Shanefield said he used Magneplanars. MG-II. When I played with polarity, I was using some highly modified Dynaudio Consequences. The differences to my ears were pretty evanescent- not zero, but not easy to detect. Perhaps if I used test tones or speakers with more second harmonic, it might have been more, ummm, revealing.
And now he has a gun!
Anyway I was thinking along the same lines. ie a technological fix that takes an administrator totally out of the picture. You could visit a booth which was there to test your ability to hear real cable differences. The booth would use cables that did measure differently and you would know this. At the end of the day it is about 1. the audibility of differences and not whether they exist or not and 2. Whether it is actually possible to make a watertight case either for or against.
While that could be a factor i´d assume that the training TG will be able to do in front is a good countermeasure.
The test protocol proposed is a conservative one, which means it favors the nil hypothesis, but that depends merely on the small number of trial and the "detection of sameness" problem. Both can be ruled out with proper training under test conditions.
If the detection ability of the participant is high than a small number of trials is sufficient to keep error type 2 risk low and a high detection ability means that the participant must be able to percept sameness with high probability.
Normally, i´d guess, that TG will notice that it is not an easy task and will also notice that it gets easier with more training.
Wishes
I haven´t read the book, so only know Johnsen´s AES convention paper on this subject from 1991, but if you knew from the book the phrase "triple blind" than Johnsen did describe in his book his blind tests for polarity. And as said before these weren´t double blind, but it makes me wonder why Shanefield insisted that Johnsen should at least do single blind tests, because he already had done that.
Johnsen book is clearly not aimed at the scientific community but more to the music listeners. And while Shanefield is of course right, that it is essential for science to take all variables out of the game (which means to aovid loudspeakers with asymmetrical distortions) what should the music listener do?
Look at these statements:
(1) not strongly audible to most people, (2) not usually audible above 500Hz (more so below), (3) possibly not as audible over loudspeakers which are comparatively free of asymmetry effects (such as second harmonic distortion)
means in other words, could be strongly audible to some people, might be audible above 500 Hz sometimes (especially to those people that might be susceptible to this effect?! ) is more so below 500 Hz and might be not as audible over certain loudspeakers (but is accordingly to that over loudspeakers not free from asymmetry effects)
Normal logic would suggest, that the normal listener should try if he could hear the effect and feels that it is as important to him as Johnsen thinks it would be.
After that he could try if another loudspeaker without those asymmetrical effects really prevents him from the perception of the "wood effect" .
His reasoning about the logic of any delusion argument is strange indeed.
"By the way, people who don't hear the effect do not need to do blind experiments, according to the way I see the logic. Only people who claim to hear something need the blindness, to be sure it's not imagination. (If you don't hear it, how can it be imagination? Of course, you might be somehow suppressing your normal perceptions, but a blind test wouldn't help that.)"
One can percept something non existent because one believes it is existant.
Otoh, one can not percept something existent because one believes it is not existent.
Thats not only the scientifically justified description but even the normal day experience will confirm this. Think of SY´s often used magician; you wouldn´t argue that we are not able to detect ( because its below under our given perception threshold) that someone take our wristwatch, would you?
This covers only the unintentional effects, if someone is intentionally surpressing his perceptions, than a "triple blind" (which means that the participant doesn´t know what effect will be tested) will help.
It is a bit exaggerated (for example i´ve never stated that i have plenty of subjects wiht superb listening abilities).
To do this for publishing in a peer review journal is simply much more effort than to do it for fun or confirming something useful for daily work.
And especially a cable double blind is a quite elaborate design if all aspects should be covered.
Wishes
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@ fredex,
forgot to mention the obvious fact, that TG is highly motivated to not fulfill the expermenter expectation, which itself could create a problem, but again the training could work against this.
A similar problem (that seems to be related to the "fourth hand anecdote" ) is known as demand characteristics:
Mental Imagery > The Problem of Demand Characteristics in Imagery Experiments (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Wishes
forgot to mention the obvious fact, that TG is highly motivated to not fulfill the expermenter expectation, which itself could create a problem, but again the training could work against this.
A similar problem (that seems to be related to the "fourth hand anecdote"
) is known as demand characteristics:Mental Imagery > The Problem of Demand Characteristics in Imagery Experiments (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Wishes
Jakob,
How could that be a problem? Assuming you mean he is motivated to detect differences, that's OK, isn't it? The results will show if he did or didn't. I don't see how this motivation could skew the results.
jd
If motivation is too strong it could lead to higher stress, which could affect the test results, especially if the conditions were unfamiliar.
My above post was a bit short in this respect, because this motivation helps in our case as it lowers the probability that the linked demand characteristic could take place.
As posted before rdf and i were concerned about possible influence in tests like the "famous" Meyer/Moran where participants don´t need to guess about the expected outcome of the test.
In the meantime i´d forgotten to search in my archives and couldn´t remember the correct phrase. In german this behaviour is called "Hypothesen-Raten" (translated guess of hypothesis) but the correct phrase is "demand characteristics" .
Wishes
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Well, obviously it will affect nearby plants - They like to be spoken to nicely.
So yes, it matters.
I like plants
Finally, a verifiable, repeatable, logical reason to throw away all those soldered coat hangers.
Big question is, what will I use for room treatment if I rehang all those clothes on the floor, in the closet?
Maybe if I heat-shrink the solder joints, they'll be easier to wipe. (I gotta stop filming pornos in my listening room.)
Actually, it's not at all similar to the situation at hand, no moreso than rdf's mind control hypothesis. MAJOR differences include:
1. Subjects were not consciously aware of the bias that the "experimenters" had
2. Subjects had no bias of their own going into the "test"
3. "Experimenters" were presented to the subjects as neutral authority figures
4. Subjects did not previously know the experimenters
If we are to accept the analogy as apt, then TG is already ruined since he's ware that I am highly skeptical of the non-mundane cable claims. And in fact, so is any audiophile. Wow! You have created the perfect, hermetic, universal excuse!
I assume you didn't actually read the paper, else you would have understood that it's irrelevant and that the statistics were not exactly overwhelming.
edit: It's actually unclear that the subjects and the "experimenters" did not know one another in each case. There is no mention of that as a variable in the paper, so presumably they did not. But that IS a presumption.
SY, we both know that Jon was there (and knows) when jneutron debunked Hawksfords "Essex Echo" embarrassment. Yet there it is, in true "subjectivism" (fallacy) form, in the morass of "references". As if that never happened.
Conclusion ahead captain....evade, evade!!!
cheers,
AJ
Sad actually, in a couple of months Matti Otala will again have discovered that amplifiers have PIM and it creates in-harmonic frequencies and the establishment supressed him to take the credit.
I am quite capable of reading something and forming my own opinion to it's merit.
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