Reviews with all double blind testing?

WARNING: LONG POST -- LIFE HISTORY AND ITS ILLUSTRATION OF BIASES -- YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP

I went through grad school with a $150 boombox. As a classical music lover, I obviously wasn't happy with it, but what was I going to do? Sell my '87 Buick and walk? Audio was not *that* important to me. So it wasn't until I got a job that I decided to invest a little something in a decent 'stereo'. Still, I was married and my wife was in law school, racking up debts. Not knowing anything about hifi, I decided to get a simple home theatre setup. I went to Best Buy, dropped three hundred on a Yamaha receiver, and another couple hundred on a 5.1 speaker set-up. ($100 off b/c I bought the two together.) Some cheap cables, and I was headed home to set up my new rig. Hooray! And man, this thing came with a sub!

You know what happened, of course. The system actually did pretty well with movies. I don't care all that much about HT being perfect. Eminem's 'Eight Mile' was the first movie I watched with the new setup, and it ROCKED! Highs were crystal clear. Very sharp. And the bass, or actually, it was mid-bass, b/c that sub doesn't go too low, was nice and full in my apartment. Gladiator was great too. Cool.

Then I popped in my cds. I wanted *so* badly to like what I heard. After all, my wife was already pissed that I had spent $500. "$500? And you don't like it? What's wrong with you? If you're going to be so picky, you should have gone to law school rather than taking forever to write a dissertation." (I still wasn't done at the time.) She didn't even know about the extra 100 I had spent on a Monster surge protector and cables.

But it sounded terrible. Mid-range just sucked. There's no other way to say it. And treble portions were highly highly annoying.

I stuck with the system for the next year or so. After a separation from my wife, I did what any lover of sound would do, and finally allowed myself in the local hifi shop. (It was only two blocks from my apartment.) I walked in with the idea of purchasing new monitors for the fronts and leaving the rest of the 5.1 system in place. Explaning my situation, the staff (quite helpful, really) suggested Paradigm monitor bookshelves. They were a few hundred bucks and sounded great in the store. There it was -- lifelike voices, not the tinny, metalic sounds I heard at home. Ahhhh!!!

Before I left with the Monitors, one of the sales guys said he had a pair of Studio v.3's I should listen to before making a purchase. Well... I listened, and *wow*. Incredibly accurate sound. It was nothing you could hear with any combination of Best Buy equipment. I bought the speakers on a pretty hefty discount, with stands, and charged home to listen.

The improvement *was* dramatic, don't get me wrong, but still not anything like I heard in the store. Hmmm... Could it be the other stuff in my system? Nah... Cd players are all the same. And amps too. The Yamaha was rated *way* above the requirements for my new Paradigms. And so what if my source was an old dual VHS/dvd player? Bits is bits, right? So it must be my room.

I spent another several months trying to like the sound. Very quickly, I discovered that speaker positioning mattered, and room treatment too. I made a lot of adjustments, but my sound was never *smooth*, as it was in the store. Hmmm...

About this time, I started researching audio. I was relieved to find out people liked my Paradigms for a "budget" speaker. "Budget? Seriously?" I thought. But everyone seemed to think that source and amplification were also important. And there was this thing called a "preamp".

I went back to the audio store and tried some better receivers -- Pioneers with room eq -- but the sound still wasn't to my liking. Sure it was loud, dynamic, and even full. But it left me cold. I pointed to some shiny gear across the room. "What about that?"

"Oh, you don't want that. It's just two-channel. You want home theatre, right?"

"Well yeah, but first and foremost, I want something that sounds good."

So he played me a Musical Fidelity integrated and cd player (around $1,500 each), with my Paradigms. Unbelievable. I just sat and listened for about two hours, entranced, letting the music work its magic on me.

I couldn't afford the MF, but there was a demo Classe, which sounded very similar in the store, only significantly less cash. I brought that home and auditioned it. Definite improvement on the Yamaha, or so I thought.

I bought it and sold the sub + sats on Ebay. Now I was *there*, right? No. I still got annoyed. But closer. Definitely closer.

Anyway, about this time, I discovered Audiogon. I also started talking to my brother-in-law, who had tried dozens and dozens of combinations of amps and speakers to get vocal music right. I realized I was only at the beginning. I was just started on the audio path. Damn. I thought I could just walk into Best Buy, walk out, and be done with it. I had no idea this would be a hobby, and a long-lasting costly hobby at that.

Anyway, I still have the Classe. And now I wonder whether it actually sounds any better than my old Yamaha. Even if it doesn't, objectively speaking, I think it does, subjectively. Because it's a really pretty amp. It has this super-heavy milled steel remote and the display, volume knob, and everything, just ooze quality. (Ok, the outputs don't. They seem cheap.) I can't help but look at my setup when I listen, and I much prefer looking at the Classe.

Maria Callas had a magnificent voice, but she was also hot, and I'm sure that added to the experience of opera-goers of the time. Speaking for myself, I prefer a grotesquely fat and ugly soprano who sounds good to a waifish beauty who sounds strained, BUT, other things being equal, a beautiful soprano actually *sounds* better in the typical soprano role. I once saw Angelina Gheorghiu in the role of Mikaela in Carmen at the Met. Gorgeous coloratura soprano, but also, she was beautiful, at least from the cheap seats where I sit. Took the breath out of my chest. I bet Gheorghiu wouldn't prove that much better than her fatter and uglier peers in blind comparison. But at the opera, you ain't blindfolded.

Maybe what happened when I looked across that showroom and spotted the shiny MF gear was just love. Just as hunger is the best sauce, love makes things sound better. A *lot* better.

Pabelson, thanks for yr kind words, but the quotes you make refer to another poster -- or are they there to illustrate yr previous points?

Qualia sez:

other things being equal, a beautiful soprano actually *sounds* better in the typical soprano role

Good point! Matter of fact, I read s/where that a nice-looking piece of equip was invariably "heard" to sound "better" than itself unsighted. Amazing!

Wattsboss:

I *do* like your analogy of the beauty that grows on you. I've had that experience, as well as its opposite -- the superficial beauty that fades quickly (or immediately upon conquest). True. Typically, it's because facial expressions take on a representational character; they come to stand for the moods and traits of the person. And in the case of a good-to-the-core person, that goodness starts to shine through. In the hot-bitchy type I usually go for, the nastiness gets associated with what I previously thought was cute.

Anyway, it may be that the beauty of an audio system takes time to appreciate fully. But distinguishing between looks doesn't take time, even if the full evaluation of those looks does. Maybe the analogy here is identical twins who no one can tell apart initially, but whose family and close friends can... immediately.

After all, I'm not sure I could distinguish the sounds of two violins immediately, in the hands of a skilled violinist. Each violin makes a wide range of sounds, and I'm not sure what's due to the violin and what's due to the violinist. Yet one violin might be $1K and the other $10K, because violinists themselves can immediately hear the difference. Maybe it's like this with audio. But I have no reason to think so, given the studies I've read, in which audiophiles who are familiar with the equipment, do no better than non-audiophiles (who are also familiar with the equipment).

Also: there is a long-term in-home disguised cable experiment going on right now. It has a few more months. We'll see how that goes.

Not arguing reviewers are perfect either...far from it...they are inherently subjective and bound by their own experiences and equip as we all are...but at least he or she can frame their observations in context which allows me as a potential buyer what to look for, what to investigate, what things I may need to consider etc.

As part of that context, wouldn't you like to know whether this reviewer can actually hear a difference between the product he is reviewing and some reference? And if he can't, what does that tell you about his review?

Pabelson, no I have no interest in whether a reviewer can hear a difference between components using DBT using the usual same/different format. Since I don't think it is valid, I would rather continue my present procedure of find whose reviews prove on target in my estimation. Frankly I don't think there are enough DBT proponents out there to make a magazine using them viable.