wrote:
There have been three articles on the web pages recently about the place,
or not, of blind testing. We had a double rehash of the editor's epiphany
that if you make yourself subject to all the standard conditions known to
produce subjective effects based on false perceptions existing only in the
brain, you will have those false perceptions. This was the basis of his
"debate" offering reported before in print and again in the web pieces.
This week we have another's jousting at blind testing. Nothing new
really, a redo of old tired arguments that boil down to saying even if the
gear really really has a different enough sound, the testing gets in the
way of a blind test discovering it, all in answer to why the mag doesn't
do blind testing to the benefit of it's readers and with a tactical
"disgruntled" thrown in here and there to make sure the point is not
missed.. Sneak preview, the real motivation of the testing folk is
revealed, saying more about the writer then his targets.
"The Blind Leading the Blind?"
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/805awsi
Is it a coincidence that the "debate" and this spate of articles follows
the rough treatment the editor recieved here and at the hands of james
randi as he tried to defend his mag's attitude toward subjective
"reviewing and support of dubious technical claims"? I think the answer
is yes and they will now want to tell us that all is well in the
subjective enterprise now that this small blip has been met and defeated.
Of course, Mr. Iverson erects a straw man. Blind tests *can* indeed
be used to test the subject's hearing acuity. But they *can* indeed also
be used to test a difference one claims to hear --
including, of course, those perceived *during the sighted
part of the test*. 'Acuity' is not an issue in that case.
A difference can already be 'heard'. The question is whether
that individual actually heard that difference.
The anecdote in question about the 1989 test
is the same one Atkinson unspooled during the HE2005 debate.
There, as Mr. Iverson does, he drew an illogical conclusion
about DBTs, from his experience.
Moreover Stereophile harps on this one public DBT as if it somehow
invalidates DBTs. Iverson even goes so far as to claim,
"The fact that any two of us in the same room taking the same test end up
scoring different results is all you need to know about the nature of
blind audio testing."
Menahile, the details of the test, as written up by Atkinson himself,
offer several possible explanations for a small difference:
http://www.stereophile.com/features/113/index5.html
the amps in question, btw were a tube vs solid state:
Adcom GFA-555 vs VTL 300W monoblocks when used to drive B&W 801
loudspeakers
One might also note ,a s JA did:
"Despite the visitors to the show being keen audiophiles, over half those
who took part in these listening tests were unable to reliably hear the
small differences between the two power amplifiers. Part of the reason
must be the high level of sound breakthrough from the adjacent room, as
well as the overcrowded conditions€”it would be hard to imagine someone
either sitting on the floor to the side of one of the speakers, or
standing next to the rear wall behind eight rows of seats, getting much of
a good sound. But in my opinion, the main reason for the lack of
identification was that even keen audiophiles rarely perform the kind of
concentrated listening that I was asking from them in these tests. I was
not surprised to note that some of the high scorers were in fact active in
the high-end industry. Tony Di Chiro of Kinergetics, for example, scored 6
correct out of 7, as did Jon Iverson, the retailer whose comments on the
test appear in this month's "Letters" section [and now webmaster for the
Stereophile website€”JA"
Atkinson, like Iverson, offers his *opinion* that it was the differences
between the listeners, and not the conditions of the test, that mainly
account for the variation in performance.
(And jsut for giggles, how many low-scorers, one wonders, were active in
the high-end industry?)
--
-S
"God is an asshole!" -- Ruth Fisher, 'Six Feet Under'