Anahata wrote:

Better still, repeat with several victims, telling some
the truth and
others the opposite. See if there's a better correlation
between their
assessments and what they've been *told* they were
listening to, than
between their assessments and what they were *actually*
listening to.

There's always that legendary meeting of our audio club,
where the host bragged about and demoed his new audiophool
amp and preamp, not knowing that Tom Nousaine coached the
host's teenage son to wire up a Pioneer receiver instead.

Ben Bradley wrote:
On Thu, 12 May 2005 01:56:24 -0700, Bob Cain
wrote:



Anahata wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote:

This 'trust your ears' business that audiophiles tend
to use as a
mantra, reflects a fundamental overestimation of how
'trustworthy'
your ears
are


Ironic, considering that "trust your ears" is a
perfectly valid
summary of how ABX works too...

On the contrary, it tells you in short order just how
much
trust you dare have in your ears.

Both camps rely on what [they believe] their ears
percieve, they
just use different circumstances and methods to decide
what that
perception is.

It's the difference between naive perception (audiophool)
and informed perception (DBT).

Ethan Winer wrote:
William,

What is needed ... is long-term blind listening tests

I have to agree with Arny. I can't see why listening long
term
increases someone's ability to discern small differences.

In a way it does. Sometimes you have to listen a long time
before you set the stage for the audible difference to be
maximually audible. Stuff like a certain rim shot, etc.

Ethan Winer wrote:
Arny,

you would have been certain that Arnold B. Krueger was
God and John
Atkinson was a pathetic girly man.

Yeah, I saw that and I almost quoted it in my initial post
above.


http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hifi200...onkrueger.html

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/cr...ages/8885.html

Thanks again, Arny. You definitely da' man!

It's my 15 minutes of fame! ;-)

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Clearly, if one can't tell the difference between two pieces of
equipment, then, for the purpose of that listener, the two pieces
of
equipment are identical under those circumstances.

Exactly... "Under those circumstances." Double-blind testing, as it
is currently
implemented, is not equivalent to simply sitting down and listening
to music.
Nor is "subjective" testing, for that matter.


Those who criticise DBT testing on general principles are on
such non-scientific ground that they might as well join a church.

Not at all. Calling something "scientific" does not make it so. (The
word itself
implies a degree of "truthfulness" that is not fully justified.)
Simply because
double-blind testing is useful in other areas does not mean it
provides useful
or valid results when judging hi-fi equipment.

What most people conveniently ignore when criticizing my views is
that I don't
agree with either side in this issue. Both sides are "wrong," because
their
testing procedures have not been proven to be correct. Simply
removing bias does
not guarantee accurate, valid, or useful results.


What I don't get, and what I thought that Atkinson was getting at
until
he veered off into mysticism, is why the tests have to be conducted
with short pieces of sound. If Atkinson's claim is that he can
differentiate between different power amps when listening to them
for
an extended period, then let's design an experiment that tests this
hypothesis, but remains double blind. How long does he need? A half
hour on each? Ten minutes? An hour? Shouldn't be difficult -
certainly,
far more time has been spent arguing over this than would be
necessary
to conduct a *scientific* experiment as to whether two pieces of
equipment can be differentiated under these circumstances.

What is needed -- and I could name several well-known people who
agree with
me -- is long-term blind listening tests in which people simply sit
down and
listen for pleasure. Properly conducted, such testing would would
provide useful
information about "how" people listen, what they think they hear, and
establish
a baseline for judging "subjective" and "objective" testing. But such
testing
would require many listeners, take a lot of time, and be difficult to
implement
and run correctly. Not to mention the fact that both subjectivists
and
objectivists have a vested interest in believing what they want to
believe.
People are uncomfortable changing their world views.

I don't know why you think that objectivists are against changing their
views. I certainly consider myself one, but if someone demonstrated
that they could consistently distinguish two power cords then I would
believe that there were audible differences between them. It is easy
enough to design an experiment to do this - it only takes 1% of the
effort that has been spent arguing about it.

"Objectivists" (or "rationalists", as I would call them) do not believe
that there are no differences between components, so we don't have any
"world views" to be uncomfortable changing. I believe very strongly
that there are big differences between speakers and microphones, for
instance.

It is not part of my weltanschuung (sp?) that there are no differences
between good power amps. I believe that there are audible differences
between mic pre amps, so I don't see why there wouldn't be audible
differences between power amps. But until people can distinguish good
power amps there's no reason to suppose that they sound different.








Kudos to Arny, indeed, for perservering when most others would have
given up. I have long taken the view that the more idiots there are
in
the world, the better it is for me, so I don't try to educate them.
I might even sell them some $2,500 power cables for them to plug
into the Romex cable feeding their power outlets.

Even if two models of amps have been "proven"
to be equal in a DBS once the person gets it home, if he "wished he had
bought the other model", this will in fact interfere with his enjoyment of
it (and that is a FACT). So just look at DBS as a good way for YOU to find
what works for you and let the other guy go his way. You won't be able to
change him and if he finds joy in it (and he's not hurting anyone) who
cares?

This is a valid point that its ignore a little too often by both parties.
The subjectivists ignore it because their claims are about auditory
differences, not experiential differences. Objectivists ignore it because
they are merely concerned with auditory differences. That being said,
objectivist reviewers do recognize value as measured by quality and sound
difference (e.g. PA from TAC). The question becomes what cost difference
can be justified. If one recognizes one is talking about aesthetics,
perceived quality, status, jewellery, etc. (i.e. factors related to
experience as a whole, but not to auditory differences), then whatever price
one feels comfortable paying (like any other luxury). However, if the price
differentiation is based on auditory superiority where there is no
difference, then strong dissentient is justifiable; i.e. it is not a debate
about perceived value, but about ignorance, duplicitousness, greed, and to
paraphrase Bloom, the closing of the American mind to any form of objective
search for truth. So yes, experience in a phenomenological context matters,
and for people who are affected by factors other than sound (which one would
expect is most people since reliability matters, and aesthetics has value),
that should not be denied. Just don't take the next step and have
experience supersede true sonic differences to the point where the latter
becomes irrelevant.

PS. Although one can argue that science some times behaves as a form of
religion (i.e. as a means for deriving meaning), to just dismiss it is the
quintessential example of throwing out the baby with the bath water. If the
standards subjectivists want to impose were to be imposed on subjectivism,
it would conclude that nothing is valid, and all conclusions about equipment
and sound are meaningless. Furthermore, if the standards of subjectivism
were applied to all other areas of human existence, then nothing would have
validity, and by extension true meaning.

On Thu, 12 May 2005 09:17:26 +0100, Anahata
wrote:

Has anyone tried a non-blind "trick" test where the cheap and expensive
cable were disguised as each other, or the guts of the amplifiers
swapped between the boxes so the listener really thought he was
listening to device A when it was device B?

I think this is the point of calling it snake oil. They are cheap
stuff wrapped in expensive packaging and pricetag.

William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Double-blind testing is a subjective form of testing. There is no
proved
correlation between what one hears in the tests and what one hears when
actually
listening to music. (The same thing is true of "subjectivist"
reviewing, as
well.)"

....and then later:
"Double-blind testing, as it is currently
implemented, is not equivalent to simply sitting down and listening to
music.
Nor is "subjective" testing, for that matter."



This strikes me as the crux of the biscuit. I'm perfectly comfortable
believing there could be some Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
variation that affects our perception of recorded music the moment we
try to quantify our perceptions of recorded music.

But regardless of whether we're doing it through rigorous double-blind
ABX testing, or subjective equipment reviews for audiophile magazines,
or just kicking back listening to tunes through our newly procured CD
player, that's what we are doing -- trying to quantify our perceptions
of recorded music.

None of us are innocent. None of us are immune to this "effect" (if it
indeed exists). In ALL of those circumstances our conscious perceptions
have been corrupted, coerced by the goal which we seek. The effort
[sic] required to make a choice between A & B in an ABX test is the
exact same manifestation of perverted perception as the effort Harry
Peason made when trying to decide whether a power amplifier was "taut"
or "robust".

On Thu, 12 May 2005 12:02:10 -0400, "Ethan Winer" ethanw at
ethanwiner dot com wrote:

I have to agree with Arny. I can't see why listening long term increases
someone's ability to discern small differences. If anything I'd say it's the
other way around.
...
I know that when I A/B stuff where the differences are very small (not
blind, just fooling around) I need to hear the exact same short passage over
and over.
...
Also, it is well known that the ear adjusts to changes in sound pretty
easily. So if anything, long term listening (live with a new power cable for
a month) will tend to *mask* real differences rather than reveal them
better.

When I was designing equipment (for myself), and struggling daily with
the question of whether a tiny improvement was real, I came to the
following conclusion:

My brain is willing to suspend disbelief in any halfway decent
electronically created illusion of sound for about thirty seconds.
After that, it quickly begins removing trust in those aspects of the
illusion that are not sufficiently well reproduced. If I can A/B for
thirty seconds back and forth, I can (if there is a difference) hear
the increase and decrease in realism. (For awhile, then fatigue sets
in.)

If I listen to the less realistic sample for a minute or more, my
brain disables my ability to trust in those aspects of the illusion
that were changing. Both samples now sound the same, because I'm no
longer listening for those differences. It may take a half-hour or
more of listening to only the more realistic configuration (or only
real, not reproduced sound) before I can trust whatever aspect of
illusion was being varied.

So the procedure was listen for half an hour, make a change, and
decide within thirty seconds whether there was a decrease in realism.
If there was a decrease, go ahead and repeat the test in the other
direction, but don't be surprised when there is no audible increase in
realism.

Am I the only one whose brain works this way?

Loren

On 12 May 2005 07:09:27 -0700, wrote:

How many times I pretended to twist a knob on a monitor mixer to make a
mucian happy when I knew I was already at the feedback threshold.

How many times have I pretended to adjust my amp to make a soundman
happy... and then have them say "great, thanks".

Al

How many times I pretended to twist a knob on a monitor mixer to make
a
mucian happy when I knew I was already at the feedback threshold.


How many times have I pretended to adjust my amp to make a soundman
happy... and then have them say "great, thanks".

Al

Been on both sides of that coin. That's why I like 30 watt tube amps
for guitar.

:)

we are paid to listen to what we are doing. we argue about which mike
and which mic pre and how they sound. we are claiming that we have
trained and experiences ears.

we argue about the sonic coloration's of mic pickup patterns and
speaker tweeter construction, the difference from tranisistor mic pres
and tube mic pres. we have trained to hear these things. our training
was experience with the issues how to use the electronics to get good
sound. this training and experience is why the pro does a better job
then the newbie.

there seems to be two attacks on the aesthetic approach to listening
for the details that every piece of electronics imparts to the audio
signal.

#1) I twisted a knob for some who has hired my ears and equipment,
which was connected to nothing and he was happy. this proves that
there is no difference in quality of the audio experience.

doesn't just prove that your client are lacking in the "ear training"
of how audio works?
that is why the trained engineer (you) is needed,.

#2) the use of ABX for comparing the sonic differences in equipment.

have you used an abx piece of electronics.
that switcher which allows you to "compare" some audio components.
it changes the nature of comparing sonic character by introducing its
sonic coloration into the equation.
kind of eliminates the ability to judge.

kind of like using a radio shack speaker to mix your clients recording.

better learn to listen better, that is what we are about as audio
people. that is what we sell.

dale

FWIW most if not all the original ABX partners did exactly
what is described here. They picked out two components to
compare, did long-term ABX testing, and compared their
results to shorter term tests. There have also been some
more-formal tests that David Clark did with I think it was
Larry Greehill.

That's not at all what I'm suggesting. The listeners would simply be relaxing,
playing their favorite music, without any knowledge of the electronics in use,
and without any attempt to make distinctions.

In other words, we simply want to know what they think they hear.

After a few months (!!!), components might be substituted -- without the
listeners' knowledge -- to see how they react.


In fact, long trials can be shown to hurt listener
sensitivity, because they temporally displace the listening
experiences being compared even more, and that is known to
be a bad thing.

Agreed (more or less). But that's one of the reasons for running such a test --
to see how such things change.

What is needed ... is long-term blind listening tests

I have to agree with Arny. I can't see why listening long term increases
someone's ability to discern small differences.

I guess I'm not explaining things clearly enough to overcome your
preconceptions.

The purpose of long-term blind listening is not (initially) to make
distinctions, but to simply see how we listen, and how we react to a particular
system.

For example, if the system remains unchanged, but people report differences in
its sound (especially if different people report different differences), then we
start to have an idea, of the character and magnitude of what I call "perceptual
noise". This would be useful to know, as it has a significant effect on
subjective testing, and (I think) at least a little on ABX and similar
methodologies.

When I was designing equipment (for myself), and struggling daily with
the question of whether a tiny improvement was real, I came to the
following conclusion:

My brain is willing to suspend disbelief in any halfway decent
electronically created illusion of sound for about thirty seconds.
After that, it quickly begins removing trust in those aspects of the
illusion that are not sufficiently well reproduced. If I can A/B for
thirty seconds back and forth, I can (if there is a difference) hear
the increase and decrease in realism. (For awhile, then fatigue sets
in.)

If I listen to the less realistic sample for a minute or more, my
brain disables my ability to trust in those aspects of the illusion
that were changing. Both samples now sound the same, because I'm no
longer listening for those differences. It may take a half-hour or
more of listening to only the more realistic configuration (or only
real, not reproduced sound) before I can trust whatever aspect of
illusion was being varied.

So the procedure was listen for half an hour, make a change, and
decide within thirty seconds whether there was a decrease in realism.
If there was a decrease, go ahead and repeat the test in the other
direction, but don't be surprised when there is no audible increase in
realism.

Am I the only one whose brain works this way?

I doubt that you're unique, but the real issue is whether the differences you
think you hear really do exist. You are assuming that because you think you hear
a difference, you really do. You can't assume that, any more than those
supporting double-blind testing can assume it gives correct and complete
results.

That is a huge assumption. Many ABX tools do not introduce coloration, and
often, to ensure participants this fact is established first so that they
are satisfied with its transparency. In these cases, only after it was
determined that the device did not introduce "a coloration into the
equation" did they proceed to use it. I think it may have been Noussaine
who made one that would have made your average high-end techno tweak proud.

have you used an abx piece of electronics.
that switcher which allows you to "compare" some audio components.
it changes the nature of comparing sonic character by introducing its
sonic coloration into the equation.
kind of eliminates the ability to judge.

kind of like using a radio shack speaker to mix your clients recording.

better learn to listen better, that is what we are about as audio
people. that is what we sell.

dale

William Sommerwerck wrote:
What is needed ... is long-term blind listening tests


I have to agree with Arny. I can't see why listening long term increases
someone's ability to discern small differences.


I guess I'm not explaining things clearly enough to overcome your
preconceptions.

The problem is Arny thinks people's auditory memory is about 1/10 of a
second. I dunno, maybe his is. I can remember things I heard 40 years ago.

He never said that. In fact he stated that there is value to long term
listening. Now as to being able to audibly remember 40 yr old sonic
experience, yes and no. Yes, you will be able to recollect certain aspects
of it, but you would not be able to recollect details that would
differentiate it in a blind test from a slightly different event (e.g.
differs by .2 dB). Yet this differentiation can be made by many in a blind
AB or ABX test that is only seconds old.

"Joe Sensor" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:
What is needed ... is long-term blind listening tests


I have to agree with Arny. I can't see why listening long term increases
someone's ability to discern small differences.


I guess I'm not explaining things clearly enough to overcome your
preconceptions.

The problem is Arny thinks people's auditory memory is about 1/10 of a
second. I dunno, maybe his is. I can remember things I heard 40 years ago.

On Thu, 12 May 2005 15:36:50 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

and without any attempt to make distinctions.

Another biscuit crux. The *attempt* itself is contaminating.
We might not (I would say experientially *do not*) listen/ hear
the same for enjoyment as for "testing".

An oft-observed fact is that eye witnesses to catastrophic
events are amazingly unreliable. We're bred to interpret
the world through a maze of models, assumptions and
imagination. This discussion is about those things; let's
just not forget the "bred" part's true relevance.

Good fortune,

Chris Hornbeck

On Thu, 12 May 2005 15:43:34 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

For example, if the system remains unchanged, but people report differences in
its sound (especially if different people report different differences), then we
start to have an idea, of the character and magnitude of what I call "perceptual
noise". This would be useful to know, as it has a significant effect on
subjective testing, and (I think) at least a little on ABX and similar
methodologies.

It does make a lot of sense to work at establishing a noise floor
first. Glad to hear you're still working on the project; your new
posts sound very positive.

Chris Hornbeck

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
Clearly, if one can't tell the difference between two pieces of
equipment, then, for the purpose of that listener, the two pieces of
equipment are identical under those circumstances.

Exactly... "Under those circumstances." Double-blind testing, as it is
currently
implemented, is not equivalent to simply sitting down and listening to
music.
Nor is "subjective" testing, for that matter.


Those who criticise DBT testing on general principles are on
such non-scientific ground that they might as well join a church.

Not at all. Calling something "scientific" does not make it so. (The word
itself
implies a degree of "truthfulness" that is not fully justified.) Simply
because
double-blind testing is useful in other areas does not mean it provides
useful
or valid results when judging hi-fi equipment.

What most people conveniently ignore when criticizing my views is that I
don't
agree with either side in this issue. Both sides are "wrong," because
their
testing procedures have not been proven to be correct. Simply removing
bias does
not guarantee accurate, valid, or useful results.


What I don't get, and what I thought that Atkinson was getting at until
he veered off into mysticism, is why the tests have to be conducted
with short pieces of sound. If Atkinson's claim is that he can
differentiate between different power amps when listening to them for
an extended period, then let's design an experiment that tests this
hypothesis, but remains double blind. How long does he need? A half
hour on each? Ten minutes? An hour? Shouldn't be difficult - certainly,
far more time has been spent arguing over this than would be necessary
to conduct a *scientific* experiment as to whether two pieces of
equipment can be differentiated under these circumstances.

What is needed -- and I could name several well-known people who agree
with
me -- is long-term blind listening tests in which people simply sit down
and
listen for pleasure. Properly conducted, such testing would would provide
useful
information about "how" people listen, what they think they hear, and
establish
a baseline for judging "subjective" and "objective" testing. But such
testing
would require many listeners, take a lot of time, and be difficult to
implement
and run correctly. Not to mention the fact that both subjectivists and
objectivists have a vested interest in believing what they want to
believe.
People are uncomfortable changing their world views.

Your points are in total agreement with the argument I have been carrying on
in RAHE for the last 1 1/2 years. I've sketched out a "control test" with
one phase exactly as you mention...actually first a sighted listening long
term evaluative stage...then a blind stage otherwise identical, then a blind
short-term evaluative stage in a neutral environment, and finally a
short-term blind comparative stage in a neutral environment. This was
designed to provide all of the bridges between long term listening for
enjoyment all the way to conventional a-b or a-b-x testing as it is promoted
and practiced by Arny and others. If the correlation broke down, we would
know where and accordingly most probably why. If it didn't, it would
convert most subjectivists to objectivists. The drawback: expensive,
difficult to stage, time-consuming, and requiring several hundred people.
Only one of the objectivists there would even consider such a test...most
denied the need for any test. They basically state, as Arny did at the
Stereophile show, that he knows dbt works because it gives the same
audiometric results as previous blind tests. Talk about being impervious to
the underlying assumptions......

For example, if the system remains unchanged, but people report differences
in
its sound (especially if different people report different differences), then
we
start to have an idea, of the character and magnitude of what I call
"perceptual
noise". This would be useful to know, as it has a significant effect on
subjective testing, and (I think) at least a little on ABX and similar
methodologies.

It does make a lot of sense to work at establishing a noise floor
first. Glad to hear you're still working on the project; your new
posts sound very positive.

I appreciate the compliment, but I have neither the time, the facilities, or the
money to set up such tests.

Your points are in total agreement with the argument I have been carrying on
in RAHE for the last 1 1/2 years. I've sketched out a "control test" with
one phase exactly as you mention...actually first a sighted listening long
term evaluative stage...then a blind stage otherwise identical, then a blind
short-term evaluative stage in a neutral environment, and finally a
short-term blind comparative stage in a neutral environment. This was
designed to provide all of the bridges between long term listening for
enjoyment all the way to conventional a-b or a-b-x testing as it is promoted
and practiced by Arny and others. If the correlation broke down, we would
know where and accordingly most probably why. If it didn't, it would
convert most subjectivists to objectivists. The drawback: expensive,
difficult to stage, time-consuming, and requiring several hundred people.
Only one of the objectivists there would even consider such a test...most
denied the need for any test. They basically state, as Arny did at the
Stereophile show, that he knows dbt works because it gives the same
audiometric results as previous blind tests. Talk about being impervious to
the underlying assumptions......

It's nice that people are finally starting to understand what I'm talking about,
and contributing good ideas of their own.

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:
Last week at the Home Entertainment Show in New York Arny Krueger
participated in a panel discussion with John Atkinson, editor of
Stereophile
magazine. Arny is well known for his support for the scientific method
to
test what is audible and what is not.

The scientific method is not foolproof. Simply removing certain obvious
forms of
bias does not mean the test results are accurate or are correlated to
what we
"actually" hear when we sit down to listen.

That you think it *should* correlate to that, suggests you don't get why
blind tests are needed in the first place. What you 'actually' hear
when you sit down to listen is *NOT* a good reference point, when
differences
are 'actually' subtle or nonexistant.

This 'trust your ears' business that audiophiles tend to use as a mantra,
reflects a fundamental overestimation of how 'trustworthy' your ears
are, when they aren't allowed to be the *only* arbiters of what you are
hearing. What you 'actually' perceive when you sit down and listen in
casual
evulation, is an amalgam of truly audible plus other non-audible
'confounding'
factors. Science may not be foolproof, but the existnce of such factors
has been proved about as well as *anthing* has been. It's why scientific
investigations of all sorts routinely employs bias controls.
Cognitive/perceptual
confounding factors are *insidious* and *pervasive*.


Good science (as opposed to bad or pseudo-science) also pays excruciating
attention to the design and underlying premises/assumptions at work in the
test, to make sure that the scientist is measuring what he thinks he is
measuring. Arny and other DBT advocates have an almost-religious belief in
the efficacy of dbt's for any and everything audio..despite the huge
difference between measuring "sound" which is pretty much a physical
property, or "artifacts" which are discrete effects that one can train to
hear, and "music" which modern brain explorations have shown is hardwired in
some aspects into the brain and totally non-intuitive as to how things work.

Even the simple assumption that there are known thresholds that Arny and
Steven and others hold as "proof" that differences cannot exist if ABX
testing shows a null, now appears dubious as recent research suggest that
the brain "pre-conditions" the auditory nerves to focus on certain selective
affects depending on the context of what it is expecting and can exceed
previously thought thresholds in doing so (note that this is context
dependent and not likely to be operable in quick-switch "snippet" testing)..

Furthermore, open ended evaluation of equipment reproducing music doesn't
come with flags or signs saying "listen for this effect" or "catch how well
I handle this". The open-ended evaluative process requires the context of
the music itself and relaxed, unconscious exposure to allow the relevant
felicities or abrogation from what sounds "real" to emerge. Then also
factor in that psychophysiological research has show that the emotional
response triggered involuntarily by some aspects of music (and presumably
with music reproduction as well) do correlate with statistically significant
accuracy to higher "ratings" for the musical experience. And they take as
much as twenty seconds to build or disappear and only develop "in context".
Finally, factor in as well the recent finding that the ear nerves themselves
apparently have a "memory" for music apart from the remainder of the brain
such that they literally can "fill in the blanks" of music which is known,
even when the sound is physically cut off, and you can see how dubious a
simple dbt test becomes as a suitable test for open-ended evaluation of
equipment quality when reproducing music. Vastly different than listening
for known artifacts or broadband signal levels. A real scientist would be
asking more questions than ever today, and exploring the implications for
testing protocols, not promoting a "one-size-fits-all" solution and its
accompanying web site.

On Thu, 12 May 2005 19:42:01 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

It does make a lot of sense to work at establishing a noise floor
first. Glad to hear you're still working on the project; your new
posts sound very positive.

I appreciate the compliment, but I have neither the time, the facilities, or the
money to set up such tests.

Of course not. But you have what's apparently otherwise lacking, a
conceptual framework. Is there *anybody* else making the effort?

You'd once talked about a "white paper" to begin to define the
possible methods, or at least the issues. THAT would be a big big
step. We're currently stuck in neutral; lotsa noise, no motorvation.

Good fortune,

Chris Hornbeck

Chris Hornbeck wrote:

It does make a lot of sense to work at establishing a noise floor
first. Glad to hear you're still working on the project; your new
posts sound very positive.

I appreciate the compliment, but I have neither the time, the facilities, or the
money to set up such tests.


Of course not. But you have what's apparently otherwise lacking, a
conceptual framework. Is there *anybody* else making the effort?

You'd once talked about a "white paper" to begin to define the
possible methods, or at least the issues. THAT would be a big big
step. We're currently stuck in neutral; lotsa noise, no motorvation.


Well now that we have noise floor out of the way, we can continue on
with the test as to what sounds best. I've been involved in this testing
for many decades. Haven't come up with a concrete answer, quite yet.

On Thu, 12 May 2005 22:49:42 -0500, Joe Sensor
wrote:

Well now that we have noise floor out of the way, we can continue on
with the test as to what sounds best. I've been involved in this testing
for many decades. Haven't come up with a concrete answer, quite yet.

Perhaps I've phrased my response too personally. William was
writing about a perceptual noise floor, and I thought that *that*
might be a good place to start.

You might be interested in his earlier posts along these lines.
A Google search just on his name might not be too exhaustively
large, for the relevant thoughts.

Good fortune,

Chris Hornbeck

Arny Krueger wrote:

While no doubt tongue-in-cheek, the debate really routed
Atkinson. He looked just as tired and bedraggled in person
as the pictures show, bad hair included.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hifi200...onkrueger.html


And you look about as handsome as William F. Buckley in those photos
Arny....hehe

But I'm sure your "Presence" was greatly appreciated. And I'm sure you
were your usual charming self.

That AMP test is a no brainer..... Do the Vinyl vs. CD test next time
and show everyone how they've wasted the last 20 years on a picket
fence medium.

Enjoy your 15 minutes Arny!

VB

You'd once talked about a "white paper" to begin to define the
possible methods, or at least the issues. THAT would be a big big
step. We're currently stuck in neutral; lotsa noise, no motorvation.

I started on it over a year ago, and never completed it. I found it difficult to
put into persuasive language what I intuitively knew to be "true".

dale wrote:

have you used an abx piece of electronics.
that switcher which allows you to "compare" some audio
components.

I was the designer of several of them. I built the first one
ever built. I *melted solder* into every ABX swithbox that
was ever sold.

it changes the nature of comparing sonic character by
introducing its
sonic coloration into the equation.

I beg your pardon? Who are you? Do I know you?

kind of eliminates the ability to judge.

What qualifies you to speak so authoritatively?

kind of like using a radio shack speaker to mix your
clients
recording.

Well then, I eliminated the switchbox all together, which
one and all can see at www.pcabx.com.

better learn to listen better, that is what we are about
as audio
people. that is what we sell.

Personally, I think you are selling broken wind. ;-)

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

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Last week at the Home Entertainment Show in New York
Arny Krueger
participated in a panel discussion with John Atkinson,
editor of
Stereophile magazine. Arny is well known for his
support for the
scientific method to test what is audible and what is
not.

The scientific method is not foolproof.

It depends on the quality of the application.

Simply removing certain
obvious forms of bias does not mean the test results are
accurate
or are correlated to what we "actually" hear when we sit
down to
listen.

Amen, brother!

Frankly, one of the easiest things to do is to do a test
that is blind, but otherwise so flawed that its just a demo
or an exercise.

That you think it *should* correlate to that, suggests
you don't get
why blind tests are needed in the first place. What you
'actually'
hear when you sit down to listen is *NOT* a good
reference point,
when differences are 'actually' subtle or nonexistant.

I think now we're talking about naive perception versus
informed perception. Golden-Eared audio is generally based
on the idea that if it is perceived, there is a specific
underlying physical cause, which is zippy new piece of
equipment at hand, say a SACD player + recording.

This 'trust your ears' business that audiophiles tend to
use as a
mantra, reflects a fundamental overestimation of how
'trustworthy'
your ears are, when they aren't allowed to be the *only*
arbiters of
what you are hearing. What you 'actually' perceive when
you sit down
and listen in casual evulation, is an amalgam of truly
audible plus
other non-audible 'confounding' factors. Science may not
be
foolproof, but the existnce of such factors has been
proved about as
well as *anthing* has been. It's why scientific
investigations of
all sorts routinely employs bias controls.
Cognitive/perceptual
confounding factors are *insidious* and *pervasive*.

Exactly. To believe otherwise is to be uselessly naive.

Good science (as opposed to bad or pseudo-science) also
pays
excruciating attention to the design and underlying
premises/assumptions at work in the test, to make sure
that the
scientist is measuring what he thinks he is measuring.

Exactly. So, lets do this with audiophile equipment
auditions as practiced by say Stereophile per their
"Listener's Manifesto". One of their underlying assumptions
exactly contradicts Mr. Sullivan's wonderful paragraph
above.

Arny and other DBT advocates have an almost-religious
belief in the efficacy
of dbt's for any and everything audio..despite the huge
difference
between measuring "sound" which is pretty much a physical
property,
or "artifacts" which are discrete effects that one can
train to hear,
and "music" which modern brain explorations have shown is
hardwired
in some aspects into the brain and totally non-intuitive
as to how
things work.

This would be some baseless assertion by Harry Lavo, who
proved to the HE2005 debate witnesses that he doesn't even
know the difference between a question and a declaration.
Conside the source and dismiss it unless you have a lot of
time to waste.


Even the simple assumption that there are known thresholds
that Arny
and Steven and others hold as "proof" that differences
cannot exist
if ABX testing shows a null, now appears dubious as recent
research
suggest that the brain "pre-conditions" the auditory
nerves to focus
on certain selective affects depending on the context of
what it is
expecting and can exceed previously thought thresholds in
doing so
(note that this is context dependent and not likely to be
operable in
quick-switch "snippet" testing)..

Sorry guys,but this sentence is obviously written at or
above the 39th grade level. I only did made it through 2
years of graduate school, which puts me somewhere under the
20th grade reading level. Not only does Harry not know the
difference between a question and a declaration, he doesn't
know the difference between a sentence, a paragrpah, and a
hopeless run-on.

Harry, can you puhleeze give us the Classics Illustrated
version of this killer paragraph of yours? ;-)

.. "listen for this effect" or
"catch how well I handle this". The open-ended
evaluative process
requires the context of the music itself and relaxed,
unconscious
exposure to allow the relevant felicities or abrogation
from what
sounds "real" to emerge. Then also factor in that
psychophysiological research has show that the emotional
response
triggered involuntarily by some aspects of music (and
presumably with
music reproduction as well) do correlate with
statistically
significant accuracy to higher "ratings" for the musical
experience.
And they take as much as twenty seconds to build or
disappear and
only develop "in context". Finally, factor in as well the
recent
finding that the ear nerves themselves apparently have a
"memory" for
music apart from the remainder of the brain such that they
literally
can "fill in the blanks" of music which is known, even
when the sound
is physically cut off, and you can see how dubious a
simple dbt test
becomes as a suitable test for open-ended evaluation of
equipment
quality when reproducing music. Vastly different than
listening for
known artifacts or broadband signal levels. A real
scientist would
be asking more questions than ever today, and exploring
the
implications for testing protocols, not promoting a
"one-size-fits-all" solution and its accompanying web
site.

Reading Harry Lavo is like reading William S Burroughs. ;-(

William Sommerwerck wrote:
FWIW most if not all the original ABX partners did
exactly
what is described here. They picked out two components to
compare, did long-term ABX testing, and compared their
results to shorter term tests. There have also been some
more-formal tests that David Clark did with I think it
was
Larry Greehill.

That's not at all what I'm suggesting. The listeners would
simply be
relaxing, playing their favorite music, without any
knowledge of the
electronics in use, and without any attempt to make
distinctions.

Huh? That is what we did!

In other words, we simply want to know what they think
they hear.

Been there done that.

After a few months (!!!), components might be
substituted -- without
the listeners' knowledge -- to see how they react.

Tell you what William, if you can get anybody with a life to
play by these rules, give me a call.

In fact, long trials can be shown to hurt listener
sensitivity, because they temporally displace the
listening
experiences being compared even more, and that is known
to
be a bad thing.

Agreed (more or less). But that's one of the reasons for
running such
a test -- to see how such things change.

We did it and it kinda left this bad taste in our mouths.
Null results from lont-term listening when quick switching
gives positive results can do that to a person.

Joe Sensor wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
What is needed ... is long-term blind listening tests


I have to agree with Arny. I can't see why listening
long term
increases someone's ability to discern small
differences.


I guess I'm not explaining things clearly enough to
overcome your
preconceptions.

The problem is Arny thinks people's auditory memory is
about 1/10 of a
second. I dunno, maybe his is. I can remember things I
heard 40 years
ago.

Joe, thanks for showing that you don't really get what
auditory memory is.

I can remember things I heard 40 years ago, too. Sometimes
word-for-word or note-for-note. But that's not the same
thing as auditory memory for small diffrences at all.

I do have to admit that when I was listening to SETs at
HE2005 I did remember things I heard 40 years ago, like my
mother's Detrola AM radio.

Harry Lavo wrote:

They basically state, as
Arny did at the Stereophile show, that he knows dbt works
because it
gives the same audiometric results as previous blind
tests. Talk
about being impervious to the underlying assumptions...

Talk about distorting what you heard until it was what you
want to hear. I said other means - that they were also blind
tests would be yet another fabrication of your mind, Lavo.

The good news Harry is that I was able to reduce your
seemingly-endless post to just two fairly-brief sentences.

William Sommerwerck wrote:

It's nice that people are finally starting to understand
what I'm
talking about, and contributing good ideas of their own.

Lavo?

No way!

I don't think he hears what others say at all.

"Anahata" wrote in message
...
Chris Hornbeck wrote:

But perhaps the "cognitive/perceptual confounding factors" actually
matter for music?

I'm sure thay do. It only worries me when these factors might persuade me
to part with $2500 for a pair of interconnects because those factors have
persuaded me that they sound better.

Has anyone tried a non-blind "trick" test where the cheap and expensive
cable were disguised as each other, or the guts of the amplifiers swapped
between the boxes so the listener really thought he was listening to
device A when it was device B?


All of the above.

geoff

"Kevin Aylward" wrote in message news:%

The dude claims to hear differences in power cables. Nothing more needs to
be said on his credibility. He is so deluded, further discussion is
pointless.


For once, I agree with you.. More than once in reality, but the over-riding
attitude make the stance indefensible.

geoff

"Chel van Gennip" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 12 May 2005 10:07:23 +0200, Kevin Aylward wrote:

The dude claims to hear differences in power cables. Nothing more needs
to be said on his credibility. He is so deluded, further discussion is
pointless.

Theoretically it is possible for a component in your audio chain to be
sensitive for differences in power cables. The solution is to remove that
component and destroy it because it is an inferiour component. Replacing
the power cable is not a sensible option.

Which component would this be ?

geoff

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message

BTW, the other half of the Stereophile article follows the
pattern of the "Enjoy The Music"


Which is a bit of a cop-out.

geoff

Geoff Wood wrote:
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message

BTW, the other half of the Stereophile article follows
the
pattern of the "Enjoy The Music"


Which is a bit of a cop-out.

Yeah, but its what both magazines felt they had to do.