ajinkya
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2007
- Messages
- 506
- Points
- 43
Murali,
Thanks for the detailed reply. From my perspective, each of your points is made with the same underlying argument: Human emotional or sensory response to a device, event, experience, cannot be measured "scientifically". And my response to that is, currently no, it cannot. But taking that even further, why should a device designer care about this beyond a point?
My statement was not about whether, given that two devices (say amplifiers) measure the same in all relevant parameter spaces, that you prefer one and I prefer another. That is exactly where the "taste" of a person comes in, and everyone has a right to their own taste/choice/preference, based on their mental make-up, culture, experiences, and finances. In no post of mine have I ever said that one should buy a device based on only measurements. And the reasons are something we all know: individual tastes, room acoustics, synergy with the rest of the audio chain, et al.
What I am saying is that audiophiles should climb down from their self-made, exalted perch, and stop thinking that audio devices are the most exquisite, delicate, and resolving things in the world. And that only audiophiles can make out subtle nuances in the output of their engineered device, that no other discipline/area of today's society can.
The biggest indication of that non-scientific, irrational mindset is when we start giving emotional reasons as scientific answers for observed phenomena. It has been shown multiple times that the human sensory system is extremely temperamental, subject to inherent biases, and based strongly on emotion rather than rationality in many cases. That does not give us a valid reason to base every argument on "my senses say so, hence it is true". What is more accurate is: "My senses say so, and hence I prefer it." If one said that, I will have no argument with that statement. What really boggles my mind is the former sentence, along with an assertion "My senses are so sensitive that most equipment cannot measure what I feel". But as an engineer, one doesn't really want to measure what you "feel". One creates devices based on a notion of what is standard and scientific. And the standards come from what is measurable, provable, and repeatable.
And our senses are notorious at deceiving us. We all have seen the visual trickery of making parallel lines seem non-parallel when placed in a certain way: Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Now, if one were to assert: "My eyes tell me these lines are non-parallel. I don't need measurements to assert this. These lines are non-parallel because I see them as such." What would you say to such a person? I would tell them that they are non-scientific, non-rational, and closed. Because they trust their senses more than a geometric proof of the parallelness of lines. If the whole world thought like this, we would have no technological progress, no advancement. Our senses are not our friends when it comes to understanding the physical workings of our world. They are our best friends when it comes to experiencing and living in the world around us, to our emotions, love, empathy. But let's not confuse emotions for rational reasons.
Even if two devices, say cars, are identical in every measurable respect engineering-wise, I will never ask someone to pick one based on a side-by-side comparison with numbers alone. Because how the car looks, feels (to that person), and touches that person on an emotional level cannot (and need not) be measured. However, if that person asserts that one car is lighter than the other, because he can feel the difference when driving both, and if both cars have been weighed accurately and are the same weight, then I will take strong objection to his statement. This analogy can be extended to Rs 1 Lakh cables, Shakti stones, resonance dampers etc. in our audio world as well. I have never seen a Shakti stone being strapped on a car bonnet, for example, to "dampen the vibrations" in the chassis. It is ridiculous and if you attempted it, all your rational friends would laugh at you. However, most people don't frown when these things are proudly displayed perched on top of expensive audio equipment. This is the mindset that I am against when I made the statement about not being tolerant towards people who use what their senses tell them as proof of reality.
As far as the CERN experiment goes, it proves my point even more: Scientists did not blindly trust only the measurements because their training, rational understanding of the derivation of the theory, and experience told them something must be wrong. And they measured not in one or two blind tests, but over 4 years. And now they are willing to ACCEPT an error was made, and RERUN the experiment. This is rationality and scientific honesty. Not emotions.
And this is another thing with audiophile forums in general: People give examples of an extreme nature, going to Quantum mechanics in certain places, to justify the possibility of some small effect being present. As an engineer, one always looks at the global effect of phenomena: "Is it scientifically possible? Maybe. Ok, if so, will it affect my system in a quantifiable, measurable way and impact the end user? No? Then it is not something that I will worry about anymore."
If engineers designed everything using general relativity as the foundation, most devices would be prohibitively costly. Newton's laws work for us, for the time and velocity scales that we deal with. Does the mass of a car in motion change by a tiny fraction at speeds different from zero? Yes. Should we bother about it as engineers? No.
Hope that helps clarify my thoughts.
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