Blind Listening Tests & Amplifiers

[nw_avphile]

Originally posted by carlosfm
If you have a disc that has very good sound, what difference does it make to know how many op-amps has the recording passed through

I agree completely! I'm just trying to say that many (if not most) recordings that audiophiles consider to sound very good have passed through a great many op-amps some claim sound terrible. There's a conflict there.

If the recording still sounds very good after having been through dozens of cheap op-amps, can't it still sound very good after passing through one more cheap op-amp (in your CD player or pre-amp)?

And yes it is an old argument. It doesn't go away because audiophiles don't have a credible explanation why things matter so much on the smaller (playback) side of the signal chain but don't matter nearly as much on the bigger (recording) side of the chain.

[SY]

Eric, just remember the story of Clever Hans.

[Tube_Dude]

More than that, I believe, and it's scientifically proved, that women can hear better than men.

I' m surprised, if that was true, why there are so few women audiophile??

I heard the Halcros on a portuguese distributor, and it's still there on the big demo room.

Strange, a friend of mine (also member of this forum) as been at this demonstration at the Portuguese distribuitor (Transon) and they told me that the sound was nothing special...
One more case of subjectivism...in who must i believe??? in you or him??
That's the problem of subjetivism!!
One man ceeling is another man floor!!

[Peter Daniel]

Originally posted by Tube_Dude



One man ceeling is another man floor!!

In this case you should rather say: one mans floor is another mans ceiling

[nw_avphile]

Originally posted by mrfeedback
More of your consistent negativity.

By far, I've been MOST consistent about suggesting people remove psychological bias in their listening so they can really trust their ears. What's negative about that?

Originally posted by mrfeedback
I find women's hearing to be extremely discriminating, and if they like a sonics change they will say so, and if not they will say so too.

I've never questioned women's hearing. Not once. I only questioned their motives for making casual comments. If you want to have them participate in some blind listening, it may well be they can hear things many men cannot. But taking a non-audiophile spouse's casual comments as she walks into a room as "proof" new op-amps made the sound better is a pretty big stretch when people have a hard time hearing differences of a much greater magnitude under much better conditions. I'm assuming here that both the new and old op-amps were working well enough to assure reasonably low distortion, flat frequency response, etc.

Originally posted by mrfeedback
Mr nw_avphile, it seems that your hearing skills are not up to scratch.

Well if that's the case, I'm in good company--the editors of Stereophile included (the Carver blind tests) and the people who own and work at high-end dealers (the Sunshine challenge and my own experiences). Besides, all I'm advocating is that people judge equipment by what THEY can hear with their own ears once you remove they psychological bias of knowing what they're listening to. So my hearing skills don't matter.

[nw_avphile]

An episode of the Candid Camera TV show did a fake wine tasting where they had four filled wine glasses in front of four different bottles of wine. They had various subjects come in to taste each of the four and offer their comments and opinions. They all gave very different descriptions of each one, and were disbelieving when told afterwards that all four glasses were poured from the same bottle!

Yeah, it's wine, not audio, but it shows the incredible psychological bias us humans display in subjective matters. It's hard to argue something very similar does not happen when listening to amplifiers.

The above example strongly suggests if we took the same amplifier circuitry (say a Gainclone if you like) and "hid" it in four different high-end large well known chassis and let a group of GoldenEars audition them under whatever non-blind conditions they wanted, I have no doubt they'd all hear plenty of differences between them.

I'd further suggest their opinions would align around the external appearance of the amplifier. If one chassis was from a Pass XA series amp, I'm sure the comments would lean towards what the community praises (and/or dislikes) about Pass amps, etc.

Finally, I'd suggest if you conducted this test blind, all the perceived differences would indeed disappear because there were none to begin with! Think about it.

You never gave me the link SY, but it appears you had something like this in mind back in December (i.e. the "Tube-O-Later")?

[SY]

You never gave me the link SY, but it appears you had something like this in mind back in December (i.e. the "Tube-O-Later")?

I'm missing the context. Something like what? Hiding "good" and "bad" components in a box with a switch, which randomly chooses "good" and "bad"? That's still something I want to do, assuming I can get someone to donate those expensive high-fashion parts and connectors (I have the switch and I can afford "bad" components).

But I'm not sending that box to Fred, he knows what to measure. This gimmick is for a listening test.

[nw_avphile]

Christer asked:

SY,

since I think it is relevant to this thread, has anything happened
to the experiment you and dorkus were planning before
Christmas?

And you responded in this post:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showt...381#post150381

My impression was you were planning to use Radio Shack parts inside a fancy looking box or something like that and see how many GoldenEars would think it sounded wonderful but I'm just guessing? Is there a previous thread on this? In what forum?

[mikek]

Originally posted by Fantastic
Hi Mikek,
Before I close this topic I should add that your attitude is healthy.
You must inquire about what others perceive about you either by asking or by observing how they respond to you. That way you could possibly bypass the'veil' of your own bias about yourself. That way you can understand what you really are - something very difficult to do and sometimes very difficult to accept !
Like they say - can you recognise the person you see in the mirror ? Not as simple as it looks.
A word of caution - always remember that getting an opinion is easy - getting a ( relatively ) unbiased honest one is tough.

....i agree......
cheers.

[SY]

Ah, OK, that clears it up. The experiment I propose goes like this:

Inside a sealed box, there's a switch (very high quality) and two pairs of high pass filters, with the corner frequency being rather low (like 10 Hz). One pair is made from cooking-grade components, steel leads, low price, too easy to get and pay for to be any good, but measurably OK. Call it "Radio Shack," if you like. The other pair is super-duper fashion-audio parts, preferably hand-made by Japanese monks and carrying an enormous price tag. treated with magic goop, if available. The two are checked to make sure that the transfer functions are tolerably close, with the Radio Shack stuff trimmed if necessary.

The switch has, say, 20 positions. Position 1 is Radio Shack. Position 2 is Japanese Zen Master. The other positions are randomly wired to one or the other, with a key sheet kept by a neutral party (I suggested Nelson Pass, but he wisely stayed far, far away form that discussion). The box is sent to someone who firmly believes that he can hear the difference between Zen and Radio Shack. He can pick any 10 of the switch positions and take as long as he likes to decide which are Radio Shack and which are Zen. He can do it any way he wants except measuring. Alone, with his wife, with his audiogeek buddies, whatever.

He returns the box to me and sends his list of guesses to the score-keeper. The score keeper will provide me with the raw score and I can then send the box to the next victim. If overall, the scores are random, that's an interesting piece of data. If one person scores significatly above chance, the test is repeated with the remaining 10 positions. If that same person scores significantly above chance again, it's pretty probable that there is audibility and that we're not dealing with so-called "lucky coins."