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In Reply to: RE: What might be a mistake to you could be a way of life for Atkinson, et al posted by stehno on November 03, 2017 at 17:57:17
If I thought I had superior listening skills and I found that a lot of people couldn't hear what I was hearing I'd want to prove it. Especially if I were working in the audio industry in some capacity and it was relevant to my job. I'd be quickly exasperated with the claims that things sounded the same when I knew they didn't.
Why doesn't Stereophile do occasional blind tests to compare speakers, electronics, cables and publish the results. It wouldn't need to be the last word in scientific testing. A difference that can only be heard in an anechoic chamber under tightly controlled conditions is irrelevant to readers.
Put together a system that the staff finds revealing and use it to do comparisons. If Stereophile staff could listen, reliably tell the difference and then describe it I'd have much better information than I get from reading a description of differences that, for all I know, are imagined. Just because blind testing isn't a perfect solution doesn't mean it's not helpful. It could certainly establish a line between difference magnitude. If you can reliably discern a difference with blind testing then it must be more audible than a difference you believe to exist but that you can't reliably identify.
The same goes for manufacturers. If I were a manufacturer of expensive components that people were saying didn't sound any better than cheaper ones I'd want to prove my case. I know Harman does/did this. I guess they had "trained" listeners so maybe they learned to prefer the Revel sound but just being able to demonstrate that the differences exist is a step in the right direction.
As a consumer I'd certainly be more likely to upgrade if I were convinced that I was making a real upgrade rather than just paying more for the same thing. Even if I didn't hear it myself I might make the leap knowing that the improvement was real and I'd probably learn to appreciate it over time. Audio seems to be like that. You don't necessarily hear the improvement right away. You listen for a while, get used to the sound but don't understand the improvement until you go back to the old sound to compare.
Follow Ups:
> Why doesn't Stereophile do occasional blind tests to compare speakers,
> electronics, cables and publish the results.
We have done so over the years.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Wouldn't blind tests just muddy the waters even more? Some people like bright, some like warm. Some have super sensative hearing, some have poor hearng. Some may favor the music selection vs some may hate it.For me, i would think the "science" or "under the hood" of MQA is where the proof lies. If most people hear something just slightly louder, they see that a sound improvement. If an MP3 file had some simple EQ change over the hi rez master file, the general public ( and many audiophiles) would pick the MP3
Dale Clark
www.arcpictures.com
Edits: 11/05/17
It's a tiny percentage of what you do, though. Since there's a fair amount of ambiguity in audio I'd think anything that could be nailed down would be a big plus. Being able to demonstrate that differences exist would be nailing something down.
> It's a tiny percentage of what you do, though.
Correct. We haven't done any for some years now. The most recent was a test
organized by a third party where Michael Fremer and I differentiated cables
under single-blind conditions.
> Being able to demonstrate that differences exist would be nailing something
> down.
Except that no-one takes any notice of the findings. More than 30 years ago
I used an ABX box to test if inverting polarity was audible. After a training
session, I scored 19/20 correct at identifying if the absolute polarity was
positive or negative. This result shows that the effect is audible to a highly
significant degree. Yet no-one at the time or since then has admitted that my
results meant anything about the audibility of absolute polarity.
So even we go to all the trouble of following your suggestion, nothing is
ever "nailed down."
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
when they like the conclusion(s).
I think you should put a listening test section on the website and any time you do one, put it there so people who appreciate that sort of thing can browse through the history of it. I can't be the only one who finds this sort of thing interesting. It seems to me that there should be 3 basic parts to the review process. The subjective, descriptive review that you have now, the measurements that you have now, and some blind/double-blind testing to make sure that what you think you hear is real and not imagined or so minor that it can't be detected in a test. It may not be practical to do it in every review but whatever you've got is certainly relevant to the process.
I, for one, have to defend JA somewhat on this issue. I used to routinely perform blind tests, and less occasionally perform double-blind tests - simply to make sure I am not deluding myself from expectation bias.
It gets boring after a while, as I have never once had a sighted test result differ from a blind or double-blind test. In the end its just a waste of time for me.
For a magazine with at least a 30% subscriber "churn" rate, it would probably make sense to run a blined or double-blind test at least once a year so that new subscribers could have more faith in the reviewer's capabilities.
I recall Fremer (in particular) used to often mention how he would routinely score 5/5 correct in double-blind tests conducted by others.
I don't doubt that it's boring and a pain in the butt. I also don't want to be someone who criticizes JA no matter what he does. There are plenty of others doing that. On the other hand, if you always have the same results whether you're blind or not then there's nothing to be nervous about. The same would be the case for all trained/golden-eared folks. If you're confident then why not prove your case. It seems bizarre that you'd be on AA trashing reviewers when you could easily prove in a blind test that there are in fact differences between the products in question.
Once again, I'm sure that there are people that hear things that I don't. I don't know how to tell the difference between those that really do and those that only pretend to without some sort of proof. It seems like I should assume people who claim to hear differences but who have excuses for not proving it are not as confident as they seem.
> > Once again, I'm sure that there are people that hear things that I don't. I don't know how to tell the difference between those that really do and those that only pretend to without some sort of proof. < <Why do you care what others think?
With regards to wine, I am in exactly the same position that you are to audio. I can tell the difference between a $200 bottle of wine and a $5 bottle of wine. I can tell differences between various wines all at around the same price (say $20 a bottle). But it's just not that important to me. I don't drink that much wine, and when I drank more I would just find something I liked would buy it again. Unfortunately unlike audio products, what was a good product last year may be a bad product this year. So it is something of a moving target.
If you are happy with the sound of your audio system, why do you care what anybody else thinks about it? If there are magazines and websites devoted to the subjective evaluation of these products, why do you care who is "right" and who is "wrong"? I just don't get it.
It's like I always say, if you are happy with the sound of lossy compressed music files played back on some kind of "smart" phone, count your blessings and save your money for something you enjoy, like travel or some hobby or donating money to a worthy charity.
Edits: 11/04/17
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