Which reminds me, Keith Herron wrote or said in an interview some years ago that one thing he discovered in working on his phono stage was people can hear differences of as little as 0.03dB. And no that's not a misprint, its three one-hundredths of a decibel.
Well I bought his VTPH-2A last year and this was one of the things I asked him about. Yes indeed, 0.03dB, which he knows from double-blind testing.
What he found was he could influence a persons preference by making that small a change to frequency response. I didn't ask if that was measured in the air or calculated from a circuit. Either way, a pretty small change. And double-blind. Heck maybe triple-blind, given that he never seemed to care which way the test went. Just one of many things he did in his incredibly persistent perfectionist approach to product development.
So yes there are indeed perfectly appropriate uses for double-blind testing.
Well I bought his VTPH-2A last year and this was one of the things I asked him about. Yes indeed, 0.03dB, which he knows from double-blind testing.
What he found was he could influence a persons preference by making that small a change to frequency response. I didn't ask if that was measured in the air or calculated from a circuit. Either way, a pretty small change. And double-blind. Heck maybe triple-blind, given that he never seemed to care which way the test went. Just one of many things he did in his incredibly persistent perfectionist approach to product development.
So yes there are indeed perfectly appropriate uses for double-blind testing.