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? - Quoraartemus_5 Science is the art of reducing the field of the unknown by making objective observations and measuring them. Religion is the art of camouflaging the field of the unknown with dogmatic certainties that are usually not correlated by objective observation. |
Mahgister, you protest way too much. My position is: if you are going to insist that I am incompetent or worse for refusing to spend thousands of dollars on wire even though I discern almost no improvement in sound at all, never mind an improvement that justifies the spending, you will have to prove it to me that I am that incompetent. In the world that I live in, which when last checked is at least tangentially associated with reality, I’m going to insist that the proof be ascertained via blind testing. Full stop. theaudioatticvinylsundays.com |
Mahgister, thanks for the clarification. My bad. I’m just fed up with audiophiles who use our hobby to ... if I may be blunt ... bludgeon people into submission with their positions because their - - - - is too small. Over 53 years, I have learned how to find components and parts that work for me and to improve upon them, that bring a smile to my face, and shock the crap out of people who hear it for the first time. What else is there in this short life, other than to try to make oneself happy despite neuroticisms, and to paste smiles on other people’s faces? I really don’t care about the rest. enuf already. Jesus Mary and Joseph (Moses Abraham and David, Marx Lenin and Mao for our Jewish and communist friends ...) i don’t wish to get involved in a discussion about wire directivity unless there is a pragmatic application that is outside of our cult of audiophilism. |
My approach to audio these days really helps me to stay out of these arguments. it’s simple: I like the way my audio sounds. Until I don’t. And then I fix it. And I have zero expectations of persuading anyone to like what I did to make it sound they way it does. The only audience member that matters is me. it is so much less stressful. You audiogon folks should try it: the Don’t Worry Be Happy approach to fine listening
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