my take on blind tests

Actually orchestras do blind testing. Not in the case of conductors, but most major orchestras do blind open auditions of musicians applying to fill a full time rank and file position. They play behind a partition. The judges cannot see who it is. They have to vote solely on what they heard.

If I were to take a double blind test, the biggest problem would be that I am completely unfamiliar with the entire audio system being used in the test.

The place I notice differences the quickest and easiest is at home; for the simple reason that I have a long memory of how it sounds and feels. So anything new introduced is immediately apparent.

At a store, a friends, an audio show, I can get an pretty quick impression of the entire setup, but individual items are hard to differentiate. If I spent all day, maybe I would reach a point where small changes were easier to distinguish. In those tests, they won't give you all day for your ears to adjust. They won't even give you ten minutes.

Many times I have stuck something in my system with the preconceived notion that is would be better. It just had to be better. But it was not. I'd spend hours trying to convince myself that is was really better, but something else was off. In the end it was not better. If I am just imagining things, it would have always sounded better in those situations, since I was favorably biased going in.

In a classical music context, there are many who think the conductor does not matter. After all, the top orchestras have world class musicians in them who know what they are doing.

About six-seven years ago I heard a young (roughly 32 year old) unknown guest conduct in Baltimore. I was very impressed. Six months later I heard him conduct again. I heard the same excellence. Was I imagining things? Well, he was just hired (still under 40 years old) to be the new Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. The only other time they hired someone young was Bernstein. People that young just don't get jobs like that with million dollar salaries. So I can't be the only person who heard what I heard.