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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
128x128artemus_5
cd318
2,636 posts
 

@astolfor

"...his father almost gave him a spank and asked if I knew or I was being me curious so he told me that short memory key in finding the right lenses, because the short memory comparison is key"

 

Thanks for sharing that interesting post.

Short term memory comparison does seem to make a lot of sense whenever we have to rely upon our senses. Everytime I look at a picture or a scene and then close my eyes to visualise it, I’m always a little disappointed to find upon opening my eyes once more just how much detail and nuance had faded so fast.

As for autism, unfortunately it still seems to be a mysterious condition, even in 2022.

Best of luck to you.

 

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,176 posts
 

In blindtest to detect DIFFERENCE in sound working with the short term memory is the best yes...

But a difference in sound is an IMPROVEMENT or a DEGRADATION in some direction relative to many aoustical cues at the same time : timbre spectral evenlope, timbre time envelope, imaging, soundstage, dynamic, LEV/ASW ratio, reverberation time, and others acoustical cues relating to the head/torso relation to each speaker for each ears... Then to detect if a difference will be qualified good or bad we need TIME and the detection must be made in a KNOWN acoustical environment with a known musical cues...

To evaluate these changes only relatively long listening session linked to the body/feeling/ brain memory make sense in the acoustical room/ speakers TUNING direction..

We have very short term memory of sound yes but also a body memory linked to emotions associated with past sound long term experiences... It is why hearing sounds must be learned in acoustic and music....The long term memory is not a direct storage of the sound but a feeling engrammation related to the sound...

This acoustic feeling is what a musician use to qualify a sound/music well done... Perfect pitch hearing is another matter...Most musician must learn to reproduce and recognize pitch...They learn how to feel it...And the feeling associated with the tone nevermind the timbre is memorized...It is why a minor chord or a major chord own different feeling meaning...Joy or sadness for example...

 

 

By the way i studied practical acoustic in my room for the last 2 years, i discovered that we dont understand what sound really is...i say that but i am not a scientist for sure...It is my informed opinion based on my listening experiments...

Acoustic is a marvellous very complex field and philosophically super deep....

For example sound is not a wave but the wave is the image of the resonant body source....

For sure without air wave there is no sound hearing, but air also make possible fire but the air are not the fire but a cause of his qualitative manifestation.. To hear sound we need a resonant qualified body to be the source interacting though air wave with our ears ...To have fire we need a combusting matter interacting with air and our feeling body called that "hot".......

Human ears/brain are able to detect QUALITATIVE information from the resonant sound source by the mediation of the wave image...Like blind people use waves image trough a resonant echo to reconstruct without eyes the environment geometry and the object matter various densities around them ...

 

astolfor's avatar
astolfor
317 posts
 

@cd318 Autism is my gift, tool and best feature for vast most part, so much to thank.  I just have some quarks, some find them funny and some they do not know what to do and get kind of scared  so they don't get to know me. I have a great partner, son, adopted daughter, very good friends, and colleagues. To be frank I can't ask more from life. 

jerryg123's avatar
jerryg123
3,429 posts
 

I have perfect vision and when something sounds like crap well it sounds like crap, I do not need to compare it to something that sounds good.

A spec sheet tells me shite. 

If it sounds like its spec sheet then swell.

I only accept testing by my ears.

noske
783 posts
 

I have perfect vision and ...I only accept testing by my ears...

A spec sheet tells me shite.

If it sounds like its spec sheet then swell.

I’m confused by many things from time to time and am the first to admit my own limitations.

I have yet to get my sensory functions confused, though, especially when it is being sought to demonstrate their infallibility.  Never-mind some inanimate object revealing itself, I can cope with that on Audiogon.

 

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