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RE: Bi-Wire Made a considerable improvement

Posted by JBen (A) on February 20, 2012 at 19:00:00

In Reply to: RE: Bi-Wire Made a considerable improvement posted by josh358 on February 20, 2012 at 15:53:56:

Clearly, your are the only one so clueless, Josh. The rest of us have normal well-balanced hearing and are totally aware of how things should sound. Yeah, right! :-))

Shortly after I got my MMGs, I figured that some things may not really "be" at points where they projected from. This was not just on the front stage. Depending on the recording, these little MMGs even displayed true surround from stereo sourcing. My doubts were more aggravating because of the TV being in the middle (which turned out to be a blessing in this room but I did not know it yet).

So, I started checking with 3 pairs of cans, at times. This helped a lot but did not answer all questions. Headphones cannot reproduce spatial clues on some material. More so, if it has unorthodox mixing, miking and/or special effects. Luckily, cross-checking my test music material in other systems eventually led to clarity about what I heard at home.

I was lucky in being able to decide on a core set of test music from the early beginning, which I still use. I did not plan on being systematic but discovered that I was so. And patient also; much more than I ever thought I was. The decision to select a core of music segments made all the difference. I was forced to judge changes based on what happened to these pieces (about 50 segments).

Which is why I know that the proponents of extremist ABXing often have it wrong.

If Josh knows how a segment of music has sounded both, in the same situation, as well as in various situations along time, I'll bet on him to best guage changes anywhere. The more at ease he is, the better he will be at it while listening (do hide that little bag of cannabis from him, please :)

His judgement as to what may be different is being helped by his much richer memory of details contained in that segment of music. As long as no external factors unduly impact his recollection of detail, he will know if something changed. He will know WHAT changed, often without the benefit of replay.

Whether "he likes the change or not" will not impact his judgment too much because his view is more objective: he can "see" the change. For now, he has a far better item to hold, a more defined: "what changed". He can decide if he likes it or not later.

The ABXers pretend that people make blind judgments while in unnatural listening settings, often with unknown material, and/or with the implied pressure of someone elses expectation. Give us a break, folks! The brain easily gets thrown off balance when it comes to this kind of change detection scheme. For lack of a better evaluation reference, we default to the basic instincts. It is THEN that too much undefined "likes/dislikes" influence can easily throw things off.

On the critics & reviewers, it is understandable as long as we know their limitations. Hopefully, if they keep a solid core of reference music, at the very least they have a key variable well in check. Still, some things do get stretched to the limits of believability, don't they?

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