In article , Keith G
wrote:



OK, this is difficult.

I'd agree. So bear in mind I'm not quibbling for the sake of trying to
nit-pick with you or find fault. I am just trying to 'raise awarness' as we
have to say these days that these things can be hard to discuss since
people may use the same words or phrases in critically different ways. With
that said, I'll continue... :-)

Put simply:

If someone jacks his kit up on cubes of coconut husk or whatever (don't
dismiss that as impossible, btw) and tells me it has *improved* the
sound, I say he perceives a difference (real or imagined) and therefore
believes there's an improvement. OTOH, in the time-honoured ukra way
(*unheard*) I would not believe it - unless I heard the kit before and
after and could perceive a difference myself?

Does that help?

Not sure. :-)

The problem is that some people might react to the statement that he
"perceives a difference" as meaning that he physically sensed a difference
- e.g if we could have attached some measurement kit to his ears it would
have produced a changed output. Others might take it to mean that his
impression was that there was a difference.

When you say "could perceive a difference myself" we have a similar
difficulty. I'd say that if a set of tests were done which could reliably
establish that - by sound alone - you/he repeatedly showed you could tell
the difference, then you did 'sense' or 'detect' a difference, but if such
tests showed no such result then you have 'believed' it.

FWIW I'd agree that even 'belived' is difficult in such situations. Hence
my preference is to try and use language that is more based on
evidence-linked statments like those above. The snag is that these can get
long-winded, and may still be problematic....

It is just that my impression is that I've seen many arguments which were
simply based on those involved not all using the same meaning for terms
like 'perceive'. Hence they argued at cross purposes, or in a way that was
futile. My interest then tends to be to ask what the nature and detail of
the evidence may be.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html