TrevC, I'd like to know what grounds you have for thinking that expectation bias is in play here. Do you have any psychological expertise?

There are many cognitive biases, and they're very complex. I speak as someone who has some academic knowledge of this field, built up over twenty years or so. I'd be hesitant to accuse anyone of a cognitive bias without good evidence and a full understanding of the subject.

In my experience, amateur psychologists are usually bad psychologists.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you pay a ridiculous sum of money for something as simple as a mains lead you expect it to be better or you wouldn't have bought it. It wasn't intended as an insult, it applies to everyone.

"Expect, Expect!" (to quote Marvin). As soon as someone expresses an opinion that can't be measured & therefore certified as being THE TRUTH. Someone comes along as says Expectation Bias without any explanation - cool! What name do you put to people's reaction when they expecting to hear a differnce but don't?

that doesn't answer my question. My question wasn't "why is simplicity important?", to which Occam's Razor is a good answer. It was: by virtue of what is your explanation simpler than the alternative explanation?

Matt

When I die I don't want no part of heaven / I would not do heaven’s work well / I pray the devil comes and takes me to stand / In the fiery furnaces of hell

TrevC, I'd like to know what grounds you have for thinking that expectation bias is in play here. Do you have any psychological expertise?

There are many cognitive biases, and they're very complex. I speak as someone who has some academic knowledge of this field, built up over twenty years or so. I'd be hesitant to accuse anyone of a cognitive bias without good evidence and a full understanding of the subject.

In my experience, amateur psychologists are usually bad psychologists.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you pay a ridiculous sum of money for something as simple as a mains lead you expect it to be better or you wouldn't have bought it. It wasn't intended as an insult, it applies to everyone.

"Expect, Expect!" (to quote Marvin). As soon as someone expresses an opinion that can't be measured & therefore certified as being THE TRUTH. Someone comes along as says Expectation Bias without any explanation - cool! What name do you put to people's reaction when they expecting to hear a differnce but don't?

Surely if there's RFI in the mains then it's going to be all the way through the dozens of metres of cheap wires in the walls/under the floors and won't suddenly disappear just because there's one metre of shielded cable on the end.

I've never really seen anyone explain on what basis expensive mains cables are meant to work. Anything bad would surely have got into the earlier part of the chain.

I can only answer anecdotally, the full details are in an earlier post, but in the electrically noisy environment of a hi-fi show the use of an Isotek power conditioner, an early model similar to the EVO3 Aquarius, and a handful of their cables improved the sound of the system significantly.

Maybe it was the isolation provided by the filters in the mains conditioner, I really don't know, but the package as a whole removed a layer of grunge that wrecked the performance of an otherwise very decent system.

I did try and explain this in my earlier post on this incident, but I shall try to elaborate.

At the time I was helping to market a rather nice amp and speaker combination, I was visiting dealers, reviewers and industry insiders and playing it to them a lot, I was getting a really good idea of what it sounded like and what it could do.

It was a fairly modest system that lacked a bit of scale and presence compared to bigger systems at similar cost but the shear musical ability that it could display impressed the hell out of a lot of people, myself included.

I took it to the Penta show that year, set it up in one of the regular rooms and was horrified with the sound I was getting, their was a slightly fuzzy, grainy quality that overlaid everything, making some known fine recordings sound a bit harsh and, frankly, a bit sh*t.

This was the layer of 'grunge' referred too above, it was clearly not a setup/placement issue and the equipment was all nicely warmed up so I spoke to an old friend who was working with Isotek and decided to try the equipment mentioned above.

The result was immediate and, to me, quite clear. The layer of grunge disappeared and the system was back to it's musical best, magic!

FWIW, After the show I did try the Isotek equipment on the system in other environments but results were marginal at best, realistically speaking there was no difference worth bothering with. I gave the Isotek stuff back.

that doesn't answer my question. My question wasn't "why is simplicity important?", to which Occam's Razor is a good answer. It was: by virtue of what is your explanation simpler than the alternative explanation?

Matt

If you are testing for a difference and don't find one the simplest explanation is that there isn't a difference. If you do find a difference then that needs to be explained.

There is a problem with blind testing that I read about on another forum . It is contained in the quote below and makes a lot of sense to me .

I must add these are not my words but a quote from an engineer who is a member of the Audio Engineering Society .

"Blind tests don't work for the simple reason that when you hear system A, your brain remembers details in the music so that you always hear them again even if system B doesn't reproduce it as well. This is a well-known psychological/psychoacoustic affect, at least well-known in the Audio Engineering Society. Those people who rant about ABX testing being the only way haven't got a clue."

Could this be one explanation as to why blind testing rarely seems to deliver any meaningful results that could not have been obtained by chance ?

There's an even simpler explanation for the non-meaningful results you talk about. Maybe there's no meaningful difference between the stuff being tested!

Chris

Chris, why do you think your explanation is simpler? Both explanations involve us positing some form of cognitive bias: whether it's the bias that predisposes people to hear the same thing twice or the bias that predisposes people to hear differences in sighted listening tests. Is one really simpler than the other?

:cheers:

Matt

Occam's razor.

Chris

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." Albert Einstein .

There is a problem with blind testing that I read about on another forum . It is contained in the quote below and makes a lot of sense to me .

I must add these are not my words but a quote from an engineer who is a member of the Audio Engineering Society .

"Blind tests don't work for the simple reason that when you hear system A, your brain remembers details in the music so that you always hear them again even if system B doesn't reproduce it as well. This is a well-known psychological/psychoacoustic affect, at least well-known in the Audio Engineering Society. Those people who rant about ABX testing being the only way haven't got a clue."

Could this be one explanation as to why blind testing rarely seems to deliver any meaningful results that could not have been obtained by chance ?

There's an even simpler explanation for the non-meaningful results you talk about. Maybe there's no meaningful difference between the stuff being tested!

Chris

Chris, why do you think your explanation is simpler? Both explanations involve us positing some form of cognitive bias: whether it's the bias that predisposes people to hear the same thing twice or the bias that predisposes people to hear differences in sighted listening tests. Is one really simpler than the other?

:cheers:

Matt

Occam's razor.

Chris

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." Albert Einstein .

I can understand the logic of how some sort of mains isolation/filtering could be of benefit - I know that people have had problems with things like fridge freezers causing mains noise. What I don't get is how one metre of expensive screened cable is going to make a difference if it's stuck on the end of 10 metres of cheap cable that doesn't have any screening.

I read the Russ Andrews booklet on mains cables and it said the most important consideration is to work backwards from the hi-fi but offered no explanation.

TrevC, I'd like to know what grounds you have for thinking that expectation bias is in play here. Do you have any psychological expertise?

There are many cognitive biases, and they're very complex. I speak as someone who has some academic knowledge of this field, built up over twenty years or so. I'd be hesitant to accuse anyone of a cognitive bias without good evidence and a full understanding of the subject.

In my experience, amateur psychologists are usually bad psychologists.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you pay a ridiculous sum of money for something as simple as a mains lead you expect it to be better or you wouldn't have bought it. It wasn't intended as an insult, it applies to everyone.

"Expect, Expect!" (to quote Marvin). As soon as someone expresses an opinion that can't be measured & therefore certified as being THE TRUTH. Someone comes along as says Expectation Bias without any explanation - cool! What name do you put to people's reaction when they expecting to hear a differnce but don't?