Hat is off to you @dletch2
Why Do So Many Audiophiles Reject Blind Testing Of Audio Components?
Because it was scientifically proven to be useless more than 60 years ago.
A speech scientist by the name of Irwin Pollack have conducted an experiment in the early 1950s. In a blind ABX listening test, he asked people to distinguish minimal pairs of consonants (like “r” and “l”, or “t” and “p”).
He found out that listeners had no problem telling these consonants apart when they were played back immediately one after the other. But as he increased the pause between the playbacks, the listener’s ability to distinguish between them diminished. Once the time separating the sounds exceeded 10-15 milliseconds (approximately 1/100th of a second), people had a really hard time telling obviously different sounds apart. Their answers became statistically no better than a random guess.
If you are interested in the science of these things, here’s a nice summary:
Categorical and noncategorical modes of speech perception along the voicing continuum
Since then, the experiment was repeated many times (last major update in 2000, Reliability of a dichotic consonant-vowel pairs task using an ABX procedure.)
So reliably recognizing the difference between similar sounds in an ABX environment is impossible. 15ms playback gap, and the listener’s guess becomes no better than random. This happens because humans don't have any meaningful waveform memory. We cannot exactly recall the sound itself, and rely on various mental models for comparison. It takes time and effort to develop these models, thus making us really bad at playing "spot the sonic difference right now and here" game.
Also, please note that the experimenters were using the sounds of speech. Human ears have significantly better resolution and discrimination in the speech spectrum. If a comparison method is not working well with speech, it would not work at all with music.
So the “double blind testing” crowd is worshiping an ABX protocol that was scientifically proven more than 60 years ago to be completely unsuitable for telling similar sounds apart. And they insist all the other methods are “unscientific.”
The irony seems to be lost on them.
Why do so many audiophiles reject blind testing of audio components? - Quora- ...
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dletch2 No, there is not abundant literature that says blind testing is bad.I don’t think anyone has claimed that, and it’s interesting that you equate "frailty and limitations" with "bad." There is abundant literature that details the fallibility of blind testing, some of which has been linked in this thread. For the measurementalists here, blind testing is a religion; it is perfect and absolute. The results, oddly, are to be accepted on "blind faith." That was Kaptchuk’s point - which you’d understand if you actually read his paper. |
jerkface The more discerning ears of the audiophile are far more useful in ABX tests.Maybe. But this has not been shown in any of the legitimate, scientific blind listening tests with which I'm familiar. However, it has been consistently shown that trained listeners - those who were instructed in advance what to listen for - were more likely to be able to detect differences. |
However, it has been consistently shown that trained listeners - those who were instructed in advance what to listen for - were more likely to be able to detect differences. See, to me, audiophiles are people who have already trained themselves on how to listen to equipment and observe differences. That said, if you have studies out there where audiophiles were no more effective at detecting differences in audio equipment in blind listening tests than the average Joe on the street, I'd love to take a look at them. Always game to be enlightened. |
- 317 posts total