"Jacob Kramer" wrote in message
om
(John Atkinson) wrote in message
. com...
"Michael McKelvy" wrote in message
link.net...
This is excerpted from a thread on the diyaudio.com website
I thought Arny might wish to weigh in either here or there on
the matter.

You didn't include the link to the Stereophile article on
double-blind testing. It is http://www.stereophile.com/features/141 .

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Thank you for posting this--it is very informative. I wish I had read
this a long time ago.

There are three problems here that I had suspected for a while. The
first, which isn't the main focus of the article, is generalizability,
which Clark conceded at the outset. Results are only valid for the
two pieces of equipment under test. Period.

I'm glad that you finally figured this out Kramer after only how many years
of uselessly pontificating about DBTs?

The second is the conclusion reached about equipment from a small
number of trials. The clearest example of this was the conclusion
that PAS and Yamaha sounded the same based on a handful of trials at
Sunshine Stereo.

Zippy repeatedly claimed that there were mind-blowing differences between
these amps. All of a sudden you're haggling over the number of trials in the
test Kramer?

The third is the difficulty of identifying subtle differences in an
ABX test.

It's no problem at all, if the subtle differences are in fact audible.

A further important fact emerged in this exchange, which it is
interesting to see has been of such longstanding duration. And that
is the tendency of this same small group of men to impugn the
objectivity and integrity of those who criticize ABX, to claim
criticisms are the result of not taking such tests, and to expound the
virtues of ABX in whatever space available no matter what the topic at
hand.


It's not our fault that ABX critics are generally either greatly mistaken or
just plain frauds.

This has clearly been an ongoing multimedia gesamtkunstwerk
since at least 1986.

Ignorance of Clark, David L., "High-Resolution Subjective Testing Using a
Double-Blind Comparator", Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Vol. 30
No. 5, May 1982, pp. 330-338. noted.

There is also a weird tendency to use
nonsensical logic and nonsequiter in response to basic logical
objections.

Please see the collected writing of a certain Ludivic Mirabel.

For instance Nousaine's interpretation of the probability
of a difference being heard as a probability of a difference being
present.

Double-talk from Kramer.