Amir and Blind Testing

The psychology of hearing is a huge subject, upon which many books have been written.

It may help audiophiles to deploy passive listening techniques when auditioning new gear. With the new component in my system, I play a recording at the normal volume for my taste, then go into the next door room and read a book about a completely different topic to audio or music. If my attention is diverted from the reading, to the music, by something that my brain has not identified before, then the new component may be contributing something interesting.

I deployed this technique when I purchased my last DAC five years ago. I auditioned 6 DAC's and only one lifted my head from the book I was reading. I still have that DAC in my system today.

Happy auditioning!

I believe that when Amir places an audio device on his test bench, he goes into "lab tech" mode, where sound only exists to confirm the perfection of his measurements.

Seriously, improvement is a hard thing to quantify.  If everybody agrees A > B, life is easy.  But what if you're the only one who thinks so?

In theory, this is a great advantage for the objectivist.  Instead of days of pain-staking listening, they spend a few hours running a battery of tests.  But, wait - how do you evaluate the results of each test?  How do the tests correlate to the SQ characteristics most important to you?

Some people need that kind of assurance, so ASR definitely serves a purpose.  However, if you're trying to decide if you'll like the SQ of a specific component in your particular setup playing your kind of music, I doubt that ASR will be much help.

But, wait - how do you evaluate the results of each test? How do the tests correlate to the SQ characteristics most important to you?

There are some tutorials available (both written and video) to help understand what the tests mean and therefore how they may be evaluated.

Understanding that might also answer your second question - there are things to watch out for, and are displayed on colorful pictures. I like pictures.

I also know that my preferences do not align well with many who contribute to ASR.

This is no cause to be disrespectful of the combined knowledge of the contributors, many of whom are electrical engineers, scientists and PhDs, and have contributed in some manner to design and building of audio and associated gears..

As with many things in life, it is valuable to learn the ability to pick and choose that which is useful to you.   

Our hearing, or actually our brain’s hearing center, adapts ... sort of like our eyes adapt to low light levels. And the hearing center has no memory, like the smell center has, when you smell something that you smelled once years ago, you know you smelled this before.

For an AB test to work it must be possible to make the switch instantly. At the very moment of the switch you can hear the difference ... if there is any.

After a while our brain takes over and we really don’t know what is happening in those grey cells. You can still decern if you like a particular sound, or if you don’t, over time, but to hear subtle differences, instantaneous switching is the only way.

I once wasted my time watching a video “review” of some audiophile switches. It was half an hour of blah blah blah about how his measurements demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that there was absolutely no measurable difference between X Y and Z switches therefore it was impossible to hear any difference so it was all in your small “audiophile” brain, his mantra so to speak. Then he went on to briefly demo the switches he had just “measured” in his (joke of a) system. And guess what: he could clearly hear a difference. His wife could hear a difference. According to him the audiophile switches sounded significantly and audibly worse.
 

Without realising he had just contradicted and refuted his half hour case for “it’s in your head”. If he accepts that his experience contradicts his measurements, for better or worse, then his measurements are flawed. For me Amir became irrelevant after that video.