Ableza
Headphoneus Supremus
Great post. One of the goals in holistic science, which is my background, is to ensure the observation is complete and to include as much of the entire system in the observation model as possible before attempting analysis. Also, to realize that with human systems there are almost always cases where causal analysis is impossible, where the mechanisms in the model may not be known, and to use phenomenology to describe those behaviours. One error that many amateur audio "scientists" make is to focus on one effect and then jump to grand universal conclusions after deciding they have found a cause. "I think the sound stage is bigger therefor it is caused by this widget and everyone will agree." They fail to realize that what they observed may be a small part of the system, that it may be perceivable to only them or their small test set under very specific circumstances, that the cause (measured or not) they test may not be the only cause, and that their conclusion should be very narrow and only be applied to their specific test conditions.I couldn't agree more. I also let those cable discussions pass, because participating is pointless. And indeed, I have no reason to visit those "audio science" bois. The problem with "audio science" is this, in my opinion:
REAL science works more or less like this:
1. Scientist makes an observation.
2. Proper measurements are made to clearly describe the observation.
3. Scientist tries to explain the observation in line with current scientific theories.
4. If the explanation is satisfactory, it stops here.
5. If it is not, the scientist looks into better/different types of measurements.
6. If that doesn't explain the observation, the scientist looks into modifying the theory, or to come up with a complete new theory that explains the observation. Obviously, the new theory will only be accepted when it can be supported by experiments.
This is how we went from Newton to Einstein, etc.
So a real scientist is infinitely curious. And he knows very well that being "right" today doesn't mean anything tomorrow. Science evolves. And you can only be successful in this field if you have a truly open mind, if you are open to new observations that challenge trusted theories.
But these audio "science" adepts stop at point 3. And if the explanation is not satisfactory, they don't doubt the measurements. They don't look for better theories. They simply say "your observation is wrong, you can't hear a difference because I can't measure it". That is not real science, it's a farce.
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