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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
128x128artemus_5
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,865 posts
 
Obviously no testing is much better than blind testing. Or not-blind. Testing is hard work......who needs it? People have better things to do with their golden ears like listen to the things they know they  like. So what if there might be something better? Beauty is in the ear of the listener.
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5 OP
1,913 posts
 
@orgillian192 A test of systems (or components in a system not my own) playing it to me would still be useless as my reference is my own system and without a direct comparison to that, I would have virtually no frame of reference to opine on what may or may not be different.

Indeed a very good point and one which Paul McGowan (PS Audio) & Hans Beekhuyzen have made as well. Harman Int. trains all their people who do testing,  on how to listen. @mikelavigne  above has given many problems which he faces in the many DBX he has been involved.
erik_squires
15,805 posts
 
Absolutely no one asked me to so I must therefore opine.

Double blind studies are for product development, not for making a choice in buying.

A double blind study on the value of a feature will help me tailor my product and marketing.  It won't help me, not even a little bit, chose among products I'll purchase.
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
might be good to remember that science is the art of logic based investigation of incomplete unknowns.

The statement does not say that science itself or logic or the art of investigation is in any way complete, nor does it suppose that dogmatism is a thing.

Arguing with human emotion as a deep colorant and filter in one’s own formation of logic... is also an act of partial and limited depth analysis with the logic  bits being all askew.

Since we don’t know everything, this part is inevitable. to be on guard for it with every single thought form of any kind.

at no point in any of the given motions of working through the considerations, should anyone assume that any of the bits in place are perfected or immutable. that’s the creep of the deep mindset of humans in ’dogmatism’, coming into the fray again. coloring. owning. projecting. deciding and living in the emotional coloring and skewing of logic.

really bad news for science.

which the idea of science is specifically designed to sidestep and take into account, and never issue any facts of any kind. to never be dogmatic, to never have facts, to revert all to mutable, changeable theory. otherwise dogmatism rises in the mind and colors facts into existence - when there are none.

Most times these sort of threads are rife with limited depth projections built out of dogma and factualization. A fundamental and core human issue.

if you want to have a discussion that is to be based in the idea and form/scope of science.... then shed the dogma and facts, in everything. Then..maybe we'll start to get somewhere useful.
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5 OP
1,913 posts
 
@ dletch2, jdane, djones, jjassmith and all the other Scientismists on board. You boys are good at casting aspersions on those of us who do not agree with your religion of Scientism. But do you have any REAL science to back up your assertions? You aren't calling on science. I've debated too many small minded people like you who when backed in a  corner, always cry out that my question was not answerable by science. So on one hand, you infer that science has all the answers and then when backed into a corner you contradict yourself and say it doesn't.  
So I know who you are, what you think you know and your next move. As I use to tell my son, "I know what you are going to do before you do it". Why? Because I have been you. But I grew up. maybe you will too. But its not guaranteed. 
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