psp;686149 Wrote: > I strongly doubt the general expectation-driven "it's all in your head" > picture. On that hypothesis, way more than half of the tweaks should be > experienced as a positive change, since hope for a positive outcome is > presumably the most common motivator of tweaking. In the real world > though, many of the things I try are neutral or negative and only a few > are positive. Further, some of the most positive changes have come as a > total surprise to me. Can you square that experience with "it's all in > my head"? I can't.
I think a more neutral appraisal of the situation would allow for some degree of subjective influence. IOW, the "it's in your head" factor is one that needs to be on the table for consideration. Forget audio for a minute - it is very, very well established that human perception can be easily colored by a variety of influences. One excellent book on the subject is Cordelia Fine's "A Mind Of Its Own". The subtitle is "How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives". The problem for those who insist that everything they personally hear must be grounded in some physical attribute is that we don't cease to be human just because the subject is high-end audio. The other aspect is that the issue of subjective influence is far more subtle and complicated than a simple "expectation bias". We may be well aware of some of our biases, but completely unaware of others. It can be very difficult to weed out a subconscious influence that is well-buried under layers of seemingly unrelated factors. The problem is the factor that is a positive subconscious influence for one person may be a negative for another. That may well be a valid explanation as to why one person likes a particular power cord while another shrugs his shoulders. Another pretty well established fact is that the grandiose, flowery language used to describe this or that tweak often subsides or even disappears under blind conditions. That said, it is perfectly fine by me that people tweak and buy expensive accessories to their heart's desire. If having a particular power cord sounds better to them, it matters little to me whether the cause is some obscure behavior of electrons or a recessed psychological byproduct of their childhood. However, such declarations of preference aren't science, but there is no need for them to be such in a home audio setting. If for some reason the answer does need to be science, there are some well established methods for reducing the influence of subjective factors during testing. Pretending that we're personally in complete control of all the subjective factors bouncing around in our head isn't one of those methods. -- mlsstl ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mlsstl's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9598 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=93154 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
