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RE: "Accuracy": not simple, alas

If you found my explanation difficult, then I think I made my point. The question of transparency is not simple. :-)

This concerns preference theory. I see there is quite a bit of literature among the marketing theorists on this subject, but most of the interesting looking articles are not worth the $30 that seem to be the cost to read them. A simple example of how objects that have multiple attributes are difficult to rank in a consistent order is the game of "rock, scissors, paper". Which one of these is better? It depends on how you compare them, the basis of the game. The important point to understand is that preferences (as manifest in specific choices, be they answers to questionnaires or purchase decisions) are not just a property of the objects being compared. They are also affected by how the decisions are approached, the order of presentation, etc.

If a collection of audio components differed solely along a single technical dimension, e.g. had the same frequency response and distortion properties but differed only in the level of white noise, then it would be easy for subjects to rank these components according to transparency, and the results would likely be consistent (for most subjects) with the measured results. With multiple dimensions as actually exist with imperfect audio components, the situation is much more complex, even potentially paradoxical.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

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