I see the issue with ABX blind testing

audphile1

4,147 posts

04-22-2024 at 12:45pm
…I had no intention to use it to prove anything to you or others in the cable denying camp. That is a fool’s errand.

I think there lies the rub, @audphile1 - I’m not denying anything (I haven’t formally tested for it short of some blind swapping of some on-hand types). I’m reiterating the need for demonstration (of it being more than a placebo).
I know it seems like petty semantics, but it’s an important discrepancy between what can be known (fact with supportive evidence for / against), vs. what is assumed but stated as fact (present state of things).

As soon as one robust, properly controlled study is undertaken and shows a significant number of participants perceived difference between two or more types of cable, the stance of “no difference possible” will be disproven, or at least shaken.

Nothing gets proven in science. Disproof is how the process is works.

What proof do you have that other people are really reading and responding to your posts?

@benanders …

I’m not denying anything (I haven’t formally tested for it
…

this further solidifies what I said above. So here’s the rub…I do not need my entire zip code to hear the changes in my system and nod their heads in approval before I finalize any purchase be it cables, streamers, dacs, etc. The only element that matters to me is what I hear and how much of an improvement there is. There were multiple instances where I had sent cables back. Cables that I had actually high hopes for they just didn’t work out. The change was so negative that I couldn’t endure listening to my system for more than few minutes before getting severe fatigue. These were high priced cables and no, they were not defective.
Do you think I would keep these cables if I had 50 people telling me they like the sound? Absolutely not.

And this, my friend, is where the discussion ends. Please let me know when you get around to trying some cables as an experiment in a comfort of your home and system, and what you had heard.

@benanders  Your cryptic posts are serving no purpose here.  Your main point is that people’s opinions are basically invalid because they are not confirmed by a controlled scientific study and thus have not been proven and could be wrong or misleading.  Well duh, and welcome to the real world.  That’s why they’re opinions and not fact, which pretty much everyone here understands except you.  Continually pointing out that people’s opinions are potentially fallible is as tiresome as it is pointless.  If you have such low opinions of people’s subjective opinions and their reliability why are you even here?  Why continue to torture yourself (and us)?  Go play with your peeps at ASR and spare us, or better yet go start your own website where people are free to express their opinions as long as they’re confirmed by a rigorous study that conforms to strict scientific methods.  If that doesn’t sound like a fruitful endeavor then you should understand why your posts are both ineffective and useless here.  And no, this was not Chat GPT generated.

I am not interested by cable threads ...

There are annoying for me because the cables changes are often evident and minors change  anyway compared to most others in the acoustic , mechanical, and electrical dimension...

I was able to tune by ears my 100 resonators ( it was an acoustic experioments as with piano tuning) the results were not thin, but so amazing it changes the way i understood acoustics because my ears catch it not my brain placebo prone...Who will accuse a piano tuner of placebos effects in his job ?

Then i learned to trust my ears and they are biased yes and prone to some illusions as anybody but they also work for a specific job, then how could i need a ABX double blind test for verifying my cables choices if i dont need it for my room after thousands of changes in a 2 years 7 days on 7 of experiments ?😊

The room is tuned for my ears system not for a circus ?

Then why coming in cables thread arguing with people ?

To show your engineering credentials ?

It is useless because no one here will travel to a James Randi show to debunk his cables buyings which can be for sure debatable as any buyings ..

Cables may differ and differ in my experience with the rightfull system in the right room minimally well installed but nothing compare to the modification of a single straw size located at some point in the room...😁

Do i need a test to verify this claim about a single straw ?

No it is an acoustic principle : It is the basis of Helmholtz resonators ...

Try it ...

But the straw must be put in the right volume, at the right place, and of the right size... Train your ears ... It is funnier than arguing about cables and more useful to demonstrate how your hearing work and can be trusted to some limits... And you will learn your room pressure distribution zones with your body...Not by a computer measuring tools... That was my goal train my hearing "by hands" so to speak for the fun and for learning ... 😊

Acoustics is something we feel with our body not only something we write and compute on a paper ...

The greeks were acousticians designing without electronics acoustic marvels and the Egyptian too ...Do they passed ABX double blind test ?

I will be frank i dislike techno-cultism who plague the world right now and that some call science... The last years demonstrated to us the results of coupling techno-cultism as science and in place of science and big corporations together ..

i will stop here ...

«I am an acoustician Amish»-- Groucho Marx🤓