Why are digital streaming equipment manufacturers refusing to answer me?

audio2design

... double blind ABX testing is considered the gold standard ...

Not everyone shares your measurementalist’s belief that ABX is the "gold standard" for evaluating audio equipment. Not even close. It appears that really upsets you.

That doesn’t mean that ABX is useless, of course. But it’s just a tool - a single, solitary tool.

And there is it folks, can't win an argument based on facts, or truth, so must resort to an insult and labelling.

Not everyone shares your measurementalist’s belief that ABX is the "gold standard"

Hate to break it to you "cleeds", but ABX has absolutely nothing to do with measurement. I think that is why it is so threatening, because it is not measurement based. It is based on one thing, and one thing only, human listening. Your ears and brain. No scopes, no meters, no Audio Precision equipment, just some stereo equipment and your ears.


What's funny is in another thread, you used as an argument, Wireworld coming up with a "Patented" device to improve their ability to do double blind testing. Cake and eat it too?  Do please try to be consistent.

Lot's of people have lots of "beliefs". Lots of people don't have the educational or practical experience either. Does not change the lack of evidence that ABX works and hence is the "gold standard" or as close as we have to one.

audio2design

And there is it folks, can’t win an argument based on facts, or truth, so must resort to an insult and labelling.

Nope, I offered no insult. There’s no need for you to pretend you’re insulted simply because someone disagrees with you.

Hate to break it to you "cleeds", but ABX has absolutely nothing to do with measurement.

That’s correct, of course. The only function of an ABX test is to determine if the listener - under the test conditions - can reliably distinguish whether "X" is either "A" or "B".

... in another thread, you used as an argument, Wireworld coming up with a "Patented" device to improve their ability to do double blindtesting. Cake and eat it too? Do please try to be consistent.

No, I never, ever said that. Ever. Please try to be accurate when you make claims. It’s bad enough when you use illogic to make an argument, but it’s worse when you fabricate claims made by others.

I have pointed out that Wireworld offers a comparator to use in evaluating cables. It’s a little odd that you seem to insist that others do this experimenting for you, but I understand that if you were to actually conduct such testing you fear the results might conflict with your fundamentalist beliefs.

Lot’s of people have lots of "beliefs" ... Does not change the lack of evidence that ABX works and hence is the "gold standard" or as close as we have to one.

Yes, and your measurementalist "belief" is that ABX is the gold standard for audio testing. As I’ve noted many times previously, it’s a very useful tool, and I’ve been an ABX test subject and found the results v-e-r-y interesting. It absolutely has a place in audio testing.

But ABX testing is just a tool - a single, solitary tool. It is not a path to Absolute Truth. That apparently offends your belief system.

Taken to the extreme, there are those who actually believe  "if you didn't hear it blind, you didn't hear it." Obviously, many sighted people can hear just fine.

@audio2design  Below is a journal article you might find interesting.  It explores a mechanism behind the empirical paradox that people can show a reliable preference between two stimuli but fail to discrimination between them on an ABX discrimination test (here referred to as triangle testing). 

I will note that the reason they identify in this case is actually "the statistical properties of the decision rules followed in different tasks."  I still suspect that raw preference judgments are more sensitive than discrimination judgments but that was not the driving factor for differences in this case.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03205304

Thank you cal3713, I do remember that paper ages ago. I will point directly to the conclusion:

Our main conclusion, however, is that it is not necessary to invoke any advantage for hedonic judgments to explain our earlier results. These, and the new results here, are just particular instances of the advantage in statistical power that Ennis(1990) shows forced-choice methods to have over triangular tests. More consistent judgments are a consequence not of greater sensitivity to hedonic differences but to the statistical properties of the decision rules followed in different tasks.

I believe I noted above that ABX was statistically more robust.