Thank you for the link, but I familiar with the AVSForum's test results already. My A/B's are not "blind" but I do them all the time, but not for just a few minutes, but days at a time. I simply do not follow the short term logic as I am aware I am trying to hear differences and it does not work for me. I allow myself to live with a set of cables for a period of time so that I can forget about them to a degree. After about a week of listening I switch back to my reference cables. This is the only way i can make any sense out of an A/B test. Sorry guys, short term tests are just not my cup of tea.
Long term listening is the only way I have ever been able to make judgments on stuff and feel that i truly know what I have heard.
Yes, I guess we just can't hear anything then, including having the speakers wired in opposite phase. We should just close up shop, and forget high end. It's all an allusion. 🙁
I think blind testing is valuable, if it is done properly (extended listening blind test). It has to let one learn the sound and that takes time.
You are welcome, especially as i can´t remember to have directed anything of the quoted to you. 🙂
Again, i can´t remember having talked about "traffic lights" .
Instead i was talking about people that must trust in their ears, as they would otherwise not be able to do their work.
I´m sure, you´ve heared (as anybody else) sometimes the story of the recording engineer who had eq´ed the hell out of a song only to notice suddenly that the bypass switch was pressed all the time and that in reality he hadn´t changed a thing. (And that, or something similar, does literally happen to everyone at least once in their lifes)
What can we conclude from that? Yes, humans are prone to sensory errors.
More interesting is what the recording engineers conclude from that story; it is (surprisingly) not that they further should rely only on dbts, but instead to be more cautious than before.
You´re talking about JNDs? I don´t know if you´ve ever done a series of tests to find out your thresholds, but i´d suspect that you´d have quite a lot of problems to notice every trick that is used during recording/mixing/mastering.
Some of these tricks are quite subtile and i don´t think that qualifies for your analogy.
Or just think of a conductor standing in front of a full orchestra and suddenly he notices that one of the strings doesn´t sound like intended.
Do you think the difference is easy to measure or easy to hear?
And if the sequence is repeated by the orchestra after some time, do you really think they´d meet the former level within a fraction of a dezibel?
And, speaking of JNDs, is it a hard threshold and if it is so, is it the same for every person on the world? Or is it more a bell shaped curve and if so what is the spread of the curve?
And if you´re sure that we were testing along the JNDs, could you cite some tests in which it was shown that the participants were able to reach that level of sensitivity?
If you couldn´t, and given the examples of _big_ differences not detected in perception tests (for example from the links i´ve posted before) what do you think can be concluded from those test results?
Wishes
Last edited:
John we are doomed to spend our days in the dungeons of the science labs lsitening to Cervin Vega speakers, connected with zip cord, thru a Technics receiver with a Sony Cd player, playing Carol Channing's greatest hits for the remainder of our lives 🙂. All is lost. Oh the pain of it all.............
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
That might be the case, but if they really think that in general they are simply mistaken.
As long as the system we are talking about is not specified, it is impossible to conclude further.
And second, as long as nobody did some additional measurement wrt rfi any
further conclusion is impossible.
Please remember the golden rule "false premises lead to false conclusions" .
Only your c) is quite right.
a) isn´t possible due to formal logic, b) and d) well .......
I´d recommend to read something like the "encyclopedia of perception" for the beginning to see what is well understood and what aspects are still not.
You´ll find a lot of references for further reading and i think you´ll surprised to find out that there is still a lot of research in this field.
I renew my recommendation to analyze some of the well documented DBTs in audio and follow the discussions about the results and methodology.
And maybe some reading about the philosophy of science might be useful too. 🙂
Wishes
It's like those quacks who claim they can get 'free energy' - you don't need to do the same tests, or do experiments with an open mind, etc to see their results. You only need to study the second law of thermodynamics. Once done with that, you know that 'free energy' machines don't work and there isn't really a global government/petro-industry conspiracy to silence the free-energy quacks. Man those guys crack me up. The "one-way magnetic field" stuff is best!! 😀[/QUOTE]
Has happened to me a number of times ... mistakes that is. We make them all the time. We can hear the same sound under different circumstances and respond differently to it - conditioned reflexes.
I completely agree Jakob!
Yep, we have increased gain for sounds of special importance and how we respond depends on the conditions we hear them.
What are JNDs? I'm not familiar with that acronym.
Do you mean: Toole's book? I have met and debated with Floyd Tool when I was with the AES. Smart guy, on the wrong path.
One night's sleep and look where the conversation heads. Integrity, techno-Millennialism, experts on the cross and a more than a little disturbing comparison to Cambodian purges (not a regime founded on religion). Quite the drift.
So for the persecuted experts on board here, have you performed even the most cursory tests of those beliefs? For examples:
- Calibrated your tests with stimuli scientifically proven audible? Or is your certainty about its implementation based on faith? Are test protocols equivalent to your buddy swapping cables behind a screen of sufficient resolution to catch differences proven in the lab to be audible? Or for those fast switching speaker cables via relays, even tried pink/white noise?
- Measured? Simple enough question, has anyone here gone to the simplest first step and measured the frequency response differences between amplifier and speaker terminals, then compared to magnitudes scientifically proven audible?
The whole idiot/expert dualism (as if dualism was in any way scientifically justifiable) this thread has taken is disquieting. The most impressive solid state design chops bestow zero expertise on physiological test protocols. 'Expert' is a statement describing knowledge in a field , not a general statement on your worth. And how could anyone who owns a TV not be hammered by the fact 'expert' means almost nothing? Don't like today what the expert says about the economy/diet/real state/environment? Wait for next tomorrow.
No, what's tragic is that the subjectivist sky has already collapsed and you just won't acknowledge it.
How do you choose and set up a test system if you don't even believe in stage focus, which just happen to be one of the important aspects where cables can make a difference?
Who are the WE, how many cable tests have YOU done? 🙂
I wish this type of %&*# will get to an end, why must there always be we and you and morons and stupids? I'm here because I would like to learn why there are differences between cables while measurements may suggest there aren't any. Why can't we try and listen to each others views and try and come to a conclusion that will be in the interest of ALL.
The idea of my post was not to suggest "other" must do the testing, my opinion is only that if those that do the testing take what is said here into consideration, the results may just be different. I'm not here to criticise, I would like to help and find answers, I can only give suggestions based on my experiences and what I think may be important to consider if anybody is interested anyway. I've done blind tests several times, they confirmed what I've heard during sighted testing but I also realise it will never be good enough to proof anything. At this stage I see it as a waste of time anyway, I do my testing because I find it interesting and maybe learn something new.
That's the Mike Lavigne thread. Not the Michael Fremer thread.
Here's the thread you want to read.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=96913
se
Last edited:
Curly Woods:
By the way, Curly, for once I'd appreciate a detailed and reasoned response to you on these points, rather than your usual obtuse tactic of a witty reply or no reply. I and others have consistently offered you the courtesy of detailed responsed to your points, the least we might expect in return is the same from you. Like that, this conversation can move forward rather than you just leading everyone in circles.
Nonsense. Plenty of studies show what people CAN hear and plenty show what we can't. I will concede though, that there are probably no studies that show we can't hear in the 20 - 300Mhz region but then, so what? Why would such studies exist? Does their absence mean you're open to the possibility that we might be able to hear in that frequency range or will you admit that we can make definitive statements abour hearing range? Likewise sensitivity to variations in SPL and phase, masking effects etc.
Again, it doesn't matter how many people are wrong - if they are wrong. You're repeating the logical fallacy of 'argument ad populum' again. I acknowledge and agree that you experience things that contradict the objectivist/scientific position, I never disputed that fact. What I disputed is that your perceptions were of something real as you claim, and not really the result of your mind playing tricks on you - a possibility you have dishonestly refused to admit for a long time now.
Your A/** are not blind but, no matter how many times you do them or for how long, the fact that they are not double-blind means they are worthless, as you *cannot* differentiate those of your perceptions that were of something real from those that were not of something real. All of your conclusions are thus unreliable and useless - even to you. That you admit not following 'short-term' logic is a straw-man - no-one ever said DBTs have to be short-term, you could follow a DBT for as long as you felt you needed. You are again being disingenuous. Furthermore, you should not be trying to hear differences - this only makes sense if you are already biased in your testing by assuming that there will be differences. You are leading yourself to false conclusions.
By the way, Curly, for once I'd appreciate a detailed and reasoned response to you on these points, rather than your usual obtuse tactic of a witty reply or no reply. I and others have consistently offered you the courtesy of detailed responsed to your points, the least we might expect in return is the same from you. Like that, this conversation can move forward rather than you just leading everyone in circles.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.