Propeller Head Plaza

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Is this the key to the blind testing problem?

Posted by Tony Lauck on April 24, 2008 at 14:12:01:
"When I was comparing compression settings to see if I could find something acceptable that would still fit on the HD space I had available, I found that I had to be careful because once I had listened to a better version then the poorer one also sounded better. It's as though the clearest image was getting buffered mentally then anything close would just trigger it. Particular details were still audible, they just didn't seem to matter. The effect fades with time and seems to completely reset overnight."

You have offered a plausible explanation of how typical ABX level matched comparisons can fail to detect subtle differences. Were this hypothesis to be accepted it would completely invalidate all null-result double blind tests that weren't designed to control for this effect.

I'm not sure how one would prove or disprove this hypothesis. Perhaps a combination of perceptual tests or pet scans could do the trick. There is a lot going on inside our heads when we listen to music and it's not just in our ears.

Tony Lauck

"Perception, inference and authority are the valid sources of knowledge" - P.R. Sarkar