[KH]

On 9/28/2013 1:30 PM, Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:

Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:

snip
Double-blind testing works for everything else, as far as I know. I'm
not going to accept any special pleading (sans really good evidence)
that it may not be applicable to audio. How would you prove such a
thing, anyway?

I don't pretend to know. How do you prove that it DOES work for audio?
Since it usually returns a null result, I'd say such overwhelmingly one-sided
results indicates one of two things: either everything does sound the
same (which my experience tells me is extremely unlikely), or DBTs aren't
good at uncovering differences in audio gear unless they are
extremely gross differences. We certainly know which of those two
outcomes the "strict objectivists" believe in, but how do we prove which
is the real answer?

Well, you start out by demonstrating that there are objectively
verifiable differences between units - through measurement - that at
least approach the demonstrated lower threshold of human hearing.

If all measured artifacts or differences are, say -110db down, then a
null DBT *is* expected, and a subjectively "verified" audible difference
is clearly suspect.

Keith