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Why blind listening tests are flawed

This may sound like pure flame war bait - but here it is anyway. Since rebuilding my system from scratch, and auditioning everything from preamps to amps to dacs to interconnects to speaker cable etc, it seems clearer than ever.

I notice that I get easily fooled between bad and great sounding gear during blind auditions. Most would say "That should tell you that the quality of the gear is closer than you thought. Trust it".

But it's the process of blind listening tests that's causing the confusion, not a case of what I prefer to believe or justify to myself. And I think I know why it happens.

Understanding the sound of audio gear is process of accumulated memories. You can listen to say new speakers for weeks and love them until you start hearing something that bothers you until you can't stand them anymore.

Subconsciously you're building a library of impressions that continues to fill in the blanks of the overall sound. When all the holes are filled - you finally have a very clear grasp of the sonic signature. But we know that doesn't happen overnight.

This explains why many times you'll love how something sounds until you don't anymore? Anyone experience that? I have - with all 3 B&W speakers upgrades I've made in my life just to name a few.

Swapping out gear short term for blind listening tests is therefore counter productive for accurately understanding the characteristics of any particular piece or system because it causes discontinuity with impression accumulation and becomes subtractive rather than additive. Confusion becomes the guaranteed outcome instead of clarity. In fact it's a systematic unlearning of the sound characteristics as the impression accumulation is randomized. Wish I could think of a simpler way of saying that..

Ok this is getting even further out there but: Also I believe that when you're listening while looking at equipment there are certain anchors that also accumulate. You may hear a high hat that sounds shimmering and subconsciously that impression is associated with some metallic color or other visual aspect of the equipment you happen to be watching or remember.

By looking at (or even mentally picturing) your equipment over time you have an immediate association with its' sound. Sounds strange, but I've noticed this happening myself - and I have no doubt it speeds up the process of getting a peg on the overall sound character.

Obviously blind tests would void that aspect too resulting in less information rather than more for comparison.

Anyone agree with this, because I don't remember hearing this POV before. But I'm sure many others that have stated this because, of course, it happens to be true. ;
larrybou

Showing 3 responses by zkzpb8

zkzpb8
212 posts
 
It’s simple - listen with your ears not with your eyes.

I understand the long term exposure to really get to know the sound of something. I’ve heard NS-10s thousands of times - when I hear a pair of those things, it’s a very familiar sound.

But - if you’re trying to make comparisons between two pieces of gear you have to level match, and make instantaneous comparisons - back and forth, back and forth. This is the way our senses work - our hearing is very non-linear, and our senses have a very short memory - much shorter than one would think.
zkzpb8
212 posts
 
Ok, as I mentioned - there are two important considerations. Level matched components - quick A/B with no time gaps. It can even be sighted, but those two things MUST happen in order to exclude variables that will cloud our judgement.

During the time it takes to swap out a component, your memory has failed you (and even shorter time than that). There’s no possibility that you can remember the sound well enough to make an honest comparison. If you could, you would be an oddity, and very rich and famous. If I played you a test tone - a single tone, not even anything as complex as a song. Then very slightly pitched the tone, unplugged the cables, plugged them back in again then played the new tone - you’d hear no difference. But if I quickly A/B’d them, everyone here would hear the very slight pitch difference.

I used to get tired of hearing about level matching. Level match this, level match that... However, when you experience how different something sounds when you change the volume (even just the smallest amount) you quickly realize how important it is to level match. Our hearing is not built to make comparisons without first making sure the levels aren’t skewing the test.

I still don’t understand all of the pressure from an A/B test - I do it all of the time in the studio. Does A sound better than B? Well, let’s see: listen to A, listen to B - let’s go with B - next... I don’t sit in a session and live with a sound for a week, make a change and live with that one for another week. When you see the power in making quick, A/B comparisons, your ears will very easily tell you what’s right.

zkzpb8
212 posts
 
'When doing A/B comparisons, its not necessary to do it blinded. What's important is to make the switches rapidly, because audible memory fades quickly.’

That’s really the heart of the matter. Listeners would be surprised at how short our sensory memory actually is... It can be surprising how two things might sound the same, but when put right next to each other, obvious differences emerge. I do this everyday at work, you really do learn to listen better, and trust your hearing more and more...
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