vlad wrote:

John Atkinson wrote:
At HE2005 -- see http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate --
Arny Krueger made the point that sighted listening changes the
listener's state of mind. This, of course, is correct, but so does
blind
listening, though in a different manner. I offer some further thoughts
on
this at http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/406awsi .

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


I read both articles carefully. I must say that John Atkinson simply
cannot reason logically. It is either the guy cannot think logically,
or he is intentionally clouding the issue.

Let's look into the first article. He claims that given two amps -
SS and tube he failed to distinguish them on the base of sound alone
(in DBT). So far so good.

Then in a second phase he acquired SS amp and started listening to it
in sighted conditions. What it means that his judgment was influenced
by other factors, not only the sound. Subjectivists here and on RAHE
spent tons of space claiming that the brain is a powerful machine that
can be influenced by anything. I think nobody in objectivist camp did
argue with that. So in the light of the fact that John's brain had
additional information - SS, brand, etc. it (brain) came to the
conclusion that it does not like it.

John explained it by "listening fatigue". In reality it could be
anything. Simply put, if John would say that he did not like the sound
because he did not like design of the front panel, everybody would
laugh at him. But "listening fatigue" sounds respectable, is not
it?

I would guess that if John had any bias against SS gear, this piece of
information would influence him.

But John did not stop there but immediately he makes a conclusion that
DBT was defective because later in sighted condition he (John) did not
like the sound of SS amplifier. The purpose of DBT was to establish if
the sound alone can be a discriminating factor between two amps. Turned
out that for John it was not the case. End of story.

But John changed conditions, threw more information in listening test
that helped him to make a distinction between two amps and used this to
complain about DBT.

I always suspected that Stereophile is a fraud, ("infinite resolution
of LP" from Michael Fremer comes to mind) but now I am even more
convinced.

vova


As I think I mentioned to JA at the show, the obvious thing to do
once he'd decided after a long audition period, that the SS
amp actually *didn't* sound as good as -- much less the same as --
the tube amp, was to do another DBT *at that point*. Surely if
the difference had revelaed itself as palpably as he claimed,
he'd now pass a DBT, and one could move on to the more interesting
question of what it was about *the two amps* that caused the
difference.






___
-S
"Excuse me? What solid proof do you have that I'm insane?" - soundhaspriority