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Why blind listening tests are flawed

This may sound like pure flame war bait - but here it is anyway. Since rebuilding my system from scratch, and auditioning everything from preamps to amps to dacs to interconnects to speaker cable etc, it seems clearer than ever.

I notice that I get easily fooled between bad and great sounding gear during blind auditions. Most would say "That should tell you that the quality of the gear is closer than you thought. Trust it".

But it's the process of blind listening tests that's causing the confusion, not a case of what I prefer to believe or justify to myself. And I think I know why it happens.

Understanding the sound of audio gear is process of accumulated memories. You can listen to say new speakers for weeks and love them until you start hearing something that bothers you until you can't stand them anymore.

Subconsciously you're building a library of impressions that continues to fill in the blanks of the overall sound. When all the holes are filled - you finally have a very clear grasp of the sonic signature. But we know that doesn't happen overnight.

This explains why many times you'll love how something sounds until you don't anymore? Anyone experience that? I have - with all 3 B&W speakers upgrades I've made in my life just to name a few.

Swapping out gear short term for blind listening tests is therefore counter productive for accurately understanding the characteristics of any particular piece or system because it causes discontinuity with impression accumulation and becomes subtractive rather than additive. Confusion becomes the guaranteed outcome instead of clarity. In fact it's a systematic unlearning of the sound characteristics as the impression accumulation is randomized. Wish I could think of a simpler way of saying that..

Ok this is getting even further out there but: Also I believe that when you're listening while looking at equipment there are certain anchors that also accumulate. You may hear a high hat that sounds shimmering and subconsciously that impression is associated with some metallic color or other visual aspect of the equipment you happen to be watching or remember.

By looking at (or even mentally picturing) your equipment over time you have an immediate association with its' sound. Sounds strange, but I've noticed this happening myself - and I have no doubt it speeds up the process of getting a peg on the overall sound character.

Obviously blind tests would void that aspect too resulting in less information rather than more for comparison.

Anyone agree with this, because I don't remember hearing this POV before. But I'm sure many others that have stated this because, of course, it happens to be true. ;
larrybou
zkzpb8
212 posts
 
It’s simple - listen with your ears not with your eyes.

I understand the long term exposure to really get to know the sound of something. I’ve heard NS-10s thousands of times - when I hear a pair of those things, it’s a very familiar sound.

But - if you’re trying to make comparisons between two pieces of gear you have to level match, and make instantaneous comparisons - back and forth, back and forth. This is the way our senses work - our hearing is very non-linear, and our senses have a very short memory - much shorter than one would think.
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
We are highly sensitive and quite variable beings of auditory input; our surivival in the wilds depended on it, and especially our sense of hearing, providing information of direction and distance where sight alone often failed. I know not to always trust my hearing because, in all honesty, there are times when, depending on my emotive state, this sense can be influenced by factors that have nothing to do with the system or source material I am listening to. And quantitatively, it seems impossible to replicate or even know when one's emotive state is calibrated relative to an earlier time, when perhaps a qualitative assessment of equipment performance, was being audibly judged. We, I propose, are the greatest source of variation in the subjective enjoyment of music, and this must be taken into account when evaluating one component against another, or a system as a whole, or an artist, performance or recording. We, like the system and the room, play as much a role in the overall test by hearing process, whether sighted or blinded.
larrybou OP
130 posts
 
I've been comparing multiple speaker wire lately and found the only way I could come to any kind of strong conclusions about their overall was to listen to each one several days at a time in my system.

It could have saved lots of time if a couple hours of blind listening tests would have declared an easy winner. But after a few days of listening to each with a wide variety of music, the winner was absolutely clear. And putting it back in my system weeks later confirmed that my opinion of them hadn't changed an iota.

Maybe it's just the way my brain works, but I can't really imagine anyone getting such a rock steady bead on various gear through blind listening tests.
cal3713's avatar
cal3713
1,421 posts
 
Non-blind listening tests are flawed, but more time with gear is better than less time. If you could stretch a blind test out into weeks or months, that would be the most accurate way to make the decision.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,966 posts
 
A customer of ours has been using a microphone to measure the results in his system as a result of minor changes he has done. He's on to something- you can clearly see how distortion has changed due to his changes.

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/otl/messages/3/36516.html

Funny- the objectivist camp says that if you hear something but can't measure it, its not real. Yet I never see them use this technique. Instead they might test one piece of equipment on the bench rather than in the system. Its not scientific! As a result, I don't seem them having any numbers at all to support their position- they are the pot calling the kettle black!
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