rdf said:
No, why? Is it irony to ask why if some gives a sweeping statement: "If you can't hear the difference between A and B something is seriously wrong"?
The arrogance, combined with ignorance, could certainly be reason for real irony. But then again, the poster probably didn't realize the extend of his post.
Or do you have an issue with my statement that humans generally perform better under stress than the opposite? That can be easily looked up of course. Should I have given references? I thought this type of stuff is common knowledge, no? That people perform not very well wrt their capabilities if not challenged?
😉 😉 😉 😉
jd
janneman said:
I still have an old Sony DVD player, I believe a better model than the one used. If that thing were the only way to play CD's, I would never listen to CD's in my live. Perhaps that's the reason some people still listen to vinyl. 😀
janneman said:
No arrogance but a listener or his system must be seriously ignorant not to hear a difference between that DVD player and CD player.
janneman said:
Jan if you can enjoy music while stressed, there are something wrong with you. 😀
We are not talking about jumping over a 12ft fence with a lion hanging on your behind.
Andre Visser said:
This is arrogance in my book. YMMV.
Andre Visser said:
Arrogance again. But that wasn't the issue Andre.
Please read what the issue was. I was talking about DBT's, and the often heard - off hand, of course, don't ask for any background - statement that DBT's cause stress so that participants cannot hear subtle differences.
That is in full contradiction to the well know phenomena that people generally perform better when under stress, not worse. And that is overwhelmingly documented. There's lots of people making a living from that phenomenon.
Peace,
jd
I would not go so far to state that stress always can lead to better performance - when it come to physical fight or flight reactions, that might be mostly true.
In the case of intellectual tasks however, folks have been know to "freeze" up during exams.
Not that this is an argument against dbt, because reading the statements of participants - especially of some tests in germany that jacob usually considers not rigorous enough to withstand closer scrutiny - the "believers" proclaim that the test was "easy" and were quite confident of their abilities to differentiate up and until the results were made public, and the back paddling started in full force.
Suddenly "stress test" was the rage, "unfamiliarity, though not of concern before the test was cited as an excuse, etc. etc. pp.pp.
In short, everything was done to discredit a test to which everybody had signed on as to the methodology and evaluation, no ifs whens or buts. Why? because every single one of the mostly "believers" participating was so sure of himself to have the almost magical capacity. Only when shown that the magic was missing - then the whining and gnashing of teeth started.
And that is why I do not take any of the cable mystics serious any more, and relegate them to the realm of the quasi religious.
In the case of intellectual tasks however, folks have been know to "freeze" up during exams.
Not that this is an argument against dbt, because reading the statements of participants - especially of some tests in germany that jacob usually considers not rigorous enough to withstand closer scrutiny - the "believers" proclaim that the test was "easy" and were quite confident of their abilities to differentiate up and until the results were made public, and the back paddling started in full force.
Suddenly "stress test" was the rage, "unfamiliarity, though not of concern before the test was cited as an excuse, etc. etc. pp.pp.
In short, everything was done to discredit a test to which everybody had signed on as to the methodology and evaluation, no ifs whens or buts. Why? because every single one of the mostly "believers" participating was so sure of himself to have the almost magical capacity. Only when shown that the magic was missing - then the whining and gnashing of teeth started.
And that is why I do not take any of the cable mystics serious any more, and relegate them to the realm of the quasi religious.
audio-kraut said:
Yes, that is why I used the therm 'generally people perform better etc'. You can overdo stress. But I agree with you that the automatic reaction 'ohh, DBT, the stress, I can't hear the subtle differences!' is nonsensical. In general 😉
jd
janneman said:
Oh but it is not arrogance to compare an old common DVD player with a dedicated good CD player, or a SOTA Ayre amplifier with a Pioneer receiver and make the claim that it sound the same, some need to wake up sometime and listen for themselves.
janneman said:
Jan if you can't or don't want to see that I've said that trying to add a bit of humour, then I will remember not to make a joke with you again.
Yes, I am one of those that will openly say DBT's causes stress, especially if you are not used to it. That was (and sometimes still is) my experience, not something that I've read somewhere. Doing a test (not even talking about DBT) can easilly cause you to concentrate on the test and on 'finding differences' rather than relax and listen to the music.
If you try to compare listening to music (allowing yourself to experience every detail) to sport, may explain our totally different perception of sound.
Andre Visser said:
Ahhh but that's the point. NOBODY says that they sound the same. What is said is: "show me". Show me a repeatable, controlled test that shows they sound different and that's it.
I know amps can sound different, I've heard it often myself. Was it repeatable and controlled? No. So I shut up.
Andre, I make come across as angry but I am not. Only excited 😉
jd
Andre Visser said:
Yes there is stress, I know. But if you are listening at home when swapping for instance cables, aren't you also trying to listen to differences? Is the difference in the two situations so big that now all of a sudden you can no longer hear the differences in cables?
Often DBT's are preceded by a period where people can do free sighted test, and then decide yes, I hear the difference, clear to me, let's do the DBT. So they are convinced that they KNOW the difference, they have it in their head, and all of a sudden they score zero? Because of the stress? Really?
jd
SY said:
I´m sure you know that i know that. 🙂
But to be honest you and quite a lot others do use past tests as if the shear amount of negative results could indeed prove something.
Statistically argued, a series of tests tend to converge against the `real` result.
So we don´t have any dissens in that, but you pretend to know that the ´real´ result would be that nobody can hear a difference (given that the usual precautions were met) while i present a hypothesis that the results were negative because the listeners were not able to hear something under these conditions. (due to whatever reasons)
A hypothesis with some probability to be true as it is widely known that listeners not used to blind testing were quite "deaf" ;
I´ve quoted it before, but it worth to be mentioned again:
"I’ve seen this effect a lot when doing my Golden Ears seminars (I publish a set of audio ear training CDs called “Golden Ears,” and often present ear-training seminars using them). Listeners asked to identify the difference between two versions of the same recorded excerpt will have real trouble, at first, hearing that one version is 3 dB louder than the other. Once they are told and shown that such a difference exists, they find it “obvious.”
quoted from
http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/wacky_world_of_blind_testing/
and no, that doesn´t mean anything general wrt to blind tests, just that participants have to be trained under these conditions and that positive controls _must_ be incorporated in the specific test protocol.
You could find similar statements from other researchers doing dbts on a regular basis, take for example James Johnston and any other i´m aware of.
I´d totally agree (despite the ´chrashingly obvious strawmen´, maybe you could give some examples, otherwise it seems to be just an rhetorical comment to disparage an author), but as i know a bit about his work, i gave him a lot of credit and am totally confident that he (and his team) is able to setup a valid test (and have the measurement tools to avoid the usually traps) and has done the ABX tests which he described.
That isn´t enough in a scientific world, but the bottom line is that you have to trust into something written, because every other detailed description of any thinkable configuration could have been faked anyway.
And the scientific world had a lot of these issues in the last couple of years including physics and other fields.
The other way is to try to reproduce his results, which otoh are confirmed at least partly by other studies as well (sometimes you have to search for these).
The for me important part was, that they used the ABX protocol.
There is a difference between something relying on laws of nature and psycho acoustics. While the laws of nature can often be used to form an inductive proof (strictly spoken mathematics is the only science able to give formal proof within an axiomatic system, while the rest is more or less based on probability), psychoacoustic means something totally different; by it´s nature it is just something esthablished after doing some tests with a (sometimes surprising low) number of test persons.
Normally it is very hard to not measure a difference between two DUTs but in regard to audibility you only can argue based on psychoacoustics.
To make it clear, i don´t think that someone has to claim supernatural powers, i´m just pretty sure that the hearing thresholds are just `a bit`lower than usually assumed.
If no positive controls are used in a test, in which way will/can you rebut the hypothesis that the participants just were "half deaf" under test conditions?
Jakob,
I agree to most of your above post. On the training of listeners, yes it may be true that they have to be 'sensitized' to even a 3dB difference in level. But what does that mean for 'anecdotal' tests of the untrained casual listener who swaps cables that measure the same and claims to hear a clear difference? I know, rhetorical question 😉
jd
I agree to most of your above post. On the training of listeners, yes it may be true that they have to be 'sensitized' to even a 3dB difference in level. But what does that mean for 'anecdotal' tests of the untrained casual listener who swaps cables that measure the same and claims to hear a clear difference? I know, rhetorical question 😉
jd
janneman said:
The irony was in chiding sweeping statements so shortly after making one. You're right, the references are everywhere and they don't support your claim. Generally the bottom end of the what's apparently the classic stress/performance continuum starts at boredom/disinterest, peaks roughly at focused attention and starts into decline at anything normally considered stress in common English.
It also makes no sense to talk of stress as something divorced from context, so let's add some using Meyer's BAS demos. A respected authority with a strong publicly-stated position that cable differences are inaudible controls the test. The group you're testing with is generally known to hold the same opinion. You know and socialize with these people, after all you're in the same club. The phenomenon under test, if it exists, is subtle. It's much easier and safer to not hear a difference. Success means being the center of group focus and subject to repeated trials. Really, the only way you'll 'win' in this situation is by demonstrating exceptional performance in a subtle task before a hostile audience. Some might find incentive from the situation but I doubt that of most. Stress exerts an influence in such group demonstrations directly contrary to the essence of the DBT protocol. That's why in clinical trials, such as the company formerly known as Nortel's audio labs, listening tests were administered by disinterested third party techs and not the engineers seeking project funds. Meyer essentially says has much himself before proceeding to ignore his own warnings, I don't see why this is controversial.
SY mentioned Nousaine's work and I had a chance to revisit some of his cable test writings. The sample was small yet what struck me was how much worse than chance all his subjects performed. All but one (if I recall Nousaine himself, who broke roughly even) chose wrong significantly more often that right. That suggests a requirement for further work.
OK, I get your point. I may have been guilty.
Anyway, that Meyer test is rather extreme in the stress department, no? A well controlled blind test should do all reasonable things to decouple the interest of the tester from the result, make people comfortable etc. There is always *some* stress because you need to do a task, but I find it hard to believe that that means that the previous heard differences somehow can no longer be heard. But no, no hard proof.
jd
Anyway, that Meyer test is rather extreme in the stress department, no? A well controlled blind test should do all reasonable things to decouple the interest of the tester from the result, make people comfortable etc. There is always *some* stress because you need to do a task, but I find it hard to believe that that means that the previous heard differences somehow can no longer be heard. But no, no hard proof.
jd
janneman said:
Not so rhetorical answer: 🙂
It just means that even otherwise experienced listeners seem to be "half deaf" if not used to blind test conditions.
And as written numerous times before i totally agree that this confirms that the reported differences were not " earth shaking" big, but even in this case dave moulton has something to say:
http://www.moultonlabs.com/weblog/more/yeah_i_think_i_can_hear_it
🙂
If you try to meashure tonal & dynamic differences between cables by meashuring frequense-response you`re way out.
Anyone tryed to "meashure" the difference between a junk-amp and a state-of-the-art Nelson by-pass lab🙄
Anyone tryed to "meashure" the difference between a junk-amp and a state-of-the-art Nelson by-pass lab🙄
janneman said:
Something like this....
...I would rather expect to hear from a Pioneer salesman than someone looking for the truth. Not that I have anything against Pioneer but I believe not even they would try to make such a comparison. Yes, I have listened to quite a few high-end top of the range receivers, not my choice for accurate music reproduction.
If a DBT can't show a difference between these, then there is something seriously wrong with the test or the listeners chosen doesn't have a clue what a good hi-fi (or good music for that matter) sound like.
You'll pardon paraphrases?
A few examples; I can give more...
1. ADC requires dither.
2. Measurement needs to include the effects of load.
3. Driving circuits can be affected by capacitance.
Wow, profound!
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