On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:54:54 -0800 (PST), Clyde Slick
wrote:
On 18 Ian, 00:15, Oliver Costich wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:52:40 -0800 (PST), John Atkinson
wrote:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1200...?mod=hpp_us_in...
Money quote: "I was struck by how the best-informed people at the
show -- like John Atkinson and Michael Fremer of Stereophile
Magazine -- easily picked the expensive cable."
So that's that, then. :-)
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
From the article: Using two identical CD players, I tested a $2,000,
eight-foot pair of Sigma Retro Gold cables from Monster Cable, which
are as thick as your thumb, against 14-gauge, hardware-store speaker
cable. Many audiophiles say they are equally good. I couldn't hear a
difference and was a wee bit suspicious that anyone else could. But of
the 39 people who took this test, 61% said they preferred the
expensive cable.
Back to reality: 61% correct in one experiment fails to reject that
they can't tell the difference. If the claim is that listeners can
tell the better cable more the half the time, then to support that you
have to be able to reject that the in the population of all audio
interested listeners, the correct guesses occur half the time or less.
61% of 39 doesn't do it. (Null hypothesis is p=.5, alternative
hypothesis is p.5. The null hypthesis cannot be rejected with the
sample data given.)
In other words, that 61% of a sample of 39 got the correct result
isn't sufficient evidence that in the general population of listeners
more than half can pick the better cable.
So, I'd say "that's hardly that".
you seem to be mixing difference with preference, you reference both,
for the same test.
For the purpose of statistical analysis it makes no difference.
And just what is the general population of
listeners.
You tell me. I presume that those who attend CES and would be a good
one to use. What would you use and how would you construct a simple
random sample from it?
Are you testing the 99% who don't give a rat's
ass anyway? If so, so what. Or are you testing people who actually
care.