Wow...and actual engineer's posts removed because they don't agree with the narrative.
That's pretty juvenile, and petty. It's actually pretty disgusting.
That's pretty juvenile, and petty. It's actually pretty disgusting.
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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edgewound ... actual engineer's posts removed because they don't agree with the narrative.I'm pretty sure he was no engineer. That's pretty juvenile, and petty. It's actually pretty disgusting.What was juvenile and petty were the personal attacks in the posts he made - just as he did under his previously-banned user names. |
Actually...McDonald's "food" is not good you, and will lead you to an early grave. This has been measured. Making such snobbish comments on those of us that don't buy into the all the audiophile nonsense, have actually listened to this varied gear and reach a conclusion that the prices don't justify the performance...by actually listening, and not falling for the psychologically subjective things they are told are there. Refusal to listen? That's an incredibly ignorant assumption and statement to make. You can snicker all you want at those that don't join your elitist club...the same reason's I never joined a fraternity. It's not what you know...it's who you know. And it's pretty fake. |
If you want to learn this stuff the odds of running into someone like me who really does understand and can actually explain it are slim to none. This kind of renaissance man is a thing of the past because we have been sold the idea of the "Expert". He/She supposedly knows a very large amount about a small subject. But I have lamented many times that the various experts know a lot about their specific ingredient which goes into the pie. And the amount of experts needed to build a pie may be 10-20-25, etc. But no one knows what the pie should taste like. Therefore the pie is often quite inferior to the one grandma used to make and she only had a 5th grade education. This is not to belittle education but the process itself which is often quite flawed. |
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