2. tech-talk
  3. 1421262840

In defense of ABX testing

We Audiophiles need to get ourselves out of the stoneage, reject mythology, and say goodbye to superstition. Especially the reviewers, who do us a disservice by endlessly writing articles claiming the latest tweak or gadget revolutionized the sound of their system. Likewise, any reviewer who claims that ABX testing is not applicable to high end audio needs to find a new career path. Like anything, there is a right way and many wrong ways. Hail Science!

Here's an interesting thread on the hydrogenaudio website:

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=108062

This caught my eye in particular:

"The problem with sighted evaluations is very visible in consumer high end audio, where all sorts of very poorly trained listeners claim that they have heard differences that, in technical terms are impossibly small or non existent.

The corresponding problem is that blind tests deal with this problem of false positives very effectively, but can easily produce false negatives."
psag

Showing 1 response by bgoeller

bgoeller
73 posts
 
I agree with the notion of Science! being applied as a tool for understanding how different equipment influences my perceptions, but I'm not convinced ABX testing is the right way to go about it.

Even if a test population of reasonable size is acquired, large enough to smooth out the differences in loudness perception in the subjects, you'd still only have a result for that particular set of equipment. Perhaps a statistically significant percentage of the subject group could identify MP3 versus APE, but once you swap out a cable or change the room temperature, confidence in the results degrade.

If one wants to apply science here, there first has to be a hypothesis that can be falsified through measured experiment. For example, "all conducting wire measures the exact same frequency response curve with white noise at 90db, regardless of the transducer". This is probably trivial to falsify, but is on the same continuum of the notion that high priced cables are "better" than lamp cord.

If you want to apply science to that or a similar or even more refined question, super. But an ABX test isn't going to get you a definitive result.
More to discover