atdavidMany tests are not needed to disprove a claim, just one ... That's completely mistaken, and the claim reflects the blind faith some have in these tests. The simple truth is this: No single test or trial proves anything at all. Only multliple tests - preferably with multiple subjects - are likely to produce meaningful results.
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It is easy GK as the person making the claim invariably includes the person making the claim as the test subject or an easily identified group/person, and their system or one they put together as the test system. It is not my fault they make themselves the convenient fish in a barrel.
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Wrong again Cleeds. If You claim that you can hear a difference on Your system, all I have to do is show that You cannot reliably detect the difference on Your system. Ditto if a supplier makes a generalization about a group of people with certain characteristics and systems with certain characteristics, and/or a system he is allowed to put together and a group he is allowed to put together. I only need to show lack of detection in that circumstance, which is near ideal for the person making the claim. Me and prof already schooled you on this at least once, but you keep repeating all the tired and wrong arguments. Are you just going to drag out the same tired and wrong arguments again? cleeds2,582 posts11-25-2019 10:33am atdavidMany tests are not needed to disprove a claim, just one ... That’s completely mistaken, and the claim reflects the blind faith some have in these tests. The simple truth is this: No single test or trial proves anything at all. Only multliple tests - preferably with multiple subjects - are likely to produce meaningful results. |
atdavid, you really don’t understand how independent test and evaluation works, do you? Don’t worry, stick around, you’ll catch on. If tests weren’t independent any yahoo in town could say his test proved some thingamabob or another is a hoax. 🤗
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Bravo to those who are starting to question the value of "high end" power cables to the quality of the sound that we hear as an end result. There is simply no scientific or logical evidence to justify the expenditure of so much money for these units.
Good audio equipment is fitted with excellent power supplies, which filter and stabilize during the rectification process to DC. Power supply surges are a different story - but surge suppressors are the proper solution to protect our equipment from such damage.
Most of us are subject to budget limitations - and do not want to waste our hard earned money on "snake oil" solutions. Science and logic should reign supreme in any technical endeavor - aside from the judgement of our ears - which can be overly subjective and misleading in some cases. Let the buyer beware!
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atdavid524 posts11-25-2019 10:17amOh look, a person who doesn't understand the concept quoting another person who doesn't understand the concept. I feel so much more enlightened now .... like at least 10lbs.
I was indeed expecting for you to say this about me (nothing new, the same arrogant, condescending, know-it-all behavior to be expected from you), but putting Micheal Lavorgna in the same meter? Really? Here is another one if so inclined:
https://hal.univ-brest.fr/file/index/docid/842647/filename/APAC_5172.pdf
There are many different ways to skin a chicken, no?
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atdavid
If
You claim that you can hear a difference on Your system, all I have to
do is show that You cannot reliably detect the difference on Your
system. Perhaps. But to insist that you can base any assertion on the results of a single test or trial is simply absurd. That's why scientific tests rely on more than one test, more than one trial and - typically - more than one subject.
Of course, if you prefer to believe in certain things because of the results of a single test, that's perfectly fine. But in doing so you abandon any claim you may have to being scientific or objective.
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You often hear people claim that as soon as a new cable was swapped the difference was "Immediately recognized", "Not at all subtle", "Could hear things never heard before" and "Transformed their system". So obviously they would have absolutely no problems picking between the two.............Right?
But the thing is I have never seen any reliable proof where someone can pick one over the other much over 50% when blinded. Going by the post here you would think that at least one superlistener can easily differentiate the cables at least 85% of the time in a blind listening test (and probably in a minute). Does anyone know of a reliable scientific test results where anyone could reliably tell the difference between anything costing over $50 (and I am not talking about using the throw away interconnects that come with lo-fi receivers or ultra thin gauge wires).
Here is your chance guys. Get some reliable witnesses and do a scientific blinded test. Show how you can instantly hear the slightest change in your cables. Then post it on all of the forums that it can be done. You will finally put to rest the countless arguments on this subject and prove to the world that expensive cables are better. You would be famous!
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delkal
Get some reliable witnesses and do a
scientific blinded test. Show how you can instantly hear the slightest
change in your cables. Then post it on all of the forums that it can
be done. You will finally put to rest the countless arguments on this
subject and you would be famous! You seem to be among the noisy minority here that places such faith in these tests, so please feel free to conduct your own blind listening tests and share the results here. Please be sure to tell us how the test was conducted. Most audiophiles don't have much interest in such tests. After all, they're tedious, time consuming, and sometimes yield puzzling results. It's more fun to listen to music. I've particpated in a few such DBTs. I'd never go to the trouble of actually organizing such a test, though. Provided that you truly want useful results, there's actually much more work to conducting such tests than meets the eye of the casual observer. And the results are useless if the test is not properly conducted. |
There is some objective collective truth in sound perception, but musical perception is more complex than just sound perception and taking into account the different genetic potential of each one of us and our own different individual listening history, it is impossible and illusory to reduce this individual history to some objective collective laws of hearing...We lear to listen music on our own term with a specific history and potential where we transform our own experience with musical experiences that are very different and varied in their impact for each one of us...Our continuously transforming experience with sound is the way to go deeper in our personal musical experience...Music perception does not reduce to sound perception at all... When i buy a piece of gear, or evaluate my room, or judge the impact of some modification in my audio system, i dont claim for a universal validity, but i claim and vouch from my own experience and personal history of listening, in my particular room with my particular gear... Reducing that to an A/B/X test is pointless... But testing ourself in some confortable personal environment and with our gear with an A/B test is, like says wisely Paul McGowan of PS audio, a necessary and instructive experiment to improve also ourself ... It is the listener own environment, mastering his own decisions, that are keys to personal improvement in audio and musical experience... What i speak about is from the subjective point of view of a listener in a process of experiencing music more deeply, and modifying his own perception of sound, with new gear or tweaks etc ,with this goal in mind and with his "own musical perception particular organ" create by his own history... Reducing that complex and very individual and personal history with ABX tests to some engineering laws of sound emission and perception is only truncating the musical experience to the lowest denominator, it is perhaps good for marketting, or engineering technology, but not a method able to explain musical perception in his relation to sound perception in an individual personal history... https://www.psaudio.com/askpaul/do-double-blind-tests-work/the second article post by thyname go in the same direction... |
I have no doubt you can hear differences from the extreme low end cables or thin zip cord vs. one costing $50+. I did my own blinded test with my friends hitting the A/B button with a DIY interconnect and the throw away Chinese interconnect. I could hear a difference and so could could my friends at least 85% of the time.
My point was I can not find any posts on the internet where someone could reliably differentiate between a $100 cable and a $1000-$10,000+ one (and that is what this post was originally about). You would think at one of the large audio conventions some high end company with their uber expensive cables would have some superlistener who could show the world there is a difference. Why don’t they do that?
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This is why your personal "experiences" when evaluating new equipment should be as blind as possible, so you can eliminate bias which is exceptionally powerful. Perceived significant changes in ones own personal system often disappear when bias (visual sighting) is removed. but not a method able to explain musical perception in his relation to sound perception in an individual personal history... |
atdavid I favor A/B auto testing...Not for eliminating bias tough, but more to begin to be conscious of them...Musical personal perception history is entirely based on subjective articulate bias in evolution...Therefore not reducible to any "objective laws" of perception or of engineering...It is impossible to design a perfect universal piece of gear that will satisfy all and each human on the planet.... Precisely because musical personal perception history is entirely based on subjective articulate bias in constant evolution... |
Other than the process, there is nothing objective at all about blind testing, or ABX testing. The actual testing is 100% purely subjective. By removing sighted bias, it ensures a much higher level of subjectivity.
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atdavid
Perceived significant changes in ones own personal system often disappear when bias (visual sighting) is removed.
All the changes that were implemented by the change in my audio system were made in a " cumulative" personal history, no illusion can persist in a cumulative long history, except for this particular complex illusion, which is the articulate sum history of all my bias, linked to individual pleasure called music.... |
Unfortunately I believe the only answer you will get to "why" is excuses. The why is obvious. High chance of failure coupled with high cost of failure.
My point was I can not find any posts on the internet where someone
could reliably differentiate between a $100 cable and a $1000-$10,000+
one (and that is what this post was originally about). You would think
at one of the large audio conventions some high end company with their
uber expensive cables would have some superlistener who could show the
world there is a difference. Why don’t they do that?
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I would offer a suitable response to this question, but I believe some would view my response as not politically correct. Let's just say that many people hold onto illusions virtually their whole life. no illusion can persist in a cumulative long history, |
atdavid529 posts11-25-2019 11:53amOther than the process, there is nothing objective at all about blind testing, or ABX testing. The actual testing is 100% purely subjective. By removing sighted bias, it ensures a much higher level of subjectivity. Then you say the samething that I was just saying the post before in other words...Glad we understand each other... |
I will vouch my whole life for this particular illusion called music by me with my own audio room in evolution... |
Let’s just say that many people hold onto illusions virtually their whole life.
You speak like Buddha.... Me I want to dissipate my illusions, and gain some "objective audio illumination", and for that I will read your posts among others, but without erasing the last persistent subjective illusion I live with and for, called music in my audio room with my gear and tweaks... |
mahgisterWhen i buy a piece
of gear, or evaluate my room, or judge the impact of some modification
in my audio system, i dont claim for a universal validity, but i claim
and vouch from my own experience and personal history of listening, in
my particular room with my particular gear... Reducing that to an A/B/X
test is pointless ... Exactly.
Reducing that complex and
very individual and personal history with ABX tests ... is perhaps good for marketting,
or engineering technology ... Exactly. And ABX may have particular value in the engineering and development of a component, where the test is most likely to be conducted in accordance with accepted protocols. But properly organizing and conducting such tests is a tricky business. It's also a tedious and time consuming pursuit that usually doesn't yield much benefit to the audiophile.
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I am sure it is not just me that questions the agenda of someone that actively tries to suppress people learning. Probably the #1 lesson that an audiophile can learn is that they are susceptible to bias. If and audiophile claims they are not, they are likely lying not only to you, but to themselves. One doesn’t need to do "tedious" testing processes in ones own home. One just needs a friend that switches cables (or lies and tells you that he did), so you don’t know what you are listening to. No huge study design, no exhaustive testing procedures, and the perfect testing system and environment .. your system, your room. Anyone who tells you there is no value in doing a test this way is lying to you. cleeds2,585 posts11-25-2019 12:11pm Exactly. And ABX may have particular value in the engineering and development of a component, where the test is most likely to be conducted in accordance with accepted protocols. But properly organizing and conducting such tests is a tricky business. It’s also a tedious and time consuming pursuit that usually doesn’t yield much benefit to the audiophile. |
Probably the #1 lesson that an audiophile can learn is that they are susceptible to bias. There is a difference between entertaining illusion, and selling snake oil, and being in a conscious audiophile history of articulate evolutive bias toward this goal: being more happy with our own listening experience ...Most audiophiles exist precisely with this" label name" because they are in a search history, and not in a so-called mission to eliminate all bias, but only the disruptive one for their own history, not the creative one, and this occur in their own personal history of cumulative articulated bias ...We always listen with our bias, but they are the good one and the bad one... "Listening without bias" is not only impossible, this is the most difficult illusion to erase, a bad one indeed...And this illusion is not only the disease of "audiophile", but of " scientist" also... By the way you speak like if being an audiophile was a tare or a disease of the mind, most audiophile are conscious that they are susceptible of bias, being audiophile is precisely that, cultivating some bias, eliminating some bias...It is an history or a life...Not a piece of engineering... Most audiophile want to learn, but no audiophile will erase his own personal history of listening, and exchange that for an "illumination" by some " scientist" ...We must be respectful of facts and persons... By the way all people vote for the virtue, and all are in favor of tests , blind one also, to eliminating blatent snake oil products, and that goes without saying...This is one thing, but it is another one to attack audiophile personal bias history, and calling that an" illusion".... All illusions are not the same, a rainbow is not a cable in the night perceived to be a serpent...In the kingdom of illusions there is the creative one and the disruptive one... |
atdavidI am sure it is not just me that questions the agenda of someone that actively tries to suppress people learning. I don’t see any indication that anyone here "tries to suppress" learning. That’s just a silly claim. In fact, there are many users who visit here regularly and share their experiences along with asking questions and responding to the questions of others. So there seems to be quite an appetite for learning here, notwithstanding the noisy minority that thinks it has all the answers. One doesn’t need to do "tedious" testing processes in ones own home. Exactly. One can simply listen for pleasure, and make observations accordingly. One just needs a friend that switches cables (or lies and tells you that he did), so you don’t know what you are listening to. No huge study design, no exhaustive testing procedures, and the perfect testing system and environment .. your system, your room. What you describe isn’t double-blind and has no control for the tester’s bias. So the results would be essentially useless, and certainly not scientific. Anyone who tells you there is no value in doing a test this way is lying to you. There’s no more value to the test you described than there is to the sort of fully sighted tests that you repeatedly assail so passionately. I’ve participated in a few scientifically controlled listening tests. The trials were conducted by real researchers, not self-appointed audio forum experts. They were tedious - something the organizers cautioned about at the start of the undertaking - and it explains why not all of the subjects who started the test were willing to complete them. Proper, scientifically-controlled listening tests are a time-consuming, laborious undertaking for pretty much everyone involved. Those who claim such tests are simple, fun and easy to conduct have obviously never been responsible for any such test. |
Cleeds
I’ve participated in a few scientifically controlled listening tests.
The trials were conducted by real researchers, not self-appointed audio
forum experts. They were tedious - something the organizers cautioned
about at the start of the undertaking - and it explains why not all of
the subjects who started the test were willing to complete them. Proper,
scientifically-controlled listening tests are a time-consuming,
laborious undertaking for pretty much everyone involved. Those who claim
such tests are simple, fun and easy to conduct have obviously never
been responsible for any such test. Care to share the results of the test? |
OK, I’ll be the first one to bring it up. There’s no such thing as a “scientifically controlled test,” at least for anything audio related, because nobody can control all the variables involved. There’s no MIL-STD for controlled test, even AES doesn’t have a protocol for Controlled Blind Testing. The Amazing Randi had a protocol for controlled blind testing calculated so nobody could pass. Geez, nobody even know what all the variables are. But if you want to pretend test, be my guest! Hey, that rhymes! 🤗
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A good overview indeed... :)
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I am beginning to question the very concept of the ABX test. Is it a real thing?
Before you get upset and slam your keyboard (yes, I am talking to you the mighty keyboard-warrior), this is just a joke, but a tongue-in-chick joke nonetheless...
Isn't the "ABX test" something that the "slayers of snake oil" throw in your face every time someone shares his / her experience of anything in audio making a difference? More often than not, without even doing any such tests themselves.
It's beginning to look like it. To the point of me starting to detest is, as only those guys use it, in every audio forum they can find. |
This is such a grossly inaccurate statement as to call it bubkiss. While ideally the test would be double blind, that is not always a viable thing to do. There are two biases, subject bias and observation bias. Single blind removes subject bias, which is usually the dominant bias. While double blind is the "gold standard", single bias is still used as it eliminate subject bias, and provides significantly more statistically relevant results. To suggest this is no more valuable than sighted tests shows a gross ignorance w.r.t. this type of testing. cleeds2,587 posts11-25-2019 12:46pm
One just needs a friend that switches cables (or lies and tells you that he did), so you don’t know what you are listening to. No huge study design, no exhaustive testing procedures, and the perfect testing system and environment .. your system, your room. What you describe isn’t double-blind and has no control for the tester’s bias. So the results would be essentially useless, and certainly not scientific.
Anyone who tells you there is no value in doing a test this way is lying to you. There’s no more value to the test you described than there is to the sort of fully sighted tests that you repeatedly assail so passionately. |
I am really starting to detest it, these guys who think they have superhuman hearing and that they alone , and their close-knit group are so superhuman that they are immune to bias that afflicts pretty much 100% of the population. They post on virtually every audio forum they can, their superhuman hearing and total absence of bias .... thyname475 posts11-25-2019 1:27pm
It’s beginning to look like it. To the point of me starting to detest is, as only those guys use it, in every audio forum they can find. |
these guys who think they have superhuman hearing and that they alone , and their close-knit group are so superhuman that they are immune to bias that afflicts pretty much 100% of the population
It is a dialogue of the deaf...Nobody has ever argued to own superhuman hearings...But attributing that hability to someone and attacking him after that for being so is an interesting tactic indeed... All of us have accumulated in a long self educating listening history, an additive number of creative and negative bias...This is not only normal, this is impossible to erase completely all our bias, there is no absolutely objective listening without bias at all...This is a fiction...We can become conscious of some of our bias for sure...And that is science... This is not superhuman hearing...I only wanted to point this out, for making things discussed clearer and not succumb to dialogue without compromising and without listening to each other... |
When you have no idea what you are listening to, then you remove all bias w.r.t. that product you are evaluating. I may not be sure, but some of what you have alluded to as bias in your last post, I think many would call preference. That is much different from removing knowledge of changes and evaluating with nothing but our ears.
I can't think of any other pursuit where a group of people fight so feverishly to maintain their ability to be bias influenced in the outcome. Anyone who thinks they will not be biased by knowing the device being tested/evaluated is, frankly, delusional. I am sorry to be harsh, but no one is immune to it. I don't understand why people keep insisting that they are.
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This is one thing to eliminate negative bias, that disrupt the process of listening...In that we are on the same page.... All of us wanted to eliminate snake oil or negative illusions...Nobody is against tests...
But it is another thing to negate the role of positive bias in an audio individual history, and reduce that to deception only....Biases are not reducible to be only preferences, because preference is only one of the final conscious products of a long personal complex history of listening processes and this personal history is an objective fact not reducible to be only a temporary negative single illusion or a singular preference only that must be eliminate at all costs ...
Biases are like iceberg surfacing tops, you can eliminate what you see: one of the surfacing tops , not the iceberg... Because the iceberg is the listening process in itself constructing in the waters...
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atdavid534 posts11-25-2019 2:06pm
You own speakers, correct? How did you buy your speakers? Did you go to a dealer and asked them to do a quick ABX test for you? Provided that same dealer had all the speakers you wanted to test, AND, the dealer was willing to let you do a "scientifically controlled" ABX test (good luck with that). Or did you order twenty speakers for deliver in your home, did the ABX test in all of them, then you returned the nineteen losing ones? I am really curious to find out how you selected your current speakers (provided that you own speakers that is of course). Thank you |
I don’t know if it qualifies for super human hearing but I can hear a mouse fart from 20 feet and yes, I passed a scientifically controlled double blind test. No, wait, it was actually only three blind mice. OK, let’s get this straight. Am I attacking those who think controlled blind tests are important or valid. Yes. And I think it’s funny. And I’m tired of pretending it’s not. Comedy is subjective, Isn’t that what they say? All of you people, the system that knows so much, you decide what’s right or wrong. The same way that you decide what’s funny or not. 🤗 |
How do you buy a TV? Most people walk into Target or Best Buy and pick a few TVs in their price range and buy the one with the best picture. Maybe it’s only audiophile who are obsessed with sound and cannot rely very much on their sense of hearing. That would be my guess.
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geoffkait18,479 posts11-25-2019 2:43pmHow do you buy a TV?
Blind test of course ;-) |
And most people take that same TV set home, complete with the awful settings in the store, set it up in their house, and then leave it in cartoon mode till it eventually dies, never knowing how much better the image could be especially for movies. I have shown many friends how much better their TV can look. I also have friends and acquaintances who wouldn’t think twice about paying a few hundred dollars for a professional calibration on their TVs or projectors, I did a lot of research, and fortunately reviews on televisions include pretty good performance measurements. Then I hit stores (Blueray in hand) and get the remote so I can change/adjust to suitable settings, then I look for characteristics in the images I like / dislike, and I won’t do it in the bright lights of the "field" at a BestBuy. While there is variability from "perfect" in televisions, for the most part, at least now, it is becoming less and less of a subjective evaluation as objective measurements tell a lot more of the story than they ever will with speakers.
... and this is an audiophile forum, not a Sonos forum.
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@blumartini
Thanks for being a good sport.
I’m not looking to tear down the conversation you actually want to have.It’s just that occasionally I think it’s good to hear from the variety of voices among audiophiles, which includes audiophiles who are more skeptical of cable claims, and cautious about relying on pure personal anecdote to settle controversial technical claims.
Carry on...
Cheers.
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mahgister, There is some objective collective truth in sound perception, but
musical perception is more complex than just sound perception and taking
into account the different genetic potential of each one of us and our
own different individual listening history, it is impossible and
illusory to reduce this individual history to some objective collective
laws of hearing... I find your writing on these subjects to be unclear as you seem to conflate separate issues: that of musical appreciate, or personal reaction to music, vs the question of the actual *audibility* of any particular technical claim. To take a hypothetical example, if a cable manufacturer claims they have reduced the presence of a distortion that occurs in the frequency of 25kHz which therefore produces a "better sounding cable," that's a claim that does not require all this personal musical history mumbo jumbo to investigate. Right off the bat there is reason to be skeptical, given the well known *general* limits to human hearing. So right off the bat it would make sense to ask for evidence we can even HEAR the problem being claimed. You could claim all you want to hear above 20kHz, but no appeal to your musical history will suffice to wave away a hearing test that shows you can not, in fact, reliably detect the presence of anything above 18kHz.(And such tests are of course done blind, so you are not given visual cue, or information, as to when the tones are playing...reducing those variables to concentrate only on what you are actually detecting via your hearing). The same goes for the fundamental question "Does cable A actually 'sound' delectably different from cable B?" So, take a possible blind test one could conduct between an audiophile AC cable and a standard "came with the device" audio cable. Let's say we want to investigate the AUDIBILITY (forget preference...lets first establish if A and B are even delectably different!) of an audiophile cable on a DAC. And let's say this audiophile cable - the "audiophileWOW cable" was purported by others to obviously improve the sound of a well known DAC. Maybe you have even "heard" it do exactly that, with that DAC. How to test this more rigorously? (*caveat: a double-blind set up would be even better, but even a single-blind test goes far further to reducing variables than the average "stick it in my system and listen" version used to anecdotally vet claims in hi-end audio). You could have two samples of the same DAC, both outputting to a switcher (pre-amp, whatever), so you can switch between the signal coming out of either DAC. First you do a blind test (e.g. someone else switching in a way you, the subject, can not know which DAC you are hearing), to first determine if you can reliably detect any difference between the two DAC units (again, the same DAC model), using this switching method. Presuming you can not, the inference being they sound alike to you as one would expect, you can move on to introducing the audiophile AC cable in the test. Just have one DAC unit using the supplied AC cable it came with, the other is now using the audiophileWOW AC cable. Now, repeat that same blind test. Can you even DETECT a difference between them to a statistically reliable degree? If not, if the results mirror a similar randomness as when they each had the same stock AC cable, then you've failed to show any positive correlation of sonic changes brought to the table by the audiophileWOW AC cable. Which is suggests that you really can't hear a difference. (Do enough of these tests, and you can establish ever more confidence that you can not hear a difference. Do it with enough people, and you gain ever more confidence that there is no audible contribution made by the audiophileWOW cable. None of this has to do with "personal musical history," it's about investigating the question of audibility, just like we do with hearing tests. But once components are established to actually sound different, then preference can play a plausible role, and it makes sense to talk about "which sonic presentation you like more" and for what reasons, how it effects your reaction to the music, etc.
Reducing that to an A/B/X test
Which is a strawman. No one suggests that we simply reduce music listening to A/B/X tests. It's just a more concise tool for investigating whether sonic differences are detectable or not. It can be expanded to preference-testing, if you like. But it's just conflating issues to mix up all this "personal musical history" stuff with a much narrower goal.You are making the typical audiophile exception for your hobby, as if the lessons of science, useful in most other areas, just don't apply to audio.It's special pleading. |
We all have bias's. That's why we like things a little different from each other. That is ok isn't it. What is a sad is some here don't want to discuss a subject, but rather dig their feet in and make fun of or argue their position. Sad that so many of us older ones can't seem to enjoy one anothers input whether we agree or not, and help each other out and just have a nice productive discussion that leads to enjoying our hobby more.
My listening to music is not a life or death thingee. I enjoy it and it is going to stay that way even though I am not an industry insider, or know anything about my equipment.
I do appreciate the insider's that contribute something positive to this place. But the old saying(it's not old, I am just now making this up)'I would rather enjoy some ice cream with my dog than have a steak dinner with a crude know it all. |
prof
To take a hypothetical example, if a cable manufacturer claims they have reduced the presence of a distortion that occurs in the frequency of 25kHz which therefore produces a "better sounding cable," that’s a claim that does not require all this personal musical history mumbo jumbo to investigate. Right off the bat there is reason to be skeptical, given the well known *general* limits to human hearing. So right off the bat it would make sense to ask for evidence we can even HEAR the problem being claimed.
>>>>That’s weird. I don’t recall any cable manufacturer ever making that claim. Did you just make that up? I suspect you might be over thinking it. 😛
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geoffkait,
Are you having trouble processing the word "hypothetical" today? ;-)
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marqmike We all have bias’s. That’s why we like things a little different from each other. That is ok isn’t it. Of course. Have you actually seen anyone saying otherwise? (Certainly not me). The type of "bias" I have referenced are things like sighted bias, the type of things it’s reasonable to control for, when trying to investigate claims about audibility. This is different from the biases that influence what we like, in our everyday enjoyment of the hobby. I’m full of those biases, like you, and happily embrace it. What is a sad is some here don’t want to discuss a subject, but rather dig their feet in and make fun of or argue their position. In other words, even though a range of opinions exist among audiophiles, apparently you only want to hear from one type of opinion - the one that falls in line with a dogma that AC cables all sound different? Do you really think keeping in an ideological bubble is that great an idea? When people in forums like this start the type of complaint "it’s sad that..." it typically plays out as "it’s sad that I have to look at anyone’s opinion that significantly differs from my own. Especially if they provide reasons/arguments justifying their opinion." How about this: How about we audiophiles actually grow thicker skins, and not consider alternative viewpoints - say, someone else who isn’t so sure as you are about the claims made for cables - as some existential threat to your enjoyment of hi end audio. Other people have different viewpoints. Relax. No biggie. |
Is it biases or biasi? When I look at very expensive equipment or speakers I don’t expect to hear great sound. Quite the opposite. I’m very skeptical that they will sound as good as they look or cost. Is that the bias you’re referring to? By the way, I’m frequently rewarded by being right. |
There is too much scientific and controlled double blind study talk here (and I am a scientist). This should be simple. Show me some validated examples where someone can reliably pick between 2 cables costing over $50 (blinded, when someone else changes them) and they didn't know which one was playing.
Thats all. Double blind, single blind, AB, ABX, Good change, bad change, Anything! It could even be on their personal system in their home. And to make it easy lets say they can notice a difference over 85% of the time for 10 tries. Not 2 out of 3. And not barely over 50% for 10.
There should be dozens if not thousands of these examples on the internet. How about at least one? It should be easy to find. All of the people who invested big bucks on their Uber-expensive bragging rights cables should be referencing it all of the time.
For some reason I can not find ANY examples.
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"...over 85% of the time for 10 tries." I guess it will have to be 90%. 85% might be eight correct and one "hmmm, I am not sure, may be this or may be that". |
Wow! What a coincidence! That’s the same requirements The Amazing Randi uses for his Million Dollar Challenge! I had no idea his blind testing protocol was so scientifically correct. Color me impressed! |
I was just being nice.......I guess Randi was being nice too. If I had a million dollars on the line it would be 99%.
Edit: just realized you cant get to 85% correct in ten tries! My bad.
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