wrote in message
ink.net...
:
: "Clyde Slick" wrote in message
: ...
: snipss you still haven't figure out that it's
: NOT about science.
: Oh, but I have, it's about denial of science.
:
: It's not about science, neither accepted nor denied.
: its just not about science.
: its about enjoying the playback of music.
: Its about enjoyment.
:
:
: The 2 are not mutually exclusive.
:
: But one need not engage in any scientific inquiry
: to find a satisfying system.
: No, only if they want to make sure they are getting what they think they
: are hearing.
:
:
: So, you say they should abx equipment to ensure that they
: DON'T get the one they 'think' sounds best, everything
: else being equal, or even if that
: satisfaction costs them a little extra money.
: I don't agree with that at all.
:
: Not to mention that YOU don't practice the prescribed rituals, yourself.
: I have no need, I know what I'm getting.

When we want to study a system, we soon come to realize nearly every
system is an open system. Thus, if one wants to establish correlations,
hopefully causally linked, it is necessary to keep many circumstantial
parameters that may be deemed of influence controlled. Ideally, all of 'm,
but that presupposes we _do_ know all possible influences, which is not
usually the case.

This is essentially the divide and conquer strategy in scientific research.
It leads to specialization and a sizeable output of findings and models in
all fields of research. So much so, that even a specialist has a hard time
keeping up with the ongoings in his/her field. It is also why at any given time,
there is no homogenous, more or less complete model of the research
field. There are definitions, axioma's, basic 'undisputed models', then several
tentatively proposed new/extention models, finally a wealth of puzzling/
exiting/hard to belief research results that have yet to be encompassed in
the 'big picture'.

From this, it must be clear, there is no such thing as _science says_.
More accurate would be: _current findings seem to indicate_ , followed
by a selection of research results that the speaker happens to favour :-)

A controlled parameter setting, part of methodology and protocol of some
experiment, when dealing with humans, includes doubleblind administering/
setting as there is then no way, directly or indirectly, that the test
participants
can be influenced by knowing what is administered/set up at any moment.

Now we come to the all important part: getting the results in This is where
the 'hard science' has all the advantages, that is, measurements with ever
more precise/less invasive/process changing equipment can give a wealth of
results.
The number of -to be controlled- parameters is not too bad. And last but not
least, there is repeatability. Good fortune then for physics, chemistry,
electronics.
Less so for biology as the number of parameters is rather large, but the results
can at least be measured. As Ludovic has repeatedly pointed out, the dbt
test results in medicine are based on observed results, not _reported effects_.

Scientific research that deals with subjective evaluation is much worse off.
large quantity of parameters, many _inherently_ noncontrollable, not much to
measure, quantify, repeatability often problematic. Hence a large body of
different models, known to be 'ok' within some restrictions or with otherwise
limited scope, no unified theories by any stretch of the imagination.

What makes audio interesting in this respect is that it is at the crossroads of
different disciplines, using different modeling, different strategies.
It therefore makes sense to have a multidisciplinary approach in audio,
or results are bound to be erratic to some degree. And this starts with
proper protocol setup.

I hope it is now selfevident that it is rather a long stretch from
what science entails to say:

with the ABX protocol, no differences could be established -
there are thus no differences, no possible preferences
between A and B. this is now an established fact.

RB.