Stuart, IMnotsoLE, I have to disagree.
An important finding over nearly 2 decades of doing these tests is that 'trying to guess which is which' is fatal. All my very best true golden pinnae do worse (less consistent & reliable) if they 'know' what is being tested.
They describe their feelings when they are most discriminative as being almost Zen like ... letting the Force guide them and paying almost no attention to 'logical' factors. eg dis presentation sounds fast so gotta be da OPA with zillion V/us slew ..
Excuse this New Age BS .. but that's what they tell me .. and that's my own experience too
Thanks to Wayne & Kudos to Einstein ..
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I would agree here that technical details or what is tested should not be disclosed before or during the poll.
I have also confirmed (for myself) how important is amplitude matching. I made for me very similar test (almost same) like the current one, but with amplitudes differing in 0.5dB. With such amplitude difference between recorded files, I got 100% in ABX foobar test ....
I have also confirmed (for myself) how important is amplitude matching. I made for me very similar test (almost same) like the current one, but with amplitudes differing in 0.5dB. With such amplitude difference between recorded files, I got 100% in ABX foobar test ....
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Excuse this New Age BS .. but that's what they tell me .. and that's my own experience too
My own experience has been that there's a positive effect (or no effect), since the listener can know not to worry about (say) bass response when the stimulus is a change in the tweeter. I haven't seen any literature to indicate otherwise.
Pavel is 100% correct about the importance of level matching. One does not perceive small level differences as such.
You would want the described differences to be submitted privately, then correlated. Otherwise, group dynamics and bandwagon will totally take things over.
An important finding over nearly 2 decades of doing these tests is that 'trying to guess which is which' is fatal. All my very best true golden pinnae do worse (less consistent & reliable) if they 'know' what is being tested.
They describe their feelings when they are most discriminative as being almost Zen like ... letting the Force guide them and paying almost no attention to 'logical' factors. eg dis presentation sounds fast so gotta be da OPA with zillion V/us slew ..
Excuse this New Age BS .. but that's what they tell me .. and that's my own experience too
True. I just knew this after the previous test. Before the test I disagreed. I also posted my blind test result on the other thread. It surprised me that the blind impression was so honest and clear. Learning from that, I did my second test without paying attention to details
)I have been misunderstood because my comments were based on the situation where everything has been disclosed and discussed. I'm too fast. Let's see if we can see many strong disagreements later when somebody try to draw any conclusion from the result.
Richard, I wouldn't go along with this. For me, I find hearing's ability to assess the relative far more accurately than the absolute to be very effective in grading - if I listen to something which is very 'atrocious', when a version is heard which is slightly less 'atrocious' then it stands out strongly. At least my hearing adapts very quickly to the 'quality' of what I'm hearing, it pushes the grading to somewhere nearer the middle the more I listen to it, so I then have room on either side to perceive a 'better' or 'worse'.
You mentioned the 'Zen state' in a following post, and I would agree with that - if I'm getting really serious in trying to pick something up aurally then what I'm "hearing" is no longer music, some instrument playing notes - it becomes a rhythm of noises, sounds - a pattern or texture of sine waves hitting my ear-drums, it has nothing to do with musicians entertaining me.
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OK, I voted. Do I get to tell you what I thought?
Lucky you , still trying to figure it out ....Server at the office must be blocking
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Jakob2, thanks for the link to ITU-R BS.1116. IMHO, this is a variation of my ABC test cos I was using this in the 80's for serious work ... not the other way round
Might be.
Afair this ITU-R was based on the method used from mid 80´s in audio compression development. You may have been involved or somebody got the basic idea from your input or it was a parallel independent invention.
As SY pointed out, the basis is a triangle test (for example, 3 samples, task is to sort the odd out, the other two are the same), the ranking task is a different one and the ITU-R puts the open reference into the game.
It depends on the goal of the test.
Obviously we do have similar observations with participants; as i´ve written a couple of times imho it is important for listeners to remain in a state of awareness to notice every possible difference if he does not know what to listen for.
On the other hand, as for example jj pointed out several times, if listeners are trained and know what effect is under test, they can achieve an incredible degree of sensitivity.
I beg to differ; from my experience the A/B paired comparison method is easier for the participants as most of them are doing something like that anyway to decide between different options- not only wrt to audio.
But, the ABC does incorporate sort of a positive control and gives therefore useful information about the listeners participating in the test.
I think we have to consider that there is no "one size fits it all" approach possible.
I don´t know about Foobar, but there is a tool based on java available:
RareWares
@ SY,
as said above, it depends on the hypothesis(es) under test.
At the RWTH in Aachen listeners were routinely taking tests without knowledge about the EUT, to keep expectation bias as low as possible.
Your tweeter example is a good one, as it illustrates the difficulties.
If the loudspeaker is for example a typical two way design, it might be that a different tweeter will nevertheless lead to a different perception of bass reproduction.
If listeners were told upfront that the EUT is the tweeter they might discard their different perception of the bass reproduction, because they could consider it as unlikely.
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