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? - QuoraNo audiophile reject blindtest...Accusing audiophile to refusing them is a "strawman" strategy... Anyway it is not simple to organize...tHose accusing audiophiles know this... It is not practical to organize one for each one of ALL alleged audible perception of change... The value of a blindtest is very limited to a borderline debatable improvement... The placebo accusation is ridicule because out of this borderline zone of small audible debatable improvements, anyone could verify immediately the reality of some changes...The "bias" accusation made no sense for most improvement in the control of vibrations, and the decreasing of the electrical noise floor and for any acoustic changes... The cables? the fuses? I dont use these "tweaks"... I focus more on essential improvements... I implemented many hundreds of changes in the last 2 years, many being perhaps placebos, yes, but the majority being not for sure....The proof is the end result... I could not erganized a blindtest for all modifications one after the other it would be ridiculous... And anyway placebo is not a problem at all nor in medecine neither in audio....Save for companies selling "snake oil" which are a minority.... It seems those who inhabit audio thread contesting ALL audiophile experiences and experiments in listening are "crusader" of the skeptic sunday children club or "trolls" blinded by their technological idolatry....Instead of attacking consumers of "tweaks" they would made a better aiming of the target if they attacked the supposed culprit companies publicly and if they challenged them ...Not their "alleged "victims"....But trolls or zealots are not Robin Hood vigilante....They work for another agenda... In general any sane individual dont need blindtest except to play and amuse himself.... In general it is marketing or industry that use the statistical tool of blindtest... The perpetual proposal of blindtest then reveal more about those who propose it than about those supposedly refusing it... It is a comical and pathetical situation that reflect the "religious" aspect of technological idolatry.... |
@djones51: I think since the time they were conducted and now there are speaker manufacturers who are influenced by them at least in the pro market. PSB speakers are still voiced at NRC. Paradigm used to be based on NRC, then strayed, and now that the founders have bought them again they are returning to that philosophy. Paradigm also has double-blind listening rooms. Ascend is one of the few manufacturers to release a full set of graphs on their speakers, and they strive for "flatness." And this quote from John Dunlavy, "Oh, no. Listening comes later. Because if you stop to think about it, no loudspeaker can sound more accurate than it measures. It may sound worse, or it may sound sweeter, prettier, but if we're talking about absolute accuracy—the ability of the speaker to reproduce as perfectly as possible whatever's fed to it—such a system can never sound more accurate than it first measures. So we try to get the greatest accuracy we can achieve from measurements. Then we begin doing what some people might call "voicing," because the best set of measurements are still open to interpretation." -- Stereophile, John Atkinson 1996 Dunlavy goes on to explain that last sentence as still trying to achieve flatness in small increments as well as large ones. Dunlavy speakers were widely regarded as some of the best of their time. Many of the top studio monitors, like Genelec and Neumann, are flat as a pancake. It just makes sense to not introduce any artificial coloring when you're recording something. |
PSB speakers are still voiced at NRC. Paradigm used to be based on NRC, then strayed, and now that the founders have bought them again they are returning to that philosophy. Paradigm also has double-blind listening rooms. Ascend is one of the few manufacturers to release a full set of graphs on their speakers, and they strive for "flatness." this is a good post that provides excellent context and background for what this pursuit is about - music reproduction that pleases the listener accuracy in and of itself as an end is besides the point, it is at best a pathway to obtaining beautiful sound reason being that a recorded signal fed through a system is itself usually imperfect, often emasculated, so it typically needs 'help' to get back its glory at time of performance or recording |
