance, take a standard guitar tutorial on youtube. If I see the person actually playing the guitar, I have a perception of higher sound quality, like the distinctiveness and timbre and detail I'm hearing about that guitar is particularly real and accurate sounding.

But if I close my eyes then the sound just goes back to the sort of bland, somewhat opaque sound produced by my iMac speakers. Nothing special at all.

I also find the sound is "better" in that way watching instruments being played in my home theater set up.

(This is one reason I usually use close-my-eyes-tests when listening to loudspeakers).

I tend to think that visual distractions afford us fewer neutrons to process the sound, so we’re less critical of it. There’s a corollary in immersive audio, I think: I suspect Dolby Atmos, as an example (I have a 6.4.4 system) gets away with lower bit rates per channel in part because there’s so much going on spatially much of the time that our brains get too distracted to lock in on minor sound quality imperfections.

For anyone who hasn’t tried it, do listen sometime to your system in complete darkness and note how incredibly expansive the sound space seems to become when your brain loses all visual bias created by the visibility of the walls in your room.

 

[Killingbeans]

I tend to think that visual distractions afford us fewer neutrons to process the sound, so we’re less critical if it.

Especially since the visuals probably activates other areas of the brain as well. You start processing nonverbal communication and other things included in the extra information.

I also get the sense that a great part of what makes audio reproduction enjoyable to us, it the feeling of "being there". And the brain doesn't really care whether it comes from visuals or audio, as long as it results in more of that feeling.

 

[richard12511]

I'm pretty sure that all my early "comparisons" of equipment were demonstrating the placebo effect!

Not an anecdote (not funny) but is "placebo" the correct term for us?
The meaning is very clear and it's universally understood but ... placebos, in a medical setting at least, can actually have a real and measurable effect. Drug trials have shown the placebo group having measurable improvements.

Do we need another word to convey that an audio placebo can only create an imagined effect?
Interestingly, I can't come up with an alternative (BS or audiophoolery miss the mark and are a bit confrontational)

I kinda disagree, at least to some extent. To me, it's not so clear the distinction between imagined and heard when it's the same device that does both things(the brain).

If our brain's placebo can actually cure us of disease, then I see no reason why it can't actually make us actually "hear" something that doesn't exist. I guess it depends on what one's definition of "hear" is. For me, I'd say I "hear" with my brain, and not my ears; my ears are just the input device; that input then gets fed through my brain's dsp module, which has many conscious and subconscious filters, and what comes out the other end is what I ultimately hear.

One of my buddies from undergrad ended up developing schizophrenia a few years after we graduated. I've talked to him several times about it, and from the way he describes it, he is actually "hearing" people that don't exist say random things to him. He can point to where in space the sound of the voice is coming from. I've had similar experiences with with drugs before, where I could hear a water faucet turning on and off that wasn't there. To me, these are real "hearings", and it's not so clear to me how that differs from imagination. I would say it's both real and imagined to my brain.

When it comes to audio comparisons, I see no reason why my brain couldn't make me actually hear something that doesn't exist to the outside world. Maybe they really are hearing differences occasionally, even if those differences were entirely generated by their brain.

TLDR: I think the effect in audio might be every bit as real as it is in medicine.