AudioBanter.com - View Single Post

Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 15 Sep 2005 02:59:18 GMT, wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 13 Sep 2005 03:43:39 GMT, wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

No 'authority' required, not one single person has *ever* been able to
tell nominally competent wires apart when they didn't *know* what was
connected. Your persistent claim that *you* can is obviously
extraordinary, yet you refuse to offer proof.

I don't have to. I claim only that I hear a difference consistent with
the change of the product in the chain, which is, of course a report of
my own experience. It was a consistent, repeatable experience, so the
possibility of halucination is remote.

The reality of the situation is that consistency is almost inevitable
in this case. See 'reinforcement' in any psy textbook. It's also the
case that real audible differences among cables is an extremely remote
possibility.

There has to be something to reinforce, no?

That would be your first impression, likely formed bedfore the music
starts. I think you've been around here long enough that we know this
will be directly related to the prestige of the badge.

I wish that reviewers listened to equipment blind, for the purposes of
audio reviews, and that many audiophiles would choose equipment by
listening without knowing its identity. The latter doesn't happen for
mostly practical reasons; the former should happen. Presumably they
have the resources.

Actually, I'm being told over and over on RAO that 'it doesn't matter'
to consumers whether the differences they hear are 'real' or not.
It only matters that they're real to *them*.

Needless to say, I find this viewpoint curiously incurious, not to
mention a boon to snake-oil salesmen.

If one doesn't know the identity, then at least we can narrow down the
reported reaction to (1) the sound, (2) the reviewer's mood or other
random neuronal firing.

And in the second case, it's inappropriate to attribute the 'sound' to the
gear. Do you think reviewers in , say, Stereophile, will agree?

That's my point. They should listen blind but they don't.

If we had many "blind" reviews, we could look for patterns. For
example, we could look to see if a reviewer has a similar impression
when given the same piece of equipment on a different occasion. Since
this experiment has never been done, I claim we don't really know what
the result would be.

Mike