schatzy - that's a very good post and yes, it all comes down to personal preferences.
But what should be filtered out is the placebo effect. I'm starting to notice that no one on this forum will admit to being affected by the placebo effect. This can't be possible, that's how our brains fundamentally work - expectations can skew results and reinforce themselves. If you believe something is better, your brain will subconsciously change your perception of it until you actually perceive it is better. And it can be passed on to others too - once omega suggested this to his friends they were looking for a difference and they found it (if you're looking for a difference you'll always find one even if there isn't a difference). Subsequent listening tests reinforced this belief. (This is how Q-Ray bracelets are sold.) omega has also admitted that he finds WAV sounds better than FLAC and that wired sounds better than wireless. Both of these assertions have very weak physical explanations but very strong psychological explanations based on expactation (we expect WAV must be better than FLAC because FLAC is 'compressed' and wired must be better than wireless because it's solid, it's physical, we can touch it and has better bandwidth.) This is not to say that omega is crazy or that he isn't hearing this, he is, but his expectations might be overriding reality. This isn't necessarily negative, we're all individuals and some inherently and subconsciously place more emphasis on expectation. Expectation is so real and some of us can be so dramatically affected by it that seemingly non-sensical devices to improve sound (stones, exotic woods, raising cables off the floor, special lacquers, even foil strips or dots) can really alter the -perceived- sound for certain individuals, and the only physical explanation for it is that it alters their expectations. If it does alter the perceived sound, then it's money well-spent for those people. Who are we to judge? However, if those individuals insisted that others would hear the same effects they would have to prove it in a way that would ensure their expectations aren't skewing the results. The SB designer himself cannot see a physical explanation for what omega is hearing. omega is surely hearing it, and in fact his brain is reinforcing this each time he hears it - the SB will probably never sound quite right to him now. In order to fix it though, Sean Adams must find what is wrong, and he can't find an electronic explanation for it. So it won't/can't be fixed because nothing has been discovered to be inherently wrong with every Squeezebox out there. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof and the burden of proof is on omega. Sean and many people here have an immense interest in making the SB sound as good as it can and if a physical defect were to be be found they would be right on it. But a physical defect hasn't been found yet. I'm pleased and slightly surprised that omega is taking this very well and still being civil, but it's also apparent that omega can't admit that maybe it could be placebo. His problem would be fixed if he could prove that it was not. It's great that he's still interested in proving this, because this is the only way to get others to fix it - to show that his expectations are not influencing his reality and that the problem can be readily and repeatedly perceived by anyone. -- Mark Lanctot 'Sean Adams' Response-O-Matic checklist, patent pending!' (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=200910&postcount=2) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36503 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
