John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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It does, on both sides, I try to ignore the demeaning, that's where the thick skin comes in. Also some appear to choose to feel demeaned, for whatever reason. For instance I could have chosen to feel demeaned by SoundAndMotions post, instead I decided to find a humorous aspect to it whilst also implying it was a bad analogy, mind you, by the general stand of analogies here it wasn't THAT bad. :) Oh dear, did Bob find the sarcasm demeaning?
 
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Blind testing certainly gives results but are they real in the manner that it applies to the test subject? And they’re set up to confuse...that’s just wrong.

Funnily enough, the tests I'm referring to were reported by Sean Olive in an article entitled "The dishonesty of Sighted Testing" :rolleyes:

However, if you look at the graph reproduced there, you can see that the preference order of the sighted listening is almost the same as the blind listening (apart from the speakers S & this is just about within margins of error plotted)

BlindVsSightedMeanLoudspeakerRatings.png


So apart from the biases already in the test setup (this was a test of Harmon employees, AFAIR & one of the speakers was a Harmon speaker - guess he didn't consider the psychology of how bias works - especially, when your livelihood may be at stake doing a test for your boss) secondly, it used one speaker, not a pair with stereo, binaural listening - so apart from these the plot shows the preference order of both sighted & blind is almost the same but blind testing reduces the amount of preference between the best & worst preferred to a much narrower range )almost the same) - this hasn't been studied, as far as I know - the suppression of differences to near identical levels (no positive controls were use din this test)
 
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Yep - Asia is where its at - it was already the case 10 or 15 years ago. The place has a fabulous vibe with so much energy.

Trust you will have a smooth move and best wishes Richard.

Thank you, Bonsai. I will retire there and travel and be closer to my girl who will come live with us after her degree is completed. I have to check out DaDod's amps there... cant seem to keep them from blowing output devices all by them selves. Reduced idle by 1/2 and will see if that solves the mystery.

Other than that... will be looking at larger property to buy. Real-estate in the city going thru the roof now.... but suburbs still OK. And, I will ship a lot of test equipment over there soon. But what to do with the audio system here? Those two big, heavy M2 will cost a small fortune to ship.



THx-RNMarsh
 
No one is free from (e.g. expectation) bias. Everyone has different level of it. For one, when he sees white object moving above him, he will think "I saw a ghost!". For the other, he will think "I think I saw white object! It could be ghost, optical phenomenon, someone making fun of me, could be anything. I don't have enough data to draw a conclusion of what it is."

Try a FoobarABX, you may experience the moment "I'm sure A is X!" but it turns out that A is Y. Our experience will shape the 'level' of our bias.

A long time ago I learned expectations lead to disappointment.....so I don’t expect anything, if anything I approach things analytically expecting disappointment! :D

I’ll look more into the foobar thing.....other than pma’s input I have no experience with it.
But testing clicks and tones seem rather useless to me.....when I a/b something in my system I can go back and forth a hundred times tweaking until I find a middle ground or ‘happy place’ as I call it.

It does, on both sides, I try to ignore the demeaning, that's where the thick skin comes in. Also some appear to choose to feel demeaned, for whatever reason. For instance I could have chosen to feel demeaned by SoundAndMotions post, instead I decided to find a humorous aspect to it whilst also implying it was a bad analogy, mind you, by the general stand of analogies here it wasn't THAT bad. :) Oh dear, did Bob find the sarcasm demeaning?

Oh no you didn’t! :D
 
It does, on both sides, I try to ignore the demeaning, that's where the thick skin comes in. Also some appear to choose to feel demeaned, for whatever reason. For instance I could have chosen to feel demeaned by SoundAndMotions post, instead I decided to find a humorous aspect to it whilst also implying it was a bad analogy, mind you, by the general stand of analogies here it wasn't THAT bad. :) Oh dear, did Bob find the sarcasm demeaning?

Hmm, if by 'feeling demeaned' you mean somebody has disagreed with me then this is the snowflake reaction - I mean people who attempt to attack the poster in personal & commercial ways - which is meant to demean the other poster's opinion by attacking them - it's playing the man not the message.
 
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So apart from the biases already in the test setup (this was a test of Harmon employees, AFAIR & one of the speakers was a Harmon speaker - guess he didn't consider the psychology of how bias works - especially, when your livelihood is at stake) secondly, it use done speaker, not a pair with stereo, binaural listening -

so apart from these the plot shows the preference order of both sighted & blind is almost the same but blind testing reduces the amount of preference between the best & worst preferred to a much narrower range )almost the same) - this hasn't been studied, as far as I know - the suppression of differences to near identical levels (no positive controls were use din this test)

This is significant .... as many here cannot as easily tell differences with blind and double blind, even less.


THx-RNMarsh
 
No one is free from (e.g. expectation) bias. Everyone has different level of it. For one, when he sees white object moving above him, he will think "I saw a ghost!". For the other, he will think "I think I saw white object! It could be ghost, optical phenomenon, someone making fun of me, could be anything. I don't have enough data to draw a conclusion of what it is."

Try a FoobarABX, you may experience the moment "I'm sure A is X!" but it turns out that A is Y. Our experience will shape the 'level' of our bias.

But the point is, why do you think Foobar ABX is the 'true picture' that your other perception should be judged against as if Foobar ABX is the yardstick.

Why not investigate & consider the possible biases/skew introduced by this test?

Warning, this has been discussed before & requires research into/learning about perceptual testing :D
 
For the ones that holler bias at every subjective observation.....what if there’s no bias to start with?

I seem to have the ability to shut off my brain and focus on the task, if that task involves testing my own gear why would I lie to myself (or anyone else for that matter?) I really don’t care enough about others ‘feelings’ getting hurt or my own ego getting bruised.

You put anything in front of me and your gonna get my honest opinion no matter what, even if you don’t want it!

I love destructive testing.....pushing things to (or past) their performance envelope tells me what their really made out of.....if it survives the mountainman it’s worthy!

On the other hand the testing that involves hearing subtle nuances as in this case definately has a learning curve for me but still the integrity is intact.

Blind testing certainly gives results but are they real in the manner that it applies to the test subject? And they’re set up to confuse...that’s just wrong.

My testing is real for me, real problems.....results are real and repeatable, probably even measureable!

The only problem I’ve got is I don’t know what I’m doing half the time!

although that could be to my benefit:D

I subscribe every word. I would add that the industrial environment and the need for productivity are not very compatible with this kind of evaluation. In any case in the design offices where I worked. It is thus a privilege granted to the Diyers, and the rare gurus like J.C or N.P. thanks to their particular situations.

If we could put an end to these sterile controversies, it would be a lot of time saved. Of course we rely on measurements in an electronic design process. It's the basis of working first on what we see (measure). This does not excuse us from fumbling with our hands in the dark corners where our keys could have rolled.

As for our individual performances in evaluations, who cares, happy are those whose ears are indulgent: they make more savings, are more easily satisfied.
The diyer works for himself and he can achieve the goals he has set for himself. No one can afford to judge his methods as long as they work for him.

And if he offers to others the results of his work, as some do here, the results will speak for them.
 
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But the point is, why do you think Foobar ABX is the 'true picture' that your other perception should be judged against as if Foobar ABX is the yardstick.

That's not what i was saying. Our experiences of being wrong will shape our 'level' of bias. Doing FoobarABX could be one of those experiences.

Why not investigate & consider the possible biases/skew introduced by this test?

You have shown a chart where blind and sighted tests have a good correlation. Also, Mark understands about conscious vs unconscious thinking. People just need to understand the meaning of FoobarABX (null) result better.
 
For instance I could have chosen to feel demeaned by SoundAndMotions post, instead I decided to find a humorous aspect to it whilst also implying it was a bad analogy, mind you, by the general stand of analogies here it wasn't THAT bad.
Hi Scott,

I'm glad you didn't feel demeaned, since that was not at all the intent. But I do wonder why you felt it was a bad analogy. IME, it's dead on. Research is, in nearly all cases, restricted to the available, known methods. If the current methods are unable to answer the question being explored, unable to elucidate the phenomenon one seeks to understand, what are the options? Most researchers restrict themselves to methods with which they're familiar and try to force their question through it. It often works, but sometimes not. And there is no cop with a flashlight (or torch, for you Brits ;) ) to just illuminate a new method.

When someone uses an inappropriate method to explore because that's all that's available, that is the streetlight effect, and it happens more often than you might think.

Cheers, SAM
 
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I subscribe every word. I would add that the industrial environment and the need for productivity are not very compatible with this kind of evaluation. In any case in the design offices where I worked. It is thus a privilege granted to the Diyers, and the rare gurus like J.C or N.P. thanks to their particular situations.

If we could put an end to these sterile controversies, it would be a lot of time saved. Of course we rely on measurements in an electronic design process. It's the basis of working first on what we see (measure). This does not excuse us from fumbling with our hands in the dark corners where our keys could have rolled.

As for our individual performances in evaluations, who cares, happy are those whose ears are indulgent: they make more savings, are more easily satisfied.
The diyer works for himself and he can achieve the goals he has set for himself. No one can afford to judge his methods as long as they work for him.

And if he offers to others the results of his work, as some do here, the results will speak for them.

Amen brother!

This isn’t poking at you (well maybe just in fun) but I find it rather ironic that ‘Tryphon’ was a early Greek grammarian!:D

I do understand.....please don’t take offense :)

Yes, there are some very generous people here (wesayso for example ;))

I’ve been skimming over the wesayso ‘build’ post and need a little more direction (I’m a little on the slow side sometimes!) as to what your getting at?

Are you saying we should use his general protocol or is there something more specific?
 
Our experiences of being wrong will shape our 'level' of bias. Doing FoobarABX could be one of those experiences.
Again, I totally agree.

All blind tests are a good way to calibrate our subjective measurement instrument. To establish the noise floor threshold (level of attention) below which the results have no more value.
But in the dayli work on the bench, it's too heavy, binding, obscured to be used.

When to the specific aspect of the ABX test, it's another game to put a name on two people in a crowd, than only to feel the difference between them.
 
Again, I totally agree.

All blind tests are a good way to calibrate our subjective measurement instrument. To establish the noise floor threshold (level of attention) below which the results have no more value.
But in the dayli work on the bench, it's too heavy, binding, obscured to be used.

When to the specific aspect of the ABX test, it's another game to put a name on two people in a crowd, than only to feel the difference between them.

Well in a sense, paring it down to the point where you get a ‘same’ or ‘no difference’ in the result is basically self calibrating....no?
 
That's not what i was saying. Our experiences of being wrong will shape our 'level' of bias. Doing FoobarABX could be one of those experiences.
ok, I understand - yes the ego investment is often the big biasing factor

You have shown a chart where blind and sighted tests have a good correlation. Also, Mark understands about conscious vs unconscious thinking. People just need to understand the meaning of FoobarABX (null) result better.
Yep
 
I find it rather ironic that ‘Tryphon’ was a early Greek grammarian!:D
I forward to the administrators of this forum, and especially to
Gpapag your suggestion to establish Ancient Greek as the default communication language over here.
Not sure that it will lessen the level of incomprehension, but it is likely that it would relax the atmosphere. ;-)
 
No one is free from (e.g. expectation) bias.

Expectation bias is not defined in the way most people seem to think it is:

"The tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.[45]"

From: List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia
Please see reference [45] for more information.

Maybe you were thinking of one of the other biases?
 
Well in a sense, paring it down to the point where you get a ‘same’ or ‘no difference’ in the result is basically self calibrating....no?
Human like to be competitors, to put challenges on themselves. Trying too much to find differences can lead to find some that don't exists ?
Wanting to do too much, the young pilots of Formula one sometimes get out off the track.
 
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