Blind Power Cord Test & results

Good posts Drubin. The "which is this" task can be difficult. With it, I would not conclude PCs to be snake oil and would have preferred if the experimenters used two groups, instead of one group given two variables - as in "is there a difference between A and B?"

What is always obvious is that audiophiles in general, unlike the professionals (Pabelson), are emotionally and knowledge-wise unfit to conduct blind testing. Its goal is to eliminate just one variable, but you’d think it was a religion. Personally I don't see why people should use it at the level of the individual consumer to decide the worthiness of each component - what a pain!, - at a larger level, however, which testing never has or will attain in audio, it has merit.

Eliminating variables is a good thing, and is practiced too little in audio, especially audiogon where anyone proclaims “truths” with any measure of experience or knowledge-base.

Subtracting the "blind", audiophiles essentially ABX everything they try in their system. While the hometheaterhifi experiment has problems affecting its validity, these problems are not inherent to ABX. Two factors that apparently people seem to be implied with ABX are time and stress. Time does not have to be a parameter, really. It could be a factor with this experiment - I think the training was too short, but it does not have to be. Although stress is typically not the significant contributor people think it is to cognitive tests, it too can be varied (and tested if one wants). What I would want with an ABX test for PCs is to mimic home trials, without revealing the pc models. That has practical difficulties, but...

Another problem with this experiment is that there is no real hypothesis and barely a conclusion. This subject is difficult to discuss when people are coming up with wrong, overly broad and multiple conclusions. There is only one conclusion per variable which includes the conditions of experiment, and there should have been a distinct hypothesis to eliminate the BS. The hypothesis determines the test procedure...there is no general best way. While the experiment was a good exercise, it was too flawed, imo, to support whether or not "pcs make a difference". Plus no one experiment can yield such a sweeping conclusion. Other factors can be manipulated that could affect the results (that is why I stated the conclusions must include test conditions).

PS -

"Some people can hear the differences and repeatedly get them right, while some people can't."

"There is so much psychological stuff at play here that we can't tell if the differences are real or imagined"

These are not factors after decent sampling, and statistical analysis.

It is annoying to me how little audiophiles/public understand science - not in specific examples like bees and PCs per se, but in the way scientists are supposedly rigid, archaic formulists reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. In my experience, scientists go to the fringe of knowledge and theory with a lot of grace, unlike the people who try playing the role.

I personally believe cables do make a difference and knowledge of the make-and-model has an influence of perception through expectation. I hope most phile’s, in the silent majority, are in the same boat. And like I stated ABX and blind between-subject testing are perfectly viable in eliminating expectation. An experiment’s procedure may be flawed and the conclusions may not fit the data, but I have yet to read or hear any logical reason why these tests are inherently flawed. One may not like the results, but ya' need more than that to discount the test.

Bumblebee physics myth:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item223.htm

Despite my reaction to his posts, I agree with Twl more than I disagree. The parameters such as system and room need to be addressed and while ABX is good tool, it is not worth much on many levels in audio, especially in private circumstances. Also, in future threads, subjective discussions should not be interrupted by contrarian physical explanations and vice-versa. There is no point to it.

Pabelson I love discussions/arguments about technical discussions. I also believe some number of technical explanations marketed by companies are BS and deserve scrutiny. What I was thinking of were technical discussions where a subjective counterpoint is introduced stating that everyone is being cheap and also the the lame "its all in your head" one-liners when posters are discussing their listening experiences with tweaks, cables, etc.

"Pabelson I love discussions/arguments about technical discussions."

I think I may be retarded.