I followed your prompt and found this rather interesting article:
What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test
Don't miss the additional perspectives from other participants at the bottom of the page.
Last edited:
Whether the brain is the most powerful organ in the body depends on the task at hand, but it is surely the only organ capable of overrating its own size and importance.
Last edited:
That's what I thought. Until I read Floyd Toole's account of sighted vs blind listening tests for speakers. Even his own speaker designers rated big speakers better for bass than small ones, if they could see them. When they could not see them, their rating changed significantly.
He recounts that they went into the test just like you think: 'we're exerts, it's our job, we won't be fooled'. They were very quiet afterwards!
Jan
Slowly increasing trend where even well known co. will try the snakeoil path.
Again marketing/sales dept. is to blame.
In this hard time economy you have to take any path available to get much cash/market% as possible.
Correct. Multiple pairs of eyes and ears comparing instant A/B's.
Individually and as group all subjects made substantially the same observations and preferences.
See above.
Yeah. That means the feel/nature of the vibration of ones' body down to and including ones' shoe soles changes, on stage/dance floor/carpeted area.
Everybody noticed and commented on this.
Incorrect. When I get around to it I will most certainly run DBLT's.
At this point in time DBLT's are a validation formality, and not yet required.
Dan.
You are confusing the 2010 test with the 2014 test?
Ok I am sure some will say that testing for more than one thing at once is wrong (preference AND is it old).
Why I laugh when anonymous internet trolls start pretending to be health care professionals and attempt medical diagnosis from 1,000's of miles away and based on just reading a few 100 words?
This sort of demonstration of Krueger-Dunning (1999) may unfortunately afflict everything else they write. The safe thing to do is to dismiss it all!
Obviously False. Seems to show a fairly high level of ignorance of human physiology.
Name some task that a human ordinarily performs that does not require an operational brain for its successful completion.
We can test your hypothesis by considering how well that task will go if attempted by a human with its brain removed.
That is a biasing influence, and tends to invalidate the experiment.
Oh, you can provide a link the text of the written reports of violin sound that the violin players provided?
Do tell!
The short answer is that there are many kinds or levels of audio memory, and they relate to different kinds of perceptions.
For example there is obviously a very long term kind of audio memory that last week allowed me to identify the voice of my brother in law on the phone after not speaking with him for months, even though he had a bad sore throat, and was speaking more hoarsely than I had ever heard him before in my life.
At the opposite extreme is the audio memory that I exercise when I hear very small differences among nominally good pieces of audio gear.
Various reflex actions such as touching something hot and pulling away (AKA withdrawl reflex). Ignoring that without the brain you couldn't touch it in the first place
Criticizing this set of tests is pretty easy for a number of grounds.
In this last cited article one thing that jumped out at me was that the journalists, the test participants (and presumably the organizers) seem to be very confused as to whether this was a preference test or a test for audible differences. They are very different things no matter how often ignorant audiophiles conflate them. It is always important to have an idea of what you are trying to do before you do it!
One obvious problem that I haven't seen discussed yet is the fact that this was not a violin test but a test of violins and violin players. How many observed variations were due to the players and not the violins? Many!
I've done similar tests of audio gear, and the performance of the performers ends up introducing so many obvious audible differences into the comparisons that figuring out what's due to the performer, and what's due to the gear can be very difficult.
In an earlier post there was an obvious flaw in a criticism of the test which nobody seems to have caught:
(link added out of respect for the readers and for easing their work)
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/20y4xi/til_that_when_in_a_doubleblind_test_21/
"[–]Vonmule 10 points 1 year ago
I'm finally relevant. Violin maker and restoration expert here. I have participated in several informal yet well structured experiments of this kind, and I will tell you that these experiments are crap for several reasons. Firstly they seem to be conceptualized with the goal of devaluing the great instruments. The problem with this is that the value of The Great Instruments does not lie solely in their sound. With regards to monetary value, They are above all, art objects. The lady blunt strad isn't worth 15.7 million usd because it sounds fantastic. It's the violin makers equivalent to finding a new great pyramid completely preserved in a bog. The lady blunt and messiah, are effectively unplayed and therefor, unworn. The corners aren't rounded, the varnish has no dirt and oil embedded into it from centuries of handling. The necks haven't been grafted ( the standard neck length changed in the 1800s, so nearly every violin had the neck cut off and the scroll grafted to a new longer neck). These instruments are our window into the old masters workshop.
"
Here is an example of several attempts at deflection.
First off the complainant claims that he can read the minds of the test organizers and discern their motives. He then argues that their biases invalidated the tests. Problem is that everybody has biases. Good tests take this into account and try to control them. If tests become invalid simply on the grounds that the test organizers were biased, then all tests are therefore invalid.
Secondly, the complainant makes the true but irrelevant observation that the value of a violin has a number of dimensions other than sound quality. It seems pretty clear that despite the many possible flaws that the tests had, that everybody directly connected with the tests knew that they were ignoring the many other societal values connected with these instruments, and trying to focus on sound quality.
To the best of my knowledge I've never cited any of these articles as proofs of anything in particular, even though I may be favorably disposed towards some of their conclusions. There is no there, there!
You apparently never have been deeply in love. A great demonstration of a human operating with his brain switched off
Jan
How the mighty have fallen. Telefunken used to be considered the Rolls Royce of the audio world. Now they are reduced to this:
Telefunken THE Junior Compact Alarm Clock FM Radio Iphone 4 5 6 MP3 Ipod Dock | eBay
A Chinese manufacturer probably bought the brand name at a knockdown price.
Last edited:
Seems like a preference study to me, one of which could very much change from time to time, the way the performer wants to interpret the music script. Using different violins also require different skills to get the performance presentation the performer wants.
You apparently never have been deeply in love. A great demonstration of a human operating with his brain switched off
Funny you should mention that. There is family lore that we (kids are visiting from out of town) were discussing just yesterday related to the conception of my first son one dark night over 4 decades ago in my father-in-law's asparagus patch. Or was it under the big Beech tree?
Clear example of a similar switch-off of the human brain. ;-)
Of course the switched off human brain is just a figure of speech. Some scientist might drop in and point out that a great deal of the brain was still required to accomplish many of the things that happened, and that it was just the higher judgement areas of the brain that were largely but still only partially disabled.
I knew the possible consequences of my actions, but at the moment I just didn't care... ;-)
Not having the violins well tuned for the study is really not so professional. I look at lots of blind test events, and most do not pay much attention to the conditions of the subject device to make conclusive results. Some relevant information are often not disclosed. But still we can find some value in many cases to learn something from them.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.