Amir and Blind Testing


Let me start by saying I like watching Amir from ASR, so please let’s not get harsh or the thread will be deleted. Many times, Amir has noted that when we’re inserting a new component in our system, our brains go into (to paraphrase) “analytical mode” and we start hearing imaginary improvements. He has reiterated this many times, saying that when he switched to an expensive cable he heard improvements, but when he switched back to the cheap one, he also heard improvements because the brain switches from “music enjoyment mode” to “analytical mode.” Following this logic, which I agree with, wouldn’t blind testing, or any A/B testing be compromised because our brains are always in analytical mode and therefore feeding us inaccurate data? Seems to me you need to relax for a few hours at least and listen to a variety of music before your brain can accurately assess whether something is an actual improvement.  Perhaps A/B testing is a strawman argument, because the human brain is not a spectrum analyzer.  We are too affected by our biases to come up with any valid data.  Maybe. 

chayro

If you read my posts here in audiogon i NEVER rejected measures...

On the contrary i rejected objectivist and subjectivist opposition to be meaningless in psycho-acoustic where measures of different kind are CORRELATED always to subjective impressions...

Second: i promoted acoustic and psycho-acoustic EXPERIMENTS in each of my post against "subjective hyperbole" of reviewers when they spoke about their "taste" in costly gear changes.....I promoted embeddings electrical,mechanical and acoustical controls devices and experiments BEFORE any upgrade...Most upgrade are not so useful... Acoustic is...

I also suspect that our initial exposure to reproduced music informs our future choices.

Here you are right and Timbre recognition is the subjective METER by which we create our small room acoustic...

Unless one is Mahgister who has obviously figured everything out. Amir’s measurements are a resource and he does provide data with a methodology. Flawed, maybe, but better than subjective hyperbole.

Sorry but i dont think a bunch of measures so useful they can be for an ENGINEER would be useful for most people... But acoustic and psycho-acoustic knowledge will be in all case...

Measures are like food we eat them without always knowing what we eat and what for and MOST food content is transformed in waste at the end anyway...Acoustic experience is like air respiration , no waste........But we need to eat food anyway, you catch it ?

 

And keep your sarcasm about me for you....Thanks...

I figure out, yes, the acoustic of my OWN ROOM... This fact disturb you?

Try many hundred of listening experiments non stop on a 2 years period ( i am retired) and you will figure out yourself the basic and you will never need to give me your sarcasm anymore.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t understand Amir’s argument. I have huge experience listening, and I have a good idea about the perceptive ability to hear things, as I was an audio salesman for awhile.

 I hear differences in my system immediately after putting a new piece of equipment in. More or less details, differing tonal balance or emphasis in certain frequencies. Where the differences are small and thus difficult to ascertain (as when I auditioned the original Audience AU24 interconnect against the Audioquest King Cobra, each providing similar slightly warm tonal balance with similar detail), I don’t fret about it.

 

 I thought Amir went off the rails when he reviewed Schiit equipment, claiming that their products were dangerous. I don’t read him.

Dear Noske, Alexander Dumas once said something very wise: all generalisations are dangerous, including this one. If I am uncomfortable about something, it’s some guru telling people there is no spoon and capitalism is rotten. That is Amir. 

He believes that he has nailed what over fifty years of audio science have failed to grasp: that numbers tell the whole story. He believes, no he knows, that if he can’t measure a claim, it’s a lie. He knows there is no difference because his software and pro audio equipment (anybody uses that at home, by the way?) tells him so. Therefore there can be no difference. And although he concedes he can hear a difference, he tries to validate his thesis with a ridiculous mumbo jumbo of Matrix references, neuroscience and psychology.
 

If this is where you belong, enjoy the comfort of half truths. 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/do-audiophile-network-switches-make-a-difference-video.20316/
 

 

Maybe the ASR guy can explain to me why my all tube, all analog, electrostatic speaker, 2 channel system sounds  better than my SS, digital based, conventional box/driver HT system. The specs and measurements are BETTER on the SS system...?

Not one person who has ever heard both would say the HT sounds better (to them).

Should invite him over for some vinyl time???

Yeah...Nah...

It appears that the fake science site are such complete amateurs that they measured the wrong AC output port on their recent power conditioner “review” according to Paul McGowen, who said they should issue a retraction for their shoddy work.

I call it the “idiot with an analyzer” phenomenon, but psychologists have a term for this kind of limited intelligence masquerading as knowledge.

“Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.”