Exactly. You are measuring audio changes in the -wrong- way. Because you don’t know what you’re dealing with, when faced with aspects of Beltist science.

” That does not mean that every wild theory about how to improve hi-fi has equal validity. ”

Theories are not important, unless you are a manufacturer, needing to explain your product. To end users, ie. you, all that matters, is that you repeatedly here differences. In which case, everything you reliably hear to make an improvement has equal validity.

“I suspect that few or none of Peter Belt’s improvements would survive such trials.”

You suspect wrong. Once again. In the 80′s, a Hungarian Hi-Fi magazine editor did, literally, *thousands* of blind trials, of people across the spectrum. 75% heard the Belt effect.

“Blind testing is not perfect.”

Far from it. You neglected to mention that it changes the way you listen, and for that reason, blind testing for subjective audio has never been scientifically validated as a methodology. It most often creates false negatives, for a variety of reasons.

Funny how you say freezing CD’s is an example of the “power of the mind”. Yet you don’t say you actually tried it to even pretend to be able to say that! Robert Harley wrote about this “power of the mind” of freezing CD’s in Stereophile. The well respected audio engineer Ed Meitner invented, along with Peter Belt, the idea of freezing CD’s to improve audio. Yet the one thing you DID try was paper under the feet tweak. And it worked for both you and your friend. Yet you concluded it was a mind f**k. Just because you didn’t believe it could be real.

There is more evidence that Peter Belt’s concepts do indeed work, than not here. And moreover, that YOU are the one falling prey to the tricky “powers of the mind”, as you are clearly a victim of the nocebo effect.

Why -wouldn’t- he leave the paper there? Because your “rational mind” says he shouldn’t?! Well you don’t have a “rational mind”. You have an irrational mind that tells you that if you hear an effect from something you “shouldn’t”, instead of researching this by making further observations, you should continue with the prejudices that limit your thinking and acceptance of new ideas in science. Trust me, there is nothing “scientific” about your approach here. Blind adherence to blind testing in audio, without questioning whether this methodology may itself be flawed, is not scientific either. For it has never been scientifically validated, for audio. How can it, when it uses subjective evaluations anyway? The reason both you and your friend heard results from the 4-legged Conversion Device (aka the paper tweak), is because it works. Go and give your “rational mind” a good thrashing anyway, for confusing you like that for a moment. And then tell it to never fool with you like that again, or you’ll mess it up with Mescaline. Alternatively, if you really want to actually learn something in life about audio; things you don’t know anything about and are afraid to ever believe, then go and read my site. Where I detail that paper tweak you tried, and a host of other ones that utilize the same principles of perception. Just don’t speculate on Peter Belt, when it’s clear you know nothing about him or the scientific phenomenon he discovered a quarter century ago. Otherwise, you are just educating with ignorance, and spreading ignorance, in the stead of knowledge. Thus “misleading” about science yourself.