What we believe, what we hear

[Thomas savage]

my expirance informs me when I read reviews about ' tweak' products and believe in them enough to buy them often this initial belief seems to influence what I hear.

After some time when belief has abated and I remove said device this audible improvement that seemed very clear at the time is found to be missing in action. The sound of my system does not degrade, this seems to of been the case a few times now...


Please share your expirances ... Stories of discovering your fallibility or indeed stories that show you don't suffer such weaknesses, that's your not fallible.

 

[fas42]

Well, to start with, I never buy them - if something seems to have an interesting effect, from what people have made comments about, I will then assemble a DIY equivalent from bits and pieces lying around, and see what gives ...

Usually these things will change the tonality in some manner; and now and again will cause a genuine improvement - if I get the latter, then I pursue it some more.

When listening to the audio friend's setup I can be fooled ... because I'm listening through the haze of all the peculiarities of his setup, and trying to work out whether the particular aspect of the sound he's focusing on has improved or not - this can be hard if it's mixed in with the clutter of other artifacts. In some ways this is like trying to hear something changing in the middle of a messy pop mix - you're having to try and compensate for the impact of the overall grunge. Which means that when I do my own thing I only worry about cleaning up the sound, it's the level of 'dirt' that I concentrate on, nothing else.

 

[mingkahn]

my expirance informs me when I read reviews about ' tweak' products and believe in them enough to buy them often this initial belief seems to influence what I hear.

After some time when belief has abated and I remove said device this audible improvement that seemed very clear at the time is found to be missing in action. The sound of my system does not degrade, this seems to of been the case a few times now...


Please share your expirances ... Stories of discovering your fallibility or indeed stories that show you don't suffer such weaknesses, that's your not fallible.

I can no be fool

 

[Sal1950]

I can no be fool

Me either sir.

 

[RayDunzl]

Purchased tweaks?

A lifetime supply of DeOxit, although clean/protected connections is more sensible than tweaky. I'd get some Stabilant 22, but the DeOxit descriptions read as though it has the same kind of active tweaky ingredient.

Other than that, none. No fancy cable. I like copper, lots of copper, when transferring power.

I've looked at tweaky ad-copy. If it doesn't make any sense to me, so be it.

I have a big bag of ferrite clamps, leftover from work. They do no harm, and do what they do.

I have DSP and DRC, if that is a tweak.

Are my ears fallible? Yes. Eyes? Yes. Touch? Yes. Taste? Yes. Smell? Yes. All tied to a fallible Brain. The ears hear the doorbell when no one is there, but can't hear a glockenspiel's high notes at all.

 

[Thomas savage]

Any stories of fooling ones self will do, don't get distracted by the word tweak. That was just a easy example to relate to.

 

[TBone]

I've a bunch of ferrite clamps from days past; only use 1 (turntable grounding wire, @pre-amp).

 

[Sal1950]

Any stories of fooling ones self will do

I could engage you with my fantasy's of 20 something ladies being interested in my aged ass, but they might not be very appropriate.

 

[TBone]

Stories of discovering your fallibility or indeed stories that show you don't suffer such weaknesses, that's your not fallible.

rather not.

my better half, she'll remind me of my fallibility.

over & over again ...

 

[amirm]

Any stories of fooling ones self will do, don't get distracted by the word tweak. That was just a easy example to relate to.

The forum software will overflow if I told all the stories of mine. Here is one that I have told elsewhere.

When I was at Microsoft, I managed the audio/video signal processing/compression teams among others. I trained myself to hear artifacts well and could outdo everyone on the team in this regard, hearing artifacts that others could not. All of which were found to be problems that were fixed.

One time I am home sick and volunteer to do more testing for the team. They were playing with different psychoacoustics algorithms for the WMA encoder. They sent me a before and after and I was horrified how much worse the new encoder was. Not being in good mood physically, I dumped on the manager for the group for not hearing such obvious degradations. The manager was pretty surprised saying they had not made any changes that would make such profound differences. I listen again and it is pretty clear to my ears that they indeed had broken the thing, fidelity wise. The manager then sends me another set of files and asks me which set I like, "A" or "B." I listen and immediately identify one as being the latest encoder with the same degradation. I was full of confidence 'till I get this horrifying response back from him, "Amir, both of those sets of files were identical; I just renamed them as two different names!" I could not believe what he was saying. Sadly that was easy enough to compare: a binary comparison shows the two sets to be identical, bit for bit. Being played through the same system, they could not possibly sound different.

I go back and re-listen and I hear them being the same. But thought, I wonder if I can hear into them what was different. I do that and the difference all comes back! Indeed, I could change my frame of mind one or the way other and can make the difference vanish, or come back on demand, damn the fact that the files were identical.

Needless to say, I told them to rely on their own testing than my opinion and they did that, and indeed improved the encoder.

These events are sobering slap in the face but necessary for one to realize what the probability of their hearing system being right is. Here I was, the king of the hill in my critical listening ability, yet I fell victim to misperception like nobody's business. For people without this type of training, there is no hope. There just isn't. Vast amount of our fidelity judgement as a group are therefore wrong. They are far more wrong, than they ever are right! To walk around otherwise, would be having one's head deep in the sand.

 

[fas42]

I go back and re-listen and I hear them being the same. But thought, I wonder if I can hear into them what was different. I do that and the difference all comes back! Indeed, I could change my frame of mind one or the way other and can make the difference vanish, or come back on demand, damn the fact that the files were identical.

Indeed that is how it is - just by changing one's focus one can make something "better" or "worse", audibly - the same goes for listening to live sound, I can listen to a classical guitar being expertly played, and drive myself nuts by focusing on the incidental fret and finger noises - ignoring the music completely - what lousy sound, must be a terrible guitar, and player !!

Key to this are the words "make" and "focus" - active concentration is the underlying mechanism allowing the perceived quality to be altered, at will. The big downside, this requires energy and ultimately leads to listening fatigue - so, in the bigger picture, it's a fail ...

A good techniques I use is to listen without listening - deliberately distract myself from "actively" listening by talking to someone else at the same time, or thinking about something that needs to be done which is totally unconnected to audio, outside the room. Immediately anything which is disturbingly incorrect in the sound will be obvious, will irritate you - and will make you want to turn down the volume ... this is incompetent sound!

So, the less you try to hear something, the more likely you will hear it ... and minimise foolin', .

 

[TBone]

From an audio point of view, my biggest misconception was realizing the actual quality of 16/44. Well, that's not actually true, the first cd player I truly enjoyed was my brothers cheap early 80's Technics 16bit chipped player. Still remember how vivid I found it compared to my own vinyl based system. But that said, it took me a long time to adopt CD in my system (even though I'd had plenty players over the years).

Anyway, a long time ago, on another forum of vinylheads, we were discussing the sound of a particular hard to reproduce section which was commonly sibilant on LP. Silly me, I stating I had no such problem, when one of the participants asked me to digitally record my version and send to him for comparison. Well, the thought of recording LP to digital, at that time, seemed sacrilegious to me, as if I was going to send him an inferior copy by default, and I basically stated just that. Him, wiser, countered; send a copy with the format of my choice, even suggesting VHS. Cornered, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a cheap used consumer CD recorder for the sake of ripping the song for his appraisal.

Over a decade later, ironically I listen to my vinyl collection more via digital than the actual LP; without issue.

 

[amirm]

Well, that's not actually true, the first cd player I truly enjoyed was my brothers cheap early 80's Technics 16bit player. Still remember how vivid I found it compared to my own vinyl based system.

That was my first CD player too. My Technics turntable could not remotely hold a candle to it. I threw out not only all of my records then, but my wife's too!

 

[TBone]

Amir, my fond memory of that particular technics is the sole reason I wish to restore & Lampi an old 1541 chipped technics player; one of those little fun side projects, perhaps one day ...