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Why Do So Many Audiophiles Reject Blind Testing Of Audio Components?

Because it was scientifically proven to be useless more than 60 years ago.

A speech scientist by the name of Irwin Pollack have conducted an experiment in the early 1950s. In a blind ABX listening test, he asked people to distinguish minimal pairs of consonants (like “r” and “l”, or “t” and “p”).

He found out that listeners had no problem telling these consonants apart when they were played back immediately one after the other. But as he increased the pause between the playbacks, the listener’s ability to distinguish between them diminished. Once the time separating the sounds exceeded 10-15 milliseconds (approximately 1/100th of a second), people had a really hard time telling obviously different sounds apart. Their answers became statistically no better than a random guess.

If you are interested in the science of these things, here’s a nice summary:

Categorical and noncategorical modes of speech perception along the voicing continuum

Since then, the experiment was repeated many times (last major update in 2000, Reliability of a dichotic consonant-vowel pairs task using an ABX procedure.)

So reliably recognizing the difference between similar sounds in an ABX environment is impossible. 15ms playback gap, and the listener’s guess becomes no better than random. This happens because humans don't have any meaningful waveform memory. We cannot exactly recall the sound itself, and rely on various mental models for comparison. It takes time and effort to develop these models, thus making us really bad at playing "spot the sonic difference right now and here" game.

Also, please note that the experimenters were using the sounds of speech. Human ears have significantly better resolution and discrimination in the speech spectrum. If a comparison method is not working well with speech, it would not work at all with music.

So the “double blind testing” crowd is worshiping an ABX protocol that was scientifically proven more than 60 years ago to be completely unsuitable for telling similar sounds apart. And they insist all the other methods are “unscientific.”

The irony seems to be lost on them.

Why do so many audiophiles reject blind testing of audio components? - Quora
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Showing 2 responses by teo_audio

teo_audio
2,197 posts
 

the longer a question exists, the more fundamental the error in the formulation of the question.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The lack of reconciliation here, and the general kindness of the group that supports the difference in cables, as expressed toward the naysayers..

... vs the general violence expressed by the naysayers, speaks to the understanding that the naysayer group is missing understanding, or data.... within their ideas on the totality of the data required - for the formulation of the question.

Ie, that the naysayers are, generally, not in good enough psychological shape and reach to be asking the question, and the known path of substitute activity for people in such condition where questions ill formed turn to being demands, is to project and possibly act out violence.

This situation of general kindness vs general violence is what we consistently see here, in these areas of clashing.

teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
might be good to remember that science is the art of logic based investigation of incomplete unknowns.

The statement does not say that science itself or logic or the art of investigation is in any way complete, nor does it suppose that dogmatism is a thing.

Arguing with human emotion as a deep colorant and filter in one’s own formation of logic... is also an act of partial and limited depth analysis with the logic  bits being all askew.

Since we don’t know everything, this part is inevitable. to be on guard for it with every single thought form of any kind.

at no point in any of the given motions of working through the considerations, should anyone assume that any of the bits in place are perfected or immutable. that’s the creep of the deep mindset of humans in ’dogmatism’, coming into the fray again. coloring. owning. projecting. deciding and living in the emotional coloring and skewing of logic.

really bad news for science.

which the idea of science is specifically designed to sidestep and take into account, and never issue any facts of any kind. to never be dogmatic, to never have facts, to revert all to mutable, changeable theory. otherwise dogmatism rises in the mind and colors facts into existence - when there are none.

Most times these sort of threads are rife with limited depth projections built out of dogma and factualization. A fundamental and core human issue.

if you want to have a discussion that is to be based in the idea and form/scope of science.... then shed the dogma and facts, in everything. Then..maybe we'll start to get somewhere useful.
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