wrote in message
...
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 11 Sep 2005 01:58:22 GMT, wrote:
I have no interest in blind testing. I am interested in comparing
products in the same way I listen to them.
Yes, we've all heard that old strawman before. Bascically, you know
that you'd fail, so you trot out this old excuse. Well, heads up,
there's no reason not to listen for hours, days or weeks at a time to
each item, so why is it so critical that you *know* what's connected?
Why do you not trust your ears alone?
Just as a note, speaking of myself, I do wish to trust my ears alone,
and if I lived with somebody or had a good audiophile buddy or the
dealers would let me borrow equipment long term, I would have my buddy
hook up everything behind a screen and do all my evaluative listening
blind.
I also think Stereophile/Absolute Sound reviews should be done on
"black boxes" or equipment behind screens.
Stewart, you often characterize this argument as though it were about
listening blind versus listening sighted.. i.e., whether you know what
you are hearing or whether you don't. Let me state, for the record,
that this distinction isn't directly relevant to my own theories. It's
not the blindness of blind tests I object to, but rather how the method
of comparing sound affects sensitivity.
I won't bother to restate these opinions since we have been over this
ground enough times already. I expect you will say the ear is most
sensitive to differences under quick-switch, and that all the available
evidence supports that. Fine.
Mike
P.S. How often has anybody done a blind test in which they listened for
days? Let's say 4 switches per trial, 2 days per switch, 20 trials:
that's 160 days. Has this ever happened? Ever?
Mike, not to the best of my knowledge.
But you are right about us being beat over the head as being against blind
testing (because it is a useful bogeyman) while the real objection has been
that short-snippet, quick-switching, comparative testing a la abx are
potentially and inherently anti-musical. The objectivists here and on other
newsgroups have no real answer to the potential problem that you, I, Mark,
and others have raised...their world can only make sense if such
complicating factors (that just happend to scream out for a validation test)
are completely ignored.