Archimago's Musings: Computer audio mythos? A comment on The Linear Solution's DS-1

[David A]

@David A, your analogy is thought-provoking but flawed: it was an objective, reproducible fact that the Wright brothers' aeroplane flew, whether or not people believed it at the time.  Anyone else could have built a 'plane to the Wright brother's design and made it fly -- I dare say some did.  On the other hand there is no analogous objective content in austinpop's review: if he says "it sounds better" (to him) then no-one can argue with or falsify that statement.  Actually no-one else can reproduce the experiment, because they aren't austinpop.

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In short: I think we're agreeing about this... 

You're right that austinpop is reporting his own experience and others can't hear exactly what he heard, but others can hear what they hear and their observations may support austinpop's experience or not. Other people could have built a working plane but it may not have delivered the same result in terms of flight time and distance as the Wright's plane did, and that's regardless of whether they built it to the same design as the Wright's plane or to a different design. A different plane wouldn't necessarily have reproduced the Wright;s experiment and actually one reason why it wouldn't reproduce the Wright's experiment is because it would have a different pilot with a different weight, affecting flight time and distance, and possibly the different pilot in a different design would have altered the aerodynamics of the plane because of body shape, how they sat/lay in the plane, and how much air resistance they provided. You actually don't need to produce exactly the same result to verify another experiment's result, you just need to produce results consistent with the first experiment. Yes, austinpop's better/worse assessments are subjective and can't be confirmed. 2 different observers can argue about which of 2 devices sounds better while both agree about what the differences are. Replication only has to confirm the existence of the differences, it doesn't have to confirm austinpop's subjective assessment of the differences. 

If your view is that Archimago's post does nothing to confirm or disconfirm austinpop's post, we're in total agreement on that point and if your view is also that austinpop's review contains more supposition than actual observation then we're also in total agreement on that point as well.

In order of value my view is that austinpop's observations are potentially valuable but they need confirmation and they have no value if they can't be confirmed, his suppositions as to cause are less valuable than his observations, and Archimago's attack on those suppositions has less value than the suppositions. At best (the observations of difference are correct) that's a progression from doubtful value to even more doubtful value to no value in my view. At worst (the observations of difference are mistaken) then the observations, suppositions, and the attack on the suppositions all have absolutely no value at all.