Mahgister...way to chew the fun outta my gum.
Why Do So Many Audiophiles Reject Blind Testing Of Audio Components?
Because it was scientifically proven to be useless more than 60 years ago.
A speech scientist by the name of Irwin Pollack have conducted an experiment in the early 1950s. In a blind ABX listening test, he asked people to distinguish minimal pairs of consonants (like “r” and “l”, or “t” and “p”).
He found out that listeners had no problem telling these consonants apart when they were played back immediately one after the other. But as he increased the pause between the playbacks, the listener’s ability to distinguish between them diminished. Once the time separating the sounds exceeded 10-15 milliseconds (approximately 1/100th of a second), people had a really hard time telling obviously different sounds apart. Their answers became statistically no better than a random guess.
If you are interested in the science of these things, here’s a nice summary:
Categorical and noncategorical modes of speech perception along the voicing continuum
Since then, the experiment was repeated many times (last major update in 2000, Reliability of a dichotic consonant-vowel pairs task using an ABX procedure.)
So reliably recognizing the difference between similar sounds in an ABX environment is impossible. 15ms playback gap, and the listener’s guess becomes no better than random. This happens because humans don't have any meaningful waveform memory. We cannot exactly recall the sound itself, and rely on various mental models for comparison. It takes time and effort to develop these models, thus making us really bad at playing "spot the sonic difference right now and here" game.
Also, please note that the experimenters were using the sounds of speech. Human ears have significantly better resolution and discrimination in the speech spectrum. If a comparison method is not working well with speech, it would not work at all with music.
So the “double blind testing” crowd is worshiping an ABX protocol that was scientifically proven more than 60 years ago to be completely unsuitable for telling similar sounds apart. And they insist all the other methods are “unscientific.”
The irony seems to be lost on them.
Why do so many audiophiles reject blind testing of audio components? - Quora- ...
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@perkri : A SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR CHOOSING LOUDSPEAKERS AND HEADPHONES FOR RECORDING AND BROADCAST - Dr, Sean Olive, Harman In the 1980’s, Dr. Floyd Toole [2,3,4] at the National Research Council of Canada conducted controlled, double blind listening tests on loudspeakers. Listeners gave the highest fidelity ratings to loudspeakers having the flattest, smoothest frequency response measured over a wide range of angles. This was perhaps the first documented evidence that listeners recognize accurate sound and prefer it. ... 2. Predicting Loudspeaker Sound Quality From Objective Measurements The accuracy of the predictions range from 86% (based on 70 different loudspeakers) to 99% with bookshelf loudspeakers with restricted low frequency output. |
There is no debate, measures and standards are technological fundamental knowledge.... But all this means different things for each specific consciousness... Is it not simple? And we cannot reduce one to the other.... Predicting Loudspeaker Sound Quality From Objective MeasurementsIt is comnmon sense that measures will say something right about speakers for example... But the use of this speaker and their choice cannot be predicted by measurements.... We can only eliminated less well designed speakers... Room/gear/ears synergy is another factors...it is possible to measure this factor in theory also but not practical...The technology behind the smyth realizer headphone is precisely that.... This is the reason why we choose gear by listening it for practical reason .... |
@mahgister: Room/gear/ears synergy is another factors But you can't listen to everything. Heck, there's very little you can listen to in a comparative environment nowadays. And that environment isn't like your own either. So you need a filter to narrow down the selection. And that's where Harman's research comes in. And if you have a goofy room, you need to understand how acoustics works to consider things like directivity, diffusion and absorption. Otherwise, most speakers will likely not sound very good. As for room, you could always duplicate Harman's room. I inadvertently designed my new media room to almost the exact same proportions. Here's Harman's. Length 9.14 m Width 6.58 m Height 2.59 m The AES and IEC also has standards for domestic listening rooms. Also, I found this paper to be informational when designing a listening room. |
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