Vitamin Q 0.022

[frankfalbo]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

I respect your opinion, but I have to disagree with a few points. There is the argument that unconscious bias could still be in effect of your perception...You could still be correct, but I want to share some possible implications with your argument. I don't mean to make any accusations if that's how I come off, I'm just being skeptical.

Look I get it. I've built a career that includes my abilities, and my objectivity in these matters. People engage with me because of it. And there will come a time as I age, that if I can't sense it through other means, eardrums alone will not be enough for me to continue to make those claims.

Someone questioned my statement about lack of bias, I should clarify that I mean in my business, I am not listening to these things with the bias that the more expensive is better, nor that it makes no difference.

Do I begin with the bias that IF there is a difference, I will be able to discern it? Yes. Because that is drive, that determination has caused me to identify things that others have missed. If guitar related, often times I can set up "the rig" that will reveal the differences. And it won't be a Line 6 Vetta. (Sorry L6, great amp, just not for critical listening )

Sometimes even a hifi reference system is NOT the best way to discern a difference, because that's not the world we live in. Sometimes gain, compression, power tube saturation, speaker cabinet SPL, and more combine to reveal something we can hear, that does make a difference in our enjoyment come gig time, or jam time. Sometimes through test equipment, or studio monitors with a high quality buffer you simply have not added enough magnification to perceive it.

You run that double blind cap test through a Fender Super Reverb on 4, it might be harder to tell than through a dimed Plexi (a good one) even with ear plugs.

The best, cleanest hifi reference system with the highest headroom may reveal nothing, because theres no gain structure to start adding exponents. And guess what we guitarists do sometimes? We play loud, we play with gain. So when someone tells me they set up the cleanest, purest, most scientific-iest test procedure and nothing happened, I guess you could say I'm a little bit biased. LOL!

As for the insults, okay yeah you all probably smell like pee and can't even play Smoke on the Water. How's that, good?

[jumble jumble]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Sometimes even a hifi reference system is NOT the best way to discern a difference, because that's not the world we live in. Sometimes gain, compression, power tube saturation, speaker cabinet SPL, and more combine to reveal something we can hear, that does make a difference in our enjoyment come gig time, or jam time. Sometimes through test equipment, or studio monitors with a high quality buffer you simply have not added enough magnification to perceive it.

You run that double blind cap test through a Fender Super Reverb on 4, it might be harder to tell than through a dimed Plexi (a good one) even with ear plugs.

Absolutely, and therefore the experiment would be performed with the exact rig that you were able to hear the difference through. The only difference would be the addition of the ABX switch. Of course, traditionally, if the ABX methodology causes the success rate to drop to 50%, then the test subject will argue that there is something about the ABX switch that is removing the difference between A and B. The switch, an arrangement of signal-agnostic electrical contacts and springs, magically knows how to make A and B sound the same, and applies that change to the signal. Of course, with guitars, I think that argument would be harder to convince with, given that a large majority of guitars already have mechanical switches through which the signal flows, and just about all of them have a mechanical jack output*.

Of course, we're now at the point where we're saying that a very specific set of circumstances needs to be in place, and even then only some people can hear it, and even then it's a subtle differece. At that point, it's helpful to have a bit of perspective, and realise that when you put on a CD you've never heard before, you can make a pretty reliable statement as to whether you're hearing a single coil or a humbucker, almost instantly. But however long you listen to that Cd, however much the player rolls his tone control up and down, and however loud or quiet you play it, you will never be able to produce anything better than a guess as to the contruction of his tone cap.

As for the insults, okay yeah you all probably smell like pee and can't even play Smoke on the Water. How's that, good?

Pretty good, but the "probably" lets you down a bit.

* Yes, I'm sure that somewhere on the internet there's a guitar with no switching and with its cable soldered direct at both the guitar and the amplifier end

[DreX]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

For the purposes of this conversation though, and for the purposes of whether or not spending money on expensive capacitors has any effect, we don't need to be able to explain it. We just need to be able to prove it exists. If I say "I'm buying these $150 capacitors, and I have scientifically valid evidence that I can detect when these capacitors are used", then it's completely irrelevant whether that difference shows up on a graph or oscilloscope. You can't look at your graph and then tell someone that they can't hear a difference, if they've just shown in a scientifically acceptable way that they can (ie, it's a not a case of them just insisting that they can).

I guess I should have said that, since it's 2014 and this debate still rages on, despite many various A/B tests people have performed with varying degrees of scientific rigor, I believe that even a very well conducted A/B blind listening test would most likely to produce negative/ambiguous results. We're already at the point of needing graphs/oscilloscope to prove there is some sort of difference. Whether it turns out to be a difference that anyone could possibly hear is another matter.

[DreX]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Of course, we're now at the point where we're saying that a very specific set of circumstances needs to be in place, and even then only some people can hear it, and even then it's a subtle differece. At that point, it's helpful to have a bit of perspective, and realise that when you put on a CD you've never heard before, you can make a pretty reliable statement as to whether you're hearing a single coil or a humbucker, almost instantly. But however long you listen to that Cd, however much the player rolls his tone control up and down, and however loud or quiet you play it, you will never be able to produce anything better than a guess as to the contruction of his tone cap.

Being a 'bedroom player' (as I'm sure many of us are) who likes to pick a clean Strat very lightly sometimes, my perspective doesn't include how I might sound recorded. I'm all about how subtle differences and differences that are felt, if not heard. That's why I'm more interested in pickups now than I ever was before; half of the difference between one and the next are only perceived by the guitarist.

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Your grasping at straws to catch me in a contradiction is, among other things, 100% off topic.

once again , that's your interpretation and defensive at that. Of course you never go off topic , do you!

[jumble jumble]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

I guess I should have said that, since it's 2014 and this debate still rages on, despite many various A/B tests people have performed with varying degrees of scientific rigor, I believe that even a very well conducted A/B blind listening test would most likely to produce negative/ambiguous results. We're already at the point of needing graphs/oscilloscope to prove there is some sort of difference. Whether it turns out to be a difference that anyone could possibly hear is another matter.

Frankly I think that if you could measure absolutely every single thing about the signal, at infinite resolution, then there would be a difference between the materials. But I don't see what it would be relevant to. The pertinent information (in this thread at least) is whether it makes a perceptible difference to the person playing the guitar.

I'm not sure exactly what blind tests have been done, but if, for the sake of argument, they've all been fully rigorous, that would put us in a position where the current body of knowledge does not support the assertion that a guitar player can hear the difference between capacitor materials. We still don't need a graph or an oscilloscope or anything when someone makes a claim like that in the first post. The null hypothesis is "the material makes no difference that I can hear". This is an easily falsifiable hypothesis, and a simple experiment can be performed to show that it's not true, if the result is "95 times out of 100, I correctly identified which capacitor was being used". At that point, while we may not have explained the difference, we at least know it exists. But, like I say, nobody seems to be able to actually do this.

Being a 'bedroom player' (as I'm sure many of us are) who likes to pick a clean Strat very lightly sometimes, my perspective doesn't include how I might sound recorded. I'm all about how subtle differences and differences that are felt, if not heard. That's why I'm more interested in pickups now than I ever was before; half of the difference between one and the next are only perceived by the guitarist.

I agree. I was simply talking about perspective. But if you are all about differences that are felt if not heard, then surely the experiments you suggest ought to be experiments about feeling and hearing, not measuring signals with equipment.

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Exactly. I'd love to see where the argument is going: "DreX bought an 805; [fill this bit in later]; therefore, PIO caps sound better than ceramic caps".

You seem to be furnishing your own "argument ", so you should know.
Do you want to point out where anyone said PIO were better than ceramic ?

[jumble jumble]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

once again , that's your interpretation and defensive at that. Of course you never go off topic , do you!

Well, here's my interpretation, and I have no need to be defensive (not having been attacked).

Your initial comment about the 805 pedal was based around a straw man: that DreX considers more expensive capacitors to be inferior. The resulting back-and-forth about whether or not the 805 is a clone of some other pedal was also useless - if DreX finally admitted that the 805 was a clone of a TS808, and that he likes the sound of it even though it was expensive, then that says nothing about whether capacitors of different materials have perceptibly different sounds.

Additionally, the fact that DreX sometimes goes off topic does not mean that you haven't gone off topic.

Do you want to point out where anyone said PIO were better than ceramic ?

People are saying it in quite round-about ways that don't lend themselves to quick quoting (for example, comparing caps to tires, then saying some tires have better tread and will last for more miles). But sure, here's a few.

I have a polyester film cap sprague 0.22 a ceramic disk cap (RadioShack) 0.022 and a Russian NOS PIO 0.022 and a Vitamin Q nos pio and I can almost promise you everyone here will pick the Vitamin Q

I would throw out the ceramic disc. Any of the others, as long as the value was in tolerance would be just fine.

All my guitars have Sprague Vitamin Q caps. [...] I sleep fine at night knowing my guitars have the best parts in them

You know, if you want to win this argument, it's actually very easy. All you have to do is post a link to one rigorous, properly conducted experiment that shows that at least one person can reliably tell the difference between two types of capacitor used in a guitars' tone circuit. You do that, the argument is over.

I don't know why people get so upset about this, though. Like, genuinely grotesquely offended by the idea that their perceptions may be informed by context, in the exact same way as every human being ever born.

[CTN]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Christ, I am beginning to seriously hate this area of the forum

[DreX]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

I agree. I was simply talking about perspective. But if you are all about differences that are felt if not heard, then surely the experiments you suggest ought to be experiments about feeling and hearing, not measuring signals with equipment.

I'm optimistic that even "felt" differences are measurable somehow, like I think the attack or slew rate of a pickup factors into what people think of as "feel", it should be possible to measure that sort of thing. I plan to try soon.

[jumble jumble]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Christ, I am beginning to seriously hate this area of the forum

Yeah, full of snide, saracastic, mocking ad hominem posts like this one, instead of ones that actually address the point:

first he designs an experiment to measure relative enjoyment of art vs amount of time spent exposed to stimulus, contrasted against other control studies such as relative enjoyment of watching paint dry, and relative enjoyment of posting useless stuff on the internet.

Then a graph of the dataset follows.

An analysis of the graph will indicate the amount of enjoyment the subject may or may not have received. His enjoyment can be measured in units of something abstract, like widgets, or rat whiskers.

[CTN]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

meh, I already had my say on the topic.

[jumble jumble]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

I'm optimistic that even "felt" differences are measurable somehow, like I think the attack or slew rate of a pickup factors into what people think of as "feel", it should be possible to measure that sort of thing. I plan to try soon.

I'm sure you're right. The measuring part isn't really relevant to us as guitar players, of course, but in terms of advancement of human knowledge it has some value. If it can be measured completely then it can be reproduced and "feel" might one day be something we can manipulate in the same way as we currently manipulate tone.

[darthphineas]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Christ, I am beginning to seriously hate this area of the forum

Remember kids...down the road, not across the street.


Sent from my armored space station via iPad using Tapatalk

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Vitamin Q 0.022

Well, here's my interpretation, and I have no need to be defensive (not having been attacked).

Your initial comment about the 805 pedal was based around a straw man: that DreX considers more expensive capacitors to be inferior. The resulting back-and-forth about whether or not the 805 is a clone of some other pedal was also useless - if DreX finally admitted that the 805 was a clone of a TS808, and that he likes the sound of it even though it was expensive, then that says nothing about whether capacitors of different materials have perceptibly different sounds.

Additionally, the fact that DreX sometimes goes off topic does not mean that you haven't gone off topic.



People are saying it in quite round-about ways that don't lend themselves to quick quoting (for example, comparing caps to tires, then saying some tires have better tread and will last for more miles). But sure, here's a few.

Originally Posted by WhoGivesAPluck I have a polyester film cap sprague 0.22 a ceramic disk cap (RadioShack) 0.022 and a Russian NOS PIO 0.022 and a Vitamin Q nos pio and I can almost promise you everyone here will pick the Vitamin Q

Originally Posted by beaubrummels I would throw out the ceramic disc. Any of the others, as long as the value was in tolerance would be just fine.

You know, if you want to win this argument, it's actually very easy.

Once again your furnishing your own argument. I'm not arguing, nor did I attack Drex.
Your quotes say nothing about PIO being better than Ceramic. Your suggestion of inference is an unsubstatiated
conjecture.

Your initial comment about the 805 pedal was based around a straw man: that DreX considers more expensive capacitors to be inferior.

Drex didn't say that at all. He said he didn't think they were worth paying more for.

If there really is a difference,..... and move on to the more mundane issue of whether that difference is worth $5.