"John Atkinson" wrote
in message
ps.com
On 10 Feb 2006 in message
. com
John Atkinson wrote:
The changes made in the editing to Dr. Greenhill's text
were examined at length in International Audio Review
and Stereophile in the mid-1980s, whose editors were
supplied copies of the original manuscript.
Just a note that Stereophile's analysis of the differences
between Larry Greenhill's orginal manuscript and the
version that was published in Stereophile Review has
been posted in Stereophile's on-line archives
http://www.stereophile.com/historical/1283cable/ .
(1) Must be a slow day in the Stereophile offices when so much attention is
paid to a 24 year old article.
(2) The analysis must be taken on faith because no relevant raw data is
provided, it only alluded to.
The article in question summarized itself into 4 points:
(1) "The first interesting result is that the listening panel's
preconceptions of cable performance had a large effect on perceived
differences between cables when they knew which cables were in use."
In fact, just another indictment of sighted evaluations.
(2) "Second, differences were still perceived in double-blind testing, but
to a much lesser degree. "
Debunking the idea that nobody hears differences in DBTs. No eyes were poked
out in the execution of these tests.
(3) "Third, panel members were surprised that the differences between cables
were so subtle and difficult to distinguish."
Welcome to the real world.
(4) "Fourth, the performance of different panel members varied widely: there
was one truly amazing "ear" amongst them, and four very good ones. "
In fact the individual panel members were not tested properly if the goal
was to determine whether the observed differences were due to actual
differences in listener acuity, or whether it was due to the lack of enough
data for individual listeners to produce reliable evidence related to this
secondary issue.