Hehe yep kinda does doesn't it. External visual cues can make you actually hear things which are demonstratively not present on the source recordings. Yet even though what you can hear isn't on the source recording I would not deny that you actually heard it - because hearing is a cognitive processes which translates vibrations into meaningful and useful information and can be directly changed due to influences from the other senses.
No, what happens is that you can keep track of the cable when you compare with all types of music. This is also how we do audio stages. I participated in one in Nogoya, Japan for HK in 1978. Got all 3 comparisons right. (They were shocked that I could hear that well. The circuits were NOT my design.)
The biggest confounder is a test situation itself. (Nothing new here, one has just to read some literature about tests in cognitive psychology).
That is the real "magic" in this game; all this talk about delusion, illusion, bias influence- all this "you should see what a good magician or con artist can do" - suddenly gone in a miraculuos way if the poor guy participates in a blind test. 🙂
Wishes
Have you read about the time the FBI tried to translate the lyrics to Louie Louie? They were essentially using self suggestion by writing out lyrics that sounded like the random sounds on the recording (there are no lyrics to the verses it's just mumbling or talking tongues) and by reading these lyrics at the same time as listening to the recordings you could actually hear the words. This is the simplest way I know to prove to yourself that you can actually hear things which are not present by simply supplying yourself with a lyrics sheet that has words which sound similar or rhyme with the original (real) words. Another example would be the line "cranberry sauce" spoken at the end of The Beatles Strawberry Fields. If you listen to the line with the sentence "I buried paul" in your head you will actually hear those words. If you substitute it with something like "I'm very tall" you will hear that. This is just one example and an easy one but I think something similar is going on with sighted A/B tests where you brain is sort of generating a difference for you to keep track - this difference may just be a construct of your head.
Quite often artificially constructed (more or less) test signals were used, but that raises irretrievably the question for the practicability of a test result.
The claim indeed was, that the listener is able to detect a difference while listening to music.
If one for example would only be able to detect a difference by rapid switching and using special constructed, artificial test signals, what could be concluded for the "normal" listening situation?
That is somewhat the golden rule of testing " the more controlled (means the more articificial the test conditions are) the less relevant in practice" .
Wishes
You still miss the point. The listeners already CLAIM to hear differences UNDER THE TEST CONDITIONS. That's what's being tested. It's their system, their room, their music, their control of switching, their control of volume. The ONLY difference is "no peeking."
Maybe they can't distinguish ANY differences, but who cares? The claim being tested is their claim to hear the difference between wire A and wire B in their particular listening environment
I notice that John is still afraid to put his beliefs to the test. Peeking is apparently necessary for him to hear the magic differences.
Key, please, that is really known; it is all about perception of reality and that depends on the biochemical reaction of our senses to stimuli and (often much more) on our brain.
One can percept things that aren´t real, and one can not percept things that are real. It depends to a great extent on the situation (and possible confounders).
A "blindness" part of a test does only take _only_ _one_ confounder/bias out of the game, but the test itself of course introduces some new _confounders_ and beyond the "sighted part" there is a lot more to address.
Wishes
P.S. That was the main reason for posting the link to the viscoglab examples; just to give an impression what big differences could remain undetected (better to say remain unpercepted) if the confounders were "appropriate"
The problem is exactly the red herring. You want to set up something that is controllable audible, even if the audibility itself has yet to be established. And if not possible, then you could safely blame the test for lack of sensitivity, instead of accepting that the audible effect does not exist. By the same logic you could test the audibility of solar flares.
BTW, you are name dropping again MUSHRA. I thought it was long time ago understood that MUSHRA is designed for testing the audibility of lossy compression. A completely different kettle of fish to the cable testing suggested here, at least because, before testing, it is accepted that a difference exists.
But I suspect you already know all these 😀
Well I agree that you can't stick a person in a bubble/lab like a rat and start testing and expect real world truths to come about. But it seems like we have been really trying to go the other route and just conduct tests in acclimated listening places where the subject is already at ease. I don't think taking the ability to see the two cables in this situation introduces new confounding variables.
Eh I'm not in the biz. Just an unhealthy obsession 😉
I thought that those are the original lyrics and the one on the radio is a cover in which he just thought the best way to sing the song was to mumble. I could be wrong though but I do think I looked up the original lyrics etc. Just giving a quick example and really that doesn't change my point.
Here are the FBIs lyrics - they need to get there mind out of the toilet. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/louie/louie.html
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My mistake. I thought you were somehow involved in the business. And no, it doesn't change your point.
I have spent most of my life around musicians and people in the recording business. I learned early on to never say anything about a song unless you could back it up. You might just be talking to the musician you are talking about.
By the way, the original lyrics are on the site you linked to.
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Not in the business yet anyway. I am pretty sure Jack Ely himself said that he sang it that way on purpose.
You know it's sort of how people will hear a song but get the lyrics all wrong but when they find out the real lyrics they get disappointed and like the original ones in there head better. I'm pretty sure he sang it that way - more phonetically than lyric for lyric.
You know it's sort of how people will hear a song but get the lyrics all wrong but when they find out the real lyrics they get disappointed and like the original ones in there head better. I'm pretty sure he sang it that way - more phonetically than lyric for lyric.
John, this is one of the few times I 100% agree with you. Because the brain works that way.
The brain brings a perception to your conciousness that is an integrated conglomerate of sensory input (sight, sound, feeling, body state) as well as non-sensory information (experience, memory, expectations etc). Take away all except the auditory input and the brain is lost. Because the sound difference is too little to reliably detect a difference. Simple, really.
jd
Yes strange, isn't it? Now what would that tell you? I mean, you can't just sweep this under the rug (well you can, but I guess you are serious enough not to).
One the one hand, you are convinced you readily experienced whatever it is you experienced. On the one hand, many 'obviously informed people' still argue about it. How are you going to reconcile that?
jd
And, voilá, there it is - the long awaited attack on a straw man.
At first i just want to know if the participant in the test is able to detect something _under_ the _specific_ test conditions (namely the test protocol,see the "detection of sameness" problem).
It would be nice to know if the participants would already fail to detect (just an example) ~2dB deviation from flat response.
We don´t know what he is able to detect in sighted tests, but we don´t know what he is able to detect in under these specific blind test conditions either.
Let me provide two assumption:
First, you´ve never participated in any listening blind test
and
Second, you´ve never conducted listening blind tests with other people.
You should do both; you will be in for some shocks about what differences people don´t detect in blind test protocols like the one SY proposed.
And after that you´ll be shocked what incredible level of sensitivity the same people could reach if trained under blind test conditions.
I could have dropped ITU-R **.1116 too. It is aimed for the audibility of small impairments and was used for lossy compression tests.
Let see, what lossy compression testing is; the experimentator knows that a difference exists (means can be measured) and wants to know if this difference is audible.
Yeah, totally different kettle of fish.
Would you dare to bet, that you couldn´t measure a difference between the two cables under test in TG reproduction chain at his place?
I suspect you didn´t know all this, but could have if only...... 🙂
Wishes
He claimed 100% scoring AND 100% identification on his own sort-of-blind-test under the specified conditions (other than truly no-peeking), and I've encouraged him to try this on his own before I show up.
Regarding your post to syn08, without any particular training in auditory test panels (though admittedly 20 years of experience in haptics and organoleptics), I had no trouble scoring 100% on a DBT of various data compression algorithms (this was on a totally unfamiliar system with unfamiliar music), 0.15dB level changes (on my own system), and (using test tones, not music) absolute polarity. It's really not hard IF the difference is actually audible and not imaginary.
I suspect that there won't be any measurable difference, and I suspect there won't be any audible difference. But I hope I'm proved incorrect on the latter.
That contradicts known psychological facts, as also has been pointed out earlier by Jan Didden.
Magura 🙂
You are completely missing the point 😀
And beyond sitting on the fence and endlessly complaining about missing "positive controls" I haven't seen a shred of positive contribution, in improving the proposed cable testing protocols.
Why don't you help SY and improve his testing protocol to include whatever "positive control" you think it's appropiate? I'm sure SY will be more than happy to add your contribution, if it really makes sense.
May I guess why?
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