totoro;693717 Wrote: > Not to belabour the point, but the issue of whether location on disc > affects sound or whether or not the disc is highly fragmented is NOT > germane to whether using program 1 or program 2 make the same identical > file sounds better. You know this as well as I do, I would guess.
Well, not to belabor the point either, but of course it does. If one program is a memory player and one is not, it can make all the difference in the world. > I would be pretty surprised if the fragmented file actually sounded > different to you in a blind test if played through a squeezebox, as > well: we're all subject to expectation effects, regardless of our level > of expertise. Played through a usb dac, this seems less unlikely, but I > still wouldn't trust a sighted test much. Not meaning this rudely, but you would probably reject an assertation by someone who told you your conclusions about your system were wrong. Besides which, Most people are quite capable of a objectively deciding what is and is not bull crap. > The idea that lots of other people claim X, so it must have some > plausibility does not wash as a logical argument. People have believed > and continue to believe in all manner of things that are known to be > counter to fact for all of human history. Honestly, considering how > small the audiophile community is, there might be as many people who > claim to have seen UFOs (and if there aren't we can substitute any > absurd commonly held view you desire), but I don't give them a lot of > credence, either. You conflate hearing differences in audio equipment with UFOs? Just to point out how absurd that sounds to me (ymmv), note that people do see UFOs every day. Just because none of them happen to be extraterrestrial spacecraft does not mean they didn't see something, be that a bird, a cloud, a jet, or the planet Venus. And thy saw something real. In the same line of reasoning, people who hear a difference really do hear a difference. Whatever the mundane reason for the difference may be. Now yes, I believe there will be a mundane reason, I don't think cables do a lot of quantum tunneling myself... As for a large number of people, well, where there is smoke, you can bet some form of combustion is happening. The reasons or explanations the give are probably less than accurate, but that something is happening is probably pretty likely. Again, YMMV. !> As to "vampire hunters" "taking the fun out of the hobby". There is > actually another way to view this, which is "bullshit artists, snake > oil salesmen, and cargo cult pseudo-empiricists are taking the fun out > of the hobby". > > If a usb cable sounded better to me _after a blind test_, it wouldn't > rock my boat particularly either. If it sounded better to me in a > sighted test, I would probably say something along the lines of "hmm, > this is probably expectation bias, I guess I should try to set up a > properly controlled test of this, since every 'explanation' I have seen > for why this would work this way has been risible". Why bother? What on earth do you have to prove to anyone other than yourself? And you can already hear a difference, so why not just enjoy the music? Now, that's within reason. If you are like me, you have a dollar limit which means crazy insanely priced anything is off the table. But if you hear a difference between say, a $5 USB cable and a $50 one, then it is probably not worth the bother to blnid test, and I would just buy the $50 one and be happy. > And yes, I am also a good software engineer with a nice position at a > major internet company and a graduate degree from CMU, but > > a. that isn't relevant, and > b. for all anyone here knows, I could really be a janitor at a car > fittings company > > my point here being that any of us talking about our background as > justification for our arguments is completely pointless, unless we > decide to break anonymity, and with all the cranks on the internet, > breaking anonymity may not be in any of our best interests (I'm pretty > sure I'm glad magiccarpetride doesn't know who I actually am, for > instance). To each their own. I personally dislike Internet anonymity -too many people will say anything about anybody or anything if they feel safe behind an anonymous screen name. I try hard to not say anything I would not say face to face. More, because writing lacks the physical clues that tell people what your intention really is. Paul -- paul.raulerson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ paul.raulerson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=50346 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=93549 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
