The dCS community has a number of vocal members who adhere to a hard science approach to high end audio. I am deliberately choosing to speak up from a more difficult position because I like the intellectual challenge. I stay in the debate as long as we are governed by intellectual integrity. That among other things means we abstain from simply resorting to or insinuating ‘higher authority’ ̴ ‘science’ or using semantics like the proximity of words to make a point. You did the latter twice - when placing crackpot theory close to ethernet switches and placing opinions right beside dispositions. Also mutual respect is vital. We have to speak at eye level. I am not going to be talked down to or pitied as the ‘whatever the flavor of the day is’.
My general proposition is that the narrowly understood scientific or engineering driven methods often argued for here have serious limitations when building an enjoyable hifi system. In a non negligible percentage of cases it provides pseudo-objective crutches that have unpredictable effects. If for example one looks only at data transmission over the IP stack the recommendation for gear can be suboptimal. This narrow perspective would not prescribe optical isolation. This view has been argued before and then at the same time optical isolation was used. That’s contradictory.
That’s the rub and what I was getting at. If you permit emotions in choosing upgrades you dropped an integral requirement for objectivity. Emotions arise in very different ways between individuals. As can be easily observed when studying reactions in a concert or in a cinema.
I am copying what is behind the hyperlink I provided above:
This framework makes a lot more sense to me than reverting to scientifically objective details that have the tendency to tell part of the story. Or to put it another way we are building a hifi system we enjoy. That’s different from the task an engineer faces in actually building the device.
I’m a computer scientist by training and a money manager by profession. The traditional engineering frame of mind is ill suited to complex systems. Financial markets are at the upper end of complexity when looked at as a system. So I have experience in both situations and believe to know what I am proposing.
I think you get Occam’s razor and the hypotheses wrong. Occam’s razor is a heuristic used when developing theories that has its place. It is by no means a universal rule. Basically it prescribes to prefer the theory that can survive with the least amount of additional hypotheses or complexity. Simplicity is not an end in itself but helps with testability and falsifiability. So first, you would have to formulate two hypotheses that have predictive power you want to judge against each other. Here your prior reasoning is too fuzzy to qualify as competing hypotheses. Plus you are convoluting the line of thought by introducing illusion.
As I said above, placing ‘opinions’ and ‘dispositions’ in a sentence like that is not permissible if we are having a valid debate. I myself can have an opinion about running a marathon. But I certainly have no disposition for running a marathon. Dispositions are our nature and then nurture is what makes them appear or flourish. Opinions are something entirely different.
On your last paragraph - I’m picking quotes to make a point.
“highly subjective” - “we’re dealing with psychological ‘issues’ (no negative valence)” - “propensity to believe what we want to believe”
First of all, empiricism works when studying minds. So does introspection and neuroscience. All three methods produce valid conclusions. Why is jitter being optimized? Because enough people perceive it as detrimental. Why do we have a choice when it comes to DAC filters in dCS gear? Because people have different sensitivities to the admittedly smaller differences a filter makes. If there were only one right solution, dCS would not give us a choice. With ethernet cables and switches I believe we have two issues at play. First, both interact with the house systems and how they are built. That will explain part of the variation in observations. Since dCS was no part of building my house, I go with what works in my greater ‘house system’. The second issue I already brought up. We have different dispositions when it comes to listening to music. There’s no better or worse, no higher or lower, no chosen or not chosen. Only different. If a man can mistake his wife for a hat or people can display ‘amusia’ (both Oliver Sacks) it should be quite obvious how different our minds are. There is no ‘normal’ that is identical for almost everybody and then outside of that are illusions, psychological issues and make-belief. We have custom. And custom is subject to mutual agreement and change. That’s about it. It is simply that only a percentage of people hear differences here. Framing these differences in perception as illusion or make-believe I find is a narrow minded view.