"watch king" wrote in message
...
I have to totally disagree with MKuller and since I have had a number
of direct emails to me that seem to totally misunderstand (or
actually distort and twist) many of the things I've said, I'd like to
clarify what I have been saying. There is a factor which should be
considered when discussing testing. Double blind testing doesn't
require a number of comparative switches back and forth, back and
forth or forth and back, to make the choice as to which test item is
better. The reason the shorter test comparison times should be used
is that it magnifies ANY difference of quality, subtle or otherwise,
that exist between one test item and another. By charting the
statistical significance of variations in listener results,
relatively short comparison periods are also the most sensitive test
method that can be used to determine when there was NO audible
difference between one test item and another.

When designing blind tests, the least useful method of blind testing
was the "unlimited time", one day to the next method. In this method
the listener was only presented with the volume control and nothing
else. They could listen for as long as they chose one day and then
using the same program material in the same sequence, they would
listen to the other item being tested (or perhaps the same item over
again). What happened was when the length of the test was increased,
the ability to hear subtle differences between items was reduced. So
the ability of the listeners to hear subtle differences when
listeners compared two items for a minute or two 50 times in a row
was much greater than if the listeners were able to listen for 5
minutes or 50 minutes or all day and then had exactly the same amount
of time to listen to the next item in the test for an equivalent
amount of time at equivalent loudness levels.

With a thoughtful choice of high quality program material and
accurate level balancing it is far easier for any ear, trained or
otherwise to pick out even the most subtle difference between one
audio product and another with these relatively shorter listening
comparison times (5-15 seconds for each product). With challenging
material the switch time between products can be as short as 5
seconds, 5 seconds, 5 seconds etc. and audiences trained or
untrained, marveled at their ability to hear even the tiniest of
differences between products. I never cared one way or the other
which style of testing was used to show that one items sounded better
than another. I was willing to run the tests whichever way showed the
ability to highlight the subtle differences better because this would
allow for the most differences to be heard. It just turned out that
during many tests used to design the final tests to be used under
certifiable conditions, more differences and more subtle differences
were always more audible using totally blind tests and relatively
short switches with challenging audio material.

Testing professionals who were able to take as long as they wanted to
determine whether one product sounded better than another, the
results were always similar but the test listeners were able to be
more certain of quality differences and they were able to make their
determinations more quickly using comparisons in the 5-15 second
range, than any other time interval. All the testing showed that
professionally trained listeners or untrained listeners had less
certainty in their decisions the longer the comparison period was
extended. In fact many of the most biased listeners became frustrated
and tried to force themselves to point out differences even when
those differences weren't there because the products tested one day
were the same as the day before. So it all comes down to the
blindness factor. This is the part that reduces the ego and listening
bias the most. No matter how long listeners want to have to make
comparisons (even up to a week if they so choose) the reality is that
they will just be less likely to make clear choices the longer the
test comparison periods run.

This difficulty in making choices unless they can color their
judgement by knowing which device is playing, is what forces biased
listeners to require that they know what item is playing in order to
choose the product their ego investment requires. It was incredibly
embarrassing and irritating that golden ear'd audiophiles would often
choose the product they had publicly said was poorer or could make no
distinction at all when they couldn't know what items were being
tested. The only allowance the listening testers could use during
these long term tests was the volume control. And the loudness levels
through the test program were recorded, so that for the rest of the
tests the volume levels were kept the same during the same sections
of the material.

Not only are double, triple or more blind tests the best way to
determine differences between the quality of one audio product and
another, it seems this kind of testing is the only way to determine
the truly subtle differences. The only thing helpful about knowing
which item is playing is that it helps listeners bias the results to
back up what their emotional ego investment says the choice should
be. This is why credible listening comparisons of wire are so
maddening for those who claim there are differences in the sound of
two wires of equal gauge (and not using frequency response modifying
devices). Run any such test for 6 days. Let the listeners listen for
as long or as short of comparison times as they choose. Make sure to
run product A against itself some of the time and the same for B.
This means that perhaps the sequence should sometimes have A compared
to A and B compared to B. There have been many listening tests run
using comparison periods from 10-10-10-10-10-10 seconds to 1 day-1
day-1 day-1 day with one item and then one day with another item
(maybe) and the results of the listeners scoring was always random.
In other words if the listeners aren't shown how to be biased in
favor of one product vs another they usually don't hear a difference
with wire. It is only when they are forced to make sighted decisions
to back up their own pronouncements, does it happen that they choose
the product they claimed was better.

It is peculiar that anyone can find anything in anything I've written
in this forum that supports the value of any kind of listening tests
except blind listening tests. True the tests have to be designed
well. A lot of test music and natural sound has to be reviewed to
find passages that will most easily identify the differences between
products. The listening rooms have to be made as neutral as possible.
There are really many factors which go into a well designed and well
run listening test. But the only way to get useful listening test
results is if the products tested are tested totally blind. There is
no reason to force listeners to make choices using relatively small
time increments, but all but the most biased listeners agree after
trying various time increments for testing, the shorter the
comparison time feasible, the better at highlighting clear
differences in products which can be "voted for" by listeners with
the greatest confidence. I hope that now there are no
misunderstandings about what I have said concerning the tens of
thousands of listening tests I've supervised. Sighted tests are
always the worst way to do listening tests and blind tests are the
only ones of any value except to those that have an ego stake in the
results to the point where they will deny the results of tests if
those results don't match their own claims.

Having worked with many many manufacturers over the years and many
consumers up to super-consumers, the best designers of equipment and
the best designers of systems were always those who were totally
dispassionate about whether their product or someone else's was
better sounding. That made these designers market only products that
were cost effective while throwing away most of the other products
they designed that were needed for "product line completion".
Sometimes designers would lose sight of this reality because they
began to believe all the things the sycophants around them were
saying, and that is about the time when their products stopped being
cost effective. Until their egos got in the way or they became too
proud to accept criticism or reality, most great audio product
designers could accept that their product may not sound as good as
someone else's as long as it sold for less money. And these same
designers could also admit that their product might not be worth
marketing at all if it was more expensive but did not demonstrate an
audible improvement over what was in the market already. The problem
occurs when designers who don't care if their products are better,
still need to sell them. Worse yet of course are designers who sell
products they know are inferior but are more expensive. These people
have to sell their products to pay mortgages, or even buy food for
their families, but they likely don't care about consumers at all,
considering exploitable consumers to be only "pockets with" cash in
them which needs to be extracted. I've often heard manufacturers who
say that they are such good salespeople that even if there is no real
audible benefit to their product they can make enough consumers
believe there is a difference to keep their businesses afloat.

If enough well designed and managed blind listening tests were run,
more than half of the audio equipment manufacturers in today's market
would be forced out of business. Either their products wouldn't be
worth what they charge for them, or the quality claims they've made
for long periods of time would be proven false. This is the major
reason why many manufacturers stoke the "flames of confusion" in the
minds of the audio buying public. It is because their quality claims
are nonsense and they just don't want this to be proven to the buying
public. When Disney hired me a year after the ESS listening tests to
run tests that would be a factor (33%) in choosing loudspeakers for
EPCOT and Tokyo, they were certain I really didn't care whose
products came out sounding the best. Disney thoroughly tested every
product many manufacturers made and some of the products from a few
specialty manufacturers. Often the listening and scientific test
results went totally against market myth and manufacturer hype.
Disney used a number of lesser known items and some very popular
items. In every case the result was that EPCOT sounded better to both
engineers and the untrained listening public than any theme park had
ever sounded. Tokyo Disneyland sounded much better than the original
in some cases and exactly the same as Anaheim Disneyland in cases
where the sound couldn't be improved. I never cared who won any of
the listening tests in any of the tests I've managed. Not knowing the
participants identity in these tests (blind testing) was the only
way, the best sounding equipment could be determined when there were
quality differences, and also the only way to accurately determine
when there was no difference in the way a group of products sounded.

What turned out to be quite unfortunate for ESS was that one of their
less expensive speakers sounded much better than almost any other
speaker in the world, including their more expensive speakers. This
turned out to be exactly the kind of information that a
super-consumer like Disney wanted to find. Eventually there were many
products that have been tested this way. That's because this kind of
blind testing highlights only which products sound better. What gets
sifted out of the situation is which company has better salespeople,
or which company has more media allies. It eliminates the idea that
by making something look impressive, a listener can be biased to
believe that the product sounds better. And blind testing is the only
way to find out which products are truly overpriced compared to
others. So for any audiophile who wants the best sound and doesn't
have an unlimited budget to be able to buy everything on the market,
blind listening tests are the only way to buy one system using their
given budget the most effectively. Watchking

Listening isn't a competitive activity, buying equipment is.

We don't get enough sand in our glass.



Did you really do "tens of thousands of tests"? By my calculations, if you
ran three tests a day, that would be 750 in a typical working year, or about
thirteen years work of non-stop three times a day testing. Certainly
possible, but an awful lot. Can you comment on how the tests accumulated?
Are you talking about the organizations testing, or testing you personally
designed and supervised?

More importantly, giving the benefit of the doubt that you've run lots and
lots of tests, could you please provide a little more info.

Were these tests a-b preference tests? It sounds like it. Round-robin
among competing units/brands?

Or were they "evaluative" tests..eg. which had silkier highs, which had
deeper bass, etc.

What statistical criteria were used to determine significance, and how large
was the typical test panel, and how many "trials" were typically used?

Was "better" a criteria you established beforehand, given the purpose of the
piece of gear (e.g. which speaker had the most even dispersion in the
listening area)? Or was it open-ended, whatever emerged as "better" to the
listening panel?

When testing speakers, how did you handle the physical placement of the
speakers to assure comparability? How did you handle the listening
environment for different types of speakers?

"watch king"
Not only are double, triple or more blind tests the best way to
determine differences between the quality of one audio product and
another, it seems this kind of testing is the only way to determine
the truly subtle differences.

Unfortunately, all we have is anecdotal evidence and some strong opinions that
this is so without any data to support it. There has been no 'verifying test'
showing that open-ended DBT results in audio are valid.

The only differences that have shown up in published DBTs I am aware of have
been gross frequency response ("brightness") and loudness differences. Many of
the 'objectivists' say that's all there is to hear. As an experienced
observational listener, I am aware of many more differences than that - mainly
multi-dimensional ones like dynamic range, imaging, and tonal color, to name a
few. As an audiophile, these are the things in music reproduction that are
most important to me. If a DBT obscures those differences, i.e. a published
DBT has never shown those differences to exist between audio components, then
of what value is it to audiophiles?
Regards,
Mike

"Harry Lavo" wrote:

....snip to content....

So if you really want to stop the "jaw flapping" and try to resolve the
differences of the two camps, first you have to acknowledge the possibility
that we might have a point, and that it is worth trying to resolve somehow.

That was the precise reason for the 16-week "Flying Blind" experiment. Been
there, done that; as they say :-)


Just as we acknowledge that traditional dbt/abx testing works fine for
simple volume and frequency response differences, and artifact detection,
which allow simple one or two dimensional evaluations.

Let's see; exactly "what" do we hear in nature? We hear timbre (frequency) and
loudness (volume) over time. What else is there? With recordings we manipulate
pitch and level over time to fool our natural hearing. But those three factors
are all there is to "hear."

Nousaine wrote:
"Harry Lavo" wrote:

...snip.....

However, if i did want to do a comparative blind test, I would want it to be
an a-b, not an abx. And I would want it to follow hard on the heels of
several hours of warm-up listening, where I had firmly reestablished those
signatures in mind before "going blind". And I would want to use the same
music I had just been listening to and control the switching. And I would
want to do it alone with no chance of cheating built into the test.

This kind of implies that you need to "re-learn" to sound of your system from
day to day; doesn't it?

What I find totally fascinating is the idea that you need several hours
of warm-up testing before you can identify "signatures" or differences,
even though it is your own set-up. What about all the previous careful
note-taking? Isn't that supposed to help you pinpoint those signatures
or differences? And what about those "wife in the kitchen can hear it
immediately" kind of differences, which we have seen many audiophiles
claim when cables have been switched?

If it indeed takes several hours of listening before differences can be
established, that runs counter to just about every equipment review I
have read, where reviewers typically notice those changes or differences
immediately. Also, it would make the consumers' lives a lot easier:
everything sounds the same if you never listen for more than a couple of
hours in one sitting!

(S888Wheel) wrote:

...some snips....

I wasn't describing a "test" of misdirection; but instead describing a
situation where a friend asked me to demonstrate the "capacitor" test. I
gladly
did so and he reported the expected results. But to my amazement I
discovered
that the "difference" he reported were the same as they were in previous
tests

I didn't say yours was a test *of* misdirection I said it was a test that
*used* misdirection. My claim is quite accurate.

Misdirection was accidentally a part of this demonstration but it was not
"used." It was an accident.

So I then asked my son to proctor the same test for me but under single
blind
conditions. Surprise .... I couldn't hear the "obvious" differences that had
been confirmed by audiophiles under open-testing.


So the real question is do you still think you hear differences when you
compare capacitors sighted?

Of course not. That would be the providence of the foolish IMO.

That was the experiment that set me to controlled listening tests. I'd been
indoctrinated by the "talk" about capacitor sound. I'd "experienced" the
expected effects in open listening. I'd successfully demonstrated those
effects
to friends (and family) all under "open" conditions.


All using misdirection. you cannot rightfully claim that such experiments
prove
that all people under all circumstances will to the same degree percieve
differences that are not there. All of your experiments involved obvious
conscious expectation bias. I am not saying expectation bias doesn't affect
perception. I am saying that your personal experiments do not prove that
people
will always be inclined to percieve nonexistant differences regardless of
their
expectation biases. Steven suggested that everyone has a subconscious
expectation bias that in any comparison there will be a difference. I don't
buy
that and I don't see anyone proving it.

I think it's fairly obvious that it's true. But no one can ever "prove"
something happens universally. For example even something as common as gravity
is "proven" always. It's just that until someone demonstrates reliably apples
that fall up I'll just go with the flow that it has been proven.

So now when I was forced to the wall I had to either conveniently "ignore"
contrary evidence OR put it to the real test.

From that time onward I out EVERY audibility issue to the blind test. IF you
can't "hear" it when the levels are matched and you figurativey have your
eyes
closed ....then it ain't sound or sound quality.

But since then you have done nothing to avoid the effects of expectation
biases
that things sound the same. That is a problem in your tests IMO.

This is not true at all, which is why as many of my experiments as possible are
done double blind so there'll be no way for me to influence the outcome. For
example even though I've never found anyone who has been able to reliably
identify competent wires; there will be no way for me to "prevent" one that
could from hearing real differences.


I suspect
if you had done the test twice,once with the specific directions stating
that
there may or may not be an audible difference when the switch is made you
would
have eliminated the effect of deliberate misdirection.

This was the case. The answer form had choices of Prefer A, Prefer B or No
Preference. There was no "switching", programs were placed on cassette tape
ansd subjects were just asked to complete the test.


If the results of
such
a
control test were the same as your test which used deliberate misdirection
you
could then claim that the misdirection was not a factor.Certainly if you
tell
the testees that there will be a difference they are more likely to to for
and
find one that doesn't exist.

They weren't told anything about 'differences' they were just asked to complete
the test. I agree that 'comparisons' imply differences but nothing guarantees
that.

The experiment was initially meant to test for the effect of presentation
order. I was surprised that the "difference" bias was far stronger than order.
By itself order didn't seem to be important but it did appear to magnify the
loudness effect, especially when the 2nd alternative was the louder one.


You don't even have to tell them or suggest anything. The mere setting of a
comparison signals "difference."

I don't think your tests prove that.

So what? The experiment surely implies it.

Like I said, I bet you could easily get the same
mistakes from people who expect no difference will be present when one
actually
is present.

These were not "mistakes" in response. The loudness/difference bias in human
response seemed pretty evident.

Somewhat surprisingly I found that audio professionals had the same tencency as
the school teachers in this experiment. After the experiment was completed and
analyzed one of the audio professionals asked to inspect his score sheet and
was kind of put-out to find that he also had a tendency to "Prefer" one of two
identical presentations.

...snip...

Any comparison implies difference. Who
would (other than a crazy like me) ask you to compare two identical things?

I don't think you understood my point. In the scenerio I proposed the things
being compared would be different.

....and people would report them as being the same? Not in general. But I will
say that it would be true that people such as myself are no longer afraid to
"not hear" differences when there are none.

I get many presentations that demonstrate audio in groups. Responses "I heard
no differerence" are very rare although many of the demonstrations don't have
obvious differences other than loudness/order manipulation. Questions are
nearly always difference biased "Which one did you like better?" Some people
will remain quiet but,other than mysefl I cannot recall the last time I heard
anyone say "I couldn't tell the difference." even when it was quite apparent
that there was no audible difference other than loudness (seldom matched.)

Which test do you reference? "Can You Trust Your Ears? AES Conference 1991"?
Have you read it? What 'misdirection' was involved other than the sound "may
have been processed" which in some cases it was to change level.


I am refering to your desciption of your tests inwhich you told the testees
that you were making a switch but infact you made no switch. I would think
the
misdirection would be pretty obvious.

I only reported one instance where the switch posiiton had been accidentally in
the wrong position for the effect BUT no fake-switching was ever done.

I don't think it proves much. We know that people can be fooled
by magicians.

OK and by amp/cable sound advocates as well.

And by amp/cable no sound advocates as you have proven.


Even so, how do you insert a
"barely", or even "obvious", audible effect (such as wire sound) that has
never been shown to exist?

You don't. You insert one that has been shown to exist. Maybe you didn't
understand what I was proposing.

Been there; done that. That's what "Flying Blind" was all about. Small
difference known to be reliably audible with ABX inserted into a CD-R. Subjects
evaluating whether the disc they had (for up to 16-weeks) contained distortion
failed to reliably identify same.

Follow-up with subject that used 16-weeks to mistakenly identify his disc (said
it was Clean when it was Dirty) proved that he could reliably idenify the
distortion within 30 minutes with a 6-second section of the song with ABX.


Maybe not. But those experiments have been conducted or maybe you didn't
notic.

Not in the ABX DBTs articles you have cited. If you have done them I have
never
seen you talk about them.

The basic research has been conducted primarily in the telecommuncations
industry (large portion at Bell Labs, ,going back to the 20-30s) and later much
at Canada's NRC in Ottawa under the direction of Floyd Toole.


No, you do it by simply making one piece of information
*unavailable* to the listener at the time of audition -- namely, the
identity of the device or treatment currently playing. The only
cues to that, should be what is *heard*. Otherwise there's
a signficant chance the identification was made based on factors *other*
than the audible.

Do you think you know what orange juice or
cola or strawberry jello taste like? I bet you cannot successfully
identify
such items by taste alone on a reliable basis. Take the testee out of the
envirement and all bets are off on sensitivity. The interaction of
senses
is
complex and critical in sensitivty of the senses


So blind people don't have a sense of taste when they aren't in their
reference
kitchen?


Of course they do if they have enough experience tasting things as a blind
person. I guess you have never tried to identify things by taste while
blindfolded. Try it with many different samples and see how well you fare.


OK and exactly how does something like that support yoiur case? If I can't
tell
an orange from a tangerine with my eyes closed that only tells me that my
sense
of taste isn't that sensitive.

Nope, that isn't what it tells you at all. It seems you are ignoring the
complex interaction of the senses. If you see the orange or tangerine your
brain has already done the major work of figuring out what you will be
tasting.
that frees your brain up to do the detail work. If you are literally
blindfolded your brain is busy figuring out whether you should be eating this
thing at all. Your brain is busy dealing with defense mechanisms. The fact is
if you have to start from scratch there is more to figure out and less chance
of percieving the finer nuances. If you don't like that example i could
easily
give you a visual example. compare prints of a complex photo one with a
slight
change in the dynamic range. See if anyone can tell the difference without
being told what to look for. Then tell the testees to compare the color
definition on the shadow areas. What was at first undetectable will become
pretty obvious.


Double blind testing tells us exactly the same thing; my sense of sound is
pretty gross and a cardboard box with the picture of a Krell on it will
perceptually turn my Parasound sonically into a Krell. Tell me something I
already didn't know.

I am trying to.

IMO you're just aguing because you have no real evidence that backs up your
case.

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
...

For open ended evaluation, you don't know initially what you are looking
for. It make days for things to gel that "a" sounds somewhat thisway, and
"b" sounds somewhat more thatway. From extended, evaluative listening and
non-quick switching. Then a tentative conclusion is drawn. Now you know
what you are listening "for". It may be something subtle and perceptual,
such as "imaging". Once you have it firmly grasped in mind what the
signature is of "a" and how it might vary from "b", quick switching can
help
precisely because it "interupts" the perception you have grasped and
altered
it slightly (or not) over the flow of music.

We are talking about open-ended component evaluation. If I simply give you
two components, say "different" or "same", or "is it a" or "is it b" and
force a choice quick switching works against you because you haven't yet
really been able to determine what it is you are listening for in audio
terms. "Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to "panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more confusion
and panic. I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle, perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion" unless we are dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume, frequency
response).

All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.

Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.

Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar with or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.

That is
why I proposed a control test that is double-blind, relaxed, evaluative,
and
leisurely.

I presume by this you mean something like the test protocol used by Oohashi
to “confirm” the existence of his alleged “hypersonic effect,” except that
you would allow longer listening times than he used.

Along with testing of the same respondents using sighted,
evaluative listening and at another time relatively short, terse,
comparative ("same","different") double- blind testing as is traditionally
recommended here.

If the control test gave results similar to traditional dbt/abx, it would
verify that that traditional dbt/abx testing was a valid "shortcut" to
evaluative testing. If the control test gave results similar to sighted
open-ended evaluative testing, then it would suggest that evaluative
testing
even though sighted was a more encompassing and valid approach for
component
evaluation.

I donÂ’t think this test, as you envision it, is really possible to perform
in the real world. You would need to run the same “evaluative” test multiple
times on the same subject (at least twice--once sighted and once blind--even
if you used multiple subjects). The problem is that his answers on the first
trial would influence him in any subsequent trials. (i.e., heÂ’ll be looking
for the same set of characteristics he has already “heard” once.) And if his
answers arenÂ’t independent, any comparison of those answers would be
meaningless. So while I understand what youÂ’re trying to get at, and what
you hope to prove, you canÂ’t get there from here.

So if you really want to stop the "jaw flapping" and try to resolve the
differences of the two camps, first you have to acknowledge the possibility
that we might have a point, and that it is worth trying to resolve somehow.

Well, no, I donÂ’t have to acknowledge any such thing. There is no
possibility that you have a point, because there is absolutely no support
for any of your conjectures anywhere in the voluminous research on human
hearing perception. If you can find such support, I will then be prepared to
concede that you may have a point. Also, if you can provide any direct
evidence for any of your conjectures, I will concede that you may have a
point. But IÂ’m not holding my breath, on either score.

bob

__________________________________________________ _______________
Learn how to choose, serve, and enjoy wine at Wine @ MSN.
http://wine.msn.com/

(Nousaine) wrote:
Let's see; exactly "what" do we hear in nature? We hear timbre (frequency)
and
loudness (volume) over time. What else is there? With recordings we
manipulate
pitch and level over time to fool our natural hearing. But those three
factors
are all there is to "hear."


That's like saying red, blue and yellow are the *only* colors we see, because
that's all there is. You are focusing on one single dimension - loudness or
frequency response and ignoring everything that is more complex -
multi-dimensional - pattern-recognition - because single dimensional phenomena
appear to be all your test can show in the way it's used.

What about more complex audible differences? How about dynamic range? How
about imaging and soundstage reproduction? What about the *quality* of high
frequency or bass reproduction, rather than the *quantity*. How about all of
those things above together at one time? We hear those things in nature, do we
not?
Regards,
Mike

"chung" wrote in message
...
Nousaine wrote:
"Harry Lavo" wrote:

...snip.....

However, if i did want to do a comparative blind test, I would want it
to be
an a-b, not an abx. And I would want it to follow hard on the heels of
several hours of warm-up listening, where I had firmly reestablished
those
signatures in mind before "going blind". And I would want to use the
same
music I had just been listening to and control the switching. And I
would
want to do it alone with no chance of cheating built into the test.

This kind of implies that you need to "re-learn" to sound of your system
from
day to day; doesn't it?

What I find totally fascinating is the idea that you need several hours
of warm-up testing before you can identify "signatures" or differences,
even though it is your own set-up. What about all the previous careful
note-taking? Isn't that supposed to help you pinpoint those signatures
or differences? And what about those "wife in the kitchen can hear it
immediately" kind of differences, which we have seen many audiophiles
claim when cables have been switched?


I am talking about getting that sound "in-your-head" firmly enough to serve
as a remembered reference through a series of tests that can add confusion
if that reference is not firmly there. There is a difference.

If it indeed takes several hours of listening before differences can be
established, that runs counter to just about every equipment review I
have read, where reviewers typically notice those changes or differences
immediately. Also, it would make the consumers' lives a lot easier:
everything sounds the same if you never listen for more than a couple of
hours in one sitting!

"Bob Marcus" wrote in message
news:%JfUb.180300$nt4.779028@attbi_s51...
"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
...

For open ended evaluation, you don't know initially what you are looking
for. It make days for things to gel that "a" sounds somewhat thisway,
and
"b" sounds somewhat more thatway. From extended, evaluative listening
and
non-quick switching. Then a tentative conclusion is drawn. Now you know
what you are listening "for". It may be something subtle and perceptual,
such as "imaging". Once you have it firmly grasped in mind what the
signature is of "a" and how it might vary from "b", quick switching can
help
precisely because it "interupts" the perception you have grasped and
altered
it slightly (or not) over the flow of music.

We are talking about open-ended component evaluation. If I simply give
you
two components, say "different" or "same", or "is it a" or "is it b" and
force a choice quick switching works against you because you haven't yet
really been able to determine what it is you are listening for in audio
terms. "Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to
"panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of
reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more confusion
and panic. I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle,
perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion" unless we are dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume, frequency
response).

All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.

Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.

Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar with
or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.

That is
why I proposed a control test that is double-blind, relaxed, evaluative,
and
leisurely.

I presume by this you mean something like the test protocol used by
Oohashi
to Â"confirmÂ" the existence of his alleged Â"hypersonic effect,Â" except
that
you would allow longer listening times than he used.


yep.

Along with testing of the same respondents using sighted,
evaluative listening and at another time relatively short, terse,
comparative ("same","different") double- blind testing as is
traditionally
recommended here.

If the control test gave results similar to traditional dbt/abx, it would
verify that that traditional dbt/abx testing was a valid "shortcut" to
evaluative testing. If the control test gave results similar to sighted
open-ended evaluative testing, then it would suggest that evaluative
testing
even though sighted was a more encompassing and valid approach for
component
evaluation.

I donÂ't think this test, as you envision it, is really possible to
perform
in the real world. You would need to run the same Â"evaluativeÂ" test
multiple
times on the same subject (at least twice--once sighted and once
blind--even
if you used multiple subjects). The problem is that his answers on the
first
trial would influence him in any subsequent trials. (i.e., heÂ'll be
looking
for the same set of characteristics he has already Â"heardÂ" once.) And if
his
answers arenÂ't independent, any comparison of those answers would be
meaningless. So while I understand what youÂ're trying to get at, and what
you hope to prove, you canÂ't get there from here.


No problem if the sighted, open-end test is done first...let's say with 16
trials if we are talking one person. I'd actually prefer 100 people doing
it once. Then three months later the test is done blind, again with 16
trials or preferably 100 people. Nobody would know or remember the exact
scores they gave on the evaluative criteria, and in the second blind test
they wouldn't know which was which so it would hardly be relevant if they
did.

So if you really want to stop the "jaw flapping" and try to resolve the
differences of the two camps, first you have to acknowledge the
possibility
that we might have a point, and that it is worth trying to resolve
somehow.

Well, no, I donÂ't have to acknowledge any such thing. There is no
possibility that you have a point, because there is absolutely no support
for any of your conjectures anywhere in the voluminous research on human
hearing perception. If you can find such support, I will then be prepared
to
concede that you may have a point. Also, if you can provide any direct
evidence for any of your conjectures, I will concede that you may have a
point. But IÂ'm not holding my breath, on either score.

Somebody always has to be first! :-)

A fair amount of science was first postulated by "crazies". May be crazy,
may be. Or may however remotely possibly be right.

But you don't have to think I am right. Enough people have raised similar
issues on this forum over the years...enough that anybody really seeking the
truth should a least design a control test to knock down the objections.
Why do you suppose Oohashi choose that particular form of testing, and why
do you suppose he found statistical correlation where conventional theory
suggested it shouldn't exist? Does not a better listening test technique
suggest itself as a possibility? Oohashi himself makes reference to earlier
tests that showed no difference using conventional techniques; that is why
his group set the listening test up the way they did, because they suspected
that might be one of the factors getting in the way. And the results don't
dispute the possibility that he was right.

Well Harry to begin with the ESS test itself sponsored and certified
by various departments inside the test site universities like Georgia
Tech (example-Dr. Patronis-Psychoacoustics), Univ of Wisc, Univ of
Washington & UCLA. There were 10, 40 minute tests per day of approx
40 minutes each with a 3 minute verbal intro and written intros
handed to each participant while they waited in line. There were 20
individual test comparisons per test session comparing one
loudspeaker to another. There were three back and forth switches for
each required decision of X (some number between 1 and 9 randomly
chosen each time) and Y (same) or "no difference". There were full
seats (12-15, depending on the listening neutrality of the room) at
every session after the first morning session which often had invited
or celebrity guests and/or departmental auditors sitting in, often
with measurement tools. The tests ran for an average of 6 days at
each university site. This makes for over 10,000 individual
man/listening/tests.

This does not count the numerous pretest set-ups used to shake down
the tests ability to function in locations in Sacramento. There was
also a preliminary "Test" test at UC Davis where the loudspeaker test
was run over and over with the same sequences of speakers but other
parts of the system were changed out like amplifiers and out of 20
possible musical and voice programs, 10 were chosen for the final
testing on the road. There were probably another 3-4,000 individual
man/listening tests done to make the test as meaningful as possible,
with the broadest variety of music (Pop, rock, dance, female vocal,
male vocal, symphonic, quartet and show music [orchestral movie
themes]. Set-up day in each actual test location there were perhaps
500 individual comparison tests run so that each seat in the
listening area could be ear-tested and measured with a full house.

Listeners were only given the choice of whether they wanted to sit in
the louder seats, average loudness seats or quieter seats. Being
"bookshelf" speakers all speakers were located above head height when
seated, for equal low frequency enhancement and the need to "look up"
for all listening. During a 2 minute break mid-session, speakers were
moved to better align competitors for the rest of the head to head
tests. While there were many comparisons that did not produce
statistically significant findings, this was because the quality
differences between many of the competitors was insignificant. In
fact the imaging in every seat using master tapes or other first
generation material was incredible. Unfortunately that meant that
some people were experiencing some of the best sound they had ever
heard and they could "forget" to record their test comparison results
on some musical passages. Statistically, "blanks" didn't count the
same as "no difference".

A preference rate of at least 3-2 was considered significant because
it meant that 50% more listeners preferred one item over another. Out
of dozens of different combination comparisons with 32 loudspeaker
models, only about 40 of the comparison tests had results that were
statistically significant although using one standard deviation as a
decisive outcome if the preference was 4-3 then 50 test comparisons
were significant. The total number of listener tests that had to have
a real choice (when eliminating "no difference") had to total at
least 171 decisions, and the number of "no difference" votes could
never be more than 30%. No test seats were put outside the claimed
dispersion area of any loudspeaker, although celebrity sit-ins often
sat without tests scoring sheets in outer seats so everyone could
experience even absorption. Test staff also used these non-test
seats. The auditing accounting firm was in charge of the actual
"significance analysis" numerically, although as a former statistic
teaching assistant I understood what "significance" meant. 100
preferences vs 70 might be meaningful, but 100 preferences vs 95
likely meant nothing. Obviously 100 preferences vs 25 would make an
irrefutable statement.

Since this group of tests was set up to test loudspeakers, that's all
that was tested. This helped keep most of the other parameters fixed
and not able to vary the results. But on later blind listening tests
to sort out equipment for EPCOT or Tokyo Disneyland, hundreds of
listeners compared various amplifiers and loudspeakers. Since these
items were to be heard inside of "something", this was the best
"blind" situation possible. Even theater systems are behind screens
and so were tested that way. While thwe opinions of the Imagineers
was considered most important, the listeners representing the
typical visitor to the parks was asked to make comments in addition
to direct votes. Every listener was treated like their opinion was
valued (which it was) and every listener took their task seriously
(which can be difficult when listening to the sound of dancing
pixie's or whatever). One helpful part of the test was to have
portions introduced by people whose voices were then played back
through the systems being tested. Luckily a movie company has many
professional narrators on staff.

While the total number of direct comparisons might have nearly
totaled 20,000 in these two situations, other companies hired me to
run product development tests with certain market segments. The total
number of tests run here might have been between 500-1000, and rarely
were more than 3 listeners listening at a time. I don't want to give
the impression that I was ever the only engineer managing and
designing the tests I speak of. At ESS there was another engineer
from inside the company and one brought in from outside to assist in
designing the tests. At Disney I worked on a team of 8 professional
engineers. In other cases there were never fewer than 3 engineers
involved. It is always better to have multiple engineers involved
with designing the tests and setting them up, and the involvement of
a music teacher usually helps too, especially in sorting out program
material.

The general public with an interest in music who categorized
themselves as "interested enough" in hearing sound equipment was the
"panel of listeners" used for the ESS tests. Desire definitely played
a big part in who took the tests at all. The only "payoff" was a
drawing for a free cassette tape each round. People often waited in
lines for hours. The weather was nice sometimes but cold or rainy
other times (especially during Homecoming week at Univ Wisc Madison).
The age of 80% of the campus test group was between 18 and 24
(pre-walkman and concert deafness syndrome), so the test ears were
pretty sharp in this case. The Disney tests had multiple levels of
listeners taking tests. The Imagineers were all trained audio
engineers with either theater, studio or specialize audio experience
(mine being musical sound reinforcement and testing), and the project
designers often had years of experience listening to Disney's other
attractions as well as live music as their reference. But many of
test listeners were "Middle Americans" because these were the people
who were Disney's target market.

I would have enjoyed interviewing every listener of the campus tests
at length but this just wasn't feasible. But every day I tried to
have 1 or 2 small group discussion sessions to get a handle on what
college listeners used as criteria for making their judgments. Music
students were the most articulate in this regard. Often they could
easily pin down why a certain test using a female voice was so
revealing or how the piano on one loudspeaker sounded more revealing
than another. As I mentioned before musical preference could make a
big difference. More results could have been used except that some
listeners heard little of no difference between test products except
with certain types of program materials. In other words sometimes
when the test listeners didn't care about certain music they just
didn't want to listen closely.

Of course engineers and theme park fanatics were very articulate
about what they liked or didn't like about te products under test for
EPCOT. writing in the test sheet margins was very common. This helped
the people who were choosing the EPCOT amps, loudspeakers, custom
transformers, and preamp signal processors. Overhead crowd control
speakers were judged more on vocal clarity whether they were used for
musical playback most of the time or not. According to the job the
product did the test results could be judged with proper weighting.
But when (as is the case with the French theater whose sound system I
was able to design) sonic quality overall was the standard, then the
best sounding competitor using the actual program that would be used
in the park, was 90% assured of being chosen.

Here are the quality criteria for "home sound" that I have picked up
from test subjects before and after they do listening tests. In
people's homes most non-electro-produced music should create a sharp
image that goes at least to the outside of the left and right
loudspeaker and possibly somewhat outside that limit. Imaging is
often a description of the "Conductor's position" in listening to
orchestral and choral music. The conductor has to be able to identify
clearly any single performer in order to make corrections or changes
to balance the totality of the work. In pop music images are created
artificially but they can be just as clear.

Next for home sound and nearly as important as imaging the vocals
should always be as clear and undistorted as possible and with the
exception of the image, the voices (especially female voices) should
be as natural as possible. Humans are conditioned more by the sound
of the female voice during their mental, physical and emotional
formation from years 0 to 7 than any other sound source. To make a
voice sound natural in a room there needs to be almost no hint of
spurious sound from a loudspeaker cabinet, internal resonance or
microphonics from tubes. In addition the loudspeaker should have very
wide and constant directivity as well as correct phase alignment in
the voice band. These are hard goals to meet.

Beyond the two criteria, sharp imaging and total realism in vocals,
people's musical interests weight various other quality criteria
differently. Pop listeners surprisingly prefer low distortion sound
at fairly loud level so as not to induce listener fatigue. Some other
listeners prefer organ and/or driving rock or other bass guitar
oriented music. Extended frequency response with low distortion and
low background noise may be more important than ultimate loudness for
jazz or folk music listeners whose instruments are usually acoustic.
Etc. Etc. Often these criteria can conflict with each other but not
always. Usually it is when speakers are designed "up" to widen
bandwidth that they produce pooer images and less vocal realism. But
this is only a comment on testing not a condemnation of "mammoth"
speaker designs. Watchking

"Listening isn't a competetive activity, buying equipment is."

We don't get enough sand in our glass

"Harry Lavo" wrote :
For open ended evaluation, you don't know initially what you are looking
for. It make days for things to gel that "a" sounds somewhat thisway, and
"b" sounds somewhat more thatway. From extended, evaluative listening and
non-quick switching. Then a tentative conclusion is drawn. Now you know
what you are listening "for". It may be something subtle and perceptual,
such as "imaging". Once you have it firmly grasped in mind what the
signature is of "a" and how it might vary from "b", quick switching can
help
precisely because it "interupts" the perception you have grasped and
altered
it slightly (or not) over the flow of music.

We are talking about open-ended component evaluation. If I simply give you
two components, say "different" or "same", or "is it a" or "is it b" and
force a choice quick switching works against you because you haven't yet
really been able to determine what it is you are listening for in audio
terms. "Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to "panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more confusion
and panic. I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle, perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion" unless we are dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume, frequency
response).


"Bob Marcus" wrote:
All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.


Because it doesn't seem to agree with your ideas.

"Harry Lavo" wrote:
Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.


"Bob Marcus" wrote:
Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar with or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.


That is very difficult to believe. The evidence is there - you have to chose
*not* to ignore it because it might not fit in with your *beliefs* about blind
testing and audible differences. It's pretty clear the objectivists do not
have all of the answers about DBTs or this debate would not be continuing.
Convincing yourself is one thing - convincing us sceptics is another - it
requires more than continued denial.

The dichotomy between evaluating/judging and
single-dimension/mulitple-dimension testing makes sense to anyone who has ever
tried open-ended component evaluation sighted and then the same test blind.
If you try paying attention to what is going on in your own head during the
process - it's called *self-awareness* - Harry's description above is the best
explanation I've seen so far. It also explains why DBTs which are positive
deal with one dimension (loudness or frequency response of more than 2dB
difference) and all the rest are null.

The test, in the way it is applied, seems to interfere with identifying the
differences you are testing for. You can either continue denying it, or admit
there might be a problem and help find for a solution with your claimed
familiarity with "all of the published research into human hearing perception".
Regards,
Mike

Mkuller wrote:

(Nousaine) wrote:
Let's see; exactly "what" do we hear in nature? We hear timbre (frequency)
and
loudness (volume) over time. What else is there? With recordings we
manipulate
pitch and level over time to fool our natural hearing. But those three
factors
are all there is to "hear."


That's like saying red, blue and yellow are the *only* colors we see, because
that's all there is. You are focusing on one single dimension - loudness or
frequency response and ignoring everything that is more complex -
multi-dimensional - pattern-recognition - because single dimensional phenomena
appear to be all your test can show in the way it's used.

What about more complex audible differences? How about dynamic range?

That's just the difference between the loud passages and the noise floor
of the system. DBT's are excellent for discriminating background noise,
and peak loudness before clipping.

How
about imaging and soundstage reproduction?

Imaging is one of the easiest things to DBT. When playing A, you should
be able to place the sound source (a vocal, or a particular instrument),
using a familiar piece of recording. Switch to B, you should sense
either the same, or a different location for those sources. Just compare
X to A and B and pick the one that's the closest.

Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.

What about the *quality* of high
frequency or bass reproduction, rather than the *quantity*.

What about it? Those are simple frequency response effects. It should be
really easy to pinpoint tonal differences of instruments in a DBT/ABX
test. Remember all the anecdotes about how something immediately stands
out when a component is changed?

How about all of
those things above together at one time?

All you need to match X to A or B on any one of these effects, if you
noticed previous differences in sighted listening. How hard is it? Of
course, it would be hard if your hard-held beliefs are on the line...

We hear those things in nature, do we
not?
Regards,
Mike

Harry Lavo wrote:
"chung" wrote in message
...
Nousaine wrote:
"Harry Lavo" wrote:

...snip.....

However, if i did want to do a comparative blind test, I would want it
to be
an a-b, not an abx. And I would want it to follow hard on the heels of
several hours of warm-up listening, where I had firmly reestablished
those
signatures in mind before "going blind". And I would want to use the
same
music I had just been listening to and control the switching. And I
would
want to do it alone with no chance of cheating built into the test.

This kind of implies that you need to "re-learn" to sound of your system
from
day to day; doesn't it?

What I find totally fascinating is the idea that you need several hours
of warm-up testing before you can identify "signatures" or differences,
even though it is your own set-up. What about all the previous careful
note-taking? Isn't that supposed to help you pinpoint those signatures
or differences? And what about those "wife in the kitchen can hear it
immediately" kind of differences, which we have seen many audiophiles
claim when cables have been switched?


I am talking about getting that sound "in-your-head" firmly enough to serve
as a remembered reference through a series of tests that can add confusion
if that reference is not firmly there. There is a difference.

In a ABX/DBT, you have unlimited time to get the sound "in your head"
when you first listen to A and B. And you are saying that after months
of open-ended evaluative listening, you still don't have that sound "in
your head" firmly enough? How about all that note-taking? And you must
have found some passages where the differences (or signatures) are
miximized, no?


If it indeed takes several hours of listening before differences can be
established, that runs counter to just about every equipment review I
have read, where reviewers typically notice those changes or differences
immediately. Also, it would make the consumers' lives a lot easier:
everything sounds the same if you never listen for more than a couple of
hours in one sitting!

"watch king" wrote in message
...
Well Harry to begin with the ESS test itself sponsored and certified
by various departments inside the test site universities like Georgia
Tech (example-Dr. Patronis-Psychoacoustics), Univ of Wisc, Univ of
Washington & UCLA. There were 10, 40 minute tests per day of approx
40 minutes each with a 3 minute verbal intro and written intros
handed to each participant while they waited in line. There were 20
individual test comparisons per test session comparing one
loudspeaker to another. There were three back and forth switches for
each required decision of X (some number between 1 and 9 randomly
chosen each time) and Y (same) or "no difference". There were full
seats (12-15, depending on the listening neutrality of the room) at
every session after the first morning session which often had invited
or celebrity guests and/or departmental auditors sitting in, often
with measurement tools. The tests ran for an average of 6 days at
each university site. This makes for over 10,000 individual
man/listening/tests.

This does not count the numerous pretest set-ups used to shake down
the tests ability to function in locations in Sacramento. There was
also a preliminary "Test" test at UC Davis where the loudspeaker test
was run over and over with the same sequences of speakers but other
parts of the system were changed out like amplifiers and out of 20
possible musical and voice programs, 10 were chosen for the final
testing on the road. There were probably another 3-4,000 individual
man/listening tests done to make the test as meaningful as possible,
with the broadest variety of music (Pop, rock, dance, female vocal,
male vocal, symphonic, quartet and show music [orchestral movie
themes]. Set-up day in each actual test location there were perhaps
500 individual comparison tests run so that each seat in the
listening area could be ear-tested and measured with a full house.

Listeners were only given the choice of whether they wanted to sit in
the louder seats, average loudness seats or quieter seats. Being
"bookshelf" speakers all speakers were located above head height when
seated, for equal low frequency enhancement and the need to "look up"
for all listening. During a 2 minute break mid-session, speakers were
moved to better align competitors for the rest of the head to head
tests. While there were many comparisons that did not produce
statistically significant findings, this was because the quality
differences between many of the competitors was insignificant. In
fact the imaging in every seat using master tapes or other first
generation material was incredible. Unfortunately that meant that
some people were experiencing some of the best sound they had ever
heard and they could "forget" to record their test comparison results
on some musical passages. Statistically, "blanks" didn't count the
same as "no difference".

A preference rate of at least 3-2 was considered significant because
it meant that 50% more listeners preferred one item over another. Out
of dozens of different combination comparisons with 32 loudspeaker
models, only about 40 of the comparison tests had results that were
statistically significant although using one standard deviation as a
decisive outcome if the preference was 4-3 then 50 test comparisons
were significant. The total number of listener tests that had to have
a real choice (when eliminating "no difference") had to total at
least 171 decisions, and the number of "no difference" votes could
never be more than 30%. No test seats were put outside the claimed
dispersion area of any loudspeaker, although celebrity sit-ins often
sat without tests scoring sheets in outer seats so everyone could
experience even absorption. Test staff also used these non-test
seats. The auditing accounting firm was in charge of the actual
"significance analysis" numerically, although as a former statistic
teaching assistant I understood what "significance" meant. 100
preferences vs 70 might be meaningful, but 100 preferences vs 95
likely meant nothing. Obviously 100 preferences vs 25 would make an
irrefutable statement.

Since this group of tests was set up to test loudspeakers, that's all
that was tested. This helped keep most of the other parameters fixed
and not able to vary the results. But on later blind listening tests
to sort out equipment for EPCOT or Tokyo Disneyland, hundreds of
listeners compared various amplifiers and loudspeakers. Since these
items were to be heard inside of "something", this was the best
"blind" situation possible. Even theater systems are behind screens
and so were tested that way. While thwe opinions of the Imagineers
was considered most important, the listeners representing the
typical visitor to the parks was asked to make comments in addition
to direct votes. Every listener was treated like their opinion was
valued (which it was) and every listener took their task seriously
(which can be difficult when listening to the sound of dancing
pixie's or whatever). One helpful part of the test was to have
portions introduced by people whose voices were then played back
through the systems being tested. Luckily a movie company has many
professional narrators on staff.

While the total number of direct comparisons might have nearly
totaled 20,000 in these two situations, other companies hired me to
run product development tests with certain market segments. The total
number of tests run here might have been between 500-1000, and rarely
were more than 3 listeners listening at a time. I don't want to give
the impression that I was ever the only engineer managing and
designing the tests I speak of. At ESS there was another engineer
from inside the company and one brought in from outside to assist in
designing the tests. At Disney I worked on a team of 8 professional
engineers. In other cases there were never fewer than 3 engineers
involved. It is always better to have multiple engineers involved
with designing the tests and setting them up, and the involvement of
a music teacher usually helps too, especially in sorting out program
material.

The general public with an interest in music who categorized
themselves as "interested enough" in hearing sound equipment was the
"panel of listeners" used for the ESS tests. Desire definitely played
a big part in who took the tests at all. The only "payoff" was a
drawing for a free cassette tape each round. People often waited in
lines for hours. The weather was nice sometimes but cold or rainy
other times (especially during Homecoming week at Univ Wisc Madison).
The age of 80% of the campus test group was between 18 and 24
(pre-walkman and concert deafness syndrome), so the test ears were
pretty sharp in this case. The Disney tests had multiple levels of
listeners taking tests. The Imagineers were all trained audio
engineers with either theater, studio or specialize audio experience
(mine being musical sound reinforcement and testing), and the project
designers often had years of experience listening to Disney's other
attractions as well as live music as their reference. But many of
test listeners were "Middle Americans" because these were the people
who were Disney's target market.

I would have enjoyed interviewing every listener of the campus tests
at length but this just wasn't feasible. But every day I tried to
have 1 or 2 small group discussion sessions to get a handle on what
college listeners used as criteria for making their judgments. Music
students were the most articulate in this regard. Often they could
easily pin down why a certain test using a female voice was so
revealing or how the piano on one loudspeaker sounded more revealing
than another. As I mentioned before musical preference could make a
big difference. More results could have been used except that some
listeners heard little of no difference between test products except
with certain types of program materials. In other words sometimes
when the test listeners didn't care about certain music they just
didn't want to listen closely.

Of course engineers and theme park fanatics were very articulate
about what they liked or didn't like about te products under test for
EPCOT. writing in the test sheet margins was very common. This helped
the people who were choosing the EPCOT amps, loudspeakers, custom
transformers, and preamp signal processors. Overhead crowd control
speakers were judged more on vocal clarity whether they were used for
musical playback most of the time or not. According to the job the
product did the test results could be judged with proper weighting.
But when (as is the case with the French theater whose sound system I
was able to design) sonic quality overall was the standard, then the
best sounding competitor using the actual program that would be used
in the park, was 90% assured of being chosen.

Here are the quality criteria for "home sound" that I have picked up
from test subjects before and after they do listening tests. In
people's homes most non-electro-produced music should create a sharp
image that goes at least to the outside of the left and right
loudspeaker and possibly somewhat outside that limit. Imaging is
often a description of the "Conductor's position" in listening to
orchestral and choral music. The conductor has to be able to identify
clearly any single performer in order to make corrections or changes
to balance the totality of the work. In pop music images are created
artificially but they can be just as clear.

Next for home sound and nearly as important as imaging the vocals
should always be as clear and undistorted as possible and with the
exception of the image, the voices (especially female voices) should
be as natural as possible. Humans are conditioned more by the sound
of the female voice during their mental, physical and emotional
formation from years 0 to 7 than any other sound source. To make a
voice sound natural in a room there needs to be almost no hint of
spurious sound from a loudspeaker cabinet, internal resonance or
microphonics from tubes. In addition the loudspeaker should have very
wide and constant directivity as well as correct phase alignment in
the voice band. These are hard goals to meet.

Beyond the two criteria, sharp imaging and total realism in vocals,
people's musical interests weight various other quality criteria
differently. Pop listeners surprisingly prefer low distortion sound
at fairly loud level so as not to induce listener fatigue. Some other
listeners prefer organ and/or driving rock or other bass guitar
oriented music. Extended frequency response with low distortion and
low background noise may be more important than ultimate loudness for
jazz or folk music listeners whose instruments are usually acoustic.
Etc. Etc. Often these criteria can conflict with each other but not
always. Usually it is when speakers are designed "up" to widen
bandwidth that they produce pooer images and less vocal realism. But
this is only a comment on testing not a condemnation of "mammoth"
speaker designs. Watchking


Thank you for the more detailed description. I and the others here now
better understand how and why you tested, and what standards were applied.

As for your findings on what people "reacted to" in a home environment, it
totally squares with my experience and I would guess would as well for most
folks here.

As a member of that "jazz, acoustical instrument" group, I have never found
loudness per se important; I do find a lack of obvious distortion to
reasonably loud living room levels helpful in preventing fatigue. Imaging
and dimensionality are much more important to me, even though I now have a
surround system. That is why I always bow out of recomendations to rock
lovers and organ fans...I simply do not have the same frame of reference.

(Nousaine) wrote:
Let's see; exactly "what" do we hear in nature? We hear timbre (frequency)
and
loudness (volume) over time. What else is there? With recordings we
manipulate
pitch and level over time to fool our natural hearing. But those three
factors
are all there is to "hear."


Mkuller wrote:
That's like saying red, blue and yellow are the *only* colors we see,
because
that's all there is. You are focusing on one single dimension - loudness
or
frequency response and ignoring everything that is more complex -
multi-dimensional - pattern-recognition - because single dimensional
phenomena
appear to be all your test can show in the way it's used.

What about more complex audible differences? How about dynamic range?


chung wrote:
That's just the difference between the loud passages and the noise floor
of the system. DBT's are excellent for discriminating background noise,
and peak loudness before clipping.


No, what you are describing is the *potential* dynamic range. The actual
dynamic range is the difference between the softest passage and the loudest.
Audio equipment varies in its ability to reproduce a wide dynamic contrast
between these two. Have you ever seen *this* differentiated in a DBT?

How
about imaging and soundstage reproduction?


Imaging is one of the easiest things to DBT. When playing A, you should
be able to place the sound source (a vocal, or a particular instrument),
using a familiar piece of recording. Switch to B, you should sense
either the same, or a different location for those sources. Just compare
X to A and B and pick the one that's the closest.

Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two audio
components?

What about the *quality* of high
frequency or bass reproduction, rather than the *quantity*.


What about it? Those are simple frequency response effects. It should be
really easy to pinpoint tonal differences of instruments in a DBT/ABX
test. Remember all the anecdotes about how something immediately stands
out when a component is changed?


No they are not *simple* frequency response effects*; that would be "quantity",
not "quality". The same goes for *transparency* and *resolution of inner
detail*. These are mulit-dimensional effects that I have never seen
differentiated in a DBT. Have you?

How about all of
those things above together at one time?


All you need to match X to A or B on any one of these effects, if you
noticed previous differences in sighted listening. How hard is it? Of
course, it would be hard if your hard-held beliefs are on the line...


Have you ever seen it done? Who has hard-held beliefs here? What about other
things besides, loudness, tone and frequency response? We have phase, timing,
transient attack, note decay, etc. all multi-dimensional attributes which have
never been demonstrated to differentiate audio components in a DBT, but
nonetheless are real audible effects.
Regards,
Mike

"Mkuller" wrote in message
news:iEwUb.229879$xy6.1167040@attbi_s02...
"Harry Lavo" wrote :
For open ended evaluation, you don't know initially what you are
looking
for. It make days for things to gel that "a" sounds somewhat
thisway, and
"b" sounds somewhat more thatway. From extended, evaluative
listening and
non-quick switching. Then a tentative conclusion is drawn. Now you
know
what you are listening "for". It may be something subtle and
perceptual,
such as "imaging". Once you have it firmly grasped in mind what the
signature is of "a" and how it might vary from "b", quick switching
can
help
precisely because it "interupts" the perception you have grasped and
altered
it slightly (or not) over the flow of music.

We are talking about open-ended component evaluation. If I simply
give you
two components, say "different" or "same", or "is it a" or "is it b"
and
force a choice quick switching works against you because you haven't
yet
really been able to determine what it is you are listening for in
audio
terms. "Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to
"panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of
reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more
confusion
and panic. I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and
fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle,
perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion" unless we are
dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle
without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume,
frequency
response).


"Bob Marcus" wrote:
All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.


Because it doesn't seem to agree with your ideas.

No. It's because it doesn't agree with a lot of things that we know
about perception, cognition, consumer behavior, and I guess with a lot
of things that we know about psychoacoustics, not to mention electrical
engineering. And the differences are not only theoretical, but also
methodological. Let's suppose that Harry's "theory" makes sense (which
it doesn't). The test that he came up with to test his "theory" is,
there is no other word for this, H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E from a scientific point
of view. Basically, it's full of confounds whose origins are in tons of
biases (perceptual, judgmental, processing, decision-related) that he
has no controls for. How do I now that? Well, you can take my word for
it, or you can go to a local library and start reading. Really, there
is no other way.


"Harry Lavo" wrote:
Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.


"Bob Marcus" wrote:
Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar
with or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.


That is very difficult to believe. The evidence is there - you have
to chose
*not* to ignore it because it might not fit in with your *beliefs*
about blind
testing and audible differences. It's pretty clear the objectivists
do not
have all of the answers about DBTs or this debate would not be
continuing.


This is not the point at all. Nobody has all answers about anything,
but some people have some answers about some things. It would be
beneficial if subjectivists try to make an effort to familiarize
themselves with those answers. Basically, what subjectivists are saying
is: since 50 (100?) years of multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed research
doesn't agree with our unreliable, biased perceptions (and perceptions
are *by definition* unreliable and biased), then all those researchers
are wrong and we are right. Well, it doesn't work that way. If someone
wants to come up with a new theory, his theory has to acommodate the
existing theory first and build from there. I'm prety sure that someone
is not going to be a layperson.


Convincing yourself is one thing - convincing us sceptics is another -
it
requires more than continued denial.


No, no, no... In this story, subjectivists are believers, and
objectivists are sceptics.


The dichotomy between evaluating/judging

judgment = evaluation!!!!! You think that you can evaluate things
without judging them? This is getting really interesting.


and
single-dimension/mulitple-dimension testing makes sense to anyone who
has ever
tried open-ended component evaluation sighted and then the same test
blind.
If you try paying attention to what is going on in your own head
during the
process - it's called *self-awareness* - Harry's description above is
the best
explanation I've seen so far.


Theoretically, Harry would like to have it "both ways", so to speak. He
would like to use consciusly monitored "true" emotions, that arise from
sponteanous (intuitive as he would say) gestalt perception of a piece of
music, as proxies for evaluation of aural stimuli (sound). At the same
time, he needs a lengthy period of time (weeks, months) to do all kinds
of "piecemeal" processing of sound (imaging, soundstaging, air, "midband
plasticity", bass extension, slam, speed, ...... I am sure you can add
a lot more properties here) before he "arrives", cognitively speaking,
at the gestalt. First of all, this is totally impossible, again
cognitively speaking. If you feel any emotions after all this time and
all the proceesing that you've done, they will be representative of
about zillion things, and not of the sound quality alone. Second, all
this proceesing is, more or less, biased to a very high degree for a
large number of reasons (and Harry has no single control for any of
them). I have described this in some detail in one of my previous posts,
but none of subjectivists felt the urge to respond with any plausible
arguments.

I do agree on one thing with Harry -- testee anxiety. However, the
cause of that anxiety is not brain "panicking", but let's not go there.
The value of a DBT ABX test is that it has necessary confound controls,
yet it is a very sensitive test given *what we know about judgment and
decision making, perception and cognitive psychology in general, as well
as what we know about psychoacoustics and properties of signals*. Do we
know everything about all these things? Of course not, but when
somebody makes a thoeretical progress in the field of perception of
auditory signals, he will be using ABX DBT (or something similar), and
nothing like Harry's test.

Also, when trying to build a plausible theory of perception (and
cognition) it is really desirable not to start with behavioralists and
Jung. Really. This is a non-starter in 2004 and speaks volumes about
such attempt. No disrespect.



It also explains why DBTs which are positive
deal with one dimension (loudness or frequency response of more than
2dB
difference) and all the rest are null.

The test, in the way it is applied, seems to interfere with
identifying the
differences you are testing for. You can either continue denying it,
or admit
there might be a problem and help find for a solution with your
claimed
familiarity with "all of the published research into human hearing
perception".


You got this also the other way around. The theory and empirical
evidence (both of multidisciplinary nature) totally predict "why DBTs
which are positive deal with one dimension (loudness or frequency
response of more than 2dB difference) and all the rest are null". If
you think that there is something wrong with this picture, the burden of
proof is on you and on other subjectivists. However, you have to do a
much better job than Harry.

Mkuller wrote:
(Nousaine) wrote:
Let's see; exactly "what" do we hear in nature? We hear timbre (frequency)
and
loudness (volume) over time. What else is there? With recordings we
manipulate
pitch and level over time to fool our natural hearing. But those three
factors
are all there is to "hear."


Mkuller wrote:
That's like saying red, blue and yellow are the *only* colors we see,
because
that's all there is. You are focusing on one single dimension - loudness
or
frequency response and ignoring everything that is more complex -
multi-dimensional - pattern-recognition - because single dimensional
phenomena
appear to be all your test can show in the way it's used.

What about more complex audible differences? How about dynamic range?


chung wrote:
That's just the difference between the loud passages and the noise floor
of the system. DBT's are excellent for discriminating background noise,
and peak loudness before clipping.


No, what you are describing is the *potential* dynamic range. The actual
dynamic range is the difference between the softest passage and the loudest.
Audio equipment varies in its ability to reproduce a wide dynamic contrast
between these two. Have you ever seen *this* differentiated in a DBT?


DBT can clearly differentiate *actual* noise floors and clipping levels.
You do agree it is easy to tell dynamic range differences in DBT's, right?

You don't see this differentiated in DBT's of cables because competent
cables all behave the same way. Cables do not add or subtract from
dynamic range. I am sure that are amps that can be differentiated in
DBT's if the actual dynamic range is different. Compare a 20W amp vs a
200W amp. You can tell them apart in a DBT.


How
about imaging and soundstage reproduction?


Imaging is one of the easiest things to DBT. When playing A, you should
be able to place the sound source (a vocal, or a particular instrument),
using a familiar piece of recording. Switch to B, you should sense
either the same, or a different location for those sources. Just compare
X to A and B and pick the one that's the closest.

Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two audio
components?

No, because speakers (and vinyl gear) determine imaging, not
electronics. If you have evidence otherwise, let'e hear it. But you do
agree that it is easy to tell imaging in DBT's, right?


What about the *quality* of high
frequency or bass reproduction, rather than the *quantity*.


What about it? Those are simple frequency response effects. It should be
really easy to pinpoint tonal differences of instruments in a DBT/ABX
test. Remember all the anecdotes about how something immediately stands
out when a component is changed?


No they are not *simple* frequency response effects*; that would be "quantity",
not "quality".

It's the relative quantity that determines the perceived quality.
Really, you're making it much harder than it is. If the tonality or
timbre is different, why can't you tell them apart blind?

The same goes for *transparency* and *resolution of inner
detail*. These are mulit-dimensional effects that I have never seen
differentiated in a DBT. Have you?

Transparency has to do with dynamic range, distortion and frequency
response. So does "inner detail". Why wouldn't you detect differences in
these properties in DBT's? (Hint, because all competent cables sound alike.)

How about all of
those things above together at one time?


All you need to match X to A or B on any one of these effects, if you
noticed previous differences in sighted listening. How hard is it? Of
course, it would be hard if your hard-held beliefs are on the line...


Have you ever seen it done? Who has hard-held beliefs here? What about other
things besides, loudness, tone and frequency response? We have phase, timing,
transient attack, note decay, etc. all multi-dimensional attributes which have
never been demonstrated to differentiate audio components in a DBT, but
nonetheless are real audible effects.

So why can't they be differentiated in DBT's, if they can be determined
sighted?

Phase? Can you determine phase in sighted testing?

Timing and transient attacks are all tied to frequency response. Note
decay is tied to frequency response and dynamic range. I would think
that those can be easily pin-pointed if differences exist. In the DBT's
of cables as such, the reason why the result is negative is because
cables do not have affect these so-called prpoerties.

Signal-to-noise ratio, frequency response and distortion can be thought
of as multi-dimensional. As you said, they can be readily differentiated
in DBT's.

Regards,
Mike

"josko" wrote in message
...
"Mkuller" wrote in message
news:iEwUb.229879$xy6.1167040@attbi_s02...
"Harry Lavo" wrote :
For open ended evaluation, you don't know initially what you are
looking
for. It make days for things to gel that "a" sounds somewhat
thisway, and
"b" sounds somewhat more thatway. From extended, evaluative
listening and
non-quick switching. Then a tentative conclusion is drawn. Now you
know
what you are listening "for". It may be something subtle and
perceptual,
such as "imaging". Once you have it firmly grasped in mind what the
signature is of "a" and how it might vary from "b", quick switching
can
help
precisely because it "interupts" the perception you have grasped and
altered
it slightly (or not) over the flow of music.

We are talking about open-ended component evaluation. If I simply
give you
two components, say "different" or "same", or "is it a" or "is it b"
and
force a choice quick switching works against you because you haven't
yet
really been able to determine what it is you are listening for in
audio
terms. "Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to
"panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of
reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more
confusion
and panic. I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and
fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle,
perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion" unless we are
dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle
without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume,
frequency
response).


"Bob Marcus" wrote:
All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.


Because it doesn't seem to agree with your ideas.

No. It's because it doesn't agree with a lot of things that we know
about perception, cognition, consumer behavior, and I guess with a lot
of things that we know about psychoacoustics, not to mention electrical
engineering. And the differences are not only theoretical, but also
methodological. Let's suppose that Harry's "theory" makes sense (which
it doesn't). The test that he came up with to test his "theory" is,
there is no other word for this, H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E from a scientific point
of view. Basically, it's full of confounds whose origins are in tons of
biases (perceptual, judgmental, processing, decision-related) that he
has no controls for. How do I now that? Well, you can take my word for
it, or you can go to a local library and start reading. Really, there
is no other way.


Well, I'd be interested in where you think the lack of controls are. Since
it is a *highly* controlled sequence of tests, with statistical rigor built
in. Let's see if you really understand what I proposed, or if perhaps you
have had a H-O-R-R-B-L-E misundertanding of same. :-)


"Harry Lavo" wrote:
Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.


"Bob Marcus" wrote:
Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar
with or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.


That is very difficult to believe. The evidence is there - you have
to chose
*not* to ignore it because it might not fit in with your *beliefs*
about blind
testing and audible differences. It's pretty clear the objectivists
do not
have all of the answers about DBTs or this debate would not be
continuing.


This is not the point at all. Nobody has all answers about anything,
but some people have some answers about some things. It would be
beneficial if subjectivists try to make an effort to familiarize
themselves with those answers. Basically, what subjectivists are saying
is: since 50 (100?) years of multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed research
doesn't agree with our unreliable, biased perceptions (and perceptions
are *by definition* unreliable and biased), then all those researchers
are wrong and we are right. Well, it doesn't work that way. If someone
wants to come up with a new theory, his theory has to acommodate the
existing theory first and build from there. I'm prety sure that someone
is not going to be a layperson.


Convincing yourself is one thing - convincing us sceptics is another -
it
requires more than continued denial.


No, no, no... In this story, subjectivists are believers, and
objectivists are sceptics.


The dichotomy between evaluating/judging

judgment = evaluation!!!!! You think that you can evaluate things
without judging them? This is getting really interesting.


and
single-dimension/mulitple-dimension testing makes sense to anyone who
has ever
tried open-ended component evaluation sighted and then the same test
blind.
If you try paying attention to what is going on in your own head
during the
process - it's called *self-awareness* - Harry's description above is
the best
explanation I've seen so far.


Theoretically, Harry would like to have it "both ways", so to speak. He
would like to use consciusly monitored "true" emotions, that arise from
sponteanous (intuitive as he would say) gestalt perception of a piece of
music, as proxies for evaluation of aural stimuli (sound). At the same
time, he needs a lengthy period of time (weeks, months) to do all kinds
of "piecemeal" processing of sound (imaging, soundstaging, air, "midband
plasticity", bass extension, slam, speed, ...... I am sure you can add
a lot more properties here) before he "arrives", cognitively speaking,
at the gestalt. First of all, this is totally impossible, again
cognitively speaking. If you feel any emotions after all this time and
all the proceesing that you've done, they will be representative of
about zillion things, and not of the sound quality alone. Second, all
this proceesing is, more or less, biased to a very high degree for a
large number of reasons (and Harry has no single control for any of
them). I have described this in some detail in one of my previous posts,
but none of subjectivists felt the urge to respond with any plausible
arguments.

I do agree on one thing with Harry -- testee anxiety. However, the
cause of that anxiety is not brain "panicking", but let's not go there.
The value of a DBT ABX test is that it has necessary confound controls,
yet it is a very sensitive test given *what we know about judgment and
decision making, perception and cognitive psychology in general, as well
as what we know about psychoacoustics and properties of signals*. Do we
know everything about all these things? Of course not, but when
somebody makes a thoeretical progress in the field of perception of
auditory signals, he will be using ABX DBT (or something similar), and
nothing like Harry's test.

Also, when trying to build a plausible theory of perception (and
cognition) it is really desirable not to start with behavioralists and
Jung. Really. This is a non-starter in 2004 and speaks volumes about
such attempt. No disrespect.



It also explains why DBTs which are positive
deal with one dimension (loudness or frequency response of more than
2dB
difference) and all the rest are null.

The test, in the way it is applied, seems to interfere with
identifying the
differences you are testing for. You can either continue denying it,
or admit
there might be a problem and help find for a solution with your
claimed
familiarity with "all of the published research into human hearing
perception".


You got this also the other way around. The theory and empirical
evidence (both of multidisciplinary nature) totally predict "why DBTs
which are positive deal with one dimension (loudness or frequency
response of more than 2dB difference) and all the rest are null". If
you think that there is something wrong with this picture, the burden of
proof is on you and on other subjectivists. However, you have to do a
much better job than Harry.

Dear Debaters,

Is it really necessary to quote entire multi-screen posts
in order to embed or add one line of riposte?

I think not.

And I apologize in advance and in retrospect for doing/ever
having done this myself.

Yrs.,

--

-S.

"They've got God on their side. All we've got is science and reason."
-- Dawn Hulsey, Talent Director

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
news:yPzUb.100288$U%5.493205@attbi_s03...
"josko" wrote in message
No. It's because it doesn't agree with a lot of things that we know
about perception, cognition, consumer behavior, and I guess with a
lot
of things that we know about psychoacoustics, not to mention
electrical
engineering. And the differences are not only theoretical, but also
methodological. Let's suppose that Harry's "theory" makes sense
(which
it doesn't). The test that he came up with to test his "theory" is,
there is no other word for this, H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E from a scientific
point
of view. Basically, it's full of confounds whose origins are in
tons of
biases (perceptual, judgmental, processing, decision-related) that
he
has no controls for. How do I now that? Well, you can take my word
for
it, or you can go to a local library and start reading. Really,
there
is no other way.


Well, I'd be interested in where you think the lack of controls are.
Since
it is a *highly* controlled sequence of tests, with statistical rigor
built
in. Let's see if you really understand what I proposed, or if perhaps
you
have had a H-O-R-R-B-L-E misundertanding of same. :-)

Maybe I did misunderstand you. I know that you posted the details of
your test more than once on this forum. So, before I look at them
again, could you please tell me the name of the thread, or the actual
post, where I'll find the best/cleanest version of your proposal. Sorry
for the tone of my post above. It has nothing to do with your idea, but
with something else.

wrote :
We are talking about open-ended component evaluation. If I simply
give you
two components, say "different" or "same", or "is it a" or "is it b"
and
force a choice quick switching works against you because you haven't
yet
really been able to determine what it is you are listening for in
audio
terms. "Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

snip

As I said last week, it appears Harry's post was the last of the real
debate/discussion.

"josko" wrote:
It's because it doesn't agree with a lot of things that we know
about perception, cognition, consumer behavior, and I guess with a lot
of things that we know about psychoacoustics, not to mention electrical
engineering. And the differences are not only theoretical, but also
methodological.

snip

How do I now that? Well, you can take my word for
it, or you can go to a local library and start reading. Really, there
is no other way.

snip

"Bob Marcus" wrote:
Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar
with or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.


josko
Basically, what subjectivists are saying
is: since 50 (100?) years of multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed research
doesn't agree with our unreliable, biased perceptions (and perceptions
are *by definition* unreliable and biased), then all those researchers
are wrong and we are right. Well, it doesn't work that way.


When the second objectivist invokes the condescending "what you are saying
doesn't agree with 100s of years of research on psychometrics", and they stop
answering direct questions - they're really saying the "debate" is over and
they have nothing new to add.

snip

judgment = evaluation!!!!! You think that you can evaluate things
without judging them? This is getting really interesting.


One final point - until you apply a value scale, it is only "evaluating", not
"judging". Everyone knows that, come on...
Regards,
Mike

chung wrote:

and notes that Mr Kuller has missed someof the point....

Mkuller wrote:

(Nousaine) wrote:
Let's see; exactly "what" do we hear in nature? We hear timbre (frequency)
and
loudness (volume) over time. What else is there? With recordings we
manipulate
pitch and level over time to fool our natural hearing. But those three
factors
are all there is to "hear."


That's like saying red, blue and yellow are the *only* colors we see,
because
that's all there is.

No I'd say RGB are the 'colors' we "see." The mixing of them allows to
"perceive" or interpret a wider range but we "see" RGB.

You are focusing on one single dimension - loudness
or
frequency response and ignoring everything that is more complex -
multi-dimensional - pattern-recognition - because single dimensional
phenomena
appear to be all your test can show in the way it's used.

This is simply not so.There are only 2-dimensions of acoustical sound,
loudness (partial loudness interpreted as pitch) and the timing of sound.
Likewise we only have 2 reception devices the eardrum (a simple membrane) and
the skin/body. That's it!!

All the rest is a function of processing and interpretation. Unless, of
course, you're an advocate of parapsychology.

What about more complex audible differences? How about dynamic range?

That's just the difference between the loud passages and the noise floor
of the system. DBT's are excellent for discriminating background noise,
and peak loudness before clipping.

Yes, and isn't loudness one of those things we physically "experience" or in
another sense "hear?"

How
about imaging and soundstage reproduction?

Again an interpretation of the loudness and timing of sounds. And as Mr Chung
notes ...

Imaging is one of the easiest things to DBT. When playing A, you should
be able to place the sound source (a vocal, or a particular instrument),
using a familiar piece of recording. Switch to B, you should sense
either the same, or a different location for those sources. Just compare
X to A and B and pick the one that's the closest.

Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.

Indeed. And IMO we don't "hear" imaging we "interpret" that. For example the
stereo "phantom" is entirely an illusion... we don't "hear" sound from a
location where it's not being produced...we "interpret" that location because
'stereo' disables our natural hearing mechanism.

It's a trick. And because it's demonstrably reliable it enables side-industry
like high-end audio to perpetrate other, mostly ridiculous, and unreplicable
illusions on end-users.

What about the *quality* of high
frequency or bass reproduction, rather than the *quantity*.

What about it? Those are simple frequency response effects. It should be
really easy to pinpoint tonal differences of instruments in a DBT/ABX
test. Remember all the anecdotes about how something immediately stands
out when a component is changed?

I've read reviews where an evaluator has opined that 'Googlemeister amp took 2
weeks before it finally revealed itself to me.' But, yes, often it's reported
that the 'difference was immediately obvious.' But when you're talking
audio-poetry covering products many of which sound exactly alike, what else
would you expect other than more-or-less random observations decribing
imaginary differences and biased-observations?

How about all of
those things above together at one time?

Indeed dynamics, spectral uniformity and appropriate timing are intertwined in
our perception. But,, systems that lack in one aspect are not truly
high-fidelity. For example the QUAD electrostats sound great IF you limit
yourself to programs without low frequency extension and no high level SPL
needs.

So, while they may be great for some chamber music and acoustic coffee house
folk, they are ultimately unsuited for MOST of the available material today.

Their usefullness can be extended by adding a subwoofer, but, even then the
QUADs will still suffer serious mid-bass depression near the crossover and
serious limiations with dynamic programs like Big Band or Swing orchestra with
full dynamics.

But, my point is that dynamic capability may be the single most important
limiting factor in true hi-fi systems. A system with unlimited SPL capability
can ALWAYS be equalized to compensate for spectral non-uniformities; but a
limited SPL system cannot be compensated in any way for dynamic incapabilities.


All you need to match X to A or B on any one of these effects, if you
noticed previous differences in sighted listening. How hard is it? Of
course, it would be hard if your hard-held beliefs are on the line...

We hear those things in nature, do we
not?
Regards,
Mike

Nope; you interpret these things from loudness, partial loudness differences
and timing information. If this were not true than you are suggesting that the
eardrum and skin possess intelligence of their own.

"Harry Lavo"

....snips....

As a member of that "jazz, acoustical instrument" group, I have never found
loudness per se important; I do find a lack of obvious distortion to
reasonably loud living room levels helpful in preventing fatigue.

As a person who doesn't particularly find traditional jazz an interesting
musical experience I do attend jazz performance (particularly 'Festivals' such
as Elkhart, Indiana) because it's a great way to see/hear acoustical
instruments in a small room (even clubs) environment. I do have reference
on-location recordings where ORTF microphones were placed within 2-feet of my
head position for reference.

And if there is one single factor that seems most important for providing the
best sense of realism is when the playback system has the capability of
delivering a loudness level similar to that experience on location.

For drums and trumpets that is often very, very loud, especially at seats where
you get a good "look" at the performance. Much louder than one might think.

Next, is timbral naturalness. Finally spatiality. Of course, to a great degree
these are intertwined. But IME the largest limitation for 'realism' is dynamic
limitations of the playback system.

Imaging
and dimensionality are much more important to me, even though I now have a
surround system. That is why I always bow out of recomendations to rock
lovers and organ fans...I simply do not have the same frame of reference.

I'm a big spatial-rendition fan; but without adequate dynamic capability
realism can be compromised. For example, I often hear systems that have
plausible horizontal 'placement' of acoustic images but dyamic limitations can
change the size (and often depth; front-back) of instruments and a realistic
sense of envelopment.

"Harry Lavo" wrote:

"Bob Marcus" wrote in message

....snips.....

"Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Same and Different are clearly un-misunderstandable terms like A and B and X.
They have no "sound artifact" dimensions. They have no "dimension" they can't
sound the same tonally but different spatially. They are either "same" in all
respects or "different" in one, more or all respects.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to
"panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of
reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more confusion
and panic.

"Panic?" "I can't tell them apart" causes panic? It's a pretty simple decision.
There could ONLY be stress if you had decided beforehand that they sounded
different and now when you are asked to make a choice based on sound alone you
can't make up your mind. Furthermore in the typical bloind test scores are only
known after the experiment is concluded.

The only possible stress mechanisms is "doubt" wheh you can't "hear" all those
imaginary differences that were so apparent until you are required to decide
based on sound and sound alone.

Rational humans will simply report what they "hear" and not what they "want to
hear."

"Panic?" Please.

I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle,
perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion"

A bias-controlled test "favors" no result. That's why it's called "blind." If
bias-controls cause "stress" it can only be due to bias-masking.

unless we are dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume, frequency
response).

These items are related to acoustical sound. They are also the only things we
"physically" hear. Exactly how does "emotion" play into it; unless you get
emotionally stressed when you can't "hear" non-acoustical differences when
required to limit yourself to acoustical cause.

All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.

Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.

Your serve.


Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar with
or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.

That is
why I proposed a control test that is double-blind, relaxed, evaluative,
and
leisurely.

I presume by this you mean something like the test protocol used by
Oohashi
to Â"confirmÂ" the existence of his alleged Â"hypersonic
effect,Â"
except
that
you would allow longer listening times than he used.


yep.

Along with testing of the same respondents using sighted,
evaluative listening and at another time relatively short, terse,
comparative ("same","different") double- blind testing as is
traditionally
recommended here.

If the control test gave results similar to traditional dbt/abx, it would
verify that that traditional dbt/abx testing was a valid "shortcut" to
evaluative testing. If the control test gave results similar to sighted
open-ended evaluative testing, then it would suggest that evaluative
testing
even though sighted was a more encompassing and valid approach for
component
evaluation.

I donÂ't think this test, as you envision it, is really possible to
perform
in the real world. You would need to run the same Â"evaluativeÂ"
test
multiple
times on the same subject (at least twice--once sighted and once
blind--even
if you used multiple subjects). The problem is that his answers on the
first
trial would influence him in any subsequent trials. (i.e., heÂ'll be
looking
for the same set of characteristics he has already Â"heardÂ" once.)
And
if
his
answers arenÂ't independent, any comparison of those answers would be
meaningless. So while I understand what youÂ're trying to get at, and
what
you hope to prove, you canÂ't get there from here.


No problem if the sighted, open-end test is done first...let's say with 16
trials if we are talking one person. I'd actually prefer 100 people doing
it once. Then three months later the test is done blind, again with 16
trials or preferably 100 people. Nobody would know or remember the exact
scores they gave on the evaluative criteria, and in the second blind test
they wouldn't know which was which so it would hardly be relevant if they
did.

I'd say thay every enthusiast would have an internal flag on what they scored
on an open test.


So if you really want to stop the "jaw flapping" and try to resolve the
differences of the two camps, first you have to acknowledge the
possibility
that we might have a point, and that it is worth trying to resolve
somehow.

Well, no, I donÂ't have to acknowledge any such thing. There is no
possibility that you have a point, because there is absolutely no support
for any of your conjectures anywhere in the voluminous research on human
hearing perception. If you can find such support, I will then be prepared
to
concede that you may have a point. Also, if you can provide any direct
evidence for any of your conjectures, I will concede that you may have a
point. But IÂ'm not holding my breath, on either score.

Somebody always has to be first! :-)

A fair amount of science was first postulated by "crazies". May be crazy,
may be. Or may however remotely possibly be right.

All Audio Myths are propagated by crazies. Legitimate science is no longer
propagated by nuts. The method is to conduct replicable experiments that can be
verified.

None of the cuurent Audio Urban Legends has ever been replicated even those of
30 years maturity.

But you don't have to think I am right. Enough people have raised similar
issues on this forum over the years...enough that anybody really seeking the
truth should a least design a control test to knock down the objections.

Why not verify your hypotheses first?

Why do you suppose Oohashi choose that particular form of testing, and why
do you suppose he found statistical correlation where conventional theory
suggested it shouldn't exist?

I'd say that either you're mis-interpreting response, he was choosing a
bias-introducing mechansim or looking for a result. But why hasn't everybody
else jumped on the bandwagon IF this is seriously important?

Does not a better listening test technique
suggest itself as a possibility?

Even IF this method was superior why hasn't the subjectivist community on the
bandwagon and delivered confirmation of amp/cable sound? Why haven't you?

Oohashi himself makes reference to earlier
tests that showed no difference using conventional techniques; that is why
his group set the listening test up the way they did, because they suspected
that might be one of the factors getting in the way.

Which one?

And the results don't
dispute the possibility that he was right.

OK; as I said prior ......you're in the batter's box.

"Nousaine" wrote in message
news:BqGUb.189768$nt4.805097@attbi_s51...
"Harry Lavo" wrote:

"Bob Marcus" wrote in message

...snips.....

"Same" or "different" are not audio terms. They are "sound
artifact" terms on simple one or two dimensions.

Same and Different are clearly un-misunderstandable terms like A and B and
X.
They have no "sound artifact" dimensions. They have no "dimension" they
can't
sound the same tonally but different spatially. They are either "same" in
all
respects or "different" in one, more or all respects.


Yes, but they have nothing to do with open ended evaluation or critical
listening to music. They can be done just fine with noise artifacts, but
that says nothing about the dynamic quality of the equipment when
reproducing music or elusive factors such as transparency.

Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to
"panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of
reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more
confusion
and panic.

"Panic?" "I can't tell them apart" causes panic? It's a pretty simple
decision.
There could ONLY be stress if you had decided beforehand that they sounded
different and now when you are asked to make a choice based on sound alone
you
can't make up your mind. Furthermore in the typical bloind test scores are
only
known after the experiment is concluded.

The only possible stress mechanisms is "doubt" wheh you can't "hear" all
those
imaginary differences that were so apparent until you are required to
decide
based on sound and sound alone.

Rational humans will simply report what they "hear" and not what they
"want to
hear."

"Panic?" Please.


This response indicates you really don't understand what I wrote about the
need for a "musical reference" to be established first before a comparison
can legitimately be made.

I believe this is why audiophiles cite stress and fatigue in
trying to do this kind of testing when dealing with very subtle,
perceptual
factors and why the test favors a "null conclusion"

A bias-controlled test "favors" no result. That's why it's called "blind."
If
bias-controls cause "stress" it can only be due to bias-masking.


Until a control test is done, this is an 'assertion' as far as open-ended
evaluation of musical reproduction is concerned.

unless we are dealing
with straightforward factors that the sensate function can handle
without
much need for the intuitive or emotional functions (volume, frequency
response).

These items are related to acoustical sound. They are also the only things
we
"physically" hear. Exactly how does "emotion" play into it; unless you get
emotionally stressed when you can't "hear" non-acoustical differences when
required to limit yourself to acoustical cause.


But music isn't just about what we physically "hear". It is about how the
brain interprets what we physically "hear". As has been pointed out here
many times.

All of the preceding is pure, baseless conjecture.

Do I know this for sure? No. But it is reasonable and verifiable.

Your serve.


Reasonable, it seems to me, only to those who either are unfamiliar
with
or
choose to ignore all of the published research into human hearing
perception, which offers no evidence for any of it.

That is
why I proposed a control test that is double-blind, relaxed,
evaluative,
and
leisurely.

I presume by this you mean something like the test protocol used by
Oohashi
to Â"confirmÂ" the existence of his alleged Â"hypersonic
effect,Â"
except
that
you would allow longer listening times than he used.


yep.

Along with testing of the same respondents using sighted,
evaluative listening and at another time relatively short, terse,
comparative ("same","different") double- blind testing as is
traditionally
recommended here.

If the control test gave results similar to traditional dbt/abx, it
would
verify that that traditional dbt/abx testing was a valid "shortcut" to
evaluative testing. If the control test gave results similar to
sighted
open-ended evaluative testing, then it would suggest that evaluative
testing
even though sighted was a more encompassing and valid approach for
component
evaluation.

I donÂ't think this test, as you envision it, is really possible to
perform
in the real world. You would need to run the same
Â"evaluativeÂ"
test
multiple
times on the same subject (at least twice--once sighted and once
blind--even
if you used multiple subjects). The problem is that his answers on the
first
trial would influence him in any subsequent trials. (i.e., heÂ'll
be
looking
for the same set of characteristics he has already Â"heardÂ"
once.)
And
if
his
answers arenÂ't independent, any comparison of those answers would
be
meaningless. So while I understand what youÂ're trying to get at,
and
what
you hope to prove, you canÂ't get there from here.


No problem if the sighted, open-end test is done first...let's say with
16
trials if we are talking one person. I'd actually prefer 100 people
doing
it once. Then three months later the test is done blind, again with 16
trials or preferably 100 people. Nobody would know or remember the exact
scores they gave on the evaluative criteria, and in the second blind test
they wouldn't know which was which so it would hardly be relevant if they
did.

I'd say thay every enthusiast would have an internal flag on what they
scored
on an open test.


How would an "internal flag" (whatever that is) disrupt a blind test where
the testee has no knowledge of which unit is which. Unless he can identify
the two units by this "flag". If he can, then it is proof that the units
are different and can be heard in a blind test, isn't it?


So if you really want to stop the "jaw flapping" and try to resolve
the
differences of the two camps, first you have to acknowledge the
possibility
that we might have a point, and that it is worth trying to resolve
somehow.

Well, no, I donÂ't have to acknowledge any such thing. There is no
possibility that you have a point, because there is absolutely no
support
for any of your conjectures anywhere in the voluminous research on
human
hearing perception. If you can find such support, I will then be
prepared
to
concede that you may have a point. Also, if you can provide any direct
evidence for any of your conjectures, I will concede that you may have
a
point. But IÂ'm not holding my breath, on either score.

Somebody always has to be first! :-)

A fair amount of science was first postulated by "crazies". May be
crazy,
may be. Or may however remotely possibly be right.

All Audio Myths are propagated by crazies. Legitimate science is no longer
propagated by nuts. The method is to conduct replicable experiments that
can be
verified.


Let's see. Some scientific breakthroughs are postulated by "crazies". All
audio myths are propogated by "crazies". Therefore, all "crazy" theories
are audio myths? Examine your boolean logic again, Tom.

None of the cuurent Audio Urban Legends has ever been replicated even
those of
30 years maturity.


Funny, things like isolation feet and tube damping rings are in widespread
use today. Mass delusion that they are effective, I suppose.

But you don't have to think I am right. Enough people have raised
similar
issues on this forum over the years...enough that anybody really seeking
the
truth should a least design a control test to knock down the objections.

Why not verify your hypotheses first?


It is you who are asserting your test works for open-ended component
evaluation testing. It is up to you to provide the evidence via a control
test before you can expect everybody else to "buy it".

Why do you suppose Oohashi choose that particular form of testing, and
why
do you suppose he found statistical correlation where conventional theory
suggested it shouldn't exist?

I'd say that either you're mis-interpreting response, he was choosing a
bias-introducing mechansim or looking for a result. But why hasn't
everybody
else jumped on the bandwagon IF this is seriously important?


Who says they aren't/won't be in the future. Trends do not happen
overnight.

Does not a better listening test technique
suggest itself as a possibility?

Even IF this method was superior why hasn't the subjectivist community on
the
bandwagon and delivered confirmation of amp/cable sound? Why haven't you?


I am talking about a difference in test technique.

Oohashi himself makes reference to earlier
tests that showed no difference using conventional techniques; that is
why
his group set the listening test up the way they did, because they
suspected
that might be one of the factors getting in the way.

Which one?


As far as I can determine, short-snippet comparative testing
short-circuiting the physiological pleasure response.

And the results don't
dispute the possibility that he was right.

OK; as I said prior ......you're in the batter's box.


I'll be posting over the weekend.

"Nousaine" wrote in message
news:BSFUb.189677$nt4.804788@attbi_s51...
"Harry Lavo"

...snips....

As a member of that "jazz, acoustical instrument" group, I have never
found
loudness per se important; I do find a lack of obvious distortion to
reasonably loud living room levels helpful in preventing fatigue.

As a person who doesn't particularly find traditional jazz an interesting
musical experience I do attend jazz performance (particularly 'Festivals'
such
as Elkhart, Indiana) because it's a great way to see/hear acoustical
instruments in a small room (even clubs) environment. I do have reference
on-location recordings where ORTF microphones were placed within 2-feet of
my
head position for reference.

And if there is one single factor that seems most important for providing
the
best sense of realism is when the playback system has the capability of
delivering a loudness level similar to that experience on location.

For drums and trumpets that is often very, very loud, especially at seats
where
you get a good "look" at the performance. Much louder than one might
think.

Next, is timbral naturalness. Finally spatiality. Of course, to a great
degree
these are intertwined. But IME the largest limitation for 'realism' is
dynamic
limitations of the playback system.

Imaging
and dimensionality are much more important to me, even though I now have
a
surround system. That is why I always bow out of recomendations to rock
lovers and organ fans...I simply do not have the same frame of reference.

I'm a big spatial-rendition fan; but without adequate dynamic capability
realism can be compromised. For example, I often hear systems that have
plausible horizontal 'placement' of acoustic images but dyamic limitations
can
change the size (and often depth; front-back) of instruments and a
realistic
sense of envelopment.


I think you will find that that is one of the main advantages of full-range
surround systems. The ability to swell and envelop dynamically, especially
in the bass, is enhanced by the multiple amps (electrical) and speakers
(acoustical, especially in the bass). In addition, the ambience itself is a
part of the phenomenon, and surround (if recorded that way) provides that as
well.

Don't get me wrong, I listen (sometimes) at levels approaching club levels,
but it just doesn't take that much power in a full-range surround system in
a 20x12x7.5' room.

"Harry Lavo" wrote:

The differences between Harry and I well known so I'll just flesh out a couple
ideas here .... large snips.....

Same and Different are clearly un-misunderstandable terms like A and B and
X.
They have no "sound artifact" dimensions. They have no "dimension" they
can't
sound the same tonally but different spatially. They are either "same" in
all
respects or "different" in one, more or all respects.


Yes, but they have nothing to do with open ended evaluation or critical
listening to music.

So what? If you cannot distinguish one from the other based on acoustical sound
alone why would anyone care about your emotional response to a particular piece
of gear?

They can be done just fine with noise artifacts, but
that says nothing about the dynamic quality of the equipment when
reproducing music or elusive factors such as transparency.

I think you are artifically defining "acoustical" qualities that have no
acoustical cause. If one amplifiers sounds "less transparent" than another when
you are looking at it BUT then fails to have that quality when someone
figuratively turns ou the lights then the inescapable conclusion is that
'quality' did not have an acoustical cause and came from within the subject and
NOT from the equipment.


Under quick switching under these circumstances, the brain seems to
"panic"
in that it can't sort audio patterns quickly and has no frame of
reference;
this by itself creates anxiety, which in turn creates even more
confusion
and panic.

This panders to the oft-proclaimed myth that ABX techniques MUST use short
program segments and overlooks the evidence that such programming is MORE
sensitive to small differences than longer exposure.

But you're free to use whatever you want. IME in bias-controlled listening
tests the most often complaint is that switching is too slow and segments too
long.

....snip...

This response indicates you really don't understand what I wrote about the
need for a "musical reference" to be established first before a comparison
can legitimately be made.

Music is just a certain organization of sounds. IME the type of music or a
subjects involvment with the program can impede the assessment of sound
quality. For example Joan Baez "Diamonds and Rust" is such a beautiful thing
taken as a whole I generally refuse to use it as a comparative piece BECAUSE my
involvement with the Music impedes my evaluation skills. I tend to fall into
the story and her voice and lose focus on the sound. A 1-minute sgement is
acceptable and is included on my reference program disc but not the whole
piece.

That's ONE reason that noise and tones are more generally sensitive to minute
sound quality differences ... it's hard to develop a personal involvement with
pink noise and so internal program-bias is reduced.

That said I'll agree with that to compare amplifiers playing music is where the
rubber meets the road. Noise may produce sounds that may never be encountered
in musical programs and may be overly-sensitive.



But music isn't just about what we physically "hear". It is about how the
brain interprets what we physically "hear". As has been pointed out here
many times.

Let me get this right an ampliifer delivers a signal to loudspeaker terminals
that cannot be differentiated from another such signal delivered to those same
terminals (and subjects cannot differentiate the acoustical sound itself
between the two of them) but somehow one pof them tranmits some kind of other
non-electrical or acoustic signals to the listener that will be subject to
alternative interpretations? You seem to be describing paranormal activity and
not sound quality.

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
Harry Lavo wrote:
"Buster Mudd" wrote in message
...
"Harry Lavo" wrote:


For open ended evaluation, you don't know initially what you are
looking
for. It make days for things to gel that "a" sounds somewhat
thisway,
and
"b" sounds somewhat more thatway. From extended, evaluative
listening
and
non-quick switching. Then a tentative conclusion is drawn. Now you
know
what you are listening "for". It may be something subtle and
perceptual,
such as "imaging". Once you have it firmly grasped in mind what the
signature is of "a" and how it might vary from "b", quick switching
can
help
precisely because it "interupts" the perception you have grasped and
altered
it slightly (or not) over the flow of music.



Would you suppose that after having spent the requisite
days/weeks/months of extended, evaluative listening and non-quick
switching, after having drawn tentative conclusions, & after having
firmly grasped in mind what the signature is of "a" and how it might
vary from "b" ...that *THEN* you could pass a conventional ABX double
blind test between "a" & "b" ?


No need, I'd already have the answer without ever having to make a
conscious
choice...it would have grown organically out of the listening.

You have 'an' answer....but you also have an inescapable question mark,
from the POV
of established perceptual research practice, unless you verify under blind
conditions. Since you've already agreed that sighted evaluation is
inherently
flawed in a way that a blind comparison can resolve,
and you appear to be a dedicated audiophile,
I can't see why the 'answer' from extended evaluative *sighted*
listening would satisfy you.

However, if I did want to do a blind confirmation, I would do it in an
evaluative fashion using the same music I had been listening to, and
identifying/rating the components on a scale designed to get at the
factors
I had grown to identify as distinguishing. I would do a one-two hour
'warm
up" sighted before going blind for each trial. And I would do fifteen or
twenty of those trials over a pretty long period of time. And then
apply
statistical analysis. It would never be a conventional a-b or a-b-x
comparative test.

But it *would* be a blind A-B or ABX test.

However, if i did want to do a comparative blind test, I would want it
to be
an a-b, not an abx. And I would want it to follow hard on the heels of
several hours of warm-up listening, where I had firmly reestablished
those
signatures in mind before "going blind". And I would want to use the
same
music I had just been listening to and control the switching. And I
would
want to do it alone with no chance of cheating built into the test.

Whatever, Harry. The key question is: would you believe the results
if they contradicted your sighted percptions?



Why is this posted again. I've already answered it. I would, if the "blind
testing" had been validated by appropriate control tests. If such
validation were not done, then I wouldn't even take the conventional blind
comparative test as I would be buying a pig in a poke.

Imaging is one of the easiest things to DBT. When playing A, you should
be able to place the sound source (a vocal, or a particular instrument),
using a familiar piece of recording. Switch to B, you should sense
either the same, or a different location for those sources. Just compare
X to A and B and pick the one that's the closest.

Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two audio
components?


I agree with Mr. Chung on this one. One may argue that using music when
listening for audible differences may be problematic in time synced ABX DBTs
because the signal may be changing more than the potential difference imposed
upon the signal by the components being tested but... Even with the ever
changing sound of the music if the imaging changes it should be easy to
identifiy in a time synced quick switching ABX DBTs. The music may change in
time but the imaging should not.

chung wrote:
Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


mkuller wrote:
Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two audio
components?


(S888Wheel) wrote:
I agree with Mr. Chung on this one. One may argue that using music when
listening for audible differences may be problematic in time synced ABX DBTs
because the signal may be changing more than the potential difference imposed
upon the signal by the components being tested but... Even with the ever
changing sound of the music if the imaging changes it should be easy to
identifiy in a time synced quick switching ABX DBTs. The music may change in
time but the imaging should not.


Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT. I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these as
audible differences - my question is why not? Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional* differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe the
test is the problem.
Regards,
Mike

Mkuller wrote:
chung wrote:
Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


mkuller wrote:
Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two audio
components?


(S888Wheel) wrote:
I agree with Mr. Chung on this one. One may argue that using music when
listening for audible differences may be problematic in time synced ABX DBTs
because the signal may be changing more than the potential difference imposed
upon the signal by the components being tested but... Even with the ever
changing sound of the music if the imaging changes it should be easy to
identifiy in a time synced quick switching ABX DBTs. The music may change in
time but the imaging should not.


Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT. I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these as
audible differences - my question is why not? Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional* differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe the
test is the problem.
Regards,
Mike


Hmmm, maybe you missed my response in an earlier post:

"No, because speakers (and vinyl gear) determine imaging, not
electronics. If you have evidence otherwise, let'e hear it. But you do
agree that it is easy to tell imaging in DBT's, right?"

The test is not the problem. The fact is that speakers dominate imaging,
and cables as well as competent amps simply do not change imaging.
That's why DBT's rarely show imaging differences: DBT's are very rarely
done on speakers.

"chung" wrote in message
news:hLAVb.6230$032.22901@attbi_s53...
Mkuller wrote:
chung wrote:
Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


mkuller wrote:
Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two
audio
components?


(S888Wheel) wrote:
I agree with Mr. Chung on this one. One may argue that using music when
listening for audible differences may be problematic in time synced ABX
DBTs
because the signal may be changing more than the potential difference
imposed
upon the signal by the components being tested but... Even with the ever
changing sound of the music if the imaging changes it should be easy to
identifiy in a time synced quick switching ABX DBTs. The music may
change in
time but the imaging should not.


Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The
question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT
with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT. I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these
as
audible differences - my question is why not? Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional*
differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe
the
test is the problem.
Regards,
Mike


Hmmm, maybe you missed my response in an earlier post:

"No, because speakers (and vinyl gear) determine imaging, not
electronics. If you have evidence otherwise, let'e hear it. But you do
agree that it is easy to tell imaging in DBT's, right?"

The test is not the problem. The fact is that speakers dominate imaging,
and cables as well as competent amps simply do not change imaging.
That's why DBT's rarely show imaging differences: DBT's are very rarely
done on speakers.


Chung, you keep repeating that only speakers create differences in imaging,
as if it is a somehow settled fact. It simply isn't. Let me relay to you a
tale, anecdotal as it is:

When I was living on Long Island, my listening room was in a finished attic
that was almost perfect acoustically. The roof sloped up and then back.
The long was opposite the listening sofa was "ledged" so it was at two
difference depths and had bookcases to diffuse sound. The speakers stood in
the middle of the room (almost) about 10' from the couch. The sides of the
speakers didn't have a wall within twenty feet on either side. There were
no standing waves to speak of and no reflections or bounces...four 3' x 3'
squares of acoustic foam above the couch were the ceiling rose got rid of
the only reflection. It was a simply beautiful listening room.

When my beloved ARC D90B amp needed new caps, I decided to sell it instead
(honestly, w/full disclosure) and invest in a new power amp. Brought three
in for a week at a time on loan. Only change made in the system...not so
much as a 1/4" change in anything else.

1) Amp 1, transistor, made by one of the leading names in the industry.
Flat constricted sound, grainy on top, a bit murky in upper bass. Imaging
and sound totally unrealistic.

2) Amp 2, transistor, made by another leading name in industry. Beautiful
imaging, soundstages out beyond speakers, instruments and voices had a
dimensional 3D quality usually associated with tubes. Yet not quite right,
as the voices and instruments sounded like they were wrapped in gold foil.
The were 3D but all you heard was the "surface" of the image...there didn't
seem to be depth or weight.

3) Amp 3, tube. Same beautiful imaging, soundstage, dimensionality. Only
now the 3D images were fleshed out and palpable. You literally felt you
could reach out and touch the performers.

Now, not a *thing* had changed except those amps. Nor was I the only one
who could hear it. My female partner at the time walked into my listening
sessions and accurately caught/described the character of the sound of each
with no prompting from me.

There is more to it than speakers, Chung.

chung wrote:


Mkuller wrote:
chung wrote:
Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


mkuller wrote:
Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two
audio
components?


(S888Wheel) wrote:
I agree with Mr. Chung on this one. One may argue that using music when
listening for audible differences may be problematic in time synced ABX
DBTs
because the signal may be changing more than the potential difference
imposed
upon the signal by the components being tested but... Even with the ever
changing sound of the music if the imaging changes it should be easy to
identifiy in a time synced quick switching ABX DBTs. The music may change
in
time but the imaging should not.


Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The
question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT
with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT. I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these as
audible differences - my question is why not? Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional* differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe the
test is the problem.
Regards,
Mike


Hmmm, maybe you missed my response in an earlier post:

"No, because speakers (and vinyl gear) determine imaging, not
electronics. If you have evidence otherwise, let'e hear it. But you do
agree that it is easy to tell imaging in DBT's, right?"

The test is not the problem. The fact is that speakers dominate imaging,
and cables as well as competent amps simply do not change imaging.
That's why DBT's rarely show imaging differences: DBT's are very rarely
done on speakers.

The inescapable conclusion is that double blind tests on wires/amps fail to
disclose imaging differences is because because competent amps/cables don't
affect those performance categories. Indeed a single speaker only displays
limited audibility in regard to those categories as well. Spatial Rendition:
staging and imaging, ambience, and envelopment (and sometimes tracking of
moving sound) reduce mainly to speaker response and directivity uniformity in
combination with placement and the room.

An amplifier or cable that delivers a transparent electrical signal to the
speaker terminals has no way of influencing spatial performance.

Mkuller wrote:
chung wrote:
Frankly, saying that DBT's cannot discriminate imaging is an excuse.


mkuller wrote:
Have you ever seen a DBT differentiate the imaging capabilities of two audio
components?


(S888Wheel) wrote:
I agree with Mr. Chung on this one. One may argue that using music when
listening for audible differences may be problematic in time synced ABX DBTs
because the signal may be changing more than the potential difference imposed
upon the signal by the components being tested but... Even with the ever
changing sound of the music if the imaging changes it should be easy to
identifiy in a time synced quick switching ABX DBTs. The music may change in
time but the imaging should not.


Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT.

I am sure that DBT's of speakers, done at places like H-K or Paradigm,
to name a few maufacturers, routinely show differences in imaging.

I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these as
audible differences - my question is why not?

Since your awareness is not sufficiently comprehensive, the question is
a moot one.

Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional* differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe the
test is the problem.
Regards,
Mike

Mkuller wrote:
Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The
question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT
with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT. I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these as
audible differences - my question is why not? Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional* differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe the
test is the problem.


chung wrote:
Hmmm, maybe you missed my response in an earlier post:

"No, because speakers (and vinyl gear) determine imaging, not
electronics. If you have evidence otherwise, let'e hear it. But you do
agree that it is easy to tell imaging in DBT's, right?"

The test is not the problem. The fact is that speakers dominate imaging,
and cables as well as competent amps simply do not change imaging.
That's why DBT's rarely show imaging differences: DBT's are very rarely
done on speakers.



Once again, your opinion stated as a fact. I have clearly heard, many, many
times, electronics (both tubed and solid state) affect imaging and
soundstaging. Certainly it helps if you start with good loudspeakers capable
of demonstrating these effects and a room that doesn't interfere. Here's a
link to pictures of my room:
http://img.audioasylum.com/cgi/view....19321&session=

I'm talking about preamps, amplifiers, and CD players. You say they don't
affect imaging and claim DBTs are your proof. That's a pretty circular
arguement, since DBTs have never been shown to be capable of differentiating
imaging differences - of anything...
Regards,
Mike

Harry Lavo wrote:


1) Amp 1, transistor, made by one of the leading names in the industry.
Flat constricted sound, grainy on top, a bit murky in upper bass. Imaging
and sound totally unrealistic.

2) Amp 2, transistor, made by another leading name in industry. Beautiful
imaging, soundstages out beyond speakers, instruments and voices had a
dimensional 3D quality usually associated with tubes. Yet not quite right,
as the voices and instruments sounded like they were wrapped in gold foil.
The were 3D but all you heard was the "surface" of the image...there didn't
seem to be depth or weight.

3) Amp 3, tube. Same beautiful imaging, soundstage, dimensionality. Only
now the 3D images were fleshed out and palpable. You literally felt you
could reach out and touch the performers.

Now, not a *thing* had changed except those amps. Nor was I the only one
who could hear it. My female partner at the time walked into my listening
sessions and accurately caught/described the character of the sound of each
with no prompting from me.

There is more to it than speakers, Chung.

Maybe you missed the part about competent? Examples of things that can
change imaging: (a) mismatches in frequency response between L and R
channels, (b) mistracking of gain between L and R channels as volume
control is adjusted, (c) mismatches in L/R output impedances that are
significantly large (like those found in SET's), (d) mismatches of
phono-equalization between L/R channels, (e) balance control not
centered, (f) loudness contour mismatches between L/R channels, and (g)
any gross frequency response errors or insufficient S/N (found in SET's,
e.g.).

There is no examples that I can found of imaging differences caused by
cables or interconnects, unless they are grossly defective.

In any event, if those differences are so real and "palpable" in your
sighted testing that your female partner at the time had no trouble
identifying them, you think you have trouble differentiating them in a
DBT? Would you still need extensive evaluative sessions before you can
compare?

Mkuller wrote:

Mkuller wrote:
Both of you missed the point. Yes, we all agree that imaging, dynamic
contrasts, etc. are real audible phenomena (multi-dimensional). The
question
is not whether these things *should* be audible as differences in a DBT
with
audio components, but whether they *ever actually have been shown* as
differences in a DBT. I'm not aware of any DBTs that have shown these as
audible differences - my question is why not? Is it a problem with the
sensitivity of the DBT or in the types of *single-dimensional* differences
(loudness and gross frequency response only) that DBTs show? I believe the
test is the problem.


chung wrote:
Hmmm, maybe you missed my response in an earlier post:

"No, because speakers (and vinyl gear) determine imaging, not
electronics. If you have evidence otherwise, let'e hear it. But you do
agree that it is easy to tell imaging in DBT's, right?"

The test is not the problem. The fact is that speakers dominate imaging,
and cables as well as competent amps simply do not change imaging.
That's why DBT's rarely show imaging differences: DBT's are very rarely
done on speakers.



Once again, your opinion stated as a fact. I have clearly heard, many, many
times, electronics (both tubed and solid state) affect imaging and
soundstaging. Certainly it helps if you start with good loudspeakers capable
of demonstrating these effects and a room that doesn't interfere. Here's a
link to pictures of my room:
http://img.audioasylum.com/cgi/view....19321&session=

I'm talking about preamps, amplifiers, and CD players. You say they don't
affect imaging and claim DBTs are your proof. That's a pretty circular
arguement, since DBTs have never been shown to be capable of differentiating
imaging differences - of anything...

I didn't use DBT as a proof. I am saying that competent amps and cables
do not change imaging, which is determined by speakers and their
placement. If you don't agree, then list the amps/cables that have
different imaging, and we can see if we can set up a sighted test and
repeat your observations.

I am also saying that if there is imaging difference between two pieces
of equipment (like two amps or two cables), it should be very easy to
identify them, blind or sighted. Why would DBT hide image differences?

You are the one who is providing a circular argument. You are saying
that there have to be imaging differences between two amps/cables, since
you can tell them in sighted testing. Then you make the *assumption*
that you cannot tell these differences in DBT's, and then use that
assumption as the reason why DBT's don't work.

Regards,
Mike

chung wrote:
snip

Now, not a *thing* had changed except those amps. Nor was I the only one
who could hear it. My female partner at the time walked into my
listening
sessions and accurately caught/described the character of the sound of
each
with no prompting from me.

There is more to it than speakers, Chung.

snip

In any event, if those differences are so real and "palpable" in your
sighted testing that your female partner at the time had no trouble
identifying them, you think you have trouble differentiating them in a
DBT? Would you still need extensive evaluative sessions before you can
compare?


More to the point, as described (i.e. "My female partner at the
time walked into my listening sessions and accurately
caught/described the character of the sound of each with no
prompting from me), she was *easily* able to not only distinguish
difference (that all-confounding *decision* you keep attributing
such nefarious capabilities to), but to comprehensively
characterize the differences between the amps *Essentially BLIND*,
unless the "no prompting from me" is a complete mischaracterization.

So, Mr. Lavo, by your own 'anecdote', "blindness" confers no
disadvantages in differentiating amps. Clearly, the process of
merely codifying the test protocol, and applying statistical
treatments of the data, post-test, can't possibly be a hindrance
in detecting *real* sonic differences. At least for your 'female
partner' in any event.

Keith Hughes

Harry Lavo wrote:
"chung" wrote in message
news:3xUVb.11981$032.40528@attbi_s53...
Harry Lavo wrote:


1) Amp 1, transistor, made by one of the leading names in the
industry.
Flat constricted sound, grainy on top, a bit murky in upper bass.
Imaging
and sound totally unrealistic.

2) Amp 2, transistor, made by another leading name in industry.
Beautiful
imaging, soundstages out beyond speakers, instruments and voices had a
dimensional 3D quality usually associated with tubes. Yet not quite
right,
as the voices and instruments sounded like they were wrapped in gold
foil.
The were 3D but all you heard was the "surface" of the image...there
didn't
seem to be depth or weight.

3) Amp 3, tube. Same beautiful imaging, soundstage, dimensionality.
Only
now the 3D images were fleshed out and palpable. You literally felt you
could reach out and touch the performers.

Now, not a *thing* had changed except those amps. Nor was I the only
one
who could hear it. My female partner at the time walked into my
listening
sessions and accurately caught/described the character of the sound of
each
with no prompting from me.

There is more to it than speakers, Chung.

Maybe you missed the part about competent? Examples of things that can
change imaging: (a) mismatches in frequency response between L and R
channels, (b) mistracking of gain between L and R channels as volume
control is adjusted, (c) mismatches in L/R output impedances that are
significantly large (like those found in SET's), (d) mismatches of
phono-equalization between L/R channels, (e) balance control not
centered, (f) loudness contour mismatches between L/R channels, and (g)
any gross frequency response errors or insufficient S/N (found in SET's,
e.g.).


These were power amps, Chung Which of the above apply.

All of them, except (d), (e) and (f) apply to power amps, if they are
not properly designed.

Plus, they were from
large and respected companies, not boutiques.

Incompetence is not limited to boutiques. So what do you think caused
the imaging differences? Were you listening at equal loudness levels?

There is no examples that I can found of imaging differences caused by
cables or interconnects, unless they are grossly defective.


I do not recall that Mike was talking about wires in this thread.

A lot of the DBT's he took as producing negative results were on cables.
You think he believes that cables do not cause imaging differences?


In any event, if those differences are so real and "palpable" in your
sighted testing that your female partner at the time had no trouble
identifying them, you think you have trouble differentiating them in a
DBT? Would you still need extensive evaluative sessions before you can
compare?


If a DBT could prove to reveal these types of differences (which a control
test is needed for), then I'm sure one would reveal these differences.

By proof you mean agreement with sighted testing? So you are saying if
both sighted and blind tests show imaging differences, then you think
DBT can show imaging differences? Hmmm, you cover all the bases here .

Mike
thinks a DBT would not; I honestly don't know. He may be right.

What!!! Your female partner (who was implied to be not an audiophile)
could hear the palpable differences immediately without any prompt from
you, and you think you may not be able to identity them, blind? This is
an absolutely amazing admission from a subjectivist. You are saying that
once we don't tell you what you are listening to, your hearing ability
as an audiophile is much worse than the average person!

"Keith Hughes" wrote in message
...
chung wrote:
snip

Now, not a *thing* had changed except those amps. Nor was I the only
one
who could hear it. My female partner at the time walked into my
listening
sessions and accurately caught/described the character of the sound of
each
with no prompting from me.

There is more to it than speakers, Chung.

snip

In any event, if those differences are so real and "palpable" in your
sighted testing that your female partner at the time had no trouble
identifying them, you think you have trouble differentiating them in a
DBT? Would you still need extensive evaluative sessions before you can
compare?


More to the point, as described (i.e. "My female partner at the
time walked into my listening sessions and accurately
caught/described the character of the sound of each with no
prompting from me), she was *easily* able to not only distinguish
difference (that all-confounding *decision* you keep attributing
such nefarious capabilities to), but to comprehensively
characterize the differences between the amps *Essentially BLIND*,
unless the "no prompting from me" is a complete mischaracterization.

So, Mr. Lavo, by your own 'anecdote', "blindness" confers no
disadvantages in differentiating amps. Clearly, the process of
merely codifying the test protocol, and applying statistical
treatments of the data, post-test, can't possibly be a hindrance
in detecting *real* sonic differences. At least for your 'female
partner' in any event.


She knew I had swapped in another amp...but we hadn't discussed "how it
sounded" since she had just walked in and heard it for the first time. So
it wasn't blind in the sense discussed here. Nor was it comparative; it was
evaluative. She described how it sounded to her. Sorry, no points Keith.
:-)