Albert, that was bad, but I loved it! Let's move back to beer tasting for a moment.
I had a number of parties where blind beer tasting was the theme and involved at least five couples. We even kept score and rewarded the individual who was closest to their original guess in rating beers (least squared difference & forced spread of ratings). More often than not, people were surprised. They could absolutely tell the difference among beers but it did not correlate well with their day to day preferences.
Why? I think it's because we had to keep the portions reasonably small so people could drive home. Like a too forward top end, it sounds pretty nice in the short term. With the beer, we would have been better off with a couple of bottles of each brew. With audio equipment, you are better off with several hours of experimentation (unless, like Twl, you are already familiar with the equipment).
The problem? With beer, you get drunk too quickly to compare more than a few. With audio, you start forgetting all the nuances (well, I do anyway) of earlier stuff unless it is your reference equipment -- this is a hobby of nuances. Alas, I'm only good at blind tests when taken over a long period of time and with limited comparisions (which is not to say I don't know what I like and I am quite willing to reject some stuff pretty quickly -- the issue is with the nuances once you get past the reject pile). That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Good post.
I had a number of parties where blind beer tasting was the theme and involved at least five couples. We even kept score and rewarded the individual who was closest to their original guess in rating beers (least squared difference & forced spread of ratings). More often than not, people were surprised. They could absolutely tell the difference among beers but it did not correlate well with their day to day preferences.
Why? I think it's because we had to keep the portions reasonably small so people could drive home. Like a too forward top end, it sounds pretty nice in the short term. With the beer, we would have been better off with a couple of bottles of each brew. With audio equipment, you are better off with several hours of experimentation (unless, like Twl, you are already familiar with the equipment).
The problem? With beer, you get drunk too quickly to compare more than a few. With audio, you start forgetting all the nuances (well, I do anyway) of earlier stuff unless it is your reference equipment -- this is a hobby of nuances. Alas, I'm only good at blind tests when taken over a long period of time and with limited comparisions (which is not to say I don't know what I like and I am quite willing to reject some stuff pretty quickly -- the issue is with the nuances once you get past the reject pile). That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Good post.