[Audio_Empire[_2_]]

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.

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

and a wire (which should also
be perfectly transparent).

Well, wire IS perfectly transparent (as long as it's just a simple
conductor - if the cable in question has boxes and bulges in it
containing external components such as resistors, capacitors, and
inductors, then, of course, all bets are off). The physics tells us that.
There is nothing going on in a cable or interconnect in the lengths
commonly used for home audio to keep it from being, for all practical
\purposes, a "perfect" conductor.

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.