Amir and Blind Testing

The very, incredibly ironic thing about him and his "Audio Blind Testing: You're Doing It Wrong" video?  The fact that HE doesn't even do blind listening tests.  

The dude waxes on and on about how reviewers aren't reviewing speakers correctly because they aren't doing A/B tests and they aren't conducting blind tests.  But what does he do?  Sits a speaker in front of him and listens to it.  He does this while both seeing the speaker itself AND he even has already seen the data on the speaker.

hy·poc·ri·sy

/həˈpäkrəsē/

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noun

1. the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

I can't take him or that video seriously.  How people aren't jumping down his throat about something so blatantly obvious and hypocritical just shows how scared anyone is to speak up on that forum.  It's sad, really.  

I'd rather he just perform his measurements and keep his chest-puffing out of it.  He's no better in this regard than the Michael Fremer(s) of the world.  

I can do without the obvious conflict of interest and ego, though. 
Yes that is difficult to do with the ASR master and his minions. Ask yourself why certain brands always score highly and get recommended.There is a distinct conflict of interest.

We cannot measure the difference between a middle C, played on a properly tuned clarinet vs. a synthesizer, vs. a trumpet. Your brain knows which is which immediately. Just like humming the note and singing out, wide-mouthed would measure identical, but you know they sound very different. 

Nor can we measure the vibrations our body picks up from places other than our tympanic membrane. (bones, hairs, nerves) Spatial awareness in ingrained in us through evolution. A noise, rustling in the grass on the savannah is a matter of life and death. Our ears are only a piece of the "listening" equation. 

I've played with EQ and a spectrum analyzer to make the response curves of Magnepans and Klipsch horn-loaded box speakers measure the same in my seat ...and they sure don't sound identical, though no frequencies are missing.

No measurer can ever tell you which one, out of 2 pieces of gear sounds better. (however you define it.

bubba_buoy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We cannot measure the difference between a middle C, played on a properly tuned clarinet vs. a synthesizer, vs. a trumpet.