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Author Topic: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.  (Read 6699 times)

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donunus

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #20 on: September 14, 2012, 08:22:51 AM »
yah you have to first know the associated equipment first by heart for it to be effective IMO. You can then for example one cable to the equation to go back and forth with your current cable being used. You don't see your friend switch the cables and he can make the tally for you if you got which cable it was correctly out of a few tries.
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ihasmario

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #21 on: December 25, 2012, 01:02:17 PM »
How about the ever wonderful phrase "anemic bass"?

Is your bass low on red blood cells? Iron deficient? Lacking colour?

No? Then why use that term to describe a bass roll-off
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MuppetFace

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #22 on: December 25, 2012, 02:11:45 PM »
I use the term "anemic bass" myself. Someone suffering from anemia lacks vim and vigor, energy. Hence using it as a descriptor for weak bass response is fine in my opinion.

Really no more outrageous than calling bass "bloated."
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Tari

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #23 on: December 25, 2012, 03:28:33 PM »
I use the term "anemic" but not usually coupled with bass.


Anemic has a secondary definition (derived from anemia no doubt) as "lacking force, vitality, or spirit" - actually, Webster's example is "an anemic rendition of the song".  People who use the term for how headphones render music seem to be in decent company.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2012, 04:37:23 PM by Tari »
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ihasmario

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #24 on: December 25, 2012, 04:05:23 PM »
Quote from: MuppetFace on December 25, 2012, 02:11:45 PM
Really no more outrageous than calling bass "bloated."

Seems pretty outrageous to me. Especially if it's used to describe bassy headphone rather than a timbre or tonal quality.  :)p1

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Sphinxvc

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #25 on: December 25, 2012, 04:13:42 PM »
I'm curious, at what point do we decide to do the Minority Report thing and take what has been observed to be true (expectation bias or cognitive biases in general) and start predicting behavior with it?  Or does that not happen?  Or is it not ideally supposed to happen? 
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MuppetFace

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #26 on: December 25, 2012, 05:37:05 PM »
Quote from: ihasmario on December 25, 2012, 04:05:23 PM
Quote from: MuppetFace on December 25, 2012, 02:11:45 PM
Really no more outrageous than calling bass "bloated."

Seems pretty outrageous to me. Especially if it's used to describe bassy headphone rather than a timbre or tonal quality.  :)p1

Why? The characteristics of bass response are part of the overall balance of a headphone, and as such it's helpful to use descriptors and modifiers to convey these things.

"Anemic" is very often used as a descriptor for intensity, as Tari and myself have said. When something lacks intensity or energy then it can reasonably be called anemic. An anemic bass lacks presence, sounds thin, weak, and so on and so forth. Likewise with an anemic midrange.

Perhaps it seems unusual to you because it's something of an anthropomorphism, having its etiology in a medical condition?
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Anaxilus.

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #27 on: December 25, 2012, 05:41:54 PM »
Bloat is a quantitative and qualitative value relative to magnitude and speed (lack of).  Anemic bass is just the inverse.  Timbre and tone is a relative comparison to accuracy and fidelity.


Anemia is used all the time, even in the military.  The rate of fire was too anemic to constitute adequate suppression.
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burnspbesq

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #28 on: December 25, 2012, 07:09:41 PM »
Quote from: ihasmario on December 25, 2012, 01:02:17 PM
How about the ever wonderful phrase "anemic bass"?

Is your bass low on red blood cells? Iron deficient? Lacking colour?

No? Then why use that term to describe a bass roll-off

Because it communicates.  It's a term that has come to have a generally understood meaning.  If you use it, people understand what you're referring to.  You can more precisely describe what you're hearing and still lose some of your ability to communicate to your audience.
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anetode

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Re: Enough with the goddamn placebo already.
« Reply #29 on: December 26, 2012, 12:55:52 AM »
That's sort of why I started this thread. Although I often wish there was a codified phrasebook so audiophiles would agree on what exactly each colorful descriptor is synonymous to, words like "anemic" are unambiguous enough to communicate ideas like lack or excess. "Placebo", on the other hand, doesn't really mean anything, even in science it's a catchall for the unexplainable and is used in several different ways. I'm all for precision, but even then there are different lexicons. Thanks to some practice and study correlating graphs I can call out a dip or peak in frequency range, but since I have next to no formal musical training, I couldn't even call out a scale for a song I'm listening to. When talking on forums like head-fi or even here, I default to vague-ish descriptors like "stridency" and "bloat" knowing that the intended audience can easily translate what I'm saying. In order not to make things too boring I can even sympathize with going a little stereophile and writing a short parable for a sound, a la purrin's bepenised jezebel, the 700.
 
Back to the thread's topic, this is why I'm not a fan of the "p" word. I'm even happier with the more condescending (but also more meaningful) "it's all in your head".

Quote from: Sphinxvc on December 25, 2012, 04:13:42 PM
I'm curious, at what point do we decide to do the Minority Report thing and take what has been observed to be true (expectation bias or cognitive biases in general) and start predicting behavior with it?  Or does that not happen?  Or is it not ideally supposed to happen? 

Err, what? As in full-on psycho-determinism?
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