Blind Listening Tests?

Sorry, not JD, Jostler is the scientist i meant.....and ahem Jostler:
1. You cannot train gullibility. What you can train is to be a better charlatan in knowingly to pretend to hear differences, which are not there or to pretend not to hear differences which are there. You cannot train something which is preconscious--like gullibility, suggestibility, naivite and such.

2. Scientists who study hearing do so in controlled circumstances which are generally carefully limited to a few essential parameters. All this has nothing to do with the complexity of a musical event, be it live or in audio. The science of psychoaccoustics is still completely in its infancy. So far there are no satisfying explantations why music does to us what it does, except for a few isolated facts, like that frequencies below 16hz or so, will scare the shit out of us. Will induce awe. (Used in the church with a decent organ and by the ancients in battle)

I am sooooo mad! I've held back from all of you on this blind testing thing, and now... Geeze I'm mad!
I've been running a controlled lab test using 150 non-related white rats from all over the world. I've had each one implanted with an electrode at the stem of there brain to monitor there reaction to sound. Of the 150 total, 20 were set as a control group and only listened to standard power cords. The rest had varying periods with standard cords and periods with differing "designer cords" I was 5 1/5 months into a six month study when it appears that either 70242.241 or P.E.T.A. broke into my lab, broke my computers and released all the rats. This of course is not only the end of my study, but sadly the end of the rats. The implants do not allow these rats to hear anything unless they are plugged in to there headphones. So sadly they are perfect targets for cats, birds and cars. I found two squished outside my lab this morning. A full investigation will be conducted to find these audio haters. Luck for all of us, all my records were backed up and in a safe here at home. I can only share preliminary findings at this time, but the results are startling.
First glaring fact, and I might add a major concern has to do with my control group. It seems that of the 20 rats exposed only to standard power cords, 15 of them (that's 75% for you scientists) have a rare form of inner ear cancer! Coincidence, I think not. This alone is worth the value of the study, but some other facts can also be gleamed from this preliminary information. It was found that in 90% of the cases the rats had lower heart rates and greater brain activities when exposed to designer cords. Conversely while rats were exposed to standard power cords the brain waves were identical to Jeffry Dommer. Coincidence I think not. Now each rat was exposed to differing amounts of time with designer cords, and some very interesting facts came to light. There was a direct correlation between the amount of time on a designer cord and there I.Q. along with there taste in music. It seems that the control group were only settled when top 40's pop was played. The next level group (20% designer cord) were only content when listening to disco and country. On the other end of the spectrum, the group exposed to 80% designer cords preferred classical and jazz, but not any jazz, Coltrane and Davis it seems were there preferred choices. The group with 100% exposure seem to show a very wide array or musical preference, but oddly they only seemed truely content with high quality recordings. Coincidence, I think not. Now I had also discussed the variance in I.Q. This study was not intended to measure an I.Q. to power cord relationship, so all this is subject to further study. We did have a series of rudimentary tasks we asked each rat to preform, and while not conclusive it was of interest. The control group was able to successfully complete only 15% of the tasks while the group exposed to 60% or more designer cord were completing the tasks with 100% success. Now this in it's self is not indicative of I.Q. alone, but could also be explained with there level of contentment. The startling fact was that the group exposed to 100% designer cords would ONLY except the Wall Street Journal for the bottom of there cage. Coincidence, I think not.
Sadly for all who are interested in the "advancement of high quality audio" A.O.H.Q.A. due to the alarmingly high percentage of cancer cases in the control group, the entire study must be sent to The National Cancer Research Facility for further review. So the results will not be made public until a conclusion can be arrived at regarding the cancer issues.
In the mean time I am starting a new group to combat the sick people of P.E.T.A. I'm calling it P.E.T.A.F.F. (People eating tasty animals for fun) If your interested in joining just let me know.
J.D.

Detlof: Psychoacoustics is about a century old now, which is pretty long in the tooth for an infant. And it's not about music. It's about perception of sound, of which music is a complex example. (How music moves us emotionally is another field entirely, but if you can't hear it--or feel it, in the case of that pipe organ--it isn't going to move you.) Also, the complexity of musical sounds actually makes it harder to hear subtle differences, not easier. People generally score higher on blind tests using test tones. So those "limited parameters" actually give us an upper bound for what is audible using a musical source.

JD you sound like a 10 hz tone to me...you have me stand in awe, not only do you keep late night studies with the ladies, you also do the most complex experiments in other fields until, what was it, you had two of the 24 year old ladies squished? Terrible. You must be Dr. Strangelove in real life, please admit it. There is so much of that hz tone in my ears, that I am AWEfully confused. What will you do now...get new ladies and fiddle with their shortchanged abdullas? WOW... and Jostler, thanks for the enlightenment. I would say psychoachoustics is even older, it goes back to the Greeks and early China and India, but you would say, that was prescientific, which of course it was in a more narrow sense. You were right in assuming, that I meant the emotional impact of music on us, where to my knowledge science so far has no real answers yet.A question, seriously, don't want to bug you, I had put it in another thread and never got an answer: Do you have any idea for an explanation about those odd experimental data, which showed, that if you play music to people whose hearing is limitid in the upper ranges, I forgot where the cutoff point was exactly,but it must have been around 10 khz or above, and in playing it, you cut off the frequencies, which they were not able to HEAR, they all and sunder at once noticed this fact all the same practically always and could thus differentiate between music played normally and cut off in the highs, even though "psychoaccoustically" they should not have been able to hear any difference at all. Another thought, I wonder if you could not develop a mathematical model, which would "prove", that the more complex and "rich" a musical offering, the greater the chances to hear "subtle differences". Would be an interesting hypothesis to go after. JD bring out your 24 year old rats, or what was it again, the 24 girls from P.E.T.A? I am so confused, there is that tone again...........

Detlof: Dont' know about studies of the hearing-impaired. I can think of a number of plausible explanations, but I'd be speculating (as opposed to listening) blindly. For example, could they not hear those frequencies at all, or was it just at a lower level? (In other words, how steep was their low-pass filter?!) Could be they heard enough to detect something, but that's just a wild guess.

As for your mathematical model, it would run counter to experimental evidence. I know of one test of cables where listeners could distinguish between two cables using pink noise, but not using a piece of choral music. That probably won't surprise too many audiophiles.