@nonnoise,
I’ve gone back several pages. Haven’t found the link yet but have noticed the test has already come in for some sensible sounding skepticism and critique by other members. I’ll find the link when I have more time.
Nope, I didn’t forget that. You are, like many audiophiles, under a misapprehension about how bias works. Bias doesn’t operate only in one sense - only hearing a difference if you think there will be a difference. It happens even if you don’t expect to hear a difference. Why? Because even if you *think* you are comparing one thing to another even that can produce false results. This is why you can tell someone to judge between cable A and cable B, and even if you don’t even actually switch cables (only ever play cable A), people will often enough still report hearing a "difference" when you "switch."
(And this is one reason why in blind testing you randomize switching - and you can see this effect show up in the scoring of cable differences).
I experienced this myself several times, thinking I was hearing sonic differences that I didn’t expect to hear when I switched something in my system - e.g. an AC cable, a digital server, etc. But blind testing showed I couldn’t in fact actually note any difference once I didn’t know which was playing.
This is why the very common refrain "I wasn’t expecting a difference, but I experienced it anyway, so it COULDN’T have been placebo/bias effect" simply gets things wrong. But it’s a pervasive myth nonetheless.
@tommylion,
You are mixing up two subjects: the subjective evaluation of music with objective facts or claims about what is audible or not. What you can or can’t hear is an objective fact. That’s why we have things like "hearing tests." You can claim you swoon to the sound of a 19K tone, but if you can’t identify when a 19K tone is playing in a blind hearing test, you can’t hear it.
Also, subjective opinions, emotional reactions, preferences etc can also be studied: they are every day.
You can even in principle (and in practice) find out if you even have an accurate grasp of YOUR OWN preferences. For instance, if you think you tend to like the sound of X speaker design over Y speaker design, you can do a blind test to see if, in fact, listening only to the sound, you actually end up picking X speaker as more preferable. People have often enough been surprised in such tests (see the work of Floyd Toole and others...)
Cheers.
I’ve gone back several pages. Haven’t found the link yet but have noticed the test has already come in for some sensible sounding skepticism and critique by other members. I’ll find the link when I have more time.
And, you seem to forget that Paul McGowan had no idea what his friend was replacing as he put the new fuse in and took it out. All he heard was the sound getting better, then worse, then better, then worse. It was only afterwards, that his friend told him all he did was replace the fuse.
Nope, I didn’t forget that. You are, like many audiophiles, under a misapprehension about how bias works. Bias doesn’t operate only in one sense - only hearing a difference if you think there will be a difference. It happens even if you don’t expect to hear a difference. Why? Because even if you *think* you are comparing one thing to another even that can produce false results. This is why you can tell someone to judge between cable A and cable B, and even if you don’t even actually switch cables (only ever play cable A), people will often enough still report hearing a "difference" when you "switch."
(And this is one reason why in blind testing you randomize switching - and you can see this effect show up in the scoring of cable differences).
I experienced this myself several times, thinking I was hearing sonic differences that I didn’t expect to hear when I switched something in my system - e.g. an AC cable, a digital server, etc. But blind testing showed I couldn’t in fact actually note any difference once I didn’t know which was playing.
This is why the very common refrain "I wasn’t expecting a difference, but I experienced it anyway, so it COULDN’T have been placebo/bias effect" simply gets things wrong. But it’s a pervasive myth nonetheless.
@tommylion,
Is there anything more subjective than one’s personal perception of, response to, and enjoyment of music? Given that, it makes perfect sense to evaluate the equipment used to reproduce music for one’s own enjoyment in a subjective manner.
You are mixing up two subjects: the subjective evaluation of music with objective facts or claims about what is audible or not. What you can or can’t hear is an objective fact. That’s why we have things like "hearing tests." You can claim you swoon to the sound of a 19K tone, but if you can’t identify when a 19K tone is playing in a blind hearing test, you can’t hear it.
Also, subjective opinions, emotional reactions, preferences etc can also be studied: they are every day.
You can even in principle (and in practice) find out if you even have an accurate grasp of YOUR OWN preferences. For instance, if you think you tend to like the sound of X speaker design over Y speaker design, you can do a blind test to see if, in fact, listening only to the sound, you actually end up picking X speaker as more preferable. People have often enough been surprised in such tests (see the work of Floyd Toole and others...)
Cheers.