poing wrote: > I wouldn't say a subjectivist point of view is necessarily unscientific.
We might be getting into semantics, but I would definitely not call them scientific. > I understand that some of the posters in this thread are engineering > guys. It kind of makes sense that you take a more objectivist position. > In the natural sciences, you sometimes can have relatively tightly > controlled experiments which can be repeated a very large number of > times. > > But when we talk about human perception, I believe it's much harder to > control for every possible effect. You can't get a truly random sample > of test subjects. Perhaps your budget limits you to 30 or 50 probands. > Etc. Indeed. But then we have to look at what we really are testing for. A lot of the beliefs of many of the subjectivist audiophiles are easily proven wrong with repeatable, tightly controlled experiments that don't involve human perception at all. If we show that there is no measurable difference in the actual signal going to the loudspeaker, using measurement methods that are orders of magnitude more discerning than the human ear, I think we are in pretty safe waters. > What I'm trying to say is that I believe most research is subjectivist. > The questions you ask (as well as those you don't ask) alone make it > subjectivist. And I think it's important to acknowledge that. Absolutely. That is why we insist on peer review, replication and verification. "To try to judge the real from the false will always be hard. In this fast-growing art of 'high fidelity' the quackery will bear a solid gilt edge that will fool many people" - Paul W Klipsch, 1953 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Julf's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=42050 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=104227 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
