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In Reply to: Umm posted by RGA on November 13, 2002 at 20:02:04:
I'm not saying there are differences in any particular piece of gear...but trying to disprove claims on bad tests like magazines and AES journals etc is simply spurious.I certainly agree. There is a point in your statement that to me is personally important. I believe that a person who raises questions regarding the current state of the art in DBTs should not automatically be labeled as making unsubsubstantiated claims about cable differences and likened to people who believe in alien abductions, creationism and astrology. Likewise, a person who questions the lack of reliability in sighted auditions because of bias shouldn't be labeled as pushing a point of view that "wire is wire is wire."
I think your point regarding number of trials is very important, and seems to me to be often overlooked by those who point uncritically to reported cable and component DBTs which have supposedly produced null results.
Here's a post where I set out the material I've gathered on the issue of number of trials:
http://www.audioasylum.com/members/mgeneral/messages/887.html
Also see:http://www.audioasylum.com/members/mgeneral/messages/397.html
For an interesting discussion on objectivity.
All of which leads me to tentative conclude that home brew blind tests may be pratically worthless and that it is somewhat unlikely that anyone soon will be conducting reliable DBTs on cables.
Follow Ups:
Is a collection of straw men, and little more.
JJ - Philalethist and Annoyer of Bullies
jj:I'm not sure what article you are referring to. If its the Leventhal JAES article, it may be full of straw men; I just haven't seen any convincing rebuttal to his arguments and I don't know enough to see where he is wrong.
Sorry.He seems to be of the "abx/dbt never found a difference" bunch. Even if you take less that great tests from less than refereed places, they have.
Makes his position tough. He attempted a bit of a whipsaw as well, if I recall.
JJ - Philalethist and Annoyer of Bullies
I have not heard of a Whipsaw?As for the differences of Tape VS CD that was largely because several years ago in BC Canada TDK ran one of those booths where if you could tell the difference between their Chrome II tape, recorded from the cd versus the cd in a blind test you would win some sort of prize. Which of course didn't happen. TDK of course has a conflict of interest, so did the UHF magazine (sort of DBT) that indicated the same kind of thing.
I had asked others on other forums to provide support in AES papers etc, that a recorded tape of cd could be distinguished and came up blanks. What I did get provided were several documents that had nothing to do with Tapes. I was provided with a live performance versus LP from the 30s or something where nobody could distinguish the difference.
Like I replied above...I am getting information fromall the wrong places I presume...but if there is incontributable evidence then RCA, APEX, Yorx etc and all the other "so called" low end companies should be marketing the hell out of the TRUTH and save us from buying non value added jewelry. Besides the "so called" lower end products LOOK WAY BETTER. Pioneer has cool blue lights and some stuff has rosewood side panels and piano blaque lacquer facing on their receivers. Compare that to the butt ugly Brystons with tacky looking handles and the Bryston wins hands down.
I'm perfectly willing to admit that when I listened to the two and thought the Bryston had tightened up the bass response dramatically, that I was under a placaebo effect of some sort. Luckily, I have yet to spend that kind of money on equipment - so I can stop before I get caught in a delusion...or was the Bryston better?
Marketing demonstrations ARE NOT GENERALLY WELL RUN TESTS.I'm not sure what your gripes with the JAES is. Could you be a bit more specific?
As to DBT's, I suggest that you visit JASA or a psychometrics journal.
The AES is generally (although not always) pretty good, but is is (and must remain, to be useful) on the applied end of audio science.
JJ - Philalethist and Annoyer of Bullies
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