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Yes – opamps swapping may make a measurable difference in a preamp

SIY

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  1. What it is they are believing is worth investigating objectively and without bias.
Clearly it's not worth it because they never do. If someone is going to make a ridiculous claim and refuse to test it, why should someone else spend even a nanosecond on it? Even if it's a bunch of people making the ridiculous claim but unanimously unwilling to test it. No evidence, no plausibility, it's going to be presumed bullshit storytelling, and it should be.
 

Gorgonzola

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Clearly it's not worth it because they never do. If someone is going to make a ridiculous claim and refuse to test it, why should someone else spend even a nanosecond on it? Even if it's a bunch of people making the ridiculous claim but unanimously unwilling to test it. No evidence, no plausibility, it's going to be presumed bullshit storytelling, and it should be.
You're missing the point. Those people aren't scientists and don't know how to do rigorous testing. I'm suggesting that YOU not ignore long- time, consistent impressions and test them. As a good & conscientious scientist you should consider that historic testing procedures might be failing to drive out real phenomena, (which wouldn't be unprecedented).
 

solderdude

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When many people claim to see a yeti, chupacabra's, aliens, UFOs, are bothered by 'chemtrails', electrosmog and all have 'similar stories' does this make it more plausible to be a real thing ?

When research would show without a shadow of a doubt the perceived differences aren't a real thing do you think people will still be hearing the same phenomenon ?
I have an engineer friend that is convinced he could hear differences between silver and copper cables.
Visited him at home and showed him without any doubt he could not hear any differences.
Till this day he still claims he can hear it.
 

lashto

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Read up on Russell's Teapot.
oh, you like to play "smart riddle" games. You're welcome!

In spite of its obvious beauty/appeal, Russell's Teapot might just not be the best fit for the case of "millions of people reporting the same musical-sound". Just note the difference in cardinality: the teapot story is a one guy scenario.
Of course, you can just take one guy out of those millions and dismiss him with the magic teapot ... and then you take the next guy .. rinse & repeat. Let's call that "the lazy-scientist's solution" and forget about it :)

How about a better 'riddle' for the (real) million-guys scenario: "Occam's Razor is slashing a teapot in space"
 
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dc655321

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oh, you like to play "smart riddle" games. You're welcome!

In spite of its obvious beauty/appeal, Russell's Teapot might just not be the best fit for the case of "millions of people reporting the same musical-sound". Just note the difference in cardinality: the teapot story is a one guy scenario.
Of course, you can just take one guy out of those millions and dismiss him with the magic teapot ... and then you take the next guy .. rinse & repeat. Let's call that "the lazy-scientist's solution" and forget about it :)

How about a better 'riddle' that for the (real) million-guys scenario: "Occam's Razor is slashing a teapot in space"

The fact that you think "cardinality" lends evidentiary weight is... interesting.
 

SIY

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oh, you like to play "smart riddle" games. You're welcome!

In spite of its obvious beauty/appeal, Russell's Teapot might just not be the best fit for the case of "millions of people reporting the same musical-sound". Just note the difference in cardinality: the teapot story is a one guy scenario.
Of course, you can just take one guy out of those millions and dismiss him with the magic teapot ... and then you take the next guy .. rinse & repeat. Let's call that "the lazy-scientist's solution" and forget about it :)

How about a better 'riddle' that for the (real) million-guys scenario: "Occam's Razor is slashing a teapot in space"
Yes, I'm a lazy scientist, that must be it.

This contrasts with the people making ridiculous claims and not lifting a finger to collect any evidence, which is totally not lazy. Got it.
 

solderdude

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"millions of people reporting the same musical-sound"

millions or just a few hundred of which a number of them are very vocal on the internet all reading and believing a number of 'gurus' and none of them ever taking well performed blind tests. Most of these vocal people even report things that are extremely unlikely to be true.
And no we are not talking of THD at -40dB or higher and audible hiss levels that are quite likely to be audible.
No... we are talking about differences below considered audible thresholds.
 

lashto

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Even the worst measuring one still is well below audibilty thresholds so cannot be the reason for 'hearing' better sound quality. Even if signal fidelity is slightly worse and some claim (without scientific evidence which is not impossible to obtain if one really wanted to) that small but not too big distortion of a certain type would be 'pleasant'.
This comes no where near most (but not all) tube amps so the comparison with tube 'goodness' is not in play in this particular case.
Furthermore the plots only show 1kHz HD at a certain level (+14dB) and most likely this will not be reached and thus distortion in practice, under normal usage) may well be even substantially lower.

hm, not sure what scenario you have in mind. I thought mine was clearly stated in a post above
...
There are actually quite a few of those "consistent subjective listening results" that he mentioned. And many are dismissed on ASR (and generally in the so called objective audio community) for no good reason.
E.g. millions of people still buy and enjoy tube devices, turntables etc... Looks to me that those "distortion-generators" do get a lot of ear-love and some extra research-effort in that area would be useful and well justified.
...
hopefully the "millions" are easy to count in there: tube preamps/amps/mics/etc, turntables, tone controls, mastering plugins, guitar pedals... And there is also very audible distortion involved.

It's not even my scenario to be fair it's mostly 'stolen' some of @Gorgonzola's posts. But lets state it again for clarity:
millions of people buy and enjoy "distortion generators". Millions of people consistently report (approx) the exact same "musical sound".
Many objectivists take those reports one by one, teapot-dismiss them and pretend that "musical sound"(distortion) does not exist.
Can we now talk about this one please ?
 

JSmith

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Can we now talk about this one please ?
"Pleasing distortion" can be added in other ways... it doesn't need to be baked into a device where it cannot be altered. Searching for a particular "sound" from a device is a fools errand, deliberately created to ensure customers keep buying new (often expensive) products.


JSmith
 

lashto

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Yes, I'm a lazy scientist, that must be it.
This contrasts with the people making ridiculous claims and not lifting a finger to collect any evidence, which is totally not lazy. Got it.
Of course they are way lazier than you :) Also have way less knowledge. Also are way easier to dismiss. So what?!

how about you stop avoiding an answer?
If it pleases you, imagine they were cows .. the scenario ~translates to "10 cows doing the same unusual belching sound". Does anyone think that the "10 cows" and "1 cow" variants are the exact same scenario?
 

SIY

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how about you stop avoiding an answer?
If it pleases you, imagine they were cows .. the scenario ~translates to "10 cows doing the same unusual belching sound". Does anyone think that the "10 cows" and "1 cow" variants are the exact same scenario?
That may be the worst analogy I've heard this month, but it's only the 6th.

When someone making claims brings evidence, it's worth discussing. Until then, it's fairy tales. If people making extraordinary claims are too lazy to get evidence, that's a pretty sure indication that they're full of shit.

If the criterion for taking something seriously is the sheer number of ignorant people making evidence-free claims, then we (scientists) need to take astrology, homeopathy, spirit channeling, and dowsing seriously. We don't.
 

Sokel

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I like to think euphonic distortion (or whatever is called) something like black-n-white pictures and films.
Like the old ones,with grain,etc.The same way I feel for my turntable,grainy,limited,etc.

Sometimes black-n-white is beautiful,some directors even use it today.
But that is an exception and it comes solely on taste.

And certainly no op-amp should be designed like this.
 

lashto

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That may be the worst analogy I've heard this month, but it's only the 6th.

It's also supposed to be one of the most ridiculous analogies, hopefully that angle does not go unnoticed. I put a lot of effort into that "analogy", would be dissapointig if it does not win (at least) some monthly prizes :)

When someone making claims brings evidence, it's worth discussing. Until then, it's fairy tales. If people making extraordinary claims are too lazy to get evidence, that's a pretty sure indication that they're full of shit.
true .. for a "someone scenario" (==one guy scenario). Anything new?

If the criterion for taking something seriously is the sheer number of ignorant people making evidence-free claims, then we (scientists) need to take astrology, homeopathy, spirit channeling, and dowsing seriously. We don't.

Oh, this is new. But your science is a bit, let's say not-so-new. Nowadays, serious scientists do exactly that what you don't:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.07189v1 - An homeopathic cure to pure Xenon large diffusion
https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09524 - Quantum homeopathy works...
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0609274 - The Standard Model: Alchemy and Astrology. By https://cms.fnal.gov/joseph-lykken/, Deputy Director of Research at Fermilab. That guy so looks like a 100% scientist, he should play one in a holywood movie :)

... anyway, you got the idea. And btw, you forgot one bunch: the "UFO teapots" might just be the easiest and closest analogy for the "musical sound teapots".

Not sure if we shall continue the 'talk', you just keep avoiding a direct answer. And if you read my posts, I never said that the 'musical sound teapots' are right in any way. Even specifically stated that "it may be a collective psychosys". Their sheer numbers do not give any "evidentiary weight" as @dc655321 commented, it's only a good enough reason to do a proper millions-investigation (instead of dismissing them one by one.)
 
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SIY

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It's also supposed to be one of the most ridiculous analogies, hopefully that angle does not go unnoticed. I put a lot of effort into that "analogy", would be dissapointig if it does not win (at least) some monthly prizes :)


true .. for a "someone scenario" (==one guy scenario). Anything new?



Oh, this is new. But your science is a bit, let's say not-so-new. Nowadays, serious scientists do exactly that what you don't:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.07189v1 - An homeopathic cure to pure Xenon large diffusion
https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09524 - Quantum homeopathy works...
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0609274 - The Standard Model: Alchemy and Astrology. By https://cms.fnal.gov/joseph-lykken/, Deputy Director of Research at Fermilab. That guy so looks like a 100% scientist, he should play one in a holywood movie :)

... anyway, you got the idea. And btw, you forgot one bunch: the "UFO teapots" might just be the easiest and closest analogy for the "musical sound teapots".

Not sure if we shall continue the 'talk', you just keep avoiding a direct answer. And if you read my posts, I never said that the 'musical sound teapots' are right in any way. Even specifically stated that "it may be a collective psychosys". Their sheer numbers do not give any "evidentiary weight" as @dc655321 commented, it's only a good enough reason to do a proper millions-investigation (instead of dismissing them one by one.)
Shorter version: No evidence. Yawn. The world is full of cranks, con artists, and dupes. I’m not impressed that you can find some without much effort.
 
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IPunchCholla

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It's also supposed to be one of the most ridiculous analogies, hopefully that angle does not go unnoticed. I put a lot of effort into that "analogy", would be dissapointig if it does not win (at least) some monthly prizes :)


true .. for a "someone scenario" (==one guy scenario). Anything new?



Oh, this is new. But your science is a bit, let's say not-so-new. Nowadays, serious scientists do exactly that what you don't:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.07189v1 - An homeopathic cure to pure Xenon large diffusion
https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09524 - Quantum homeopathy works...
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0609274 - The Standard Model: Alchemy and Astrology. By https://cms.fnal.gov/joseph-lykken/, Deputy Director of Research at Fermilab. That guy so looks like a 100% scientist, he should play one in a holywood movie :)

... anyway, you got the idea. And btw, you forgot one bunch: the "UFO teapots" might just be the easiest and closest analogy for the "musical sound teapots".

Not sure if we shall continue the 'talk', you just keep avoiding a direct answer. And if you read my posts, I never said that the 'musical sound teapots' are right in any way. Even specifically stated that "it may be a collective psychosys". Their sheer numbers do not give any "evidentiary weight" as @dc655321 commented, it's only a good enough reason to do a proper millions-investigation (instead of dismissing them one by one.)
Did you even read the abstracts? The first two aren’t talking about homeopathy in the kooky medical sense, but in terms of physics at the particle/quantum level. Do the word doesn’t even mean the same thing, it’s a homonym. And the third isn’t an argument for alchemy or astrology, but a discussion of the implications of the known unknowns of the standard model.

The thing you are missing about Russel’s Teapot, is that yes, even if a million people claim it’s there, that means nothing until one of THEM, the claimants, brings the evidence. And no, pointing at other people making the claim, no matter how many there are, is not evidence.

But here is the great thing about science: it’s an open club. Anyone can do it. You just survey the state of knowledge for your topic (you can walk into a public university library and use their research tools to do this). Create a falsifiable hypothesis. Create an experiment to test that hypothesis. Perform the experiment. Publish your experimental data for everyone else to evaluate.

There are thousands of article published every year expanding our knowledge of human auditory perception. Two I have read recently: one examined the impact of training on thresholds of human perception of harmonic distortion in relation to absolute thresholds. Another examined the effects of estrogen on absolute levels of audibility of sine waves.

But the burden isn’t on me or anyone else to prove or disprove your claims, it’s on you to gain an understanding of what is known and unknown and to posit your evidence.
 

lashto

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I like to think euphonic distortion (or whatever is called) something like black-n-white pictures and films.
Like the old ones,with grain,etc.The same way I feel for my turntable,grainy,limited,etc.
sound vs color is a very good analogy. Might just be the best. Both are waves .. a musical-note is a sound-frequency, same as a color is a light-frequency .. and so on.

IMO that analogy works particularly well on THD. Just look at a THD measurement/graph, replace the 1000Hz test signal with a red-wave and a few minutes-of-math later you'll have a good idea of how a distorted 1000Hz should sound.

oh, you are lazy ... me too :)

The color test signal is a 'pure' red-wave, IIRC somewhere in the 4xx Thz range.
Let's only use the H2 for brevity. It will be in the 8-9xx Thz range. A 'tiny' violet-wave (actually could be ultraviolet and invisible but that's an interesting point for another time)
And how does your 'distorted' red-wave look? The 'pure' red-wave is a bright-red and the 'distorted' one will be a blood(ish)-red (i.e. red+violet). Some call that a "darker red". Some call it a "fuller red" .. as in "there is more color in there" (and there actually is)

Apply that to the distorted 1000Hz sound wave and you'll hear a "fuller 1000Hz sound". Or a more colored 1000Hz sound if you wish (btw, that "sound color" is usually called timbre).

Interestingly, many 'objectivists' call the "fuller 1000Hz" distortion. Don't think I ever heard anyone calling the "fuller red" distortion .. but that's also a possible subject for another time.
 
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rwortman

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The thing you are missing about Russel’s Teapot, is that yes, even if a million people claim it’s there, that means nothing until one of THEM, the claimants, brings the evidence. And no, pointing at other people making the claim, no matter how many there are, is not evidence.
An engineer writing in a motorcycle magazine once said “you can’t vote bullsh— into truth”.
 

lashto

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Did you even read the abstracts? The first two aren’t talking about homeopathy in the kooky medical sense, but in terms of physics at the particle/quantum level. Do the word doesn’t even mean the same thing, it’s a homonym. And the third isn’t an argument for alchemy or astrology, but a discussion of the implications of the known unknowns of the standard model.

The thing you are missing about Russel’s Teapot, is that yes, even if a million people claim it’s there, that means nothing until one of THEM, the claimants, brings the evidence. And no, pointing at other people making the claim, no matter how many there are, is not evidence.

But here is the great thing about science: it’s an open club. Anyone can do it. You just survey the state of knowledge for your topic (you can walk into a public university library and use their research tools to do this). Create a falsifiable hypothesis. Create an experiment to test that hypothesis. Perform the experiment. Publish your experimental data for everyone else to evaluate.

There are thousands of article published every year expanding our knowledge of human auditory perception. Two I have read recently: one examined the impact of training on thresholds of human perception of harmonic distortion in relation to absolute thresholds. Another examined the effects of estrogen on absolute levels of audibility of sine waves.

But the burden isn’t on me or anyone else to prove or disprove your claims, it’s on you to gain an understanding of what is known and unknown and to posit your evidence.
You could have missed/avoided the point in fewer words, like SIY does :). But many thanks for the effort anyway!

Yes, I could have posted a link about what you seem to call "real homeopathy". I chose quantum-homeopathy because it sounds even more "teapoty". Hope there was something new/interesting in those abstracts and I did not waste your time. Noone was supposed to read those, because none of that matters (for the current 'argument').

The only point is that scientists do serious studies about homeopathy .. and about UFOs .. and all sorts of other 'teapots'. It does not matter if those teapots are bullshit or real, what matters is that serious studies are made about them. Not because there was any (usable) evidence but mostly because "millions of people". In itself, a lot of smoke makes it "worth" looking for a fire (and there's a 'razor' in there too.)
Such a study should be done for "musical sound".
I'd say it's not a very complicated point. Or easy to miss. But looks like l may be mistaken.


P.S.
The counterpoint made here is that it's only "worth doing" a study if you have "strong evidence". For some reason, it is also repeated quite ad-nauseam. IMO, that "counterpoint" is fairly ridiculous. 'Millions' of studies are done simply to check if there was actually any evidence.

And going (too) much further and philosophical about this, nobody owns the definition of "worth doing". A bunch of people seem to be convinced that they found it in a teapot, though.
"Worth doing" is just a choice. Thousands studies were done just because somebody had a 'hunch' .. or was bored ... or had some extra budget .. or did like butterflies or whatever. Every single one of those studies was 100% "worth doing"
 
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