Wavebourn said:
AES papers are finally addressing the variable of listener training. It's not something I'll ever aspire to but certainly the trained ear can differentiate between makes of musical instruments. The measurable differences are obviously large but the relevant point is those differences are recognized via trained aural memory. Too often the valid scientific find that aural memory can be untrustworthy is so stretched as to make one wonder how anyone could possibly recognize their mother on the other end of the phone.
BTW Wavebourn, nice recordings. 😉
A good recommendation. But if I may a little anecdote.
At an audio day we did a listening test to about 10 different tracks with the same speakers but different crossovers. The difference was like day and night to me. And I did look very carefully at the person who was leading the procedings and who devised the experiment.
But I could not read anything from "reading facial or body language cues" from that person. Zip nada. So I guess some people are amazingly bad at reading body language. Or some people are amazingly good at hiding it. 😉 Or maybe the person did not care at all about the outcome.
Amen
This body language theory seems to me like a presumptiom that we want to manipulate the A-B test.
Just today we listened to CD/SACD, true DSD (Telarc and Harmonia Mundi) vs. CD layer and CDs, all very good recordings of classical music. It is a puzzle for me, and my visitors, that someone can be that deaf and not to hear the difference.
Just today we listened to CD/SACD, true DSD (Telarc and Harmonia Mundi) vs. CD layer and CDs, all very good recordings of classical music. It is a puzzle for me, and my visitors, that someone can be that deaf and not to hear the difference.
Guys, read about Clever Hans. Nothing intentional, the guy who owned him was by all accounts an honest fellow.
The idea that one can control unconscious bias and cuing, or even be aware of them, is risible.
The idea that one can control unconscious bias and cuing, or even be aware of them, is risible.
PMA said:
There's a very interesting and fun read about this issue in the Wikipedia entry about the famous horse Clever Hans. Apparently the cues that Clever Hans' trainer was providing were completely involuntary. Another story about Clever Hans that's a very fun read is here. One quote from the latter article that cracked me up was the following:
"The researchers also found evidence that hounding a horse with questions he can't answer leads to painful horse-bites."
Sounds like audio! 🙂
Edit: Looks like SY beat me to it.
Clever Hans is well know though I'm not aware of anything indicting it only leads to positive results. I always liked that history named the effect after the horse, his owner's name is forgotten.
Andre Visser said:
Even on computer speakers 128kbps MP3 is notably inferior to 256kbps. My absolutely indifferent to hi-fi brother skips anything under 256 in his downloads for car listening. Get him into ABX and I am sure he can't tell Neil Young from James Brown.
PMA said:
I once enlisted my niece, whose only audio "systems" are her iPod and her car, to sit thru a review of the Parasound Zamp and compare it with my Parasound HCA1000A and refurbished Scott 222C tube amp. Same cables and same interconnects to the same Adcom preamp and Rotel CD player for all three. She used her own CDs for music and could easily differentiate between the three pieces of equipment, even though she had never even seen a vacuum tube before and had no preconceived expectations. That result surprised me no end.
rdf said:
Thanks!
You may laugh, but I'm going to borow my old Pyramid prototype for the Saturday's concert: I have no amp in the house!
My last hybrid prototype had a horrible mistake that I won't fix because of my stubborness frying a dozen of samples from IRF, my last one is not finished yet... There is a Russian saying about a shoemaker that is always barefooted... It's about me.
Let us assume for the purpose of this post that there is no question about whether resistors sound different. In the case of two resistors compared, the question now is, "which one is more correct?" When one resistor makes the trumpet stand out a little more in the mix do you say, "this is the way it should sound", or do you say "that resistor sounds brash".
I have struggled with this and have ended up chasing my tail as I moved from one part of the system to the next, what used to sound 'brash' now sounds 'correct' and vice-versa depending on the system's configuration at the time.
If it is context that determines a part's correctness, it is wrong to attach this quality to the part itself.
I believe a 'systems approach' is preferable.
I have struggled with this and have ended up chasing my tail as I moved from one part of the system to the next, what used to sound 'brash' now sounds 'correct' and vice-versa depending on the system's configuration at the time.
If it is context that determines a part's correctness, it is wrong to attach this quality to the part itself.
I believe a 'systems approach' is preferable.
''There is a Russian saying about a shoemaker that is always barefooted... It's about me.''
Its a Greek saying, It goes back to adopting many stuff from Byzantium through Vladimir Svyatoslavich the Great who married a Greek princess and turned Christian, and on. Moscow got the name ''Third Rome'' after the fall of Constantinople. Of course the double headed eagle (emblem of Russia till today) is the emblem of the Eastern Roman empire who turned Greek in culture. You will be amazed on how many very old sayings we have in common through adopting the Greek tradition. I have Russian friends living in Athens. I must also congratulate you for the DNA of Russian women. Extremely good looking.
Its a Greek saying, It goes back to adopting many stuff from Byzantium through Vladimir Svyatoslavich the Great who married a Greek princess and turned Christian, and on. Moscow got the name ''Third Rome'' after the fall of Constantinople. Of course the double headed eagle (emblem of Russia till today) is the emblem of the Eastern Roman empire who turned Greek in culture. You will be amazed on how many very old sayings we have in common through adopting the Greek tradition. I have Russian friends living in Athens. I must also congratulate you for the DNA of Russian women. Extremely good looking.
Wavebourn said:
Imagine if Russian cobblers had CAD to contend with on top of that. I always enjoyed Russian folk tales as a youth, one of the few countries with a verbal tradition as strange as my ancestral Italy.
Thankyou guys for the support, now I have one shoe, left one. I googled for Altec 1569 that people said is brother of my Pyramid and found how they solved my problem 50 years ago: by adding one resistor from Concertina splitter's cathode to the grid of the following differential stage. As the result, grid current in the half of the diffcascade feed from cathode did not cause decrease of dynamic resistance in cathode of Concertina (actually, less change) so did not turn the whole phase splitter into a Shmidt trigger.
Now I'm going to finish the right shoe the same way. 😉
Now I'm going to finish the right shoe the same way. 😉
Wavebourn said:
... And the equivalent spanish tradition goes as "In the blacksmith home, knives are made of wood" ...
Rodolfo
Wavebourn said:
Yes, and if you think it through, it is ridiculous to have experienced audio persons organise DBT audio tests. They are precisely the only ones you DON't want to do that! They have a vested interest, and they don't have the expertise how to organise it.
You should ask people trained in organising DBT's, with behaviour knowledge, and knowledge of statistics. M & M, or any other ausio expert, were NOT the right people to organise this test.
Jan Didden
Andre Visser said:
Andre, this may be your opinion, but none of the perception and memory studies I'm aware of support this.
Jan Didden
Nelson Pass said:
Well, Nelson, to be fair, they didn't give any judgement on the sound quality either. Their presentation was about the engineering issues in current dumping, and not on whether it sounded better or not. So that question was quite irrelevant in that context.
Jan Didden
Stradivarius
Stradivarius developed his magnificant instruments by double blind tests???
Oh my.....
Stradivarius developed his magnificant instruments by double blind tests???
Oh my.....
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