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#41
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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. |
#42
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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). |
#43
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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. |
#44
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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! ;-) |
#45
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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. |
#46
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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. |
#47
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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. |
#48
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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". |
#49
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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 |
#50
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#51
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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. :) |
#52
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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 |
#53
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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. |
#54
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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. |
#55
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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. |
#56
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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 |
#57
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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. |
#58
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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. |
#59
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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 |
#60
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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 |
#61
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"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...... |
#62
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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. |
#63
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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. |
#64
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"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. |
#65
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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 |
#66
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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. |
#67
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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 |
#68
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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 |
#69
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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". |
#70
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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. ;-) |
#71
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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. ;-( |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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"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 |
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"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 |
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"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 |
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"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 |
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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. |
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