In defense of ABX testing


We Audiophiles need to get ourselves out of the stoneage, reject mythology, and say goodbye to superstition. Especially the reviewers, who do us a disservice by endlessly writing articles claiming the latest tweak or gadget revolutionized the sound of their system. Likewise, any reviewer who claims that ABX testing is not applicable to high end audio needs to find a new career path. Like anything, there is a right way and many wrong ways. Hail Science!

Here's an interesting thread on the hydrogenaudio website:

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=108062

This caught my eye in particular:

"The problem with sighted evaluations is very visible in consumer high end audio, where all sorts of very poorly trained listeners claim that they have heard differences that, in technical terms are impossibly small or non existent.

The corresponding problem is that blind tests deal with this problem of false positives very effectively, but can easily produce false negatives."
psag
I'm not sure I agree about your frequency response predictability since a given speaker can sound dramatically different from one room to the next. This is the objection to anechoic chamber frequency response measurements, I.e., they have no relation to real world performance. The variability of frequency response room to room was what created an instant demand for equalizers, not to mention room treatments in general, you know, tube traps, Mpingo discs, Shakti Halographs, Corner Tunes, Skyline diffusers, crystals, tiny bowl resonators, SteinMusic Harmonizers, things of that nature.
Nonoise- I hope you took my post in the (playful) spirit that was intended. Not sure I'm ready to go the vegetarian route, but you are correct; this horse surely has been sufficiently beaten.
"Especially the reviewers, who do us a disservice by endlessly writing articles claiming the latest tweak or gadget revolutionized the sound of their system."

"Can you show us some scientificly valid listening tests that were done comparing individual components as part of a review?"

Probably I shouldn't have used the word 'science', which seems to get people in an uproar. Perhaps a better word would have been 'logic'. It is logical to assume that by using standard ABX testing, one can determine with certainty which of two testing scenarios sounds better. And in fact, that assumption turns out to be true.

If reviewers did this, they could start to build trust with their readers, and the 'snakeoil' aspect of high end audio might start to diminish.
Swampwalker, totally in the playful spirit intended.

In fact, after posting, I looked back at it and it seemed a bit succinct and could be interpreted in lots of ways. I should have followed it with a :-)

All the best,
Nonoise