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? - QuoraAt home is a different history :) but in general in my ears the qualities of the a component transfer and by this time I already have a good sound map on the different rooms. Don't you believe that if 2 rooms are properly arranged for your ears they will sound fundamentally similar but with their own signature?
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There is an acoustic signature of a room by itself, by virtue of his vibrating body... All rooms differ...Even if i tune them, why? For the same reason that the vibrating body of all violins differ from one another for an educated ear even when they are tuned by the musician himself... They always differ and this difference i call it yes their acoustic signature, their timbre ... Then the 2 rooms like the 2 violins will produce the same musical tonal playing but with a different sound timbre perception, so subtle the difference could be and will be, the difference will stay... This is the reason that we only know how sound an audio system in some specific conditions when we tune it ourself with the chosen room ...If we listen to it in another acoustic conditions , it will not change completely for sure, because like for the room which will sound different before and after his tuning , the audio system has his own internal acoustic signature which will express itself differently in different room ... It is his "timbre" expression so to speak...Like a human body can play the same tone than any other body but with a unique timbre expression... This is the reason why there is no absolute room and no absolutely perfect gear system...No absolute timbre perception either...Perfect hearing of perfect pitch is not the same phenomenon than timbre perception itself... «Pitch allows us to hear intonation in a language and notes in a melody. Timbre allows us to distinguish the vowels and consonants that make up words, as well as the unique sound qualities of different musical instruments. Combinations of pitch and timbre enable us to identify a speaker’s voice or a piece of music.» Then pitch perception and production is linked to some precise frequency tone, timbre is a more complex phenomenon related to the resonant human and musical body in an acoustic environment ... Timbre phenomenon cannot be reduced to only a spectrum envelope for example there is also a time envelope and way more related to the interaction with the acoustic environment around the resonant body ... Pitch perception will not change from a different room or from a different singer body to another one... Timbre will change from one room to another and from a singer to another one....
In a word multiple trade-off are at play in acoustic/psycho-acoustic ....There is no perfect room, no perfect instrument, no perfect ears, only perfect musical tone yes... Then your choice of words is neither true nor wrong...I only try here to convey my own limited understanding from my room tuning process... Remember that i am not a musician nor an acoustician either, i only made listenings experiments in my room... Then two room even tuned by me cannot sound similar, they own different signatures that i adapted to my own liking or ears/brain signature... If we put the same system in these 2 room, different in size, geometry, topology and acoustic content my tuning will transform them in something i like yes but different...( the audio system is part of this acoustic content of the room and the same system will sound in a different way in the two rooms) All of what i just said dont contradict the fact that picking between some different pieces of gear in a room tuned by me is a good idea Why? Because if i tuned the room i will not need a blind test to chose well... If i dont know the room signature it is better with a blind test yes... My best to you....
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"When you meet a new person can you look at them for a few seconds and determine how they compare to the last person you met, or does it take time for their true nature and character to reveal itself? For me, it’s the same with audio components. It takes time to get to know them."
Fair enough, if you believe there might be parallels between comparing a human being with an electronic device - I can't fathom certain human beings even after knowing them for decades but that's another story - but what about those who went around espousing "night and day" differences, yet dare not risk undertaking a blind listening test between a $10 DAC and one costing 100 times as much? Let’s not forget that human perception evolved primarily to detect differences, which often meant danger. It’s something we’re very good at. Therefore if it really does take several days/ weeks to identify a sonic difference, which might only be due to a subtle anomaly in frequency response, then just how important could it be anyway? Furthermore, wouldn’t such delicate differences between frequency response will inevitably suit some material/systems and not others? In fact you could argue that when the detection of extremely marginal differences (which may well be down to manufacturing tolerances) takes such a long period of time how can we be sure that it’s not our mood/attitude that is actually changing instead of any increase in our perception? You can bet that the equipment on test will always be slitkre consistent than the human being doing the testing by ears alone. It’s quite one thing to say I love product X, it’s better built, has better backup service, but entirely another to say it’s clearly sonically better than product Y. Sonic differences are, I suspect, easily the most important factor when it comes to purchasing new equipment. Audiophiles change equipment in an attempt to upgrade their sound. I can’t see any reason why us consumers would have a problem with blind listening tests when auditioning potential upgrades. Money and sonic satisfaction are very important to most of us, aren’t they? So perhaps we should also ask that why is it primarily manufacturers, dealers and reviewers that have an issue with blind listening tests? Instead of embracing an additional way of evaluation, some them seem to be quite hostile.
Reviewers/shills/ad men/hacks/sales reps etc seem to be particularly cowardly/defensive/guarded/silent when it comes to reviewing blind. In fact I know not of a single one that would risk their ’reputation’ in this way. Not one. Why is this? Perhaps their fear of destroying their entire retail business model by revealing the emperor’s new clothes syndrome is real enough. It should be easy enough to arrange for most, but can you imagine any dealer offering the facilities for prospective customers to listen blind? Me neither. |
@cd318 Thank you for reinforcing my point. The differences are often subtle and it takes me extended listening to discover those differences and see how I react to them. I have nothing "against" blind testing. Blind test your heart out. I don't however think it's an effective way for me to judge the sound quality of audio equipment. |
