As an aside, conducting a proper audio double-blind test is tricky business. I’ve seen it done and it’s not as easy as it looks. When they’re well conducted, I’ve found that many differences become harder to distinguish than might be expected. When they are improperly conducted, such a test has no advantage over a sighted test and can yield misleading results.

This is a bunch of nebulous claims. I don’t know what you have seen. What was hard about it. Or how it generated worst results than sighted.

Such claims have been examined. For example audiophiles claim they need long term testing vs short. Clark led such a study for his local audiophile group by creating a black box that generated X amount of distortion. Audiophiles took these home but could not hear the distortion. Yet, another group with an ABX box and quick switching, not only detected that difference but eve a lower one! See my digest of that paper here.

AES Paper Digest: Sensitivity and Reliability of ABX Blind Testing

The second of the tests consisted of ten battery powered black boxes, five of which had the distortion circuit and five of which did not. The sealed boxes appeared identical and were built to golden ear standards with gold connectors, silver solder and buss-bar bypass wiring. Precautions were taken to prevent accidental or casual identification of the distortion by using the on/off switch or by letting the battery run down. The boxes were handed out in a double-blind manner to at least 16 members of each group with instructions to patch them into the tape loop of their home preamplifier for as long as they needed to decide whether the box was neutral or not. This was an attempt to duplicate the long-term listening evaluation favored by golden ears.

This was the outcome:

The results were that the Long Island group [Audiophile/Take Home Group] was unable to identify the distortion in either of their tests. SMWTMS’s listeners also failed the "take home" test scoring 11 correct out of 18 which fails to be significant at the 5% confidence level. However, using the A/B/X test, the SMWTMS not only proved audibility of the distortion within 45 minutes, but they went on to correctly identify a lower amount. The A/B/X test was proven to be more sensitive than long-term listening for this task.

See how I provide specifics to back what I say? Why do you think mere claims should be sufficient otherwise?

@soundfield 

Umm, over your right shoulder, in background

I see where you got confused.  Almost all of the ASR video content has the analyzer in the background.  None of these tests were run during that video.  Every test I have been showing predate my youtube channel by 5 or more years (see the dates in ABX tests and the ones for videos).  In the video, I am just showing the results, not running them then.  This should have been quite obvious.

As such, your claim that I had an analyzer running at the same time of the ABX testing is totally false.  

Hi Chayro,

Sensory Evaluation classes in the Wine Industry teach us that the olfactory sense of smell is interpreted; the only one of our senses that is not 'technically' hard-wired.

Some humans can be 'trained' to distinguish up to 1,000 different smells.

Each humans mouth, nose etc. are different.  For example when we would place and old 3-ring binder life-saver on our tongues and place a small drop of blue dye in the middle hole we could count the taste buds in the center of the life-saver-shaped hole.  Those who had lots of little taste buds were 'super tasters' and medium amounts 'tasters' and those with few big blotchy ones were called 'non-tasters'.  Each of them totally valid for the person whose tongue we were looking at.

We tried different taste sensation like bitterness from caffeine, or sweetness from sugar.  Each taste was sensed from a different area of our mouth.

The lesson we learned was we are all physiologically different.  What tastes good to you may not taste good to me; so make sure you put at least 3-different wines on the table to try and please everyone!

You can see where this is going, if you like a wine reviewers taste then you will like his wines, no matter how he measures his taste in the wine, you both have a similar set of physiological taste buds and olfactory sensory apparatus.

So it's not too hard to understand that audio senses are also interpreted to some degree based on lots of physical inputs and from most importantly life experiences.  We could never understand why the teachers promoted the old school European wines over the fruit forward California ones, until we had enough tastes under our belts to gain a base-line of understanding from which our sensory evaluation could take place.

Thus no matter how many types of audio equipment one may listen to or measure, if you don't have the same taste in sound as the reviewer then it matters not because like it or not sound is an interpreted experience.

Trust me we put super expensive, super highly revered wines next to those that were not, and it was always the same thing, 30% liked, 30% did not like, %40 didn't care that much.

If you put 30 people in a sound testing environment, good math and statistics will tell you the same spread will recur over and over, cost is irrelevant, and personal choice is all that matters.

So, find a reviewer that has your taste in sound and follow them.

Cheers Mate

Why?  Set up the test.  Show the people here that they can't tell the difference between high res and CD as you like to claim.

Umm, where did I claim that? Plus its a fools errand to seek negative proof, not mine. I'm far more interested in you demonstrating that you can, especially with someone else running the test. Sans any view of the signal analyzers of course 😉.

I see where you got confused.  Almost all of the ASR video content has the analyzer in the background.  None of these tests were run during that video.  Every test I have been showing predate my youtube channel by 5 or more years (see the dates in ABX tests and the ones for videos).  In the video, I am just showing the results, not running them then.  This should have been quite obvious.

Ok, so you confirm those are indeed signal analyzers, Oscilloscopes etc that could theoretically real time analyze and identify signals, visibly. Cool.

As such, your claim that I had an analyzer running at the same time of the ABX testing is totally false. 

Well, there is no way for us to know that definitively now, is there?

That's why you didn't grade your own Math tests in school (and score 100% all the time!). It's good to have independent oversight.

Pick a component to test an upgrade , in your own system room, let say an amplifier...

Let say you are not a fool you read the specsof the seller before buying to know if this amp, will pair well with your dac and speakers...

Let say you are not a fool and you read before buying Amir measures just to be sure that the specs about this amp are confirmed by an independant tester...

Let say you know well your dac, your speakers and room and your old amp working BEFORE replacing by the amp you just bought ...

Let say you know the definition of timbre in acoustic...

Let say that not only you know this definition of timbre but you are able to improve it or degrade it by just playing with the materials passive treatment in your room and the ratio absorbtion/diffusion and their optimal location and the timing of the reflective surfaces...

For those who dont know HOW COMPLEX the acoustic definition and perception of timbre is here the main factors :

"For example, J. F. Schouten (1968, 42) describes the "elusive attributes of timbre" as "determined by at least five major acoustic parameters", which Robert Erickson finds, "scaled to the concerns of much contemporary music":^[4]

1. Range between tonal and noiselike character
2. Spectral envelope
3. Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release")
4. Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation)
5. Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration" WIKIPEDIA

---- DIFFERENTIATING IMAGING....It is the way sound sources are differentiated one from another laterally and in detph...

Blind test had nothing to do directly with a training of the ears in music , or in acoustic implicating an incremental thousand listening experiments all INTERRELATED to give at the end an acoustic room , not a perfect one, but an incredible one able to give me all factors of a good musical experience...

An acoustic concept as holography, listener envelopment or timbre cannot be perceived only for the reason young ears are able to take an audiologist test...The young person must learn the concept before perceiving the complex object , being it timbre or holography, acuity is not enough at all...

These concept must be understood by EXPERINMENTS in a room and then to be under the control of the ears/brain imposing the right acoustic constraints to create them or controlling them... A room is like the varying lense of microscope, it is the variation of the acoustic conditions that make you able to FOCUS on the right aspect of the phenomenon... Then imposing blind test to an acoustician or a musician is a valid test in experimental psycho-acoustic , but the way Amir use this valid test is a kind of abuse against people And his bragging about audiology test resemble a teen bragging...... Not science... When i did my room acoustic and tuning i was already old, and my ears was not the same as 40 years ago... But my ears are healthy for a man of my age and i learned and created the room acoustic so imperfect it was, i created it FOR ME , not as a MODEL IDEAL room for all ears and PERFECT... But so imperfect it can be i can aussure you that there is no relation with the same speakers inside the room between before and after the completion of the process... This was the goal... LEARNING ACOUSTIC was the goal too... And in this i learned why audio is based on psycho-acoustic , not on the electrical measures of Amir...