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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: Let me get this out of my system...

It was only meant to illustrate how we can hear what we expect to hear, what we wish to hear, even when something very different is what is there.

You seem to miss my point. Thanks to the skill of the recording engineer (it wasn't RvG BTW), it is possible to convey - under the right listening conditions - the ambiance of the recording venue. If the conditions aren't right, the illusion is less effective. To say that you are hearing only what you want to hear is IMHO to misunderstand the nature of the listening process and to under-estimate the skill of the recording engineer.

What makes your Sunday morning/headphones percept more "there" (as you put it) than your Saturday night/Rioja one? What leads you to assume that one result is somehow "right" and the other one is mere self-deception?

The brain is not a mirror - perception is an active process. In the visual field, we don't see "images" of things, we see things. The same is true for hearing.

If it's any consolation, I let pass the opportunity to make it many more times than I actually bother to respond.

Not much consolation really because, though you respond to my quip, you ignore the more substantive point that you are looking for a simple "solution" to a complex issue.

I have never conducted a double blind study or any other kind of research study. I always commissioned qualified professional research firms to do them.

I assumed that. Of course "double blind" tests in professional hands are a good market research tool (and professional opinion pollsters are a lot more rigorous than many give them credit for - what their clients do with the results is a different matter).

What I do not accept is that MR industry techniques can be extrapolated to the psychological/perceptual arena. "Audiophiles" can (and do) blabber on about "blind tests" for days at a time but they're still talking nonsense.

You, it seems to me, are one of them - you regularly argue here that "DBTs" performed by any Tom, Dick or Harry in the audio context typically produce more robust psycho-acoustic data than any listening tests. They don't.

Curiously, in this case, you're doing the opposite. You're right to argue that Gordon's wav/lossless "blind test" performed in an unknown manner on unknown subjects at a trade show (!) without statistical analysis of the "results" is not robust and that his listening tests are probably more valid.

It seems to me that you argue that almost any type of "blind test" is superior to a listening test - unless the results challenge your presumptions about, say, file formats. You can't have it both ways.


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