Paper in oil caps

[davent]

You'll need something bigger then an "A" for a few of these PIO's. http://www.partsconnexion.com/DUELUND-74523.html

And maybe a mortgage.

I'm sure it can be arranged but you need to move fast as they show only ten in stock! Other mojorific values available.

[musiclikscreams]

Wow this got a lot more attention that I realized. I got a bunch of components off eBay and once they get here Ill let you know how it turns out

[Thecomedian]

If we suppose that he is personally crusading against the idea of caps making a sonic difference, because he cannot hear difference himself, we could conclude that he is tone deaf and committing an argument from incredulity.

That's not what 'tone deaf' means. This part of your argument would be classified as an appeal to ridicule.

there is evidence that cap material and even the voltage rating has an effect on the way it modifies the signal.

Empirical signal analysis tests are not very convincing to me.  The question isn't whether differences exist, it's whether they are audible.  The only way to examine this is tightly controlled double-blind listening tests.  If you can find someone who can consistently tell which cap is which in such tests, you prove your academic point that the differences are, in principle, detectable.

Then you move on to the real-world scenario: are the differences audible in a musical context?  Another set of double-blind listening/playing tests.  

How many caps in the signal chain does it take to tell the difference?  More tests. If you test enough people and enough scenarios, you'll end up with a distribution of cap detection abilities of the given population. People on the upper end of the spectrum (assuming anyone passes the tests) get to spend more money on components.

I suspect that the differences, if they exist, are so small that they are overwhelmed in influence by the rest of the signal chain/air temperature/humidity/etc, and that the first experiment will make the rest unnecessary.  But I haven't actually done the controlled experiments, so I could be wrong.

The likelihood that anyone in the audience cares is certainly much lower.  Whether or not that's important is more of a personal thing.

Uh, pretty sure "tone deaf" would mean he wouldn't be able to consciously recognize sonic differences. You'd be surprised how far a person can "fine tune" their brain to hear the most subtle differences. That's why they tell you to expose your baby to music and words from an early age, because it develops those processes that are important in understanding things which rely on "air vibrations". Pretty clear.

Additionally, you're arguing for his own tired point. Go ahead and check out the simple test in the members only page of a contest on hearing the difference between a klon pedal and some other pedal. Someone in there got the pedals 100% correct, someone else got them 100% accurately tracked, but inverted their choice of which were the klons and which were the other pedal. Both indicate that people CAN actually hear such subtle differences.

It is my personal experience, that most music was mostly listening to the melody section of music, and the notes and subtleties coming from the harmony and rhythm sections were not recognizable consciously to myself, until I actually spent time practicing "listening" to pick out the individual instruments.

Tone deaf people can't be taken seriously when they ignore logic. Can you hear bats squeaking outside your window at night using their echolocation? I can. Maybe if you say you can't bats are clearly "mojo" devices and anyone who believes they can hear something you can't is an alien abductee or something, because they must be the crazy one, not you.

[induction]

Tone deaf means 'unable to recognize differences in musical pitch.' Not relevant here.

As for Joe Gore's experiment, the fact that people can recognize the difference between two different pedals in no way indicates that anyone can hear the difference between different types of the same value of capacitor.

Again, I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that it hasn't been demonstrated, and I'm skeptical. You'd be surprised how far a person can "fine tune" their brain to hear the most subtle differences that aren't actually there, if they expect those differences to exist. Lot's of people on this forum and others can transcribe music just by listening to it, and can very easily separate all of the instruments, but can't hear the difference between different types of the same value of capacitors.

[mistahead]

Tone deaf means 'unable to recognize differences in musical pitch.' Not relevant here.

As for Joe Gore's experiment, the fact that people can recognize the difference between two different pedals in no way indicates that anyone can hear the difference between different types of the same value of capacitor.

Again, I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that it hasn't been demonstrated, and I'm skeptical. You'd be surprised how far a person can "fine tune" their brain to hear the most subtle differences that aren't actually there, if they expect those differences to exist. Lot's of people on this forum and others can transcribe music just by listening to it, and can very easily separate all of the instruments, but can't hear the difference between different types of the same value of capacitors.

Gotta step into it a little methinks...

Can you accept that in applications PIO will operate or function differently to another type of cap? (There is plenty of solid data from enthus's and manufacturer's to support that this is the case.)

Can you accept that in small audio circuits there are too few parts (and too little "active" band) for a "faulty" part to hide? (Subjective - needs to be answered to bother with discussion at all.)

There is logic behind... well logic - take away enough of the good sense and you end up with a bunch of subjective crap - we know the operation of the parts is different, we know that circuits we use can be "coloured" by parts in key positions, so pure logic tells us we could be in that range where the parts are affecting "tone" audibly...

Wait... Are you suggesting that the conversation is reaching a point where people are saying if I threw a "black box" TS clone to a "trained listener" they could tell me by listening to it (isolated into their rig) which MATERIALS C1-CX were made from? I think one of us is taking the wrong amount away here... not EXACTLY the right amount out of the same words.

Edit: missed a key word, cleaned up the formatting.

[induction]

Gotta step into it a little methinks...

Can you accept that in applications PIO will operate or function differently to another type of cap? (There is plenty of solid data from enthus's and manufacturer's to support that this is the case.)

I do not accept that the method of their operation is fundamentally different.  They do roughly the same thing (store charge separation in two conductors separated by an insulator) with different materials. I do accept that the different materials may have different response functions that are measurable by an oscilloscope. In all cases that I've seen, these differences were detected in connection with voltages, frequencies, and/or intensities that made them irrelevant to stompbox operation. I accept that they could, in principle, be detected by ear. I am skeptical that they are detectable by ear.

Can you accept that in small audio circuits there are too few parts (and too little "active" band) for a "faulty" part to hide? (Subjective - needs to be answered to bother with discussion at all.)

Yes. We are not talking about faulty parts. We are talking about different types of caps with the same value.

There is logic behind... well logic - take away enough of the good sense and you end up with a bunch of subjective crap - we know the operation of the parts is different, we know that circuits we use can be "coloured" by parts in key positions, so pure logic tells us we could be in that range where the parts are affecting "tone" audibly...

We know that circuits can be colored by different values in key positions. Whether 9V circuits can be audibly colored by using the same value but different materials is the claim that I am skeptical about. Pure logic does not tell us that differences between caps seen in an oscilloscope that fall outside of the range of operation of the part and circuit in question can cause an audible difference in a pedal.

Wait... Are you suggesting that the conversation is reaching a point where people are saying if I threw a "black box" TS clone to a "trained listener" they could tell me by listening to it (isolated into their rig) which MATERIALS C1-CX were made from? I think one of us is taking the wrong amount away here... not EXACTLY the right amount out of the same words.

I am not suggesting any such thing. I'm not sure what you're talking about here.

I'll say it again because I believe I've been misinterpreted: I am not claiming that it is categorically impossible for people to hear differences between different types of caps with identical values in certain circuits. I am saying that I have seen no evidence for this except for self-reports under uncontrolled circumstances, so I am skeptical. The only way this can be demonstrated conclusively is tightly controlled, double-blind listening/playing tests.

Insults ("tone deaf", "tired point", "neurological disorders or brain damage, or lack of training and fine tuning") are not logic, and are not persuasive.

Analogies ('I can hear bats' (so can I), 'I can hear instruments even when they aren't playing a melody', 'some people can tell the difference between a Klon and a tubescreamer') are not persuasive.

Straw men ("anyone who believes they can hear something you can't is an alien abductee or something, because they must be the crazy one, not you",  "Anyone who hears differences in sound is obviously delusional") are not persuasive.

Controlled, double-blind tests are persuasive.

[midwayfair]

Additionally, you're arguing for his own tired point. Go ahead and check out the simple test in the members only page of a contest on hearing the difference between a klon pedal and some other pedal. Someone in there got the pedals 100% correct, someone else got them 100% accurately tracked, but inverted their choice of which were the klons and which were the other pedal. Both indicate that people CAN actually hear such subtle differences.

While I don't have the data or the inclination to jump in on the cap side of this argument, I do need to point out that an isolated case of a single individual getting the answers to Joe's quiz correct is a poor choice to support your argument. This is not useful data because we can't rule out chance. You would need to test the same individual multiple times in a double blind test with multiple types of sound differences and against a control population. In a nutshell, this is the same issue with anecdotal evidence (minus the additional possibility of anecdotal evidence just being made up).

We do have overwhelming evidence that different people can hear different frequency spectra, because things like hearing loss exist. That's really it.

But here's the real barrier to testing "golden ears." You need to know a huge amount of data on the person before you can begin to test them at all: What's their total range of frequency? What role does experience and ear training play in their ability to perceive differences? What role does chance play? Are they experiencing any ear fatigue during the test? Are their sinuses acting up that day? Is psychoacoustics playing a role in their answers? How many times do you need to test them to get a baseline? How many times do you need to test a control group to get a baseline? It becomes very much like measuring pain. At some point you simply have to resign yourself to self-reporting on a purely subjective scale with few useful reference points.

[induction]

But here's the real barrier to testing "golden ears." You need to know a huge amount of data on the person before you can begin to test them at all: What's their total range of frequency? What role does experience and ear training play in their ability to perceive differences? What role does chance play? Are they experiencing any ear fatigue during the test? Are their sinuses acting up that day? Is psychoacoustics playing a role in their answers? How many times do you need to test them to get a baseline? How many times do you need to test a control group to get a baseline? It becomes very much like measuring pain. At some point you simply have to resign yourself to self-reporting on a purely subjective scale with few useful reference points.

If the goal of the test is to demonstrate whether it is possible for someone to hear the difference, then you don't need to know all of this to get a positive result.  If any test subject can consistently identify the difference, the point has been made (assuming proper controls on the setup of the test and proper statistical analysis of the result).  If no one ever passes the test, it still won't be proven that it is impossible, but after enough test without a positive result you can generalize to 'even if the effect exists, it's too small to matter in any practical situation', and none of the above questions matter. If, on the other hand, you get even a few positive results, you can start to make rough estimates of the number of people in a population who can detect the difference. Then you can start to modify the tests to start examining your questions, and dig deeper into the details, if you were interested.

I'd settle for a single positive result.

[artifus]

here is a guitar solo as played by mr. jimi hendrix:

*use your imagination*

here is a guitar solo as played by mr. jimmy page:

*use your imagination*

compare and contrast

*use your imagination*

[mistahead]

Gotta step into it a little methinks...

Can you accept that in applications PIO will operate or function differently to another type of cap? (There is plenty of solid data from enthus's and manufacturer's to support that this is the case.)

I do not accept that the method of their operation is fundamentally different.  They do roughly the same thing (store charge separation in two conductors separated by an insulator) with different materials. I do accept that the different materials may have different response functions that are measurable by an oscilloscope. In all cases that I've seen, these differences were detected in connection with voltages, frequencies, and/or intensities that made them irrelevant to stompbox operation. I accept that they could, in principle, be detected by ear. I am skeptical that they are detectable by ear.

Can you accept that in small audio circuits there are too few parts (and too little "active" band) for a "faulty" part to hide? (Subjective - needs to be answered to bother with discussion at all.)

Yes. We are not talking about faulty parts. We are talking about different types of caps with the same value.

There is logic behind... well logic - take away enough of the good sense and you end up with a bunch of subjective crap - we know the operation of the parts is different, we know that circuits we use can be "coloured" by parts in key positions, so pure logic tells us we could be in that range where the parts are affecting "tone" audibly...

We know that circuits can be colored by different values in key positions. Whether 9V circuits can be audibly colored by using the same value but different materials is the claim that I am skeptical about. Pure logic does not tell us that differences between caps seen in an oscilloscope that fall outside of the range of operation of the part and circuit in question can cause an audible difference in a pedal.

Wait... Are you suggesting that the conversation is reaching a point where people are saying if I threw a "black box" TS clone to a "trained listener" they could tell me by listening to it (isolated into their rig) which MATERIALS C1-CX were made from? I think one of us is taking the wrong amount away here... not EXACTLY the right amount out of the same words.

I am not suggesting any such thing. I'm not sure what you're talking about here.

I'll say it again because I believe I've been misinterpreted: I am not claiming that it is categorically impossible for people to hear differences between different types of caps with identical values in certain circuits. I am saying that I have seen no evidence for this except for self-reports under uncontrolled circumstances, so I am skeptical. The only way this can be demonstrated conclusively is tightly controlled, double-blind listening/playing tests.

Insults ("tone deaf", "tired point", "neurological disorders or brain damage, or lack of training and fine tuning") are not logic, and are not persuasive.

Analogies ('I can hear bats' (so can I), 'I can hear instruments even when they aren't playing a melody', 'some people can tell the difference between a Klon and a tubescreamer') are not persuasive.

Straw men ("anyone who believes they can hear something you can't is an alien abductee or something, because they must be the crazy one, not you",  "Anyone who hears differences in sound is obviously delusional") are not persuasive.

Controlled, double-blind tests are persuasive.

Just read through the above, I appreciate the tutorial in discussion at the end (makes me sure I'm speaking with someone who knows "The Rules" of discussion - game on), and the clarification of your point just prior to that - it seemed off however I was, resulted in an apparent strawman - sorry about that.  Additionally love the word "skeptical" up there and the good semantics being played, dubious outcomes will result... anyway back at the plot.

Regardless of what TYPE of component we are referring to. We can in fact shake out a couple of key points, by stepping through it.

1. Despite manufacturers statements, 'scopes, and other (generally accepted as reliable sources) stating that component behaviour could be (or is) different due to the way it operates you are "skeptical" that it could have an impact on the output sound of a circuit.

2. We can accept key components qualities (such as 'raw' component values) can influence the output sound of a circuit if used in key positions of many circuits, in fact we measure the "secondary" traits to select components for some applications (eg. leakage)

3. Controlled double blind tests are SUBJECTIVE and not persuasive - physics, maths and logic do not lie.

Without going all "MOJO PARTS MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE" on you, I don't value that sh*t either, I am happy to accept that the way a component is made an functions, can in fact impact on its operation when compared to another similar component that is made and functions differently. If this operational difference occurs in an portion of a circuit that has influence on the output sound of a circuit, and in a portion of the signal that is audible at output, why would it NOT impact on the sound?

Actually - just went back and re-read your post, don't bother responding to the above, semantics games are all we are going to get here. Kthxbai.

[Thecomedian]

Additionally, you're arguing for his own tired point. Go ahead and check out the simple test in the members only page of a contest on hearing the difference between a klon pedal and some other pedal. Someone in there got the pedals 100% correct, someone else got them 100% accurately tracked, but inverted their choice of which were the klons and which were the other pedal. Both indicate that people CAN actually hear such subtle differences.

While I don't have the data or the inclination to jump in on the cap side of this argument, I do need to point out that an isolated case of a single individual getting the answers to Joe's quiz correct is a poor choice to support your argument. This is not useful data because we can't rule out chance. You would need to test the same individual multiple times in a double blind test with multiple types of sound differences and against a control population. In a nutshell, this is the same issue with anecdotal evidence (minus the additional possibility of anecdotal evidence just being made up).

We do have overwhelming evidence that different people can hear different frequency spectra, because things like hearing loss exist. That's really it.

But here's the real barrier to testing "golden ears." You need to know a huge amount of data on the person before you can begin to test them at all: What's their total range of frequency? What role does experience and ear training play in their ability to perceive differences? What role does chance play? Are they experiencing any ear fatigue during the test? Are their sinuses acting up that day? Is psychoacoustics playing a role in their answers? How many times do you need to test them to get a baseline? How many times do you need to test a control group to get a baseline? It becomes very much like measuring pain. At some point you simply have to resign yourself to self-reporting on a purely subjective scale with few useful reference points.

I agree about "small sample sizes", however, the point was that it's extremely telling that one person got the answers PERFECTLY 100% backwards, indicating that they could differentiate between the two, although they didn't know which was which. I could definitely tell one version was more "mid/low-mid".

Tone deaf means 'unable to recognize differences in musical pitch.' Not relevant here.

As for Joe Gore's experiment, the fact that people can recognize the difference between two different pedals in no way indicates that anyone can hear the difference between different types of the same value of capacitor.

Again, I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that it hasn't been demonstrated, and I'm skeptical. You'd be surprised how far a person can "fine tune" their brain to hear the most subtle differences that aren't actually there, if they expect those differences to exist. Lot's of people on this forum and others can transcribe music just by listening to it, and can very easily separate all of the instruments, but can't hear the difference between different types of the same value of capacitors.

While it's true people can be subject to priming and even auditory hallucinations, I tend to trust my ears when it comes to listening and picking out sounds which are clearly there. I can turn my head and hear the buzzing and high pitched whine that comes out of my LCD tv, provided the rest of the environment is quiet enough. You'd be surprised how annoying a laptop's AC adapter can be at night, when it's in sleep mode. It sets the block into a pulsing mode, so you can hear whenever it switches on and off, and I can verify that it was indeed coming from that block because at the same time it pulses, the LED/power indicator turns green and then turns off again. I remember the first time I heard it and had to dig around trying to figure out wtf was making that annoying noise. Now I just unplug my lappy before I sleep.


The point of the story is that under proper or improper settings, subtle differences can be masked or exaggerated, which definitely would account for some people not considering "different parts of the same farad values make a sonic difference".

As for tone deafness and it's relevance to the conversation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deafness

The ability to hear and reproduce relative pitch, as with other musical abilities, is present in all societies and in most humans. The hearing impairment appears to be genetically influenced, though it can also result from brain damage. Someone who is unable to reproduce pitches because of a lack of musical training would not be considered tone deaf in a medical sense. Tone deafness affects the ability to hear relative pitch changes produced by a musical instrument.

Suppose a cap DID affect a suble tonal difference? A medically tone deaf person, the same as a non-musically trained person, would both be unable to hear that.

A medically tone deaf person, even with medical training, would still be unable to hear subtle tonal differences.

let me ask you a simple question. Do you believe the mid/bass/treble boost/cuts implanted in a guitar actually make a tonal difference when playing with them? Or what about the pickup selection/blend?

When I first started playing I couldn't really hear any difference at all. I learned to hear the difference by messing around with it forever, and eventually fine tuning myself. Other non-trained people often say the same thing on youtube videos: They don't hear any perceptual difference between selecting neck or bridge pickup in a video. if we really want to get nuts with this conversation, we can say that since those people cant tell the difference, then even IF there is scope/oscillator/output evidence that there ARE changes to the signal, all of that data is meaningless, because it could all just be perception. This is the same logic as people who claim that, despite scope differences and clear variations with the same values of farad caps, there "isnt a statistically valid study to prove the "mojo parts" actually impart a sonic difference".

Maybe all the people who believe they hear a tonal difference when picking 100% neck or 100% body pickup are really all victim to a mass delusion, just like those people who hear sonic differences between caps of different manufacture/material/internal design, but same farad. I mean, both the cap differences and the tone knobs DO produce variations in the signal's output on scopes, but we could all just be "expecting" to hear that difference, and deluding ourselves into perceiving it even though it's not there, right?

I'm suggesting that this entire discussion is silly, because measuring instruments don't lie, but people are too individual to agree on something as "subjective" as audio sounds. Some people love the sound of one fuzz face over another. some people hate the fuzz face but love overdrive. Some people love dubstep and some people think it sounds awful. Isn't it possible that people crusading against "mojo parts" may not have the "ear"/dislike the tonal quality, and so deny any tonal variation exists?


Tone deafness can still be relevant to this discussion, btw.

http://jakemandell.com/tonedeaf/

In our research, we were looking for neuro-anatomical correlates of tonedeafness (called "congenital amusia" in the scientific literature. The test you are about to take was used as a screening test to roughly characterize a patient's pitch discrimination and musical memory abilities. Even though musical memory is strongly tested here, we have found that people who are tonedeaf tend to have normal musical memories.

That could be important for discerning subtle qualitative differences caps make.

There's a rule that if the cap is in the AC signal traffic, it's important, but anywhere else, such as DC only, it doesn't matter what it is, almost. We even put a 100uf and .01 uf caps on the DC power bus, because the different size of the farad (and material) will help cover the high and low frequencies of power introduced hum and interference into the AC signal.

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/jan/tonedeaf/020116.tonedeaf.html

   Monica is a perfectly healthy middle-aged woman. She's normal in every way -- except that she's tone deaf. And as NPR's Joe Palca reports for All Things Considered, she's helping Canadian researchers discover why it is that some people can't carry a tune to save their life. They say genes might be the answer.

At Peretz's lab in the University of Montreal, testing showed that Monica was off the bottom of the scale in her ability to recognize melodies. Peretz then tested Monica's ability to hear changes in pitch. She played her several sequences of five tones, with the fourth tone in each either rising or falling in pitch. In one of the sequences Monica listened to, most people -- even babies -- could detect the change, says Peretz. Monica couldn't.

Monica could detect some dramatic shifts, but sometimes even those weren't enough. And for some reason, she couldn't identify tone differences that were lower than the surrounding tones. 

Consider the following in light of the previous quote: There is very rarely any "black and white" "on or off" behavior in brains. THere are "degrees of expression". Some people may be "partially tone deaf", such as not having the ability to recognize tonal shifts if the surrounding tones are dB louder, as in the case of Monica. However, they may be able to recognize subtle shifts, even when mixed with other tones, if that tone is of equal or greater strength.

this starts to sound reasonably close to the concept that some people can record the frequency differences of caps of different design and identical farad, and other people can claim that the repeated differences could be due to "playing style" and "less rigorous scientific method", simply because they fail to hear the difference, and are convinced such difference can't exist.

If you'd asked me 1 year ago if such difference were possible, I would also have said no. I've seen discovered I can discern the difference between all neck or all bridge pickup selection, however, so I can't believe that the answer of different caps of identical farads causing tonal differences will be a definitive no.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823214755.htm

In a study comparing amusics to people with normal musical ability, researchers used a brain imaging and statistical technique to measure the density of the white matter (which consists of connecting nerve fibers) between the right frontal lobe, where higher thinking occurs, and the right temporal lobes, where basic processing of sound occurs. The white matter of the amusics was thinner, which suggests a weaker connection. Moreover, the worse the tone deafness, the thinner the white matter.

Well, I guessed at the possibility of "tone deafness" being a continuum, and apparently the density of white matter correlates to "how tone deaf someone is".

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/tone-deafness-a-broken-brain/275470/

It's been difficult for researchers to get over the idea that, with enough exposure to music, people born with amusia might somehow learn to listen. But even as music has become even more pervasive (think iPods), the condition persists. Last year, Peretz and her team looked into the potential to train young people with amusia, who they reasoned might have enough brain plasticity to be somewhat remediated. They gave 14 amusic 10- to 13-year-olds their basic test for music-hearing ability, then sent them home with MP3 players loaded with popular music (200 songs they found on the Internet, such as "No One" by Alicia Keys), which they were instructed to listen to for 30 minutes a day. Four weeks later, they were retested.

The kids tried. They ended up listening to their MP3 players for closer to 45 minutes a day. But at the end of the month, not only did they fail to improve on the tests, how poorly they scored correlated with how much music they reported listening to.

A new study published in the journal Brain takes it back a step by trying to figure out exactly where the brains of people with amusia go wrong. While subjecting participants to  a basic melody-recognition test, researchers in Lyon, France studied their brain activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanners. They found that amusic people's difficulties on the test stemmed from delayed or otherwise impaired functioning of two areas of the brain, the frontal and auditory cortexes, during the early encoding of melodic information. What's more, the researchers detected physical abnormalities in those brain areas. For example, they had more grey matter and less white matter than is usual in the frontal cortex. This "convergence of functional and structural brain differences" appears to explain people with congential amusia's inability to both process pitch and retain short-term memory of melodies.

There's at least enough science out there to conclude that it's very likely that "the golden ear" is a real thing.

[gritz]

"These capacitors are so special that only the most musical of listeners will be able to fully appreciate the richness of their sound, the tight bass, sparkling treble and clean transient response. Special offer, only $20 each while stocks last."

Would anyone admit (even to themselves) to having a tin ear after blowing a bunch of money on esoteric hardware? Or perhaps what the super-sensitive listener might be detecting is not "perfect" reproduction, but a flaw (albeit a not-unpleasant one)? Why else would so many audiophiles like valve amps?

Arguing about this kind of stuff is like discussing religion - everybody has their beliefs and they care not a jot for the opposing point of view. A lot of what is presented as "fact" (on both sides) is offered by people with a vested interest, or is harvested by way of confirmation bias. Let people make up their own minds (just so long as they don't drone on endlessly about it).

I guess what irks the "non believers" is that an awful lot of obvious BS is put out there by people who are either trying to sell something, or to appear smart / superior, or who wish to otherwise exploit the naivete of others. Of course there are also evangelists who actually believe what they are spouting, but that doesn't automatically make it true.

Suggestion for newbies: Focus your efforts on the nuts and bolts, like Ohm's law. Invest in the most blameless components, tools and test gear that you can reasonably afford - and be prepared to do plenty of research. Keep an open mind, but remember that there will be people who will try to pull the wool over your eyes, or who will accidently mislead you. It's a long road, but try to get the basics down. There will be plenty of time for the "paranormal" stuff later and you'll be in a better position to understand it, or at least to ask the right questions.

Magic is just science that we don't understand yet.

[Thecomedian]

While that's true, the opposite effect must also be avoided, yes? The non believers professing their faith just as wildly, and with just as little (or LESS) evidence. I'm all against either side snake-oiling the masses.

We actually have some scientific backing to explain why the very subtle tonal shifts caused by different types of capacitors might actually be audible, after all, don't we unanimously agree that ceramic caps don't sound as good "in the signal path" as other types of caps like film? Clearly, there are differences that can not only be measured but heard, when dealing with a two caps of mfd value and of different material, or even just different mfg method with a same material, such as a multilayer vs a single layer, etc.

I think one of the reasons people assume it wouldn't make a difference may not only relate to their own inability to perceive it (just as someone with a tin ear may not want to admit they cant hear a difference in their prized buy item, so, too, will the tin ears who do not use the "mojo" parts will refuse to acknowledge they may have been doing it wrong as well) is that these devices are also so physically small, which trips them up. If we were talking about the bore size of an 8 cylinder car, a few mm makes a noticeable difference, yet in contrast to the actual size of the engine, this difference is extremely miniscule (and remember, we're amplifying the most subtle differences into big noises!).

Taking the same thing down to the scale of capacitors, why should we not hear a difference? And then again, we have not only repeated tests performed by multiple independent people at different times, we also have hysteresis charts, scientific study on the white matter in the brain that can determine our "auditory acuity", and so on, while the nay-sayers have... what? A gut feeling? A claim that they don't hear a difference themselves, and there has been no rigorous testing to prove without a shadow of a doubt that such differences are audible to people? Where's their logic or scientific or even amateur evidence to support their claims? Smoke. Vanished.

Furthermore, while at the same time claiming that a much more controlled test needs to be done, the nay-sayers have gone to great lengths to avoid performing these tests themselves and providing the double blind study in a youtube or vocaroo clip that once and for all could put the matter to rest, by drawing up huge sample sizes and comparing them to statistical probabilities.

It would be advisable that mojo parts are "the last thing" you get, comparable to buying a BMW shift knob for a volkswagon bug. It's not going to add much to that car as it would to a legitimate BMW. it may be a poor analogy, but I'm running out of F's to give for the moment, like a honey badger.

I've thought of a test, now.

Find two identical mojo and non-mojo parts, as per MFD, but not as per mfg or possibly even not as same material. The capacitances are identical. Insert a switch into the guitar to select for treble bleed of either one or the other. Turn the guitar as low as possible in volume, and turn any intermediary pedals, the gain, and the volume of the amp up to 10. Record that. See if there's a noticeable audible difference, and get some scope data on it. To strum the guitar strings and eliminate "user inaccuracy/not playing right in both tests", get one of those auto-strummer motors that someone posted on these forums before, so that the motor provides a consistent test behavior.

If we can scope out measurements of different frequency responses, like the guy micing his amp and graphically representing the outputs over the frequency ranges, and if we can or can NOT hear a difference before and after pulling back the curtain on the wizard a la the graphic charts in side by side comparisons, then we should be able to consider the matter settled once and for all.

All that has to be done is put the test parts at the quietest part possible in the signal chain (low volume guitar), and amplify it over and over with a number of units, to be sure that any differences are clearly audible to even the person with the most Tinny of ears.

That's my proposal if one of you debunkers would like to get working on it.

[FiveseveN]

while the nay-sayers have... what?

I'll tell you what they don't have: the burden of proof.

[midwayfair]

I agree about "small sample sizes", however, the point was that it's extremely telling that one person got the answers PERFECTLY 100% backwards, indicating that they could differentiate between the two

No, you still can't make that determination. It's not necessarily an unreasonable assumption, but it still can't rise above assumption with the data available. You have no baseline or comparative tests to determine that they were able to do so beyond mere chance.

Disclaimer: Math ahead. I suck at math. But I'm pretty sure the calculations are correct.

There were 10 sound samples total, divided into two pairs. That's 5 coin flips. The probability of guessing all five in a row is 3.125%. It's not an unreasonable assumption that they guessed and happened to get it right: each contestant is posting in public, and it does no good to post the same answers as another person who posted before you,* so each answer can be treated as unique. You only need 32 people to guarantee both a correct answer and a 100% wrong answer, and in a sample size of 16 contestants the probability to get either a correct answer or a 100% wrong answer is essentially a coin flip. There were about 20 "contestants." That means that the probability of getting either was greater than chance (62%). In other words, a group of 20 deaf people could have reproduced this result, and a group of 32 deaf people would have produced a winner.

Again, I don't have a horse in the cap race, but as a former science editor I think it's important for people to look critically at data and how they're used in an argument.

*Let's just assume that the people posting were smart enough to do this ... I'm not going to catalog the answers to find out if they were, and even if they weren't it doesn't necessarily invalidate the argument.

[Thecomedian]

while the nay-sayers have... what?

I'll tell you what they don't have: the burden of proof.

anyone who makes a claim has a burden of proof. There is at least some scientific evidence supporting the theory that audible differences are possible. There is no scientific evidence supporting the fact that there are no audible differences. Do you understand that both sides have a burden of proof?

each contestant is posting in public, and it does no good to post the same answers as another person who posted before you,* so each answer can be treated as unique.  

That's an incorrect assumption. You need to get the answer right, not to have your answer differ from others. There were as many prizes possible as correct answers given by the posters, up until the cut-off date where it was all tallied. The trick to this particular shell game was correctly calling the klon from the other pedal, which is where the real "coin flip of the game" was.

so, no, you can't treat all answers as unique. It'd be like having a math problem on the board for kids to do and get a reward after each kid does the problem in front of the rest of class and everyone has already done it, and then all the kids try to get different results to "randomly win". It doesn't make sense compared to actually trying to answer accurately.

[midwayfair]

There were as many prizes possible as correct answers given by the poster

No, just three:

The first three contestants to submit perfect scores

In either case, do you have any data to prove that any given poster was doing anything other than guessing each round? No, you don't. We know nothing about the contestants because they're anonymous posters on the internet. You can't even prove than they listened to the samples. You picked the least important aspect of my paragraph and dismissed the main point, that 20 different answers provides a greater than chance probability of producing either a correct or 100% wrong answer.

[Thecomedian]

There were as many prizes possible as correct answers given by the poster

No, just three:

The first three contestants to submit perfect scores

In either case, do you have any data to prove that any given poster was doing anything other than guessing each round? No, you don't. We know nothing about the contestants because they're anonymous posters on the internet. You can't even prove than they listened to the samples. You picked the least important aspect of my paragraph and dismissed the main point, that 20 different answers provides a greater than chance probability of producing either a correct or 100% wrong answer.

ontestant is posting in public, and it does no good to post the same answers as another person who posted before you,* so each answer can be treated as unique. You only need 32 people to guarantee both a correct answer and a 100% wrong answer,

If the latter logically follows from the former, I think it's a major point, since it indicates that "you only need 32 people" which inflates the probability into "acceptably plausible". that doesn't sound like chicken feed to me when the premise of your argument is that it has a high statistical probability there will be two perfect 100% or 0% scores.


again, you say 20 different answers, but are they 20 different answers? You ask us to treat each answer as unique, but the reasoning there is flawed because people don't want to give a unique answer, they want to give the right answer.

[induction]

You ask us to treat each answer as unique, but the reasoning there is flawed because people don't want to give a unique answer, they want to give the right answer.

For his logic to work, they don't really need to be unique answers, they just need to be causally uncorrelated with previous answers.

[FiveseveN]

anyone who makes a claim has a burden of proof.

Exactly. What you seem to ignore is the fact that tere are no "negative claims". Skepticism is just the reasonable default position where there is insufficient evidence to support a claim.
See Bertrand Russell et al for more information.