Brilliant Art Dudley's article

[puroagave]

What all this boils down to is all you folks got your stereo systems and you like them (at the moment perhaps! ha ha) and if we all sat and listened to your systems in the same room with some sort of correction so they were represented to some audio curve at the listening position, well, we would like some more than others.

So, the only fear from all this idea of blind testing (even if its not full of controls) is that we might find out that we like the sound of a system that costs a few thousand dollars over one that costs tens of thousands. And if you perceive value based on cost in audio, then you would be crushed. No matter, if you preferred that lower cost system, over time you wll end up with some other system anyway...and so it goes.

The real question is the point of diminishing returns, the point of different sound as opposed to "better" sound, and apparently some folks don't really know what they like in their "sound". For some, its cost as a reassuring value proposition, the more the better, for others its type of product, ss or tubes, or type of speaker, etc. But in any case, all these systems will sound different, and golden ears would perceive this, but different vs better certainly is a preference thing and blah blah.

so you're suggesting (proposing?) your peanuts-priced mid-fi system, with a little DSP, will stand head and shoulders with a cost no object rig? I thought those threads died at the 'other' site, the one some of us departed from to get away from trolling posts. try as you might, you're not going to provoke another food fight from you know who or yours truly. not that i care, but remind everyone else, what does your current 'reference' system consists of?

 

[rbbert]

...Exactly. There are those who pooh-pooh pharmaceutical blind testing also. I'll take my drugs, thanks....

Cheers,

AJ

If you don't know what you are talking about, you really don't want to go there. DBT for pharmaceuticals is so rife with methodological errors and unremoved biases that it is a joke. All you really have to do is look at the laundry list of drugs supposedly proven "better" by published DBT's which have then been withdrawn from the market or so thoroughly discredited that they have no longer any practical use to realize that. $$$$

 

[countingbackwards]

I haven't read this whole thread...but I always think that the problem with the concept of double-blind testing as it relates to audio, is the definition of the word "blind". It implies lack of ability to see with your eyes. However...the problem here is that we don't hear with our eyes, we hear with our ears. Our perception of what we hear is impacted by more than "fact". The same brain that processes what we hear is open to other inputs: are we bored? Tired? Hungry? The emotions created by those inputs mix in with the sound we're hearing, to form a complete emotional response to a circumstance, which can't be duplicated even if we listen to the same song on the same gear in the same room.

As an example: go to a HiFi show, listen to something a 10 am, then listen to the same thing in the same room at noon, when you're a bit more tired and hungry than at 10 am. I bet your response to the same input will be different.

So while a DBT may have some use in theory - it's a silly test in audio. In fact, you'll be more focused on trying to keep it "blind" than you will on the music you're hearing - and you may prefer a different type of sound when you're in that headspace than when you're listening to music. So in that sense, the DBT isn't likely to determine your preferred choice any more accurately than any other method.

At the end of the day...there isn't an empirical way to choose a "favorite". Favorites are by definition subjective. We may all have different preferences, and that's what leads to crazy audiophile terms that people use to try and explain their prefences.


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[BobM]

This is my first peek at this thread. No, I didn't read through it, but just seeing that there are 17 pages of comments leads me to believe it has turned into the usual pissing war between subjective vs objective rants.

So ... tell me I am wrong?

 

[Mike]

This is my first peek at this thread. No, I didn't read through it, but just seeing that there are 17 pages of comments leads me to believe it has turned into the usual pissing war between subjective vs objective rants.

So ... tell me I am wrong?

Nope, you're right. I couldn't keep up. My head was hurting.

Back to spinning vinyl. Life is too short.


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[MDP]

I think it's run it's course