What's so great about double-blind testing? Let's talk about what double blind testing is. You get a bunch of bored to death grad students to run the experiment. You hire a bunch of random undergrads who are willing to screw with you for $10 and pizza. The undergrads are mostly art history and victims studies majors - they're the ones most deeply in debt who most need free pizza. And these people are going to be the find word?
I play several instruments. I have perfect pitch - I can tune a wind instrument by ear, then check it on a strobe and be within 1hz at A440. You can use my voice to get a choir to sing on key. I've had excellent speakers most of my life. I know what I hear.
Perhaps we should subject relativity and quantum field theory to double blind tests? If the average guy cannot tell in a double blind setting that an orbit is precessing, then perhaps general relativity is wrong?
I did some double blind testing once on speakers. You may be interested to hear that the threshold of reliable perception on 2nd harmonic distortion is about 1%, and at that level half the people prefer the distorted signal. This is almost certainly why tube amps are still around. I keep promising myself to build a squaring circuit and add it to a good transistor amp, allowing you to add a variable amount of "warmth." I wonder if the Absolute Sound would give me a grade A product.
The threshold for 3rd harmonic distortion is more like .1%, and no one likes it. Crossover distortion = bad, but vacuum tube distortion = good. That's what double blind testing gets you.
This is like that thing where the masses are trained that if it's not in a peer-reviewed journal then it's not science. Peer-review is a club, not a scientific process.
That's an excellent description of how to do it wrong. The goal of a DBT is to remove or at least control bias and variables. The selection of a particular tes subject demographic is introducing a bias.
It's quite easy to prove that biases in sighted testing skew results to the extent that if presented with two choices with different suggested qualities that a preference will be shown even if the actual electrical differences are zero.
Most of that is irrelevant. The highlighted part is the classic objection to the type of testing where that very statement is eliminated as a bias.
Irrelevant.
The audibility of harmonic distortion of either kind is not a fixed threshold of percentage because a fixed percentage threshold implies testing with a pure sine wave at a fixed level where actual music has no fixed level, is harmonic rich, and the total spectrum results is masking of distortion products. Added to this the fact that distortion detection, even with pure tones, is a threshold that varies with time, longer resulting in greater sensitivity.
The detection thresholds, even in traditional classic references, only apply to specific stady-state pure tones. Distortion audibility thresholds can never be stated correctly with a single figure metric.
The audibility of non-harmonic distortion is also subject to similar masking effects, but generally considered to be more objectionable because of the harmonically unrelated products.
But no matter, the discussion is far, far off topic.
There's no branch of science not subjected to peer review, and no branch of science that would take a fully biased test and use that to determine a fixed threshold, or even a generalized go/no-go determination of some form of phenomenon.
I think I'll just stay with science for now, you're welcome to choose whatever philosophy you like. But from the statement of credentials, I expected otherwise.
It is the gold standard in every field of science.
But because your world view doesn't agree with science, you think the science must be wrong. It's called Cognitive_dissonance.
Often the supposed difficulty of the test is used as an excuse not to do it even by those who know how to, sometimes you can't win, presuming there is actually something to win of course
Often the supposed difficulty of the test is used as an excuse not to do it even by those who know how to, sometimes you can't win, presuming there is actually something to win of course
Yes! A good DBT is actually expensive.
I taught physics and astronomy at USC. Physics and astronomy don't use double blind testing. Neither do chemistry or molecular biology. The fields that use double blind testing are typically named ______ science, like political science or neuroscience. Their very name shows they suffer from an affect known as "science envy."
Apropos of nothing, Paul Erdős once said, "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." Alan Kay replied, "Then a computer scientist is a machine for turning coffee into urine."
Medicine (drug research in particular), psychophysics, and research that deals with human perception or response to external stimulus or substance.
Oh dear.
Wow! Took me a year to see this, but this is my one step solution. I love Schiit equipment and I wanted a Mani phono preamp over the Rega. I also have a decent PC workstation that I can use for the A/D conversion using Audacity.
Double blind testing is only relevant when the data comes from subjective judgements, not from measurement instruments - in that situation you use controls, calibration, and peer-review (carefully managed sceptism). Much effort is expended trying to find and eliminate or compensate for all causes of systematic error in physical sciences - you need a good grounding in statistics too, since much data is noisy.
You need to read up on some basic psychology if you don't understand things like expectation bias and the like.
I got a Schiit Mani phono preamp and was thinking of getting an audio interface ADC to digitize the output to either 16bit 48kHz or even 24bit 96kHz to help reduce the brick wall filter effects. Is there any advantage to dithering down the 24bit 96kHz after de-clicking operations to 16bit 48kHz to reduce the final file size.
I use Winamp to convert cda files to MP3 in 24 bit 320 kbps, you can hear the difference between 128 and 320 resolution., and some people prefer Ogg Vorbis and FLAC.
There is a 44.1/ 48 choice too.
Please go for the highest resolution possible, and change to new media for storage, hard disks, DVD, whatever, every 5 years.
That is the normal life for those.
There is a 44.1/ 48 choice too.
Please go for the highest resolution possible, and change to new media for storage, hard disks, DVD, whatever, every 5 years.
That is the normal life for those.
Last edited:
MP3 is obsolete and awful.
Ogg Vorbis was great for it's time but it's been replaced with OPUS.
Now you either use FLAC (lossless but disc is cheap) or OPUS (much better psychoacoustics than MP3).
Opus (audio format - Wikipedia)
FFmpeg will convert anything to anything basically.
FFmpeg - Wikipedia
Ogg Vorbis was great for it's time but it's been replaced with OPUS.
Now you either use FLAC (lossless but disc is cheap) or OPUS (much better psychoacoustics than MP3).
Opus (audio format - Wikipedia)
FFmpeg will convert anything to anything basically.
FFmpeg - Wikipedia