Expectation bias - the listener is being asked to hear any difference that might exist between the devices (or no difference) - rather than the relaxed natural evolving of an opinion about the sound. Like my wife said to me unsolicited over Christmas after the music was playing for a couple of hours in the background (& she doesn't take any interest in Hifi) - "that really sounds very good". I know other biases were at play here but of a different nature
I guess my point is that when the idea of a "test" is raised then it changes the ear/brain relationship in the listener.
The inability to peek and validate one's conscious or unconscious biases.
An important point is that ABX is one of many blind testing formats, i.e., it is just one of many DBT formats. One can also do triangle (my favorite) or repeated preference/ranking. The latter requires a lot more trials for statistical significance, but some people prefer it.
The most difficult part is accepting the results if they don't comport with your wishes.
That's exactly correct. It does no good to eliminate one form of bias but then introduce another (Clever Hans, for example). And that's also why DOUBLE blind is important- it is far too easy, especially with spouses, to unconsciously transmit and receive unintentional nonauditory cues.
And my point was questioning whether in listening, modifying then listening again, you are NOT listening for changes ??
That doesn't compute!
And that anecdotal "wife from the kitchen" stuff is rather tired and has zero value.
Once upon a time when I was an audiophile, the common wisdom and advice was to tell people to select audio components based on what sounded to them like live music. People actually used to attend live music in those days even if it was only a high school orchestra, band, or church choir and pipe organ recital so there was some expectation of familiarity with it among most of the population. Once I became even a little experienced and sophisticated at listening to expensive audio equipment, I realized none of it did. That's when I started thinking about trying to find out why.
Today, I think few people hear live music anymore (Grateful Dead doesn't count) or at least they don't hear it very often. Small wonder some people buy simply what they like. That's okay if you don't pretend that it's high fidelity. What I find not okay is that the price of much equipment in the category that is called "high end" has little to do with its intrinsic worth either insofar as the cost to research and manufacture it or by its performance compared to much less expensive alternatives. The cult mentality of those who manufacture it, advertise and review it, and sell it is designed specifically to deter any rational thought being given to what you are actually getting and putting it in context of what you are paying for it. This is because when viewed in that light none of it stands up to what I call the smell test. Where every other area of electronics has evolved to where you get more and more performance for less and less money over time, TV sets and computers for example, this niche seems to constantly head in exactly the opposite direction.
Personally, as someone with a lifetime of experience with engineers, scientists, manufacturers, and other people who create and sell products, I refuse to call tinkering research, clumsy hand wiring workmanship, inconsistent manufacturing practices acceptable, and products with poor or variable performance imbued with some mystical powers that cannot be quantified. To me it's all overpriced junk. For example, exactly which manufacturers of high end audio equipment excluding those which are owned by large corporations such as HK Industries is or could be ISO 9000 certified? I'll bet almost none of them.
ISO900x certification is meaningless in the context of limited production and fashion. Conformance to ISO900x boils down to documenting procedures and following them ("Document what you do, then do what you document"). You can make absolute doo-doo and still be ISO certified- it means that everything you make is doo-doo, and the same kind of doo-doo day in and day out. And it means you paid a LOT of fees for auditors, consultants, and the rest of the ISO racket.
Considering that Jerry Garcia died in 1995, that's a safe statement. And I would dare say that most people around here listen to live music on a regular basis- it's impossible to avoid.
Considering that Jerry Garcia died in 1995, that's a safe statement. And I would dare say that most people around here listen to live music on a regular basis- it's impossible to avoid.
Audio Advances
I guess everyone has a different amount of time, energy and intelligence to spend on any aspect of their life, and most people are not involved with DIYAUDIO! Therefore, if they are going to have decent audio reproduction by necessity will have to be satisfied with what they can purchase. I think most or all of us here on this list have a more active interest in making progress on this front, even if it is just personally.
I share a similar view to yours, in that after years of professional audio engineering I am now just trying to satisfy my own interest in the subject. I have no illusions that any advancements will become a new paradigm for the masses, but I'm having fun, and maybe most importantly, it is keeping me actively involved with music, my first love! (don't tell my wife!)
I hope for you that your new concept for acoustic imaging can be brought to market, but if not, enjoy listening to it! If you DO decide to share it with the rest of us DIY geeks, than thanks in advance...
p.s. thanks for sharing your experience auditioning violins; the instrument crappy enough to be suitable for me has not yet been invented.
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
I guess everyone has a different amount of time, energy and intelligence to spend on any aspect of their life, and most people are not involved with DIYAUDIO! Therefore, if they are going to have decent audio reproduction by necessity will have to be satisfied with what they can purchase. I think most or all of us here on this list have a more active interest in making progress on this front, even if it is just personally.
I share a similar view to yours, in that after years of professional audio engineering I am now just trying to satisfy my own interest in the subject. I have no illusions that any advancements will become a new paradigm for the masses, but I'm having fun, and maybe most importantly, it is keeping me actively involved with music, my first love! (don't tell my wife!)
I hope for you that your new concept for acoustic imaging can be brought to market, but if not, enjoy listening to it! If you DO decide to share it with the rest of us DIY geeks, than thanks in advance...
p.s. thanks for sharing your experience auditioning violins; the instrument crappy enough to be suitable for me has not yet been invented.
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
Last edited:
But of course there are cases that differences are heard. Not all amps sound the same, and surely not all speakers sound the same. I don't think anybody has an issue with that.
The point is, unless you do a controlled test, you cannot be sure whether there indeed IS an audible difference or not.
Except for some pathological cases.
jan didden
The brain tries to assemble a picture that makes sense
from all the senses, and this sort of thing is not limited
to sight.
One of my favorites is where the listener is presented with
a tone that is rising or falling in pitch. If you add a gated
burst of white noise, the listener will of course continue
to hear the rising or falling tone through the noise.
If you gate the tone out at the same time you gate the
noise in, the listener will still perceive a continuous rising
or falling tone, even though it isn't there.
Yes that's a good one. Another one involves two sliding tones that rise in pitch, then restart at the low end and rise again. The upsetting effect is that you think the tone is continually rising, but it remains clearly audible. It can go on for an hour, and you think it is continually rising in pitch, but it never gets at the point you can't hear it anymore.
Unsettling.
jan didden
The brain tries to assemble a picture that makes sense
from all the senses, and this sort of thing is not limited
to sight.[snip]
The brain is a prediction machine. If you see two speaker boxes, one large and one small, the expectation is that the larger box has deeper bass.
Even if they have absolutely the same bass, sighted test will overwhelmingly result in giving better bass to the larger box.
Now why is that? There's a lot of literature on this, but the short end is that the brain as said is a prediction machine, honed in 100's of 1000's of years resulting in the human race rising to be the top species. If you hear low notes, it implies a large animal, and you better pay attention. Conversely, if you see a large animal or any large object, it implies lots of low frequency tones. You are biased toward the combination of large object - low frequency sound, because it used to be that your survival depended on your ability to quickly and accurately do that pairing and act on it. Simple as that.
jan didden
Audio Illusions
And speaking of auditory illusions, how about the prevalent one in current music of using AutoTune to make a singer sound like they can actually sing? IMHO the engineer who does that is guilty of lying, pure and simple...and if that makes me old school, so be it. I have a physical reaction to hearing that sound that by analogy is aural vomiting. I realize that there are subtle uses for it that I wouldn't notice at a casual listen, but I have an ethical objection to it: It is the auditory equivalent of human lips superimposed on a dog's face speaking.
To keep the subject matter relevant to this thread, I have the same reaction to the sound of the old Carver TX-11 stereo synthesis technique. It fooled everyone into thinking it's stereo performance was phenomenal, when in reality the tuner basically switched into mono to eliminate the L-R subcarrier noise and substituted a synthesized stereo image.
Because Carver did not explicitly explain this in their literature, I consider it a fraud.
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
The brain tries to assemble a picture that makes sense from all the senses...
And speaking of auditory illusions, how about the prevalent one in current music of using AutoTune to make a singer sound like they can actually sing? IMHO the engineer who does that is guilty of lying, pure and simple...and if that makes me old school, so be it. I have a physical reaction to hearing that sound that by analogy is aural vomiting. I realize that there are subtle uses for it that I wouldn't notice at a casual listen, but I have an ethical objection to it: It is the auditory equivalent of human lips superimposed on a dog's face speaking.
To keep the subject matter relevant to this thread, I have the same reaction to the sound of the old Carver TX-11 stereo synthesis technique. It fooled everyone into thinking it's stereo performance was phenomenal, when in reality the tuner basically switched into mono to eliminate the L-R subcarrier noise and substituted a synthesized stereo image.
Because Carver did not explicitly explain this in their literature, I consider it a fraud.Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
Last edited:
I would like to point out that while the Grateful Dead was very important in supporting and criticizing my early work, so that I could FINALLY make sonically acceptable designs, I left their employment in late 1973, some 38 years ago. What did immediately after was to become a member of the staff at IHEM or in English: 'The Institute for Advanced Musical Studies' based in Montreux, Suisse and I worked with them full time for 1 1/2 years.
There I lived in a luxury hotel with graduate students of classical music. Every night I ate with them, attended a recital of some of them, and ultimately married one of them (A violinist, and popular singer). When we traveled, we often did something within our circle, like visit our friends, in Cremona, Italy for a week or more, studying and discussing violin quality. (a favorite of mine) Here is where I learned what other live musical instruments sound like, besides guitar (that I played).
Returning to the USA, after 3 years, working also in both Paris and London, I found John Meyer safely situated in a job that I was originally offered, but had declined in order to stay in Europe, at Crystal Clear Records. I was soon also engaged by Crystal Clear to make their studio board electronics and I sometimes attended their live direct to disc recordings.
And so it goes.
Just this week I received a friendly phone call from Dick Sequerra. He wanted to impart some 'sage' advice to me, much like I try to offer here. I thanked him for it, and was quietly glad that I was already following his advice on my own volition with my latest project, and able to modify my efforts on a future project, in time. He also reminded me that I should listen to live music as much as possible in order to keep my internal reference calibrated. I mentioned that my office mate, Brian Cheney had a live-recorded demo at CES just last month that I attended, and nobody seems to be able to reproduce a clarinet properly. With that understanding between us, the call was terminated.
Now, just last week I was asked by Jack Bybee to attend a live performance of the Vienna Philharmonic at Zellerbach hall, doing Schubert, etc. Jack was adamant that he go, even though he had a major operation on his knee, just 2 days before. He went, with another mutual colleague of ours, and I declined. Had they done music I was into, I would have attended gladly.
I hope that this monologue puts things into a slightly different perspective.
Now, I have gone though all this to clarify what I do with my time and trouble.
There I lived in a luxury hotel with graduate students of classical music. Every night I ate with them, attended a recital of some of them, and ultimately married one of them (A violinist, and popular singer). When we traveled, we often did something within our circle, like visit our friends, in Cremona, Italy for a week or more, studying and discussing violin quality. (a favorite of mine) Here is where I learned what other live musical instruments sound like, besides guitar (that I played).
Returning to the USA, after 3 years, working also in both Paris and London, I found John Meyer safely situated in a job that I was originally offered, but had declined in order to stay in Europe, at Crystal Clear Records. I was soon also engaged by Crystal Clear to make their studio board electronics and I sometimes attended their live direct to disc recordings.
And so it goes.
Just this week I received a friendly phone call from Dick Sequerra. He wanted to impart some 'sage' advice to me, much like I try to offer here. I thanked him for it, and was quietly glad that I was already following his advice on my own volition with my latest project, and able to modify my efforts on a future project, in time. He also reminded me that I should listen to live music as much as possible in order to keep my internal reference calibrated. I mentioned that my office mate, Brian Cheney had a live-recorded demo at CES just last month that I attended, and nobody seems to be able to reproduce a clarinet properly. With that understanding between us, the call was terminated.
Now, just last week I was asked by Jack Bybee to attend a live performance of the Vienna Philharmonic at Zellerbach hall, doing Schubert, etc. Jack was adamant that he go, even though he had a major operation on his knee, just 2 days before. He went, with another mutual colleague of ours, and I declined. Had they done music I was into, I would have attended gladly.
I hope that this monologue puts things into a slightly different perspective.
Now, I have gone though all this to clarify what I do with my time and trouble.
Joshua, I hope you see this more clearly. What we are debating against is a version of 'reality' that is akin to a 'religious' reality, generated by certain people in the audio business who sincerely feel that we cannot trust what we hear, as we will be overwhelmed by internal subjective biases. Kind of liking the sound of your own child's singing voice, when everybody else 'cringes'.
Of course, they are correct, bias is everywhere. You and I must do what we do for ourselves, and not try to PROVE our experiences to anyone else, least they be diverted into investing extra time and money into a 'dead end'.
Of course, they are correct, bias is everywhere. You and I must do what we do for ourselves, and not try to PROVE our experiences to anyone else, least they be diverted into investing extra time and money into a 'dead end'.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.