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RE: A Serious Proposal

Hi

There seem to be two distinct camps here related to this subject.
You have people who make / market / sell the tweaks in question who benefit financially from them as well as some who have bought / bought into them.
Then you have skeptics who usually don’t have anything to gain financially by from either promoting or “de-bunking’ them, yet seem to take on the task.

What makes it more difficult is the hifi market for trinkets has been taught that the idea of finding out if or how something actually works actually blinds you to the truth.
Not only that, but “truth” is not a Black and White issue.

This is not like trying to get to the reality of a situation as in R&D, as there are people who make money off of the confusion and don’t want reality.

Like I said to Geoff, the ”trinket market” is viable because of several factors.

#1 the workings of room acoustics, loudspeaker drivers and electronic circuitry are generally beyond the grasp of the non-technical user, leaving open the myriad of pseudo science explanations..
This fact combined with a keen interest and subjective nature makes many gullible for the disingenuous to prey on.

#2 That a segment of the hifi manufacturers play on that weakness and some sell products which have little or even no scientific function. These are generally in the “Trinket” category, things the end user can buy and add on without harming the actual operation. If you acknowledge this at all, it is only a matter of where the line is drawn.

#3 That often enough it is well known psychology makes that trinket item work subjectively as a result of having made a mental / financial commitment.

Consider the example I gave in an earlier post, an analogy to avoid the more emotional issue dealing with people that sell this kind of stuff.

Lets say your highly trusted friend told you about some simple process that seemed to work and didn’t cost that much.
He said when he put the “GASomizer” (a powerful magnet) across his gas line and he got 10% better gas mileage, you have no reason not to believe him do you?

The marketing says it works by magnetizing or re-arranging the gasoline atoms bla bla bla for greater efficiency. He shows you the records, sure enough about 10% better mileage, now based on that “science” proof, is it time to get one?

What if your also a chemist and work with hydrocarbon strings daily and can’t think of anything that makes gasoline magnetic or could be effected by a magnetic field. It’s more complicated now, but lets say your still keen to find out after all your friend is totally sure..
Your real keen to find out what reality is and your able to set up and run experiments, you set up the car’s engine with a known load and compare how long a tank of gas runs, how much energy is produced with and without a magnet and after sufficient testing there is no difference. You conclude, the mileage improvement must be due to something other than the selling explanation.
Now you analyze the engine computer in your friend’s car and you discover that after he installed the magnet, having taken an action expected to increase gas mileage, he subconsciously became somewhat less aggressive with his gas pedal. (the actual reason these work)

The two views;
From the subjective only user view, the magnet made a documented difference to the customer and it worked exactly as claimed, it obviously works and a happy camper is made.

In the scientific / objective only view, the magnet can’t effect gasoline from a chemical standpoint, it didn’t make any difference at all in the measured operation of the machine or combustion of the gas, obviously this is a totally different view and is the one I would side with here...

Which view is correct?

Both are, depending if your frame of reference is Subjective of Objective.
Adding the gas magnet did cause a documented improvement in the owners gas mileage no question about it..

Adding the gas magnet had no impact at all on the gasoline, engine or combustion in any way, no question about it. ..
As a marketing or product opportunity, it’s a winner, as an engineering opportunity it’s a dead end. The most important point is one can often devise a test, which shows if something works on the equipment in question OR works because of the effect it has on you.

I’m not trying to squash the mysteries of audio far from it, but as a designer I can only deal with the engineering side, I want to get at reality, only knowledge of that reality lets you design things that work objectively for other people, even strangers that haven’t heard the sales pitch.
Like I said in an earlier post;
“If it's a matter of real money, figure out a way to hear the system switching back and forth from with and without, A -VS- B, and have someone else do the switching so you don't know which is which.
Not knowing in advance removes the "commitment" or knowledge leaving the judgment based on ear detectable sound alone.. Just like a real hearing test or any other scientific sensory test, removing “the prior knowledge” forces one to be honest, to depend on the sensory input alone.
Ask yourself how much sonic difference can there be, when you’re unable to hear any difference using your ears alone in the best conditions ? If you can hear “it” without knowing in advance, there is a difference worth pursuing.

Now, I have no doubt that some can hear a sheet of blue paper sitting on the table, a collection of little marbles or hear the difference when they freeze the bits on a CD or hear the re-arranged atoms after placing the magic phone on a the cd player, but I’ll go out on a limb as say I would be very highly surprised if anyone at all can detect any these things without prior knowledge “or measure any effect at all on the gasoline combustion”.

Now, don’t take this as saying cables don’t make a difference, all amps sound the same, not at all.

I am saying only IF there IS a difference in the actual operation of A vs B, if large enough to actually hear, you will hear it if you compare A to B sufficiently without prior knowledge.
Trinkets generally fall in the inaudible difference category when tested this way so one should ask what the opposition to even the idea of this kind of honest test says.
Who wins and who losses when companies and people judge things based on what they actually can hear or what a product actually does vs what they think?
Does it matter more that the gas magnet caused your gas mileage to improve, or, more important that it actually didn’t improve the combustion efficiency in your engine at all?

Does it matter that products are marketed using a science explanation like “increased combustion efficiency, magnetizing / moving atoms etc” where there is no scientific mechanism at work?
Isn’t doing that an outright lie and in the interest of the field and reality in general, worthy of causal scorn? Thus the only motivation for an engineering type to write a reply.
Best,
Tom



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