Amir and Blind Testing

Acoustic/psycho-acoustic is a single heart with 4 irreducible chambers:

 

Objective aspect of measurements...

Subjective aspects of measurements...

Objective perceptive evaluation ( collective consensus)

Subjective perceptive evaluation...

 

Not one of these chambers can be reduced to the other one...

Amir dont take  into account these 4 factors, only the playing with his measuring  tools matter for him, then all his disciples erase completely the two subjective factors...

 

 

Great post teo_audio thanks...

Your post illustrate why i do what i do...

My Helmholtz "mechanical equalizer" with one hundred adjusted tubes resonators and diffusers tuned by my ears, use my ears not a microphone, and not some testing frequency but a large bandwidth spectral set which is called an instrument timbre or voice to guide me in the process of acoustic optimization..

This mechanical equalization work to optimize the room /speakers ---> relation and this grid of Helmhotz resonators and diffusers modify the pressure zones distribution in the room being a permament WORKING part of my room...

This mechanical equalizer is useful to fine tune the relation " from the room TO the speakers with my ears"...

 

But i can use also with it a useful tool to complement it : an electronical equalizer to fine tune the Speakers/room ---> relation this time...

Why?

Because with it i will fine tune the relation "from the speakers TO the room without my ears" using not instrument timbre for my ears, but a tested frequency for a microphone and using an integrated pink noise generator in the Sansui and an automatic equalization process....

Then the two process are complementary and add something the other CANNOT add ...

But unbeknowst to most people electronical equalization is not enough ALONE for helping our specific ears to recreate all acoustic factors like listener envelopment for example... And mechanical equalization so wonderful it is, is not "accurate" nor perfect but is like our imperfect ears are imperfect ...But imperfection is not a defect here it is the SPECIFIC  way our brain interpret sound experience FOR US Individually... We are all different ...

My dream now is buying this:

 

Only a mechanical equalizer  alone or only an electronical equalizer alone  is not enough to OPTIMIZE a small Speakers/ room/ears complex relation...

Acoustic is the sleeping princess all the pieces of gear are only the 7 working dwarves...Psycho-acoustic is the kissing Prince, and only him can awake the Princees...

 

The human ears is the gravific CENTER of acoustic...psycho-acoustic must rule over physical acoustic in music listening...then mechanical equalization and electronical equalization can be used at the same time to complement each other ... Correlation between subjective perception and objective measures is the WAY...

Not one without the other....

Gear brand name fetichists and "subjective" tasting fetichist are like measuring tool fetichists , the two groups negate or undermine the CORRELATION at the center of acoustic and psycho-acoustic relation which is the only HEART of audio experience...

 

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Interesting ! thanks...

"Gear listening fetichist" or "tool measuring obsessive fetichist " are marketing conditioned creatures ignoring acoustic and psycho-acoustic power anyway...

In acoustic the division betweem subjectivity ande measures make no sense, because their correlation id the center of psycho-acoustic science... Acoustician are superioir audiophile because they listen sound not the gear like RCA conditioned dog listening not a room but a gramophone pavilion ... 😁😊

it is Bybee that give me the impetus to try my journey in my embeddings controls adventure search...

I bought one of his device at low cost 7 years ago... I decided to create my own heaven WITHOUT upgrading the gear but instead putting the gear in a better mechanical, electrical and acoustical environment...

I replicated the first Bybee device with great success...Using minerals +crystals experiments ...

I succeeded...It is not the same as Bybee invention but it work enough to convince me...And it work not less... But in other way than the orginal Bybee plates...

I even replicate some Bybee results about room acoustic upgrade in my own way...WHY? Because when you know that something is possible then you gain the desire, the energy, the trust you need to do it in your own way...Simple...

When you dont believe in something and you dont believe in your own brain/ears learning potential then you dont do it... Simple...

Bybee results give me confidence...

Thanks to him for his story and inspiration...

 

Amir and co were also proclaiming Bybee devices would have no effect whatsoever on audio. Then one of them actually measured them, and the Bybee devices were reducing distortion. So did they admit they were wrong? Of course not, Amir just immediately moved the goalposts to saying the measured reduction could not possibly be audible, and then demanded double blind tests as proof the Bybee did anything. Then they got embarrassed and quickly locked the thread on their forums so it would move off the 1st page.

They probably failed to remember that Jack’s devices/similar works (works from the same mind) are being used in detection systems in nuclear submarines, for lowering the noise and distortion floor for said extremely sensitive equipment that is being used to detect underwater threats. There being likely even more, that Jack was not allowed to talk about.

I was just thinking of putting together a wide ranging (As it would have to be) article for the audio world, called:

"Synthetic psychology and the midwit problem -- in High End Audio."

Read about acoustic and psycho acoustic and forget " gear listening fetichist" and their rejection of blind test and forget " measuring tool fetichist" and their embrace of blind test instead of their own ears... These oppposing camps are united by the SAME ignorance...

I am not against the use of blind test by the way...

But using his own ears like acoustian learn to use them is the key to audio...

And the materials you put on the wall and the cheap homemade device you will use dont need to have a price tag but need to have the right physical amd mathematical acoustical properties...All my acoustical devices cost me nothing and we dont need blind test to tune our speaker/room no more then we need blind test to tune a piano or to verify the tuner hearing, playing the piano will do the test...

Is it not simple to understand?

 

And dont try to test other people claims, it is a waste of time, learn how to listen in your own room...

 

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The interesting experiments are really hard to do. I can imagine a test involving giving some audiophiles long term daily access to a very highly regarded system in an excellent listening room. The trick would be to change things out and see if they hear it. Change out a real copy of an amp or pre-amp or other component with a shell version that looks identical but has different innards. Have available a form to report if they hear something sounding off or degraded, or improved. They would never be told about the fake components being sneaked in on them. The point isn’t to put them on the spot, but to see if they notice changes when they aren’t expecting them at all. If it is found that they do notice changes on gear that supposedly measures well enough to be beyond the hearing limits of humans, then we have something interesting to start testing - just what is it that’s different about these components that allows people to hear the difference? If something is found, then that can be tested in future components and our understanding of how to make good sounding equipment will be advanced. Without some testing like this, all the reporting of improved sound without a meaningfully correlated measurement is just anecdotal accounts of subjective experience that give us little to build on. People perceive they are hearing differences I have no doubt. But they don’t know why although they offer conjecture. Perhaps the manufacturers do know why but if so they aren’t sharing information that would be very valuable to science and would dramatically enhance their reputations far beyond the audiophile world. As it stands I don’t see research in high end audio reproduction trickling advancements into other fields. That kind of substance doesn’t seem to be present. It’s always the other way around. Or am I wrong?

 

I think Amir is excellent and had an ideal methodology. I wouldn’t buy anything that didn’t pass muster with him. ASR is an outstanding site. But, if you like million dollar cables and hyped up rubbish it isn’t the place for you.

 

 

You opposed here "measuring tool fetichist" against "listening brand name gear fetichist"...

They have the same ignorance in common with the RCA dog listening the pavilion of a gramophone with NO ROOM between his device and his ears...At least the dog trust his ears not a decibel meter or a spectroscope only...

These two groups put acoustic and psycho-acoustic way behind their obsession with the gear in their journey , but it is , unbeknownst to them alike, MAINLY with acoustic treatment and control  we can  reach reach optimal sound/musical experience with a speaker/room ...

Measuring is useful...Listening is useful too and correlating the two in acoustic is mandatory and the only fundamental for explaining sound experience... For sure the most deluded are those who trust more a tool at the END than their own ears...

Acousticians use their EARS to tune a room...Guess why?

 

Great post!

 

But  many people dont figure out generally even the difference and correlation between acoustic science and psycho-acoustic...

We are like RCA dog thinking the voice come from the device itself not  from the room/ears...

I could go on for pages and pages more, but the end point is that physical measurements as they stand, connected solely to engineering criteria and weighting, fail to take into consideration the capacities of the human ear and brain and generally fail to understand ’hard engineering based measurements’ limits and limited scope, in application, to the complex question at hand.

 

Saying an half truth will not solve the problem...

The ear can deceive YES and the measuring tools can deceive us also when we focus on one aspect of sound only, or when we focus on the GEAR or the TOOL instead of the acoustic multidimensional aspect piloted by our hearing...

People throw their money in upgrading the GEAR because the measuring tool say so in the publicity...

Instead of upgrading toward costlier components, learning acoustic by ear will liberate them from the consumers market conditioning selling the GEAR because of some MEASURED specs say so , underestimating acoustic experience of our trainable ears is the sin of the measuring fads and the cardinal sin of the SELLERS.......

Acoustic is not only a set of equations it is also a brain/ears experience and the dynamic correlation between the two in real time in our room ...We must learn our room...

Saying that the ears are not trainable because it cannot be trusted is like painting yourtself in a corner....

Repeating that the ears are not to be trusted is an half truth worse than a lie....

 

The problem for many people is they trust their own perception. This just does not work well for hearing. The result of all this is an entire industry based on deception. As long as it is not my money why should I care?

 

It is is not a question about pure audibility in a quantitative measurable way ONLY, it is mainly a question about the information content in what we hears...

Then a ears/brain trained musically and acoustically is not necessarily "Better" in his power of resolution than some another non trained ear/brain, the learned biases make him able to perceive what another similar pair of ear will never " see" without training... A bias is also attention focus piloting ability, a guidance, not only a blinder, or a bad conditioning....

 

What we hear, his content, color, form, dynamic, living qualities are not determined only and mainly by a decibel meter or by the measurable brute Hertz range...

The information content about all the qualities of a resonant body, a cavern, a piece of wood or metal, a fruit or a vegetable, a musical instrument, or any resonant object put in a state of vibration by us and from which we extract many HIDDEEN qualities, this information content is notmeasurable in Hertz and in decibels at all....

The only fact that you seems to ignore this voluntarily speak much louder about your opinion than anything you will say about the Hertz range of audition and decibel range which anyway is true for sure...We are limited, and saying that is a common place trivial argument that do not go to the crux of the matter...

The specific intonation of a player, the listener envelopment acoustic factor, the micro structure of a playing instrument timbre, the meaning of a symphony, the synergy between musicians, the reverberation time effect on imaging and timbre in a room , etc all that and many others characteristics, like echolocalization  in trained  blind people has a great information content we must learn to perceive, and perceiving it dont means that i PRETEND to be  a "bat and that i claim that  you are limited compared to me in the Hertz range and in the decibel range...

Decibels and Hertzs are ONLY some quantitative aspects of sound, and attacking someone because he claim  that the ear is better than any limited measuring tool reflect only ignorance,  no one ever  pretended to be superior, or a "bat" out of the human range, to do so it  is not fair and it is scientifically naive...

Anyway we are all potential  training bats also....The ears is the beginning and the end for any musician and acoustician journey, in a way any measuring tools could not  ever be...Any tool will be more limited anyway in all those other dimensions of sound that the multidimensional ear/brain which will be able by contrast to capture, isolate and translate  a sound in a new information content...

 

We must learn to be listener in spite of our limitations....Great acoustician, great , musicians, some blind people can train us....

And remember that in human history the worst limitation of man are the self imposed one...Not the evident one....Calling them miracles will not erase them from our own potential ....

 

In a word: we "see" the complez information content of the sound, we dont hear it ONLY in Decibel and in Hertz or in Savart scale dimensions or in any other measurable dimensions....

 

You may hear better than I and 90% of the population but that tells us what? When you hear good enough to pick product A from B when they both measure beyond human audibility or measure within .1% variance using only your ears in a controlled testing regimen then you’ve told us something useful.

Amir was polite and i dont doubt about his honesty and dedication at all....

I am less patient with his many disciples on the site ASR....

Very disagreable experience for me....I am very naive when it comes to discussing our experiments...I supposed that people can forget their opinion for the sake of a discussion... 😁😊 It is not often the case in life....Save among friends...I prefer audiogon with all his defects....Because of a better variety of opinions...

Anyway my own position is hard to figure out by people used to separate subjectivist and objectivist in children like warring camps like in Swift Gulliver big egg end kingdom  and small egg end one...

I am inspired by music field and acoustic and psycho acoustic where this division about a piece of gear which must be "tasted" OR must be "measured" make no sense at all...

In my experience and experiments ONLY correlation between measures and subjectivity which is the ultimate judge make sense....

My best to you....

Mahgister,

Not trying to be sarcastic. Just trying to point out, with a nod to Oscar Wilde, that Amir is earnest and so are you. Maybe two earnest. Two sides of the same coin?

In a word we can see the world with the ears, like some blind people already did, but we will never spoke with the eyes...Even if some particular popular idiom say so....

Hearing is complex more than the eyes and incorporate the visual system not the opposite...Ears are able to retrieve deep hidden information and translate it ...

The eye redistribute SOME of what is already spatially there...Eyes dont create a complete new world like the ears did with what we call MUSIC or SPEECH , two complete new worlds of sound anchored in the human body....

How simplistic will be someone who think we can "measure" hearing creative power, or even only his  "audible" resolutive  abilities or his interpretative power, with only a decibel meter linear scale to decide what we can hear and what we cannot ?

Any sound is a complex body of potential information not measurable by the Hertz scale sorry....

 

What human ears are able to listen to is not CUTTED linear chunk of sound measured in decibels...Decibel meter cannot evaluate acoustic meaning but can help to implement better physical conditions for his experience thats all...What i hears cannot be described by a narrow window in Hertz sorry...It is more complex than that...

Human ears/brain listen to an integrated and an integral totality of information so complex to figure out that NO TOOL right now can replace the ears/brain translated interpretation and creative system...We can add to it some electronical appendice yes to help some, for some task, but we cannot replace it in ALL his functions for now, because ears are integrated not only with the brain, BUT WITH ALL THE BODY system and even with the eyes brain system....

Read psycho-acoustic....

I own a book of 800 pages about TIMBRE perception only, and no simplistic explanation of what is timbre perception exist and will never exist... Guess why?

It is because ears are not a "tool" like other measuring tools.... Ears dont measure very restricted and specific aspect of sound ONLY AND MAINLY but create also new meaningful aspect of sound or TRANSLATE natural sound in located meaningful one and ESPECIALLY RETRIEVE very conplex information HIDDEN deep in the sound source resonant body and in his environment...

And saying that the eyes /ears interaction may create biases is not false , but it is completely ridiculous argument when someone want to discredit ALL biases, especially the one we must cultivate in acoustic to learn how to listen because he doubt that some reviewer hear what they hear and ask for blind test all the time like an opinionated children or a measurement fanatic ...

Of course placebo and nocebo effect exist in the TWO directions though, wanting to listen something or negating to have listen something... Of course blind test may be useful to eliminate biases in some necessary experiments...But nobody learn acoustic and acquired the necessary biases to do so and tune his room/system with blind test only and mainly...

We must learn HOW to listen, not erasing all biases at all cost, in the opposite we must develop and cultivate many new biases... Replacing old biases by new one...It is precisely the task of an acoustician and of a musician...

 

 

Anyway, half joking here, my room/system is anything but beautiful to see.... Too much ugly devices... Then.... No esthetical biases here for me.... 😁😊

 

By the way human ears can almost do what bats do in a great measure: read about echo localization in blind people...

And survival evolutive history did not end many thousand years ago, man create civilzation and music and language with his ears... Survival here is survival of cultures and not only survival  of the physical body by localization of sounds...

A musical sound is so complex to define that i own a 1200 pages book about it ande musical sound is not ELUCIDATED scientifically for now...It is the same phenomenon for speech sound...

 

 

«American bats will never understand French sound»-Groucho Marx 🤓

 

 

I don’t know where this notion of ears being a great tool, they’re "tools" cobbled together by millions of years of evolution they’re simply good enough for us to survive. There are tools that hear way beyond human ears just as there are tools that see way beyond the human eye.

If you read my posts here in audiogon i NEVER rejected measures...

On the contrary i rejected objectivist and subjectivist opposition to be meaningless in psycho-acoustic where measures of different kind are CORRELATED always to subjective impressions...

Second: i promoted acoustic and psycho-acoustic EXPERIMENTS in each of my post against "subjective hyperbole" of reviewers when they spoke about their "taste" in costly gear changes.....I promoted embeddings electrical,mechanical and acoustical controls devices and experiments BEFORE any upgrade...Most upgrade are not so useful... Acoustic is...

I also suspect that our initial exposure to reproduced music informs our future choices.

Here you are right and Timbre recognition is the subjective METER by which we create our small room acoustic...

Unless one is Mahgister who has obviously figured everything out. Amir’s measurements are a resource and he does provide data with a methodology. Flawed, maybe, but better than subjective hyperbole.

Sorry but i dont think a bunch of measures so useful they can be for an ENGINEER would be useful for most people... But acoustic and psycho-acoustic knowledge will be in all case...

Measures are like food we eat them without always knowing what we eat and what for and MOST food content is transformed in waste at the end anyway...Acoustic experience is like air respiration , no waste........But we need to eat food anyway, you catch it ?

 

And keep your sarcasm about me for you....Thanks...

I figure out, yes, the acoustic of my OWN ROOM... This fact disturb you?

Try many hundred of listening experiments non stop on a 2 years period ( i am retired) and you will figure out yourself the basic and you will never need to give me your sarcasm anymore.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great posts that say much in few words....

Amir and others on this thread are absolutely right: A/B comparisons are notoriously flawed by expectation bias; that’s just how our brains work. In my profession (drug discovery) we therefore use "double-blind" evaluations, where the experimenter (e.g. the audio dealer) and the patient (i.e. the customer) do not know whether they are receiving a new treatment, a standard treatment, or (in non-critical cases) a sugar pill (i.e. placebo). Only such an evaluation would either confirm or put in question Amir’s well-intended measurements, in the sense whether or not the data he measures are relevant to human musical enjoyment and thus would indicate - before you buy it - if a particular gear enhances or diminishes such pleasure (which is, I suppose, what this exercise should be all about). The respective measurements would indeed have to track with the "enjoyment score" after listening to a hidden piece of new gear or an old one, while the listener and the dealer would not even know what gear is being listened to. In that sense, Harry Pearson was correct in his criticism of both: lone reliance on measurements and on A/B comparisons. He also knew that a new piece of equipment might sound spectacular at the onset, only to become fatiguing after a few hours or even days, no matter how "good" the measured data were. Psychoacoustics were a budding discipline in his early days, and we are still just beginning to understand how we make esthetic decisions, and what important part THD plays in this puzzle, if any at all.

Psycho-acoustic is fundamental knowledge for tuning a room, physical acoustic is NOT ENOUGH, for example knowing the way our brain synthetize the information coming for our two ears from the two speakers and from the walls and the meaning of the delay in time between these two frontwaves and their timing reflections and the way we could use and timing them to differentiate each one of them for each ears... i used that to decide for an asymmetric distribution of my Helmholtz resonators from each speakers and around the room with succeess...

No need to A/B blind-testing here....Our ears biases or pleasure level internal meter in the recognition of the timbre and imaging experience and any other acoustical cue are our guide and are our ONLY teacher here...

Precisely what Amir want to erase i keep it : our ears biases history... He is like a children playing with tools without learning with his BODY....He does not know that science is multi-disciplinary...And measure in one field means not the same in another field... It is the reason why concepts are more important than mere numbers...

Obsession to confirm biases is not scientific inquiry... But using acquired biases could be a scientific tool ...

 

Amir appears believe we all suffer from expectation bias. One problem how does that explain when the expectation is for things to sound no better or worse but they don’t?

This part pertain to the "nocebo effect"... When you claim that there is no positive difference ever and could not be one... But like someone painting himself in a corner Amir did not know that at all.... 😁😊 He dont see the "beam" bias in his own eye...And he look for the bias straw in others eye...Comical...

Anyway i was insulted by many people the only time i go there not by Amir but by his disciples.... i was naive thinking people look for truth and improvement.... They look for confirmation biases yes.... But that include Amir’s disciples especially... My self i was looking about improving acoustic experience by correlating some minerals addition on some part of the gear.... Easy experiments to do....And easy to verify, by their impact on the timbre perception, less so easy to measure, i dont know...

Human hearing is able to detect very subtle change from the resonant body source of the sound, it is the way man create music and create his meaning... Some ignorant claim they could reduce this phenomena to decibel level measures for example to determine what is audible or not... Simplistic claim that say all about scientific complete ignorance of the neurophysiology of acoustic which is non linear to begin with... What is audible for human ears is qualitative features essential to our survival, not simple linearly measured numbers by simplistic tool but non linear interactive complex qualities resulting from the interaction between the sound source and the environment...

 

 

«Silence is a bias and a sound, especially when i speak with my wife»-Groucho Marx 🤓

You cannot tune a room by blindfolding each step of your process...

You cannot fine tune sets of springs under and on top of each speakers damped by concrete load in my case, you cannot fine tune this at near 100 gram of precise loading weight blinfolded...

You cannot put in place 40 pieces of shungite and copper all along your electrical grid blind folded it is unnecessary to begins with...

And all others of my various devices like Schumann resonators grid i dontneed to be blindfolded to test it.... It is enough to set them off or on, each one at a times..And listen to the huge final difference...

Same process for my grid of different ionizers ....Samething for my other devices...

 

Blindtest is a tool for industrial reasearch yes and for marketing purpose also yes, it could be interesting to play with it in audiophile experience why not? it is fun yes...

But it is USELESS for my embeddings controls journey in mechanical,electrical and acoustical experiments in my own room...It will make my journey impossible to even start because of the complex burden which is related to scientific blind testing protocol.... 😁😊

It is ignorance to promote systematic blind test in audiophile tuning....Any audiophile can put off or put on something and listen and decide erroneously in some case but anyway being right in most cases... . It will be impossible anyway to blind test EVERYTHING...Perhaps some of my devices is not anything than a placebo effect for sure, but that did not explain the HUGE S.Q. improvement i enjoy now after many hundred of SMALL changes...

Our goal is creating a pleasurable acoustic experience of music in a system/room synergy for our own ears..

Our goal is not to set the OBJECTIVE standard for an industrial product where blind testing is a crucial step...

Objectivist and subjectivist division is a childish division who make no sense whatsoever in acoustic and in psycho-acoustic where only the correlation of each OBJECTIVE change or measure is CORRELATED under control by a guiding SUBJECTIVE judgment...

The important word here is not subjective nor objective but controlled correlation...

And blind test is a form of controlled correlation yes... But reducing all form of controlled correlation to thisone only is foolish... Especially in the incremental process of acoustic tuning of our room which may implicate many hundred of small changes by listening experiments...

 

 

For The measures problem: all is measurable in principle but we cannot measures all that can be measured or all that must be measured  anyway and in some case we dont know what to measure... And anyway no one has the same ears/brain history and stuctural working... We differ... Then to set a room and tuning it  measures are necessary but are only tags all along the road not the road itself...

Amir limited argument apply only for ONE change...

In an incremental ongoing process of MULTIPLE ORIENTED changes like adding multiple devices to controls the mechanical, electrical and acoustical working dimensions of our audio system, and for the tuning process of our room/speakers, our own LEARNED biases and audio history are an advantage and a tool and they are also our perspective peripheral original vision who make us able to focus on some center of attention at will... It is not only an analytical habit it is ALSO a synthesis of our sound interpretative history : a learned set of biases...

All biases are not always bad and a spectral analyser always right...it is not so simplistic...Science is not playing with tools....It is conceptual and experimental...

Acoustic is the main matter in audio not electronic engineering...Sorry for those who dont know this elementary fact ....

Let Amir play with his tools and we will set or system/room like we will like to enjoy it for music...I buy nothing, never upgrade and create my own devices... And i am satisfied ....I dont need obsessed tools fanatics to teach me that adding a quartz crystal+shungite and copper on a cable is stupid... I know what my ears teach me....All my devices cost peanuts but my system dont sound like peanuts...

Why there is not GENERAL acoustic thread in audio forums save precise questions sometimes by some but no GENERAL acoustic thread... I started one and it goes dead in days....

I will say why?

It is because people like Amir and the so called subjectivist think that it is electronic engineering that gives to us sound experience... It is not even wrong.... For me it is IGNORANCE or a lie... It is acoustic and psycho-acoustic that explain sound and give us music and sound higher experience... Not upgrading with the advice of Amir or from a fan of a brand name product...

 

 

My best to all....

 

Perhaps A/B testing is a strawman argument, because the human brain is not a spectrum analyzer. We are too affected by our biases to come up with any valid data. Maybe.