First of all I think I should put my previous post into context. I am an engineer myself. Although not in this field. My comment on conviction and beleif was based on the knowledge that engineers, like myself, have a tendency to put too much into measurments of single parameters when the whole truth is limitlessly complex. We have no measurement today showing how a stereo component will sound. So listening is still the best way to evalute how a stereo components technology will have an impact on the aural senses.
No disagreement there whatsoever. Many engineers do trust measurements rather than their ears - I just happen not to be one of those. I used to be though. Now I work to devise measurements which confirm what my ears tell me rather than deny what my ears tell me because my measurements indicate otherwise.
What you are saying about bias is obviously true, but how a person relates to the marketing can be something very different than just black or white. It doesn't have to be beleif or disbeleif. After a long life with a lot of components with both just and bullshit marketing many audiophiles have learned that they need to listen to how the component sounds before they make up their minds if they believe the marketing or not.
I don't take the view that beliefs aren't in shades of grey, so thanks for allowing me to clarify this. Beliefs aren't black or white, they come in various strengths. But let's see - not everyone tends to listen to every component, there's going to be some filtering going on based on marketing materials as to whether to spend the time seeking out an audition of a component. So beliefs are definitely in play prior to auditions, not just inside the listening room. We all tend to have reviewers we trust more than other reviewers, associates whose views we give more weight to the opinions of than others.
I believe engineers often put their theoretical knowledge as a filter in front of themselves instead of having an open mind in matters as complex as this. I am not saying that you do any of this, but claiming that sample-rate-conversion and external clocks shouldn't make a soundwise improvement without something else being wrong seems to me to fit into this category. There are too may obeservations showing the contrary.
You have misunderstood me. I did not claim they shouldn't make an improvement to the sound. I said (I believe) I know of no way they can make any improvement to the signal - that is add any information. I admit placebo effects so yes people can and do hear improvements. If you do know a way that upsampling improves the signal then let us all know please.
My comment on the dCS Upsamplers samplerate conversion or any other samplerate conversion is based on experience. I have yet to meet anyone who I have listened with to an upsampled sound who hasn't heard the sonic benefit unless they have not strongly believed it not to work prior to listening.
Thanks for clarifying that.
I have a friend who works in the psycology field and he has tought me that in audiophile community we use the term placebo much too widely.
Did he teach you based on his own authority or did he cite research into how audiophiles typically use the term? If the latter, do you have links?
Place is pr. definition when a prior expectation tricks the mind to experience what you thought you would experience.
This understanding (is it from a dictionary?) is flawed. Placebo is not 'a trick'. And no it doesn't have to rely on conscious thinking either. Placebo is much more subtle in operation than this simplistic 'definition'.
In the audiophile community the placebo argument is also used (especially by engineers) when the aural experience doesn't correlate or can't be measured even if the experience is nowhere near the prior expectation. The first time I heard an external clock connected into a dCS combination where we had played without the clock first, I was (as engineers tend to be) negative. I didn't believe that this could improve the sound since the clock inside the dCS Elgar DAC (used in that experiment) should be good enough. I was however very impressed with how focus, timing and especially imaging improved when the clock was connected.
I don't deny your experience, but now we're talking about an older DAC design and Bruce mentioned very recently that he had heard an older dCS unit improve with an external clock. So given corroboration I wouldn't necessarily place placebo into first position as my hypothesis. I'd say that there's something amiss with the local clock. But this is a tentative conclusion - if there's something I'm missing about clocks, I've not yet seen the explanation for this in dCS marketing materials. If they had a secret sauce, wouldn't they at least give us a taste of it?
So if anyone out there reading this knows of any mechanism whereby an external clock improves the jitter performance of a local clock, I'm all ears.
