Folks,

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. John is known for, um, - well, let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3 file (30 MB, 1
hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/

Way to go, Arny!

--Ethan

And kudos to you, Ethan, for your article
about audiophile voodoo in the current issue
of Skeptic magazine.

http://www.skeptic.com/


Ethan Winer ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote:
Folks,

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. John is known for, um, - well, let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3 file (30 MB, 1
hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/

Way to go, Arny!

--Ethan



--

-S
It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying
before the House Armed Services Committee

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.


John is known for, um, -- well, let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

John isn't anti-science -- he just wants to believe what he wants to believe. In
that respect, he's no different from Arny, or 99% of the human race.


By the way, like Steven Sullivan, I very much appreciated your Stereophile
essay. I was flabbergasted that JA actually published it.

On Wed, 11 May 2005 15:53:13 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

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.

My worthless personal take, based on trying those "tests" quite
a lot at one time, are that the correlation problem is a bitch.

John isn't anti-science -- he just wants to believe what he wants to believe. In
that respect, he's no different from Arny, or 99% of the human race.

You're percentage is a little low.

By the way, like Steven Sullivan, I very much appreciated your Stereophile
essay. I was flabbergasted that JA actually published it.

Looking forward very much to reading it. Arny is particularly
elegant and well thought out in his structure, and can express it
convincingly if one accepts his premises. (Which in turn, are all
quite reasonable, well accepted, likely, and internally consistent.)

Chris Hornbeck

It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any form of objective
methodology.

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
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.

The publication that he is chief editor of would indicate otherwise.
Furthermore, his poor attempts at justifying a lack of rigourous study of
most subjectivists claims published within Stereophile is further indication
to the contrary. Attempting to dismiss his attitude as nothing more than
closed mindedness that reflects the majority of the population does not deny
the above facts.

John isn't anti-science -- he just wants to believe what he wants to
believe.

"William Sommerwerck"


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.


** Pure gobbledgook.


John is known for, um, -- well, let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

John isn't anti-science -- he just wants to believe what he wants to
believe.


** Believing what you want to believe in spite of what the evidence
indicates is about as anti-science as it gets.


In that respect, he's no different from Arny, or 99% of the human race.


** Your assertions are based on fallacies, use false logic and are plain
wrong.





............... Phil

Ethan Winer wrote:
Folks,

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. John is known for, um, - well,
let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3 file (30
MB, 1
hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/

Way to go, Arny!

--Ethan

I listened to most of this (as a part-time engineer, a subscriber to
Skeptical Inquirer, and a long-time user of some of your software
products).

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.

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

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.

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.

Raul Goyo-Shields wrote:
It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any form of objective
methodology.

For concluding what sounds good to the human ear? Nope.

"Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote in message
...
Folks,

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. John is known for, um, - well, let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3 file (30 MB, 1
hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/

Way to go, Arny!

--Ethan


As one with preconceived notions about the superiority of the scientific
method, I have to say...

Rock on, Arnie! Keep up the good fight!

Craig

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*.



John is known for, um, -- well, let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

John isn't anti-science -- he just wants to believe what he wants to believe. In
that respect, he's no different from Arny, or 99% of the human race.

By the way, like Steven Sullivan, I very much appreciated your Stereophile
essay. I was flabbergasted that JA actually published it.

Stereophile essay? I'm talking about an article in *Skeptic*. I highly doubt
JA would have published it! If he did, my respect for Stereophile would
increase radically.


--

-S
It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying
before the House Armed Services Committee

wrote:

Ethan Winer wrote:
Folks,

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. John is known for, um, - well,
let's
just call it an anti-science bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3 file (30
MB, 1
hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/

Way to go, Arny!

--Ethan

I listened to most of this (as a part-time engineer, a subscriber to
Skeptical Inquirer, and a long-time user of some of your software
products).

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.

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

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.

They don't *have* to be. That recommendation comes from work in
psychoacoustics, where short snippets as samples were found to increase
discriminatory success, due to the nature of audio memory.
The whole idea behind using them is to *increase* the chance of detecting
real difference, not make it harder. But a testee is
certainly free to use longer
samples, long switchgn intervals, etc.
The only problem is that if those results turn out negative, then
one must retest for the possibility that those conditions themselves
masked a real difference (because scientific work suggests they can).

If someone *passes* a DBT using longer samples, though, there's no basis
for challenging the result due to the sample length. I think most
objectivists would be 'OK' with such a report. There's no 'rule' that
says the samples have to be short.


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.

I think the idea is that 'living with' the amps revealed a difference, that
doing an DBT while unfamiliar with the amps didn't show. Fine! By
all means, let's see if it made a difference. Now having formed quite
definite 'feelings' about the difference in sound..to the point of being
*sure* that one sounds better than another -- do another DBT. Should be
easy to pass if you're right! And if so, you have valid grounds to
start agitating for long 'acclimation' periods before doing DBTs
of audio stuff. (Actually, researchers already routinely recommend and
employ pre-DBT training sessions to sensitize the testees to differences...
Arny K also recommends this on his pcabx site)




--

-S
It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying
before the House Armed Services Committee

Joe Sensor wrote:
Raul Goyo-Shields wrote:
It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any form of objective
methodology.

For concluding what sounds good to the human ear? Nope.

Since self-report of 'what sounds good' varies vastly across
the spectrum of listeners, one can hardly call it a reliable
indicator of much at all.

Meanwhile, it's incredibly easy for people to convince themselves
that a tweak makes something 'sound better' -- even when the
tweak does NOTHING AT ALL to the sound. I think Mixerman
told one of those stories in his diaries...twiddling gear that
wasn't even in the signal path, to assuage a record company
exec who wanted to hear more 'air' or 'body' or somesuch.


--

-S
It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying
before the House Armed Services Committee

On Thu, 12 May 2005 05:28:46 +0000 (UTC), 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, 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*.

Brilliant; possibly the best I've ever read. But now define "hearing".
And then define the color red.

Ya just can't get there from here, is the problem. I'll be very
interested in your comments; thanks; and please don't take my
comments negatively; anything but.

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

Just some thoughts. We human beans have such a desperate need to
quantify and simplify the overwhelming complexity of the external
world that the need can overwhelm the better angels of our modeling
nature. "Trust, but verify".

Chris Hornbeck

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
Since self-report of 'what sounds good' varies vastly across
the spectrum of listeners, one can hardly call it a reliable
indicator of much at all.

Meanwhile, it's incredibly easy for people to convince themselves
that a tweak makes something 'sound better' -- even when the
tweak does NOTHING AT ALL to the sound. I think Mixerman
told one of those stories in his diaries...twiddling gear that
wasn't even in the signal path, to assuage a record company
exec who wanted to hear more 'air' or 'body' or somesuch.

Even science knows that if the mind thinks something to be so then it might
as well be in some instances. And since music enjoyment is purely subjective
this makes doing whatever goofy things some people do (I'm not one of these
people BTW) even if it's totally immeasurable or worthless to others just as
justifiable as anything else. 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?

Ethan Winer wrote:
Folks,

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. John is
known for, um, - well, let's just call it an anti-science bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3 file (30
MB, 1 hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/


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.

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

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...

Anahata

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?

Anahata

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.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Joe Sensor wrote:
Raul Goyo-Shields wrote:
It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more
reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any
form of
objective methodology.

For concluding what sounds good to the human ear? Nope.

As usual Joe, you've missed the point.

begin over Joe's head

The point is that much of what these high-end snake-oil
artists claims sounds better, doesn't even sound different.

How can something really sound better, if it sounds no
different?

end over Joe's head

Joe, take as much time as you need to come up with a
well-thought-out answer, instead of your typical childish
hip-shots.

Ethan Winer wrote:
Folks,

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.
John is
known for, um, - well, let's just call it an anti-science
bias.

You can read about the discussion and also download an MP3
file (30
MB, 1 hour long) he

www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/

Way to go, Arny!

Thanks Ethan.

The Stereophile article comes to a logical conclusion about
half way down, when it says:

"By the end of the hour, if you had been a recent arrival
from another planet and had oriented yourself to life in the
USA by watching action flicks and video games, you would
have been certain that Arnold B. Krueger was God and John
Atkinson was a pathetic girly man."

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. he was not
prepared, as typified by the failure of the promised
PowerPoint equipment. I pulled a lot of punches at the
debate because I'm really not into kicking whipped dogs.

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

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

article which attempts to argue against me in a vain attempt
to offset the points I made.


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

Arny,

I listened to most of the debate. It was weird how the other guy didn't get
how an amp isn't flat because you can tell a signature after multiple
passes, but digital conversions can be done many times without a signature
and are by far flatter.\. My question is what sample rate and bit depth are
you using for this?

Julian


"Raul Goyo-Shields" ### wrote in message
. ..
It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any form of objective
methodology.

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
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.

The publication that he is chief editor of would indicate otherwise.
Furthermore, his poor attempts at justifying a lack of rigourous study of
most subjectivists claims published within Stereophile is further
indication
to the contrary. Attempting to dismiss his attitude as nothing more than
closed mindedness that reflects the majority of the population does not
deny
the above facts.

John isn't anti-science -- he just wants to believe what he wants to
believe.

Julian wrote:

I listened to most of the debate. It was weird how the
other guy
didn't get how an amp isn't flat because you can tell a
signature
after multiple passes, but digital conversions can be done
many times
without a signature and are by far flatter.

Yes, its interesting that good converters can be that much
better than even really good amps.

My question is what sample rate and bit depth are you
using for this?

I did the work I described at HE2005 with a Card Deluxe
running at 24/96.

I first established the transparency of the Card Deluxe with
these tests:

http://www.pcabx.com/product/cardd_deluxe/index.htm

and moved on to these amplifier tests:

http://www.pcabx.com/product/amplifiers/index.htm

If I did it all over again today, my candidate cards would
be the M-Audio Audiophile 24/192 and/or the LynxTWO. Not
because there's anything wrong with the Card Deluxe, but
these are better price-performers, one much more expensive
but with far better performance, and one with similar
performance, but about half the price.

It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any form
of objective methodology.

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.)

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.


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.

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.

See my other post.

On 5/12/05 12:33 AM, in article , "Joe Sensor"
wrote:

Raul Goyo-Shields wrote:
It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any form of objective
methodology.

For concluding what sounds good to the human ear? Nope.

Hehee... And in a word 'yes' (unless you;re doing the Orwell Thing)

Define
design a testable hypothesis
Test
examine results
peer review for others to attempt to duplicate results
Reassess
refine
Repeat

It's what got HiFi started in the ~30's professional engineering world
It's what keeps us refining and getting closer
It works reliably
NOTHING else does.

On 5/12/05 1:28 AM, in article , "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,

Not so, if we want to keep this a working discussion (and leave no loopholes
to wilgle throuhj semantically!) then it's about letting
'Trust Your Ears'
stand in for
'Trust What You Interpret'
DBT indeed is BIULT around the sole idea of Trusting Your Ears... And not
allowing in your eyes or other evidiciary confusing elements

Your ears are damned good...
Along with the processing parts of the brain and the emotional and
pattern-addicted parts of the brain and mind it's a system that is
INCREDIBLY good at resolving anomolies but indeed can be fooled easily IF WE
LET IT.
Maybe these folks need to watch Rashomon...

William Sommerwerck wrote:
It may not be foolproof, but it is certainly more
reliable than
subjectivists analysis that refuses to explored by any
form
of objective methodology.

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.)

This sounds similar to a key point from the Debate, but I
think it overstates the relevant facts by quite a bit.

William Sommerwerck wrote:

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.

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.

Bottom line - no joy from the long term tests. If you can't
hear a difference in a well-done short term test, listening
for hours, days or weeks per trial hasn't been found to
help.

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.

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.

In my experience the differences in transducers far far outwiegh
differences in electronics. If you don't like the sound change your
speakers, mics, placement or room acoustics.

As far as amps in a professional setting, durability and reliability
trump super specs almost every time.

I'd like to coin a new phrase for the audiophools....

the placebo-audio effect


Mark

Chel van Gennip wrote:
Just try a simple A-B-C test:
[snip description of random blind switching test]
I think you missed my point.

My hypothesis is that the subjectivists really believe that the golden
cable (or amp etc.) sounds better, but only while they "know" they are
listening to the expensive one.

To test this: instead of randomly switching so the listener didn't know
which was which, let them know quite clearly which is the cheap one and
which is the expensive one, but actually tell consistent lies about it,
and see if they still show a marked preference for the one that they
*think* is the fancy one. (you can't do this with speaker because the
trick would be obvious)

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.

I'm sure the psychology works: thousands of Bose customers think their
stuff sounds wonderful...

Anahata

Arny Krueger wrote:

For concluding what sounds good to the human ear? Nope.


As usual Joe, you've missed the point.

begin over Joe's head

The point is that much of what these high-end snake-oil
artists claims sounds better, doesn't even sound different.

How can something really sound better, if it sounds no
different?

end over Joe's head

Extremes. I am not for the snake oil cables and such either. That ain't
me. Over my head? w.t.f. is that?





Joe, take as much time as you need to come up with a
well-thought-out answer, instead of your typical childish
hip-shots.

You mean such as you did? Could you be any more hypocritical?

Steven and William,

And kudos to you, Ethan, for your article about audiophile voodoo in the
current issue of Skeptic magazine.

like Steven Sullivan, I very much appreciated your Stereophile essay. I
was flabbergasted that JA actually published it.

Thanks. But just to be clear, my Audiophoolery article is in the current
issue of Skeptic, not Stereophile. Big difference! :-)

--Ethan

Anahata,

let them know quite clearly which is the cheap one and which is the
expensive one, but actually tell consistent lies about it

Excellent idea. I like that a lot. Then you can correlate the answers from
those who were lied to and those who were told the truth.

--Ethan

On Thu, 12 May 2005 05:46:03 +0000 (UTC), Steven Sullivan
wrote:

wrote:

...

If someone *passes* a DBT using longer samples, though, there's no basis
for challenging the result due to the sample length. I think most
objectivists would be 'OK' with such a report. There's no 'rule' that
says the samples have to be short.


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,

IIRC he lived with that transistor amp he hated for six months.

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.

I think the idea is that 'living with' the amps revealed a difference, that
doing an DBT while unfamiliar with the amps didn't show. Fine! By
all means, let's see if it made a difference. Now having formed quite
definite 'feelings' about the difference in sound..to the point of being
*sure* that one sounds better than another -- do another DBT. Should be
easy to pass if you're right! And if so, you have valid grounds to
start agitating for long 'acclimation' periods before doing DBTs
of audio stuff. (Actually, researchers already routinely recommend and
employ pre-DBT training sessions to sensitize the testees to differences...
Arny K also recommends this on his pcabx site)

If it takes long-term listening to show the difference, then do a
test using long-term listening.
How about having a large locked box (large enough for heat buildup
not to be a problem) in the listening room that contains the
amplifier. Once a day a 'maintenance person' comes in, and without the
testee seeing (send him to the shower or something), opens up the box,
spends five minutes doing something, tests the system so see that it
works, locks the box, notifies the listener that he is through, and
leaves until the next day. The listener then has 23 hours and 55
minutes of listening time until the maintenance person comes in again.
During each visit, the maintenance man might or might not have
changed out the amplifier (all amps used are precisely gain-matched).
He might swap it at every visit for a week, then go two weeks just
checking at each visit to see if the unit functions ok (off-site
records are kept of what amp is in the box when). This should give
adequate listening time at least for the listener to decided "like it"
or "hate it" as Atkinson said of the transistor amp he had for several
months that had passed a DBT (been indistinguishable from another good
amp). With that sort of time frame (especially several weeks at a
time) he should be able to say when the amp has been changed out.
Sorry, with the above, the maintenance person knows what's what.
Leave both amps in the locked box, make a switchbox driven by a
microcontroller, the maintainer turns a keyswitch to activate it, it
switches (inaudibly of course) or not, and displays a five-digit
number that encodes the switch setting, the maintainer writes it down
but doesn't know how to decode it into a switch setting. For longterm
listening (several days of one amp at a time), make the chances of
switching much less than 1/2. So it's a good DBT.

But then, what was that Presidential quote, "We have nothing to
fear but truth itself..."
And now I wonder why I just spent my time typing all that...


-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

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!

--Ethan

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.



Bob

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

Or for that matter an automated system that switches (or not) between
units. It could be run from a PC with a form to fill out with your
opinions and ratings of the days listening. Pretty simple to implement.
Serial control of a couple good relays. You could test any reasonable
number of amps in a month. You could even make it interactive. As long
as the tester has no clue as to which amp it being listened to at any
time. Just ABC&D in a sealed black box and some sort of switching.

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. If anything I'd say it's the
other way around. But even if that were so, if you have to listen for a
month to detect some tiny improvement, how important really is that
improvement?

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. A friend once asked me to listen for a change in a song his client
sent out for mastering. The ME claimed he made it "better" but my friend
couldn't hear any difference. I couldn't either, but I also "couldn't tell
if I could tell" until we took both versions of the tune and lined them up
in his DAW. Before we did that, one version might be playing a verse while
the next was at the chorus. Just having a different chord was enough to
throw off any perception of low end clarity and fullness from one version to
the next. But once I set up each tune to play the exact same 5 second
passage - over and over while switching back and forth - I was then able to
conclude with certainty that there was no meaningful difference.

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.

--Ethan