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Blind fold hearing test

How many of you could be blind folded or put in a room in total darkness and know what kind of speaker amp and preamp are being used. Another words if u came blind folded in my listening room could u tell I was using a Krell amp a ARC pre and B&W speakers? Not necessarily the models but more or less the brands. I would be the first to say for me it would be no. Would love to see how many of you could. Should be interesting. 
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vinylfan62
119 posts
 
I could. At your house.  Now that you have told me what you own.  I pretty sure I would nail it every time. Ha!  But other than that no. I’d like to see someone who could. That would be fun. 
ratboysr's avatar
ratboysr
60 posts
 
@vinylfan62 Dang it you beat me to it.
ashoka
99 posts
 
Some one had done that experiment I am not sure BBC or Discovery or NatGeo... I remember at about 20 years back  had seen a video where a blind folded listener made to hear an artist live performance, a high end 2way (white small Bookshelf) stand mount speaker and low end speaker at 5-8 mt(my guess) away in Vajrasana position on the parquet floor.May be room is not treated front wall(behind speaker) was full glass wall. Room again I guess, arounf15X20X>9 ft. The listener came out with correct assessment. 
firstnot's avatar
firstnot
248 posts
 
It seems that to able to ID any one cone in a box speaker would be 
impossible. To tell different style apart, certainly. Electrostatics should be
the easiest. Okay Stereophile and others, get the deal going. There can be many ways to setup this test. Let's see which magazine does it best!!  This I would like to read!! 
8th-note
418 posts
 
The history of blind listening is pretty consistent. Everybody, including golden ear reviewers, can't hear differences when they can't see the component (this doesn't apply to speakers). @firstnot - you will never see a major magazine do such a test because their reviewers wouldn't participate. After several famous (infamous?) embarrassments where the Emperor was found to be naked Stereophile came out aggressively against blind tests, saying that they aren't valid.

Several audio societies have put together A/B/X blind tests to see if their members could hear the difference between two competitive components. In every case I'm aware of the members failed to statistically identify a difference.

Speaking for myself, the idea that I could blindfolded identify the brands of the components I was listening to is ludicrous. I'm not sure I can even hear any differences between interconnects. I think we hear with our eyes much more than we care to admit.
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