I' ve been watching this video, how can it be? Is everything he's saying there a placebo effect? I know for a fact that all AC noise is being filtered out during the process of converting to DC and even before that when using a descent dac or amplifier, what's going on?
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Is Every thing Placebo?
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eddantes
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Lots of talking and hand waving... but a complete lack of data.
If you want to know a thing - measure a thing. And this has been measured soooo many times - that no amount of yapping and handwaving should ever bring it up for ducussion again.
If you want to know a thing - measure a thing. And this has been measured soooo many times - that no amount of yapping and handwaving should ever bring it up for ducussion again.
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Since he isn't using any controls, that's the most likely conclusion.
olieb
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Never underestimate the placebo (or nocebo) effect!
It is the base of many practices and beliefs.
I am going to listen to ‘Placebo’ right now ahh 1996 those were the days.
Keith
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I like the 70's better
eddantes
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A friend in need's a friend indeed
A friend with weed is better
A friend with breasts and all the rest
A friend who's dressed in leather
MMMMM those were the days
I have to laugh at the garden hose-sized power cables, when the wiring up to the wall outlet is ultra mundane Romex. I laugh again even harder when I'm told that it's the last 6 or 8 feet of power cable that matters for sound quality. Hork! About hork: A shout of derision from a grampa bullfrog.
Justdafactsmaam
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A nitpick. It’s not a placebo effect. It’s the result of steered focus and data reduction that happens when we process and set to memory what we hear.
Placebo effects generally disappear when the placebo is revealed. Steered focus and data reduction are part and parcel with human hearing.
It is often referred to as bias effects since focus is often steered by biases. But it happens with or without biases in play.
We simply cannot process everything we hear and we simply cannot accurately remember everything we process. So comparing an aural memory to real time aural stimuli will often lead to the impression that there are differences where none exist.
And this is also why those perceived differences can seem so substantial and not possibly the result of biases or placebos
Placebo effects generally disappear when the placebo is revealed. Steered focus and data reduction are part and parcel with human hearing.
It is often referred to as bias effects since focus is often steered by biases. But it happens with or without biases in play.
We simply cannot process everything we hear and we simply cannot accurately remember everything we process. So comparing an aural memory to real time aural stimuli will often lead to the impression that there are differences where none exist.
And this is also why those perceived differences can seem so substantial and not possibly the result of biases or placebos
I don't like to watch these videos but sometimes I'll have a look at the transcript.
So, when he says he doesn't know how or whether these things actually work, I think that's the most important thing to take away from this video. You can stop there.
Okay, he doesn't know if the product has anything to do with what he's hearing. Unless we have some hard evidence, the only reasonable conclusion is it's all placebo.
Continuing:
The types of changes to the sound he describes, like:
Are the types of changes that mixing engineers will make to a mix in the studio. Making a vocal "more forward and focused" would be a fair thing to ask a mixing engineer to do, and they would probably know what to do based on that feedback. To accomplish that you probably need to make at least 1-2dB changes to overall level or EQ - perhaps a boost to the upper midrange, perhaps changing the wet/dry mix on the reverb, maybe pulling a little upper mids out of the guitars - whatever. The point is, anything that could produce that subjective effect would absolutely be measurable.
All this guy needs to do is take 20 minutes to make recordings with different power cords and put them into Deltawave and we'll easily see the differences he's describing, if they're real. Spoiler alert: they're not real.
Me too. The weight/stiffness of some of those cables is enough to pull a lighter-weight piece of equipment off the rack.
Of course, cable supports will alleviate such a problem!
When it comes to the mains-power side of things, I offer this: when I provide a PA system for a festival, I'll make recommendations about the generators or mains supply to ensure proper system performance. Occasionally, those recommendations are heeded. For context, I'm in the UK, where the mains supply is 240V nominal, the typical mains outlet is 13A-rated, but the fuses in the plugs will allow higher current draw for short times: you can pull 30A for one second!
The PA system includes a digital mixing desk, and 3x Powersoft amplifiers: T604 (biamped mains), T602 (subs), T304 (stage monitors). Plus all the musical-instrument-related gear (amps, pedals, etc). If pushed to their limits, the Powersoft amps will put out 15KW total, for short bursts. Fortunately, live music is peaky and the average mains draw is fairly low.
I've had to run that system on the end of around 150m of extension leads when the supplied generator ran out of oil and seized. To call the mains supply "squishy" would be an understatement. I could watch the mains voltage drop as I pushed the master fader.
Another time, a cheap 3KVA generator was supplied, and that thing had basically zero voltage regulation. The PA system draws relatively little current at idle, but when the kick drum hits, it'll pull a LOT, especially if I bridge the T602 into 4ohm. As a result, for each kick drum hit the mains voltage would drop to around 200V, and then the generator would try to recover. Demand, however, had dropped, so it'd overshoot to 260V. Repeat for every kick drum hit.
The situation improved somewhat when 1KW of filament lights were connected up - at least that way the generator would never drop to somewhere-near-idle.
In the case of the generator, I'm certain there was a lot of noise and other crap on the mains supply. In all cases, the PA system didn't care. No extra noise, no ugliness, no impression there was anything wrong with the mains supply in any way. It just kept on working.
Given all of that, I would suggest that if your audio equipment is in any way upset about having a subpar mains supply, it is broken. The power supply filtering is not doing its job, and it should be returned to the manufacturer for diagnosis.
Chris
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Well said Jusdafactsmaam! I hadn't had an expression for that effect until now, thanks.
It's a coincidence that I have been considering a way for anyone to demonstrate it to themselves. What I came up with is this. Next time you drive your car, pick an ambient sound and purposely listen to it. This could be the tire noise, the engine hum or whine from the transmission. Notice how other sounds are instantly attenuated. This is not actual attenuation but a shift of "steered focus" (excellent!). You can repeat it over and over and really get a feel for how other sounds get pushed into the layer behind the one you're focusing on.
Now imagine you have just bought a $5000 dollar fuse and fitted it to your power amp, obviously you have been discriminating in your choice and read all the marketing BS and reviewer fantasy, so you know what you should be expecting. Veils lifted, silence more black than black, soundstage astoundingly real etc, etc, etc. Your steered focus now perceives these things, just like listening intently to the whine of the transmission! There really is a "difference" in how you are perceiving the sound but it's only real to you.
The experience can be shared though, I remember a YT video posted by someone claiming to be skeptical about the effect of mains cables in a system. The method used to convince him otherwise was a sighted swapping of cables on a friends system. You can imagine the exchange between these individuals after the cable was swapped from an OEM to the silly Audiophool unit. The skeptic would have been primed by the cable owner of what amazing improvements would be heard.
Cable owner: So?
Skeptic: Uhh...
Cable owner: No really, listen...
Skeptic: Yeah... you're right!
The cable owner has simply obliged the skeptic to apply steered focus to the sound. Thus another Audiophool is born!
Evident there he doesn’t understand how bias works.
Keith
Keith
Right! For most of us "Placebo effect" implies a subtle and probably rare phenominon that temporarily distorts reality. In fact it is how we experience reality, how we experience, think, and act all of the time. It is how our brains work when we advance past the newborn stage.
The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality by Andy Clark is an excellent 2023 book that covers the latest science on this. "Reality" as we know it is always a complex synthesis of sensory information and expectation. Our thoughts are not objective evaluations of what we see, hear, taste, and feel, but rather the result of our brains being incredible prediction engines.
Those claiming to be unbiased don't understand how thought works. We are perhaps unbiased when we are 1st born; but it is not an effective way to interact with the world. So, yes, to the OP's question.
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His revenue stream comes from producing video after video, once money becomes involved honesty is out of the window.
Keith
Keith
I work in electronics and use a network analyzer that can see signals in the 10's of nanovolts range. It comes with a bog-standard EIA power cord. So if that can work so well with such a standard cord, why can't a vastly more limited frequency range audio component work with one?
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