Some days are diamonds some are stones. You can’t fool Mother Nature. Or Mothra.
How are you hearing no difference?
In my experience, I've never heard two pre-amps that sound exactly the same, nor two DACs that sound the same, nor two amps...etc. Yet, occasionally someone will claim that they heard no difference between Product A and Product B in their system. I find it difficult to believe.
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Listening with just your ears does eliminate the effect of psychoacoustics quite plenty if you are totally blind, and you ask the in-store consultant not to tell you which one of the several amps, or preamps, or players, or cables, etc... in the lineup you are listening to... Particularly if the evaluation and results are repeated with consistency. I found there can be significant differences in performance between components of same price ranging from freeby earpieces given out by airlines in flight or 50C RCA wires supplied with old boomboxes and cassette recorders, all the way upto multi thousand $$$ wiring and high end speakers... Same thing for other components in the audio chain. While this has usually been the case, it has not been universally so... There have been some less than common cases where I have perceived little or no difference. G. |
guidocorona Listening with just your ears does eliminate the effect of psychoacoustics quite plenty if you are totally blind ... This is mistaken and a common misnomer. It is impossible to listen "with just your ears." Just as with vision, what we perceive is determined as much by our brain as it is by the physical hearing mechanism. There is simply no way to completely eliminate psychoacoustic phenomenona from a listening test. Those who completely reject scientific blind listening tests - and I’m not one of them - often cite that as a flaw in blind testing. It’s a valid point, but doesn’t completely discredit the value of such testing, imo.
... ask the in-store consultant not to tell you which one of the several amps, or preamps, or players, or cables, etc... in the lineup you are listening to ... If you want a meaningful blind test, it has to be double-blind. And there’s more to it than that; to be scientific, you need to match levels, and you need to provide quick switching while also allowing the subject to listen for as long as he likes to each DUT, such as is provided in the abx protocol. Conducting a valid, double-blind, scientific listening test is a tricky business. And even when properly conducted, it’s easy to misinterpret the results. For those reasons and others, I believe that audiophiles have very little practical use for blind listening tests. |
Hearing, just like the rest of our senses can be refined and educated over a period of time. As an example, top chefs and wine sommeliers have educated their palette to discern subtle taste differences that most would miss. Perfumers have developed their sense of smell to the point that they can deconstruct a perfume formulae. Or how a conductor hears the orchestra differently than the audience. |
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