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I responded to the Geddes post 8 minutes before you posted this !

You have no idea what Geddes was testing, and he was also talking about the reliability of a very small group of eight audiophiles. Can we apply that experience to ALL audiophiles?

YOU WROTE:
"... then how can one take any (DBT) test result seriously?"
MY REPLY
How can anyone take any sighted audition comments seriously?

Your logic problem, besides jumping to conclusions that suport your pre-existing opinion, is that I've never claimed the results of any particular blind audition would apply to YOUR ears.

What I have said is audiophiles frequently (almost always) report hearing differences in sighted auditions, but less frequently report hearing differences in sighted SPL-matched auditions, and much less frequently hear differences in blind auditions.

The consistent result of reducing potential reasons for audiophiles reporting differences, reasons that could not affect the true sound quality of a component (attitudes, beliefs, expectations and A-B SPL differences) ... is fewer reported A-B differences.

Three decades of evidence strongly suggests audiophiles frequently imagine hearing differences among components and/or mistake small SPL differences as meaningful sound quality differences during sighed auditions.

Geddes post really supports what I've said for years --"golden ears" are mainly a figment of an audiophile's imagination.

Real golden ears who hear component differences much better than everyone else must be rare, or maybe they don't exist at all.

If real golden ears were not very rare, I'd be able to name one who could reliably hear differences among wires (in front of witnesses) when listening to music with the brands/models hidden ... but I can't.

Nor can you.

I've never asked fellow audiophiles to rely on "other ears" for their purchase decisions -- I have reminded them that many audiophiles have found their actual ability to differentiate among components in a controlled listening experiments was not as good as expected -- and usually not even close to what they expected.

And that could be true of any audiophile.

No matter how strongly he believes he "knows what he hears".

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  Kimber Kable  

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