@geoffkait
>>>>>I have serious problems with long term listening as a definitive method of testing. And I’m going to tell you why. First, things change over time for any number of reasons, even day to day and hour to hour the sound can change on a whim, for no apparent reason. But sometimes the listener does make actual physical changes to his system during the long term listening. And those changes, conscious or not, can affect the sound. So, which is it, the sound on Sunday morning at 7 am or the sound on Thursday afternoon at 3 pm? Second, audiophiles frequently complain of audio memory being an issue, so what’s to prevent audio memory from being an issue in long term listening?
Once again it looks like we’re faced with the likelihood that there is no such thing as a scientifically valid listening test. There are too many variables in the case of long term listening to be able to definitively conclude anything about the device under test. If someone can’t hear it in a short term test there’s no guarantee he can hear it in a long term test
Understood. But, for me, I’ve found that in some cases, I need to hear lots of familiar music played mostly in it’s entirety, to get a handle of just what the change I made did to the music. I try my best to not introduce other changes until I’m satisfied but hey, I’m only human.
Unlike visually, where we see everything at once when we enter a room, only to have our mind sort things out, aurally, we need to hear things in their entirety, or close to it, to make a determination. Gestalt in the visual sense doesn’t work the same in the aural sense, or at least in the same time frame.
Short term listening tests can help to see if one can pick out a note’s pitch, scale or tone and not the whole contribution a change can make to the music. Long term listening can at least help get one a handle on what’s happening, in a better sense, but I agree it’s not definitive.
All the best,
Nonoise
