Originally Posted By: lawrencerd
I see a lot of comments while cruising threads that some such oil was quiet or noisy any my thought is this..what causes this, and does it matter? is there any relationship between these noisy oils and wear or do we even understand this phenomenon? Are there any oils that are almost always quiet or does it depend on the application in question and how it meshes with the oil used?
I'm interested to hear anything anyone knows about it.
Mostly, it's due to the power of suggestion--psychoacoustics in action. Unless someone does a legitimate blind ABX comparison, the comments mean absolutely nothing. Most people have an extremely limited understand of the perception of sound and what influences it; and generally, the more you try and explain this to folks, the more defensive and mad they get about it. It's no different that the audiophile crowd raving about the $5,000 speaker cables or the magnificent sound of $10,000 amplifiers. Of course, in blind testing people can't actually tell a difference. I believe Richard Clark's million dollar amplifier challenge is still open if anyone wants to prove this wrong...
There's no explaining reason to either group of people though, so don't waste your breathe. Just understand that what people "hear" doesn't necessarily equal the wave forms being transmitted. Still, people seem to love talking about the 'smoothness' of oil!
