Which company has the silliest products, Machina Dynamica or Synergistic Research?

Nutty! Classified! Coo-coo clocks are Verboten!

With garden gravel wrapped in tin foil

It gets thrown around when people make claims when they’ve made absolutely no effort to avoid bias and perceptual error.

We’re having this discussion because you keep grasping at straws in a vain attempt at validating your misconceptions. If you were a little less Dunning Kruger, there wouldn’t be a discussion at all.

Does it involve putting gravel in a dongle plug?

Your reputation precedes you! We have grudging admiration for unabashed snake oil and shameless hoodoo!

If you're looking for a wide selection, Amazon has the most titles.

Ha Ha! Mr Brilliant Pebbles!!!

What controls did you apply to your test to avoid bias and perceptual error? A professional would know that line level matched, blind, direct A/B switched comparison with multiple trials averaged is the best way to avoid error. Is that what you did? I’m interested in how you conducted your test.

That is a classic description of the placebo effect. Nothing specific, all judgements made on impressions and feelings.

Bedroom systems definitely need to be compact and simple.

It’s like a dog fetching a stick. You casually refer to something as an aside or joke and the conversation goes running off after it. I guess it at least shows that people are sort of listening.

Update: I’m getting more of the rear channel effect now. I moved my chair forward about 10 inches to line up with a table, and it started working better. Off axis listening with my 5.1 system still maintains directionality, but with the sound bounced off the ceiling and walls with my sound bar...

People don’t talk about home audio much around here.

I think you believe many things that aren’t real.

Wake me up when we start talking about home audio again.

Is there a point to this?

It seems to me that if a frequency makes you smarter, we should set up loudspeakers near polling stations on Election Day.

Is that just a guess or is there evidence that your brain functions better with a particular frequency? It sounds like you’re making it up though.

No one has said that any tool is perfect. It’s just a lot better than the alternative. Blind test, or your impression doesn’t count.

Everyone experiences bias and placebo. Even scientists. That’s why you apply controls to your comparison to minimize their effect. If you don’t apply controls, you don’t know for sure whether you are correctly judging. If you argue against those controls, it’s more than just not knowing. You...

Yeah... it's more than knowing though. It's being able to *do* good enough that someone is willing to pay you for it.

Try “knowing enough” in art! That isn’t easy either.

The way to objectively measure our perception is by applying controls to the comparison to minimize bias and perceptual error. And the best tool to do that with is the level matched, direct switched blind test with multiple trials averaged. If you don’t do that, you are very likely completely wrong.