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RE: Slagle is the actual scientist here...

>>The problem with your subjectist view of the world, it seems to me, is that words cease to have clear meanings, and claims or assertions are apparently no longer supposed to be endowed with any testable validity.

That's right. Taste, aesthetics ...no testable validity. No universal applicability.

Comes with the territory.

Electronics is a science. Musical audio is not. The less perfect unit in the lab can sound better, and often does.

Indeed, it is a slide into relativity...but that is the nature of human existence, like it or not. Man interfaces with the universe through culture so there is no other path.


>>You say "The problems of clinical blind testing for audio evaluation are
numerous and profound." Can you elaborate on what these problems are?

Long story short...the normal context of aesthetic enjoyment is lost. The test is a totally artificial situation, set up in an unnatural way and foregrounds ways of listening and emphases alien to kicking back and listening to some tunes.

Do you listen to music with the mindset that you are undergoing a test?

What is being tested? The listener or the systems? Seems like the listener is being tested.

Do you consciously try to inventory little details too use in a forthcoming comparison or switch back and forth between systems every 30 seconds while listening to music? Isn't that a super strange thing to do?

What are we looking for "perception of difference?"...what the heck does difference have to do with music listening?

The famed blind test is like a hearing test. Raise your hand when you hear a tone in the left ear. Perceptability of sonic events or phenomena.

Tt has nothing to do with music or what music listeners do in natural music listening situations.

Tests, furthermore, foreground and valorize aspects of reproduction that might be detrimental to enjoyment long term. For instance, bright hyper-detailed presentations tend to fare better in blind tests than they do in extended evaluation in normal listening situations.

I used to work in a high end store and I ran many many "blind auditions." I was a huge seller of Straightwire Cable. God, what a shitty bright cable! I should rot in hell. But people chose to buy it compared with what I thought was much more natural sounding stuff. Why? Bright junps out. Some people do equate "different" with "better" somehow, perhaps.

Depends on the individual but I think there might be trends among groups.

I can I go on and on but how about this as a closing comment. This blind testing apparatus seems to treat listeners as interchangeable entities.

What's worse, statistical analysis totally erases each individual and comes up with a generalized quantity that doesn't necessarily match with any of the individuals in the test. Scientists seem to think this is OK.

Well I think somebody like me, who has worked as a recording engineer professionally, built tons of gear, worked in audio for three decades, and hears a lot of really top notch (and expensive bad) stuff all of the time, or somebody with a lot of recording experience like Triode Kingdom who, like me, could sit at a parametric equalizer with no frequency readout and know how to twist which knobs for desired effect, cannot be replaced by some joker off the street with 20 minutes of listening training.

Everybody can hear but listening, especially critical listening to good audio gear, is a learned skill. Not everybody learns or wants to learn the same things and people are at different levels in the process. there are cultural factors, individual differences in psyiology, hearing damage/loss, and so on. Not to mention the destroyers of science...tastes and preferences.

Basically, I don't care what anybody else thinks because I know that most people out there do not share my exact tastes and preferences and in fact probably never heard anything remotely like what I have at home right now, for instance, or any of my top five favorite speakers.

The problem with tests is that they are totally FAKE. Maybe, I say maybe, they have some "validity" within the artificial conditions and context of the particular test, but there are so many things going on that it is impossible to control or even identify all of the variables.

People who do this work or think it is the last word in validity testing can only do it by ignoring or discounting the many problems, or maybe they never even thought about it.


I say the only proper test is to use X in your normal listening life and take your time. Eventually good. bad, and good enough will sort itself out.

The point is not to convince internet skeptics on DiyA or AA but to find your own path to joy. There is no science for that.



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Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent -- Wittgenstein

Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic

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