Amir and Blind Testing


Let me start by saying I like watching Amir from ASR, so please let’s not get harsh or the thread will be deleted. Many times, Amir has noted that when we’re inserting a new component in our system, our brains go into (to paraphrase) “analytical mode” and we start hearing imaginary improvements. He has reiterated this many times, saying that when he switched to an expensive cable he heard improvements, but when he switched back to the cheap one, he also heard improvements because the brain switches from “music enjoyment mode” to “analytical mode.” Following this logic, which I agree with, wouldn’t blind testing, or any A/B testing be compromised because our brains are always in analytical mode and therefore feeding us inaccurate data? Seems to me you need to relax for a few hours at least and listen to a variety of music before your brain can accurately assess whether something is an actual improvement.  Perhaps A/B testing is a strawman argument, because the human brain is not a spectrum analyzer.  We are too affected by our biases to come up with any valid data.  Maybe. 

chayro
Post removed 

Everyone has their opinion and that's all it is including mine. The only way to get beyond opinions is with vigorous testing including our ears. You may hear better than I and 90% of the population but that tells us what? When you hear good enough to pick product A from B when they both measure beyond human audibility or measure within .1% variance using only your ears  in a controlled testing regimen then you've told us something useful.

This is true but it doesn't really tell us anything.

Some, because of experience, training, open-mindedness, or simply physiological advantage hear better than others.

The point of Amir's video mentioned in the OP is trying to get us past these notions of sighted listening being all that useful for anything other than personal preferences of the aesthetics of the item. Buy what you want, like what you want but personal preferences tells us nothing about the component only about 1 persons preferences. 

My system recently started sounding better and although I hate to admit it, it could be due to my newish speaker cables hitting the manufacturers 500 hour break-in point. Who knew? Perhaps the manufacturer...

That site is more a marketing place for topping and others and not much to do with audio. As with any forum there are some good, intelligent, level headed individuals, but ultimately its all about the extreme side of the measurement police and his ego IMHO.

His methods have been debunked numerous times, depending on where you sit in obj vs sub viewpoint.

Some interesting reads for another viewpoint

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/audio-science-review-review.9827/

 

It is is not a question about pure audibility in a quantitative measurable way ONLY, it is mainly a question about the information content in what we hears...

Then a ears/brain trained musically and acoustically is not necessarily "Better" in his power of resolution than some another non trained ear/brain, the learned biases make him able to perceive what another similar pair of ear will never " see" without training... A bias is also attention focus piloting ability, a guidance, not only a blinder, or a bad conditioning....

 

What we hear, his content, color, form, dynamic, living qualities are not determined only and mainly by a decibel meter or by the measurable brute Hertz range...

The information content about all the qualities of a resonant body, a cavern, a piece of wood or metal, a fruit or a vegetable, a musical instrument, or any resonant object put in a state of vibration by us and from which we extract many HIDDEEN qualities, this information content is notmeasurable in Hertz and in decibels at all....

The only fact that you seems to ignore this voluntarily speak much louder about your opinion than anything you will say about the Hertz range of audition and decibel range which anyway is true for sure...We are limited, and saying that is a common place trivial argument that do not go to the crux of the matter...

The specific intonation of a player, the listener envelopment acoustic factor, the micro structure of a playing instrument timbre, the meaning of a symphony, the synergy between musicians, the reverberation time effect on imaging and timbre in a room , etc all that and many others characteristics, like echolocalization  in trained  blind people has a great information content we must learn to perceive, and perceiving it dont means that i PRETEND to be  a "bat and that i claim that  you are limited compared to me in the Hertz range and in the decibel range...

Decibels and Hertzs are ONLY some quantitative aspects of sound, and attacking someone because he claim  that the ear is better than any limited measuring tool reflect only ignorance,  no one ever  pretended to be superior, or a "bat" out of the human range, to do so it  is not fair and it is scientifically naive...

Anyway we are all potential  training bats also....The ears is the beginning and the end for any musician and acoustician journey, in a way any measuring tools could not  ever be...Any tool will be more limited anyway in all those other dimensions of sound that the multidimensional ear/brain which will be able by contrast to capture, isolate and translate  a sound in a new information content...

 

We must learn to be listener in spite of our limitations....Great acoustician, great , musicians, some blind people can train us....

And remember that in human history the worst limitation of man are the self imposed one...Not the evident one....Calling them miracles will not erase them from our own potential ....

 

In a word: we "see" the complez information content of the sound, we dont hear it ONLY in Decibel and in Hertz or in Savart scale dimensions or in any other measurable dimensions....

 

You may hear better than I and 90% of the population but that tells us what? When you hear good enough to pick product A from B when they both measure beyond human audibility or measure within .1% variance using only your ears in a controlled testing regimen then you’ve told us something useful.