There we go on again about "sighted bias".
It exists . It affects especially powerfully those who don't care very
much if they
are listening at home or in a store to one kind of wallpaper noise or
another , to one kind of
deafening noise or another produced by the combined efforts of the
performers and their audience at a rock concert, or when "listening" to
one kind of car "music" or another.
They are ready-made advertisers fast food.
They are what makes American business great and booming. It is that
kind of bias that makes you quote triumphantly that 99% orefer solid
state.
The day I'd agree with 99% about anything involving art: music and
music reproduction, literature, painting I'd know that Alzheimer did
its work.
It is the small fraction of that 1% that make the lasting difference.

You have no evidence about how many anf what kind of people are
affected by brand names. Everybody? Prove it. A poet or a mathematician
as much as an average teenager?

You don't know. But you talk as though it were a universally, evenly
distributed characteristic quite independent of musical experience and
training, education, sophistication , gender and age.
Actually I do think choosing blind is easier. It helps to
concentrate.
And that's it. Period. Any protocol such as your ABX is destructive of
my attention and the evidence that it helps others to discriminate does
notexist. On the contrary so far everything has been coming up
"the same" in ABX sessions..
You're putting yourself in an untenable position when you say
"That's because IT IS all the same: amps , preamps, cdplayers etc. And
loudspeakers are not worth testing because "Everybody knows they are
different". So in fact nothing in audio benefits from your
"testing".
And in reality NO ABX reports with a positive outcome ever
appeared in a scientific, peer reviewed mag, such as JAES,
Arny you're too bright not to see the pointlessness of such
argument.
Why don't you give it a rest? Retire to a Buddhist monastery for
a year or two of meditation. I'm told it does wonders .
Ludovic Mirabel


Arny Krueger wrote:
"Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote in message
ups.com


If all amps sound the same, and all CD players sound the
same, and all preamps sound the same, and all wire sounds
the same, why would one even bother to test them?

Not all of them do.

If the
measurements are within 'audible limits' as has been
discussed in other threads, it seems very pointless for
hobbyists to bother with. Just read the spec sheet.

Common spec sheets are far from sufficient to determine from measurements
that the piece of equipment is sonically blameless.

We know that tubes and LP can sound different from SS and
CD.

So say the least.

We know that some people have preferences both ways.

Currently its about 99.99% prefer SS, and the rest either don't know or
prefer toobs.

We know that speakers sound different. We know that
speaker selection is a preference. There is no need to
blind test.

Not so fast. Even though hearing differences between speakers is generally
pretty easy, there's still the matter of preference. Preferences can be
affected by sight. For example, if you know that a certain speaker is highly
regarded and another is unknown, will your evaluation be guided by just
sound quality or will it be affected by the reputation of the
highly-regarded speaker?

I do not claim to be an 'audio researcher' or a
manufacturer. Are you? And if you are, I think that you
should use whatever test protocol suits your purposes as
an audio researcher or manufacturer. Personally, I get
the impression that most of us here are hobbyists, and
NOT 'audio researchers' or 'manufacturers.'

It's all about how badly you want to reliably know which audio products
sound best.

If you want an evaluation that is colored by your preconceived notions, or
the appearance or reputation of the products being compared, then by all
means do sighted evaluations.

If you want to know which is best based solely on sound quality, then do
bias-controlled evaluations.

It's a matter of personal choice - the means to achieve either outcome are
well-known and can be used with only a reasonable amount of difficulty.