This is true, and is often made apparent when someone who claims to hear differences quite easily has to show their stuff without knowing what they are listening to by other means than listening. Random guessing becomes the rule.
That is, hear the differences without non-audible cues.
Trust me, many people think they can hear amazingly small differences until they have to do so by "Just listening".
have you faced this challenge?
Why don't you give us some real-world examples of actual use of positive controls in a DBT.
If you can't, I can.
Your error here is your assumption that there were no tests done with positive controls. You get to be wrong!
You said the people involved have to agree before having a test.
An initial agreement (or not) is not relevant to getting a valid result from a skilled individual.
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I was trying to understand specifically what Jakob2 and rayma were referring to.
A positive control shows that the test can work. That is not a given unless demonstrated.
Using a known reference weight to show that a scale can accurately measure weight.
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Claimants bring the audio components that they claim to make audible difference. The initial step is for others who are there to participate go through non-DBT auditioning (& viewing). If they agree with the claimants, then they proceed with DBT. Sometimes they proceed with DBT anyway due to stubborn claimants.
You've never done this, have you.
Good question.
Conductors are not necessarily good judges of concert hall sound quality because their listening position is acoustically vastly different from that of the listeners.
Nobody really knows what a concert hall sounds like until they have sat in a representative selection of seats which is always more than one or just a few seats.
Sound quality in just about any room including any reasonable concert hall varies with listener location.
That's one reason why recordists often move their mics around, until they obtain the sound quality that they desire. The sound quality is different at different places in the room.
I agree that agreement by the listeners is not an absolute necessity. For example, sometimes listeners are paid to listen, and the cash overcomes their lack of desire.
Agreed. But having ab agreement sure helps with everybody's attitude!
Of course. That would be the basics of test before proceeding. You know someone who doesn't?
The easiest positive control to obtain is that the listeners can still hear the difference they are used to hearing after the system has the switching gear incorporated into it, based on their sighted evaluations.
In reality the general unreliability of sighted evaluations makes this a bit of a sham from the viewpoint of the people who are experienced with this sort of thing and know that these people are perceiving illusions created by their biases.
Another approach that is often used is to add the general difference being evaluated to the program material in variable amounts ranging from very easy to hear to mission impossible.
This is particularly easy to do with things like phase shift, frequency response variations, harmonic distortion, IM noise, and jitter.
IME always true.
Some people seem to want to forget what their hypothesis was when criticizing other people's tests.
Typically, the hypothesis that naive audiophiles have walking in the door is that audible differences among DACs and amps abound and if you don't hear them readily, you are either not trying or deaf.
It is, for all practical intents and purposes difficult or impossible hear difference among most DACs and amps unless they have some fairly grossly measurable defect.
BTW, a high percentage of SETs and NOS DACs have exactly those kinds of defects, but most reasonably good mid fi gear does not.
Falsifying the original naive audiophile hypothesis is pretty easy by its very nature. But, that's not the hypothesis that we hear about once people hear about those failures.
Hi,
Goes both ways really.
Anything anyone claims to hear that someone else seems not to is met with disbelief and a strong demand for proof.
Why not just accept that we all perceive sound differently instead of "thinking" that if you can't hear it whatever it is it can't possibly exist ?
Oh, BTW, in my book audiophiles are not per definition naïve.
Maybe people ought to consult a dictionary before throwing insults for a lot of those so called "naive" audiophiles have been shown to be right on quite a number of occasions over at least 3 decades.
I'm actually a little jealous of all these people that can't hear these differences. Life for them is soooo much simpler.
Cheers,
Goes both ways really.
Anything anyone claims to hear that someone else seems not to is met with disbelief and a strong demand for proof.
Why not just accept that we all perceive sound differently instead of "thinking" that if you can't hear it whatever it is it can't possibly exist ?
Oh, BTW, in my book audiophiles are not per definition naïve.
Maybe people ought to consult a dictionary before throwing insults for a lot of those so called "naive" audiophiles have been shown to be right on quite a number of occasions over at least 3 decades.
I'm actually a little jealous of all these people that can't hear these differences. Life for them is soooo much simpler.
Cheers,
That's called debate and it's allowed on this forum.
There are those who claimed to hear differences from certain components and went in to level matched DBT. That same person failed to distinguish the difference when visual cue wasn't given and volume levels were matched. How about just accepting that the difference perceived was due to volume level difference and not the price difference between electronic audio gear?
AB CCs are both non-magnetic and non-inductive. They do drift higher in value over time, but there are applications where this doesn't matter much, like the input-stage RF filter or bias resistor for the input LTP, or the signal-ground lift resistor. Those are generally the locations where I tend to use ABs if I can't find anything better, like silver-palladium terminated thin-films or metal foils.
From a subjective point of view, there is a certain full-bodied presentation that ABs have, which is generally pleasant-sounding. There may be a lot of resistors that measure better at DC, but don't have the overall balance of an AB over the entire audio spectrum. I can't speak for all Asians, but where I come from, vocals and mids are an important part of the audio experience, and ABs do rather well there.
I believe that calling an audiophile 'naive' in the present context, if he/she shows little or no understanding of sound perception and/or denies the existence of the concept of sound perception, is correct.
Not sure why anyone would call that an insult? Or what that has to do with being right on a number of times?
Jan
Arny said:
Of course, but IME, it goes the way I say a lot more often.
Read any audio forum anyplace, and you'll find 100's and even 1000's of posts that claim audible differences for some of the most ludicrous reasons, all based on sighted evaluations.
Challenging "Can hear" claims is even forbidden on many forums.
Three reasons:
(1) Decades of seeing such claims fail any reasonable scientific theoretical scrutiny. IOW people claim to hear things that if you measure them, they are wayyyyy below the known thresholds of hearing.
(2) Decades of seeing such claims fail any reasonable scientific practical scrutiny. IOW people claim to hear things that if you test them, they end up randomly guessing.
(3) The reliability of the evidence that people present to support their beliefs. Mostly its casual, sighted, non-level matched, non-time-synched listening evaluations or something they read that was written by either someone as naive as them, or some so-called audio authority with a financial interest.
Of course not. You believe you are right, and that I am wrong. I'm not saying that all audiophiles are naive (after all, I'm an audiophile ;-) ), just that its very easy to find naive audiophiles and that I've done so many times in the past.
You obviously presume that you know this audio stuff far better than I.
I don't know what you are talking about. Present your evidence. At this point you appear to be basing your argument on your personal authority. What gives you more right to do that than I? And, that's pretty typical, IME.
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