[Andrew Haley]

Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:

Audio_Empire wrote:

That's true and to my mind it makes DBT null results more than a
little suspect. This kind of testing [the double-blind test] seems
to have been "borrowed" from the hard sciences (drug testing,
hypothesis testing, etc.) and I don't consider listening a hard
science.

What does this even mean? The question of audibility is a scientific
one, and can be verified scientifically. Are you denying this?

What I'm disputing is the accepted notion that methodologies (such
as DBTs) that work in the hard sciences (such as drug testing) where
the results do not rely on people's abilities to discern something
or upon their opinions are wholly applicable to testing audio gear.

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?

OTOH, if the premise of the test is simple enough, (like listening
to wires) I think they are useful when they return a (inevitable)
null result, but for more complex things such as D to A conversion,
amplifier or preamplifier sound, etc., the return of a null result
is far less reliable.

Why should it be? The same tests apply to a DAC (which should be
perfectly transparent in a bypass test)

There's the problem. You say that DACs should be "perfectly
transparent" in a bypass test,

..... given known thresholds of hearing ...

yet there is much evidence that says that they aren't.

I don't believe that, at least not for DACs without faults. (It's
always possible to mess something up, of course.)

All I want to see is someone repeatably distingush a good pair of
converters in a straight wire test. The only problem that I know of
is that there will be an inevitable time delay. You can eliminate
that, though, by introducing a converter pair with double the time
delay and comparing to see if the delay is audible.

It's not about "hard science", it's about honesty:
"As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its
credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the
kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example)
that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since
Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among
rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me..."
J. Gordon Holt, Stereophile Posted: Nov 10, 2007

Yet Gordon, who was one of my closest friends, BTW, was extremely
skeptical of DBTs (as applied in the audio world) and was convinced
that most active components had a signature sound.

Sure. I don't know that I agree with any statment of his except this
one. I posted it not because I'm a Holt fanboy but because it's very
well expressed.

Andrew.