Amir and Blind Testing

The only thing your test would reveal is that under those test conditions, 40 percent of the subjects heard no difference. There’s no data to support your conclusion.

Under strict test conditions. This is a given. I do say that this isn’t easy.

Common sense suggests that something may be learnt from a test when there is a difference and 40% says there is none.  It is not a "dead" number - to an analyst it speaks information.

What would be more interesting (to some, anyway) is where there is no difference and 40% (or 60% or even just 5%) said there is a difference. Could any conclusions be drawn from this? Perhaps the test wasn’t blind or conducted properly (this includes a person who is partial to the outcome conducting the test)? Hmmm. Correctly, this aspect is conceded in the comment.

Given that ears are apparently to be trusted. As is often advocated by many good folk here.

In any event, individual tests are preferred for reasons.

ASR is pretty used to empty responses like that one. It basically says "I don’t actually have any good, civil arguments or evidence in response to ASR’s reviews...but since I still don’t like their conclusions...here’s a disparaging meme so I can feel like I got one over on them."

 

Embarrassing enough once. But..3 times?

Posting something like this which is the opposite of what’s in the link, imbues you with what, pray tell? A silly sense of accomplishment?

All the best,
Nonoise

This has gone assbackwards the device under test is the listener not a DAC, amp, whatever. The measurements have shown no difference in two devices say DACs, person makes claim to hear differences, the ABX is for the person not the DAC. If the person can pick one DAC from the other better than chance, which is where statistics enter, then his claim is taken seriously and viewed as objective not subjective nonsense about blacker blacks and wider soundstages.

If a company wants to show their fuse, cable, smear on goop, DAC etc.... affects the sound then the type of blind tests being discussed using sufficient people shown to have excellent hearing etc.. would be conducted by a third party to avoid company influences. Not that any of these companies that claim this stuff will ever do them.

A sound proposed in a blind test, and disconnected from the listener room historical intimate soundfield and proposed to be evaluated in a testing unknown room alien soundfield with a different relation with the speakers/system used cannot prove anything certain about the alleged difference claim by the listener...

Why?

Because the interpretation of a sound difference is ALWAY different coming from system differences in the test, or coming from the speakers/room specific differences for example...

The way a dac translate a specific soundfield from a recording trade-off set and propose it through a specific system FOR another room soundfield is completely specific and always vary...The difference between sound coming from gear in different room conditions can even be huge...

My dac cannot be judged to stay the same after changing the room compared to before for example and this is also true of my amplifier, cables, speakers, they give something which is the same by virtue of their designed qualities but in a complete different way when i modify the A./P.A. conditions.....

I myself could not be able to detect all differences i can detect in my room with my gear transported in other acoustic conditions ... I know that WITHOUT blind test and with a CONTINUOUS Listening experience where the affective and acoustic cues are never disconnected and where my memory then can goes on working...it is how i tuned my room....ANY CHANGE CAN BE DETECTED, even sometimes a single straw acting like an Helmhotlz diffuser or a single straw variable perimeter and lenght working as the neck of an Helmholtz resonators.... But mark my word here, I have ORDINARY hearing ability in my age group by the way but an history of listening experiments for years in MY ROOM which explain how and why i can did what i did...

Then mocking me with the false claim that i pretend to have bat ears is BESIDE MY POINT.... Proposing to test me by blind test make no sense at all....We learn to hear in some condition and with particular tools or instruments and devices...This is this content we learned to identify not by superpower but by learned habits in a KNOWN context with familiar sound/speech/files/albums...

Blind test prove nothing generally in an audiophile tool fetichist deconstructing context... But those using these blind test to debunk some product are , like the opposite group those who promote these same products in the same gear fetichist war FORGETTING acoustic/ psycho-acoustic (A./P.A.) conditions and science...

But when this is said, i dont think that Amirm measures are useless, not at all, but used by his disciples cohort of fetichist tool measured specs, which are not an absolute anyway, they go and stay in an audio dead end, ...

In the same way audiophile focusing on the brand name gear goes in a dead end forgetting the relation between A./A.P. to idolize the gear piece overestimating his power contribution to the final S.Q. experience and undersestimating completely the crucial relation of the gear with A/P.A. conditions ...

Prove me wrong...

It is my personal experience i dont pretend to be a scientist, but i learn something in the last years in my room... 😁😊

The difference between piece of well designed gear in the same bracket of the S.Q./price ratio EXIST but are way less diffrence than the improvement make on them by  putting them in the right acoustical embeddings settings... The diffrence here is HUGE....This is true for all piece of gear at ny porice tag...

No speakers beat the room like said some unknown acoustician...

This is true for a dac, an amplifier and for any piece of connected gear in the system...