One Saturday not long before press time for this issue, I received an email from Technical Editor (and former Editor) John Atkinson with the subject line, "20 Years Ago."
"Just read your May 2005 As We See It for the first time in many years," John wrote. "Great stuff!"
Could 20 years really have passed since I wrote that piece? Back then, I was in a different career, indulging my hi-fi passion by contributing to Stereophile on the side; now I'm in my seventh year as Stereophile editor. Then I was still a youngish dude; now I am an oldish dude. "Time flies" just doesn't capture it.
Some readers will surely remember that long-ago editorial. It was about a product dubbed the Intelligent Chip, a small piece of—well, something—encased in plastic. I wrote, "This small, plastic-encased device is claimed to permanently improve the sound of CDs. Just place the chip atop your CD player, insert a CD, and press Play. 'The sound of the upgraded disc more closely resembles the sound of the original master recording.'"
How was it supposed to work? "Some have implied that it has something to do with quantum dots," I wrote. "Aligning protons has also been mentioned, along with 'artificial atoms' (possibly another reference to quantum dots) and the rearrangement of 'stray bytes'—unruly ones and zeros, presumably—on the typical CD." (footnote 1)
I recounted a story John Atkinson had told in a newsletter. A few years before, he found himself convinced by Enid Lumley's demonstration of the pizza-box tripod tweak—at first. She put said device on top of a CD player. "When she did the test, I did hear the difference," John told me back then. "On my own, no difference, which I ascribed to Enid's powers of persuasion."
Persuasion powers aside, I've had similar experiences—not with pizza-box tripods but with any number of real system changes at home with my hi-fi. Some changes hold up; some disappear. Others remain audible but ultimately don't matter.
Rereading that old column presented me with an obvious question, one I was not eager to grapple with: How have I changed? How have my views changed over 20 years, 6+ spent as Stereophile editor? I've gotten older and grayer, that's for sure. I've lost some lean flesh, but consistent with the gray hair, I feel I've grown wiser.
If the Intelligent Chip reached me today, I would be no less dismissive. The problem is not that it has no apparent mechanism of action; it's that there is no plausible mechanism of action. For such a thing to make sense, we'd need to involve religion, metaphysics, or the paranormal.
As listeners, we're fallible, all of us. We're vulnerable to the power of suggestion. Hearing is not a function of ears alone but of the ears and the brain working together in complex ways. Anything that changes our perceptive state of mind can alter what we hear or how we hear it. All that means we have to be careful.
That's why some audiophiles believe in rigorous scientific testing—ABX, DBT, and all that. I don't blame them. Such tests can provide assurance, a sense of certainty, which is comforting. Some people are more comfortable with uncertainty than others. I remember well the uncomfortable feeling just after I started reviewing for Stereophile of not being sure. I desperately sought an aspect of the sound that I could latch onto, something I could be certain about. I wanted to turn a subjective review into a math problem. That would make me less vulnerable, less exposed under the critical gaze of readers. In time I learned to trust (but verify) my subjective judgments.
A former hi-fi reviewer once told me that the reason he quit was that hi-fi reviewing is too hard. It can be done well, but to do it well requires too much time and too many resources. He had a point—which is not to say that I entirely agree. One approach is to dedicate as much time and as many resources as possible—which is why Stereophile does the most extensive and rigorous reviews in the industry, with weeks and months of listening plus careful measurements. Still, our reviews can't provide the absolute certainty I once craved. The familiar state for Stereophile reviewers is to be confident but not certain. You might say that finding the right balance—rendering meaningful judgments while acknowledging uncertainty—is the essence of what we do.
Scientific certainty is great, but it's expensive, and some problems—such as the ability of a component to provide musical satisfaction—are, if not intractable, then at least poorly suited to a scientific approach. A scientific approach goes against the experiential nature of listening to music for pleasure.
I'm not going to turn this column into a disquisition on scientific testing. That important topic has been treated at length in these pages (footnote 2). Suffice it to say that a scientific approach is essential whenever we can't afford to be wrong, as in medical research—but the effort to eliminate false positives makes a test less sensitive to real effects.
Whenever occasional errors are tolerable, we can make do with less rigorous proof, including the opinions of experienced listeners. I know of few hi-fi companies that use scientific testing routinely in product development; instead, they use trained, experienced listeners and trust their ears. That's what we do, too.
Among my favorite questions to ask reviewers is "Are you sure?" Can they stand behind their observations confidently? Said reviewer may pause, then answer "yes, I'm sure," or go back and do more listening. I trust our reviewers because I know them to be serious people. I know they have good ears, plus integrity. I think you should trust them, too, but you get to decide that.
How have my views changed in the last 20 years? I've become more attuned to, and more interested in, gray areas. More than I was 20 years ago, I'm skeptical of my own theoretical knowledge, hence my ability to determine what theory excludes. An observation that lacks a ready explanation may nevertheless have an explanation, as long as it doesn't violate logic, as long as it remains plausible that an explanation will arise. If we can avoid what philosopher Daniel Dennett has called "greedy reductionism" (footnote 3), a measured skepticism leaves a lot of room for us to play in.
Chips, however, are still for chumps.
Footnote 1: Ken Kessler wrote about the Intelligent Chip in Stereophile's June 2005 eNewsletter. He conducted listening tests where audiophiles could compare copies of a Chesky CD where one had been treated with the Chip and the other left untreated. Hi-Fi News editor Steve Harris identified the treated and untreated copies of the Chesky CD five times out of five. "He didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe it. John Atkinson, Jim Austin, and Sam Tellig certainly won't believe it. But I was there. I witnessed a 100% perfect score," wrote KK. Was this an example of the Pizza Tripod Effect?—John Atkinson
Footnote 2: Also see J. Gordon Holt's 1982 essay on using the ABX comparator for blind tests here.—John Atkinson
Footnote 3: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism.
Footnote 1: Ken Kessler wrote about the Intelligent Chip in Stereophile's June 2005 eNewsletter. He conducted listening tests where audiophiles could compare copies of a Chesky CD where one had been treated with the Chip and the other left untreated. Hi-Fi News editor Steve Harris identified the treated and untreated copies of the Chesky CD five times out of five. "He didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe it. John Atkinson, Jim Austin, and Sam Tellig certainly won't believe it. But I was there. I witnessed a 100% perfect score," wrote KK. Was this an example of the Pizza Tripod Effect?—John Atkinson
