Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts

@prof

The ironic thing is I’m one of the very, very few ASR members who has actually posted detailed reports of (my) blind tests.

That is amusing actually, I wonder why that is ... 🤔

@axo1989

That is amusing actually, I wonder why that is ... 🤔

I think it’s understandable to a degree. For one thing, doing blind tests can be a hassle, sometimes totally impractical (speakers especially). And generally speaking I think the members there can and do rely on the relevant tests having been done by other parties. For instance all the research by Toole/Olive/Harman Kardon et al, for selecting the relevant measurements in speakers. And also they can look to measurements of DACs and amplifiers to see that distortion levels are below known thresholds of audibility. So in many cases they don’t really need to perform their own blind tests, depending on what approach they take to buying equipment.

On the other hand, it is fairly galling to be disparaged as some pure subjectivist-in-sheep’s-clothing by folks there who haven’t really "put up or shut up" themselves in terms of personally having experience blind testing.

Generally speaking I don’t like to run from one forum to another, in order to bash the other. And clearly I’ve written a bunch in support of ASR here. Any critiques I raise here about ASR I’ve raised plenty of times on ASR.

Having been involved in many a philosophical debate, where you really have to have all your ducks in order because every assumption is going to need justification, I can’t help notice a tendency among *some* on ASR that I’ve seen elsewhere when people are appealing to science. It’s the mistake that "because I am citing the science" I am therefore "on the side of the facts" which means "my argument is sound whereas yours is bereft of The Facts."

One may as well say that because I’m standing on a stack of study papers, my claims are scientifically true. There is a self-blindness to the interpretation one is making from the science to the claims of any argument. Often a pretty glaring gap there. Citing purported facts isn’t good enough; what matters is whether the inference you are making from those facts to the claims in your argument are reasonable and sound. And it’s in there that you see people who claim to be of a scientific mindset making starkly anti-scientific leaps of inference! (That includes taking confident positions from studies with ridiculously small sample sizes, when it suits their prejudice).

As I’ve argued on ASR many times, I see some people arguing in a bubble, not really looking at how the implications of their position plays outside of the ASR bubble. For instance, the rejection of the worth of subjective descriptions, reports, reviews as utterly worthless and unreliable. I’ve argued that you simply can not take that too far because you will hit contradiction and absurdity, given the general reliability of our senses in navigating the world. There’s clearly some of a pure engineering mind-set who have never actually had to work in the "real world" where one must communicate about sound without appeal to instruments and measurements - an example being my own profession working in sound post production for film and TV. We communicate successfully all day long via subjective descriptions of sound, to pass information, guide and alter the sound to an agreed upon result. The proposition that purely subjective impressions and descriptions are Totally Unreliable simply can not explain this success, or offer anything practical in it’s place.

That’s what I mean about the way many people "argue in a bubble" where they think a conclusion makes sense just when applied to their particular area of interest in a hobby, while not examining it’s implications in the rest of the real world.

What timing.  Sure enough, after writing the above, I'm going through just this same debate on ASR once again, where someone there has declared subjective impressions as meaningless and useless.  

Blind tests are a hassle, and there’s nothing remotely sexy about them.

The ones I’ve done involved switching between different masterings and bitrates as well as CD v Minidisc v MP3 player have demonstrated just how similar they all were.

My Sony MP3 was indistinguishable from my Marantz CD player.

A shocking discovery!

One that I had to repeat a few times as I could not accept the evidence of my own ears at first. It didn’t make sense then and I’m not sure it makes much sense now.

My mind keeps insisting that the Marantz CD6000ki must outperform a sub £100 Sony MP3 player.

It really should.

But it doesn’t.

Talking of CD, at the last show I went to, a fortnight ago, it was nearly all steaming and vinyl, hardly a CD player in sight.

How times change.

It would now appear that manufacturers and designers no longer see it necessary to use a compact disc player when they want to demonstrate loudspeakers and amplifiers at their best these days.

It takes some getting used to how things change, especially when you recall all of those endless sound quality comparisons between CD players during the 1990s up til around 2010.

Now it would appear as if all of those differences were largely in our imaginations and have now become as irrelevant as the use of leeches has in healing the sick.

Well cd318, you've just proven either your system or your ears aren't "resolving" enough.

;-)