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In fact, I believe he is understating the difference. For the difference between recognizing and not recognizing is infinity. As Vanna White turns just one more letter, which is after all maybe only 2% of the available letters, the contestant recognizes the quote: “These are the times that try men’s souls...” Prior to turning that letter, there was no recognition; afterwards, total recognition. The result was not linearly related to effect. Marginal differences do not necessarily have only marginal results.

In Jude Wanniski’s great book, The Way the World Works, he develops his theory of marginality: marginal differences can, in human affairs, can have hugely disproportional effects. The camel's back is fine until the extra piece of straw, which is only a 0.00000001% increase in weight, breaks its back. The fastest runner in the world is famous and receives fat promotional deals; the second fastest runner, the one who is 99.993% as fast, is largely ignored and is offered no Nike endorsement jobs. The model who works for your local department store makes $200 per photo shoot, not the $200,000 that Cindy Crawford makes; yet she is only marginally less attractive than Cindy Crawford. If she were marginally more attractive, she would make $2,000,000 per photo shoot and we would worship her as a freshly born deity.

The whole of high-end audio lives in the realm of marginality: the $30,000 vacuum-tube amplifier's output is only marginally different from the average $200 Chinese receiver's output; as seen on the scope, no difference can be discerned. But, like the extra letter revealed by Vanna, small audible differences can have large effects.

But are those differences audible? No scientific proof has been offered that shows that they are. However, proving a negative is much more difficult than proving a positive. If someone shows us a pink crow, then we have proof of its existence; but how do you prove that no pink crows exist, without collecting every single crow in the world and checking for pink? Second, when we test for audibility we are not testing the sound, but the listener. If we were testing the sound, we would need only a microphone and no listener. Now what happens to people under test? Sometimes the act of testing influences the results. Imagine that you are being tested to see if you can tell the difference between your wife’s kissing and another women’s kissing. No problem. You intimately know your wife’s lips, their texture and temperature, their pliancy, her smell and feel against you, and her technique from years of avid kissing. The differences are not subtle.

Yet, I promise you, if you were blindfolded, placed on stage with a huge, loud audience, and Regis making jokes at your expense, you could not tell whether your wife or Regis was kissing you. This example is extreme, but the principle is the same. I know from experience how the act of being tested can alter the results.

A friend had stuffed his ears with cotton and sat listening to music. He wanted to prove that he the sonic corruption resulting from having audio signal flow through mercury contacts was so obvious that he could hear the difference with his ears stuffed with cotton. He was right he could hear the difference, as could I. But then we introduced an AB switch box that allowed random selection for double-blinded testing. Even removing the cotton did not help him. For the first half of the test, I was puzzled by his suddenly poor performance, as I could readily hear the difference, but then I could also see the switching in action. But when I operated the switching box in the random mode, I too had a hell of a time trying to discern the differences. If you believe the answer is obvious—power of suggestion—I am sure you are wrong.

While the power of suggestion is no doubt great, it isn’t always universal nor decisive. For example, I managed to attend the University of California at Berkeley, live twenty years in Santa Cruz and never become a liberal. One possible source of trouble is the stress of being evaluated. (I am always sadden by my eye’s poor performance in the optometrist's office and I find myself trying to guess the “right” answer, rather than just report what I see.) Another possible source of trouble is revealed in a recent study that showed we listen to music with a dominant ear. If we know the piece well, we listen with one ear primarily, as can be seen in our unconscious turning of that ear towards the loudspeaker. On the other hand, if the piece is unknown, we listen primarily with the other ear. Apparently, we listen for different aspects of the sound, rhythm vs. melody, tonality vs. dynamics, depending on whether we know the piece or not. My guess is that when we are placed in the hot seat, we switch from known to unknown and we switch ears and with that switch, we lose the faculty we need to discern those subtle differences. Crazy idea?

Try this test: take two diodes (1N4001) and solder each of them in parallel, but opposite in orientation, with a 10-ohm resistor. Now place a soldered pair in series with the leads to each loudspeaker. Now listen. If the no difference can be heard, or if it can be heard too readily, increase or decrease the number of diodes or the value of resistors. Once a very small difference is achieved that you can easily hear, have someone blind-test your ability to discern the difference.

So is scientifically rigorous testing worthless in evaluating the audiophiles claims? No, of course, not. But such testing must be careful to test apples and only apples. But then even if the tests were perfect and showed no positive results, why shouldn’t someone be allowed to remain adrift in the sea of subjectivity, unlike the Arts, their stereo systems are not government funded. And surely, the whole point to high-end audio is the sound of music, which, like drinking wine, is a truly subjective enjoyment.

December 20, 2002

As expected, any article that even mentions a tube phono preamp garners a large response. Vinyl just will not die. Beyond the sonics, what I dearly miss is the packaging: 12 inches by 12 inches was a perfectly sized canvas for liner notes and, most importantly, artwork. I knew many people who framed record covers and I have bought many a record because of the artwork on its cover alone; no one in the history of the CD has bought a CD for the same reason. Consider this: we have lost an art form without any fuss from the consuming public; yet when graffiti is painted over, there is an outcry.

When I first read of the CD's creation as a playback medium, I prayed that the LP's form factor would be retained and that we would be sold single-sided Laser Disks. Because this disk is twice as large, it can hold four times the content of a CD. Imagine the possibilities: longer recording times and higher sampling rates and word lengths. No such luck. In fact, the need to make a walkman-compatible medium was a decisive consideration and Philips originally only wanted 14 bits of resolution, which Sony be thanked, did not happen. The DVD restores the content potential, but still saddles us with the small cases. What would have proved interesting was if the music labels sold two disks, one 12 inch high-quality digital disk and one low-res mini-disk (it might have fit in the larger one's hole), both packaged together, which would have made for smaller walkmans and car playback decks, while still retaining a high-end home playback medium. Dream on, John.

Many have written to proclaim their intention to build a phono preamp based on inspiration from the article. If you do take the plunge, please relay your results back to this journal. Unfortunately, the schematic on page 13 of "RIAA Preamps Part 2" held a topological typo, which could not escape Morgan Lundberg's keen eye. Thanks Morgan. The HTML and PDF have been updated.