A lot has been said about how placebo effect helps to manufacture differences in our heads based on personal or experiment bias. In contrast, I have not heard much about the reverse effect: the brain erasing differences that may be there.
Let me expand with a few data points:
To get good sleep when I am travelling, I have learned to bring ear plugs with me. That way, the guy who wakes up at 4:00am to catch an early flight and slams his door next to me, doesn't wake me up. When I use my ear plugs, I start to hear my own pulse. At first it is a distraction. But I have learned to focus on it and try to reduce its rate by relaxing. And by doing so, I quickly fall sleep. So clearly, we have control over our body in ways we don't always appreciate.
By the same token, I have been doing a ton of tests both triggered by analysis work we have been doing in the De-Mag thread and at work, trying to optimize and compare audio components. Since many times these tests are sighted, I try to see if I can nullify the effect of placebo by trying to see if I can nullify the difference I hear just like the heart rate exercise.
This is a skill I learned long time ago which I thought I heard differences in files that were identical. The technique takes a bit of work to develop as was the case with lowering my heartbeat. At first your brain tells you that it can't happen but if you believe it, and let it happen, it indeed works.
In every comparison, I am able to reduce the difference I am hearing by forcing myself to think that way. Put another way, if the observation iis at 100, then I am able to push myself -50 points to the low end. And as we know from placebo effect, I can also imagine it to be bigger by probably the same amount.
So the question then becomes, if the brain is just as good at erasing differences as it is to imagine them, would that not distort blind tests? When I hear tiny differences in blind tests, I am always careful to think whether I am imagining it, knowing well that I may be listing to the hidden reference (both samples being the same). What if I am erasing a difference that is really there, by pushing myself to erase the perceived difference?
If true, then our perception has +- variation of X. It then follows that any difference less than X cannot be reliably determined in such a setting where a person is being challenged as I have been. I suspect even average listeners, when told that they may be arriving at wrong results in testing, will at times attempt to moderate the differential they are hearing and hence, fall in the same bucket as me but perhaps with less variation than I can force myself into.
I realize we are not going to prove anything in this discussion. But want to probe deeper into experiences others have and whether this kind of thinking holds water. Asa fun exercise, I suggest you also go and perform the above test. Take a tweak that you have done recently and see if you can imagine it making less difference than you thought and see if you can erase some or all of the advantages you thought it had.
Let me expand with a few data points:
To get good sleep when I am travelling, I have learned to bring ear plugs with me. That way, the guy who wakes up at 4:00am to catch an early flight and slams his door next to me, doesn't wake me up. When I use my ear plugs, I start to hear my own pulse. At first it is a distraction. But I have learned to focus on it and try to reduce its rate by relaxing. And by doing so, I quickly fall sleep. So clearly, we have control over our body in ways we don't always appreciate.
By the same token, I have been doing a ton of tests both triggered by analysis work we have been doing in the De-Mag thread and at work, trying to optimize and compare audio components. Since many times these tests are sighted, I try to see if I can nullify the effect of placebo by trying to see if I can nullify the difference I hear just like the heart rate exercise.
This is a skill I learned long time ago which I thought I heard differences in files that were identical. The technique takes a bit of work to develop as was the case with lowering my heartbeat. At first your brain tells you that it can't happen but if you believe it, and let it happen, it indeed works.
In every comparison, I am able to reduce the difference I am hearing by forcing myself to think that way. Put another way, if the observation iis at 100, then I am able to push myself -50 points to the low end. And as we know from placebo effect, I can also imagine it to be bigger by probably the same amount.
So the question then becomes, if the brain is just as good at erasing differences as it is to imagine them, would that not distort blind tests? When I hear tiny differences in blind tests, I am always careful to think whether I am imagining it, knowing well that I may be listing to the hidden reference (both samples being the same). What if I am erasing a difference that is really there, by pushing myself to erase the perceived difference?
If true, then our perception has +- variation of X. It then follows that any difference less than X cannot be reliably determined in such a setting where a person is being challenged as I have been. I suspect even average listeners, when told that they may be arriving at wrong results in testing, will at times attempt to moderate the differential they are hearing and hence, fall in the same bucket as me but perhaps with less variation than I can force myself into.
I realize we are not going to prove anything in this discussion. But want to probe deeper into experiences others have and whether this kind of thinking holds water. Asa fun exercise, I suggest you also go and perform the above test. Take a tweak that you have done recently and see if you can imagine it making less difference than you thought and see if you can erase some or all of the advantages you thought it had.