teo_audio wrote:
It’s been covered that due to how the human body works, hearing and mind aspects, that double blind testing for sonic comparison purposes...beyond a very few basic a-b switches... does not work.
You may want to take that up with researchers like Dr. Floyd Toole and Dr. Sean Olive (not to mention a great many other companies that have used double blind testing to develop, for instance, new digital audio codecs).
It’s always interesting how cable-differences-promoters like Teo don’t seem to have any problem with causal, sighted comparisons - a scenario well known scientifically to introduce human bias variables - for showing positive results. One doesn’t, for instance, see Teo objecting to the methods used to produce a favorable sighted review of his cables in a recent audiophile site.
But as soon as the subject turns to blind testing, especially those that don’t show positive results, well then it’s time to nit-pick the test methodology to death, even casting doubt on the scientific enterprise of blind testing.
Funny this double-standard.
As always, I would ask Teo to explain how he can invalidate the results of blind testing, while not cutting off the branch he is sitting on. That is, if you are going to cast doubt on the method that takes the most rigorous attempt at reducing known variables, how in the world will you justify a less rigorous method that will be vulnerable to well known variables (e.g. human perceptual biases)?
And note that when people try to nit pick blind testing for audio, they will tend to start referencing research that suggests our auditory memory becomes problematic in certain test circumstances. Most good DBTs take this in to account. But the conundrum happens because tests that indicate problematic areas for DBTs tend to revolve around the problem that more subtle the difference, the worse our audio memory is. But even given this, it should give little comfort to the cable-loving segment of audiophiles. This is because all you have to do is look at the claims routinely made for the effects of high end cables, in which the audible differences are often claimed to be far from subtle. e.g.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/has-anyone-tried-these-stunning-new-cpt-power-cordAnd how often is a skeptic’s hearing questioned by those advocating the sonic differences of high end cables? It’s virtually certain that at some point the skeptic’s hearing is questioned because they fail to hear differences that are SO OBVIOUS.
But once it comes to asking if someone can hear those differences when they don’t know which cable they are listening to, then those differences seem to grow smaller, and smaller - blind tests not sensitive enough! - and the excuses grow longer and more numerous.
Again, I’m not in the camp that just denies audio cables can sound different. But at the same time, the type of objections many audiophiles - and those selling cables ^^^^ - raise against more controlled testing scenarios are often unconvincing (and often naive).
