Observations of a controlled Cable Test - Page 4

Anyone who finds any of this remotely stressful needs to get a life.

I think that's more than a bit harsh! There's nothing wrong with having a good solid passion for something like audiophilia; and if there's one thing we probably agree on it's that Mike L. is among the most passionate. A serious challenge to one's passion, no matter what the circumstances, is going to be stressful, even if undertaken voluntarily.

Besides, I would argue that a stress-free life isn't a particularly exciting one. If that's the life to "get" count me out!

My life is far from stress free. Spending two hours doing a DBT on cables would be a holiday!

Well yeah but for you and I, cables aren't a budgetary concern!

Very True.

Anyone who spends ~$43K on speaker cables does NOT have a budget

Frankly, I didn't really get the 'stress' part of the a/b testing either, but didn't comment..why is a/b testing stressful?

Reminds me of a quote :
"I gave him an unlimited budget and he exceeded it".

Curt---I would say that on its own, blind testing is perhaps cumbersome and tedious but not stressful. As Bob and I both suggested, the stress comes from the expectations placed on the tests; in this case, that Mike was submitting to a serious challenge to his orthodoxy.

Let's give Mike some credit here. From my understanding he manages a large Automobile dealership. I think he can handle the stress.

The stress also comes from a lack of practice.

"What can I do to help you ABX speaker cables today?"

Swampfox---I did not mean to imply he couldn't handle it! I just wanted to acknowledge that it's there and say that it's commendable to face it down.

I'm just saying that we are blowing the stress thing way out of proportion. Frankly, I admire Mike L for doing the test and the way he's handled himself.

Amen, Bob!

What's more, the performance of DBT's in threshold tests gets down to within -->||<-- of the maximum sensitivity permitted by physics.

The evidence for the sensitivity of DBT's is present and accounted for.

The evidence for the total, absolute inaccuracy of sighted testing for small differences due to the auditory sense is also present, accounted for, and overwhelming.


Jon, please provide me with some concrete, testable, verifiable evidence in support of that claim. It is an extraordinary claim that is directly opposite the entire experience of the credible psychoacoustics community.

In short, my experience with DBT's, is that they and cognates are the only valid kind of auditory testing in existance, that they have shown no such problem at all, of course presuming training and feedback after the decision, as well as a substantial acclimation period.

If somebody didn't find anything, and the test was well done, the overwhelmingly most likely meaning is that there was nothing to hear in the test.

There is, in science, no absolute negative proof, only a cumulative weight of evidence, and that is solidly and incontrovertably, in all cases, on the side of the properly run DBT or cognate.

It is also just as certain that sighted tests are so prone to inadvertant, honest human error, that they are, unless differences are enormous, completely unreliable for the purpose of detecting differences due only to auditory stimulii.

+1 here.

Mr. Risch may be right, about different brain activity occuring in 'sighted' vs 'blind', but it doesn't have the implications he thinks it does.

This is a quote from the wiki article on placebo effects. The date links to the actual article by McClure et al published in Neuron, a highly respected scientific journal of neurobiology.


This certainly doesn't imply that sighted judgement is MORE ACCURATE than judgement from 'pure' sensory input (blind). It implies that 'sighted' input activates a different brain area than 'taste data' input, and the judgment is affected by this -- it's virtually DECOUPLED from actual taste input. That leads to things like inaccurate identification of the drink. People who have a stated preference for Coke, will not be able to tell if it's Coke when blinded...and they will state a preference for 'Coke' even when it's really Pepsi with a Coke label on it. This 'cultural' bias has a brain activity correlate.

Here's the actual abstract of the Neuron paper:

lmao, honestly, work has been really boring in the past couple of months so I have to come on here to get excited and alteast create a good amount of stress......I would be falling asleep otherwise

Now, if the listener received an electrical shock everytime he picked the wrong cable . . . that would be stressful.

Are you implying that electric shocks are not standard protocol for blind testing?!!

(Rich goes back to drawing board, realization of why people refuse to take part in any more of his tests begins to dawn...)

That is saying something great. Enjoy the visit with family, the trip to FL and at your leisure return to this avenue of discovery.

I think you can find 'clubs' where people are into that sort of thing, Richard.

Frantz,

I believe it is surprising insofar as the normal reaction when a persons core beliefs are challenged is to make excuses and cry foul. In fact, when it comes to people failing cable tests it occurs nearly 100% of the time. So for me yes, Mike's reaction is surprising, and that is a compliment .

MikeL-it seems that it wasn't too long ago that you were going to leave this forum for good and I have been happy to see that you have not only stayed but have become active again. Know that if you keep on this path of cable testing and show that you can tell the difference in cables you will change me into a believer. But until then ....

Mr Hirsh-your post is a fabulous diatribe in denial. Your disciples should be proud....

I will agree with the stress thing.

Almost any kind of testing is stressful. not because i might fail or pass, but because i have to pay attention to things that are normally not part of my focus.

As an example, i just had to do an evaluation of Telepresence solutions. when conducting the conference, my brain was going at double speed analyzing the latency, the audio, the video, trying to then break apart what is related to the codec's and what is related to the gear... etc, etc, etc. So while others came out of the demo saying how awesome it was, i had 100 times more input to process and was wiped after a one hour meeting.

So in any case where a test is happening and you are being serious about it, you will find it stressful due to the fact that you are recording far more stimulus than if you were just sitting back getting comfortably numb.

I have not read every post so I don't know what has or has not been said about the stress thing but "stress" is another red herring. Stress might cause some people to fail in certain endeavors, I'm sure some people fail the bar test because of stress, yet amazingly, many people sill manage to pass and become attorney's. Since audiophiles ALWAYS fail the cable comparison test, I think we can logically conclude that stress is not the primary causative factor.

A personal quest for the truth has to be admired.

OK Dizz, but how do you think your stress level would've been had that been the 10th time you'd seen it?

Correct!

Hear, hear!