Nothing hastily about it. We have asked repeatedly for you to tell us what test it was and you won't even say what it was let alone how it was run.

He does. As do I which is to show what empty talk these claims of "show me double blind tests" are. The people who shout the loudest, are the ones least likely to run them. That hopefully demonstrates the problem with these people which is to rehash stuff they have read online. Not anything that they have first hand experience.

Your posts are also information-free which is another trait that is good to highlight. Here we have a "subjectivist," jkeny posting authoritative references like the ITU BS1116 and we have upstanding forum "objectivists" who just type words for the sake of words. We have him posting his double blind tests and we have you evading telling us about just one test that you are so proud of. The one test that supposedly completely turned around your beliefs in audio.

It shows how little evidence you really need to change your audio views. A test that you are too ashamed to tell us was that transformative? Clearly you don't need much of any evidence to believe in something. Forum post and whatever imagined blind test was good enough.

Nope. We are asking what "DBT" that was. If it is not relevant to ask that in a thread specifically about blind tests, then all common sense is thrown out the door and then some.

There is the question of "how much I make a year." What relevance does that have in asking you what blind test *you* have run?

Who here wants to side with spkr. Anyone want to defend him? Anyone believes that he has run such a test as he claims? Anyone here believe if he has run a test, it is worth a thing?

Sadly they won't spend a dollar of it to learn though. I routinely, scratch that, all the time run into people who won't pay $7 to buy a paper from AES they keep arguing about. Seven bucks! $999 is out of the question for people who claim to believe in double blind tests. What hope is there for people who don't to buy it?

I would have been interested in buying at at under $500 but with one caveat: measurements must be posted. The box is no good if it is suspect from transparency point of view. Stuff like "low noise" doesn't cut it. If the person designing that box doesn't have measurement gear, that is a red flag. And if he does but chooses to not post the measurements, that is even a bigger red flag.

I also don't see any kind of money back guaranteed. If there was such and again the price was under $500, I would have bought it and measured it. As it is, can't chance $1000 for a box that is not more transparent than what will be hooked up to it.

It is ironic that he doesn't show a blind test of the box itself showing it to be transparent .

Still, great find. If I have a moment of weakness, I might buy it at the $1,000 price.

In context, I believe Mr. Cook has simply misspelled 'sighted'

[QUOTE=FMW;31201929]I agree with all of your points except for #7 . Normally, a sighted evaluation will produce exactly the results that the salesperson suggested so that makes it dishonest in my book.

What is a consumer to do? QUOTE]


With regards to point # 7: I wasn't envisioning a sales person speaking into the evaluations. While I was typing, I was picturing in my minds eye, a person being left predominately alone, predominately in control of the auditions. In the way that you envision the setting, I must agree, that too would produce a decidedly 'dishonest' evaluation.


You presented in my mind the question of questions: What is a consumer to do? In my mind, the best, but not the only answer is to use their own ears, and not the opinions of others, but this approach is still obviously flawed as well, but based on my experiences and travels, it's the only practical avenue available to the masses, at this time.


No matter what, we must use our own ears to hear, to hear we must engage in the act of auditioning. Just as the actual musicians do; whom write, perform and record the music that has produced us audiophiles (music lovers).


But yes, what ultimately is the consumer (US) to do? I contend that there's no perfect (100% correct) answer available at this time.

I just re-read through my postings - you would be correct - I apologize for the use of the wrong word.


Thank you for pointing it out.

Oh dear, be still my heart. Don't promise what you cannot deliver, Amir.

You 'industry' cheerleaders are constantly eliding an important point from a *consumer* (not academic) viewpoint: just how does a positive research result from a DBT involving trained listeners and maximally revealing conditions (i.e., exactly what you *want* for a *research* protocol) map to a claim someone reads on, say, computeraudiophile, or Neil Young's press releases for Pono, or Stereophile, about how the soundstage 'bloomed', the bass got 'tighter' and 'faster', the 'veil was lifted', as soon as the cables were switched, or as soon as the format was changed from REdbook to hi rez, or as soon as amp B was switched to amp B, or even as soon as loudspeaker A was compared to B. Not after careful listening for a tell, not after 'training' -- but right away.

Does the mere fact that A and B *can*, under certain conditions, be distinguished, mean that we can or should take claims from sighted evaluations of A and B -- which are THE NORM in audio reporting and reviewing -- at face value, and if so, when?

"We' (meaning me, Arny, Peter Aczel, etc., name your notorious 'objectivist', but apparently not you, though you claim to be a well-informed 'objectivist')) already knew that amps *can* be distinguished under some conditions. That Redbook and hi rez *can* be distinguished under some conditions. That even the best mp3s *can* be distinguished from lossless under some conditions. That even *cables* *can* be distinguished under some conditions. There is no magic, no new science, involved. The 'conditions' of course, are the key.

Are those conditions likely to be encountered by listeners?

*THAT* is the 'real world' problem, Amir. *THAT* would be important stuff to Joe Audio. Joe Audio wants to know what he should worry about, what he should spend his money on, how he should prioritize. Address*those* questions...or hey, maybe stop posting.

Sean Olive uses DBT to address concerns that would be of considerable consumer value: determining what and how audible parameters affect listener preference for loudspeakers. It addresses a measurably and subjectively large problem. Bob Stuart, not so much. The effects he is studying are *tiny* in both dimensions. Moving to hi rez is not going to end the loudness wars or improve acoustics at home --the 'large problems' that Joe Audio actually faces.


Last and certainly least, your amusing and subtly talented amigo jkeny seems to think that demonstrating a difference in a DBT means the difference was thus truly heard by anyone who ever claimed to hear one, or ever will. He seems to think that no one has ever 'learned' or 'trained' themselves to detect a'tell *during* an ABX, after which their score (performance) improves. You know that these things are not true. You might want to educate him.

Why, whichever one Amir cuts and pastes most frequently, of course.

Listeners who claim to be able to tell A from B, before and even during an ABX, yet the stats show otherwise. Or listeners who claim prior expertise in A vs B, yet suddenly find it extremely vexing to tell A from B during a DBT. I'm not making this up, these cases actually occur and they ain't rare. Any self-professed 'audiophile' taking a DBT will likely fit into one of those two listener categories. Question is : why the outcome? One answer is: they were fooling themselves; they can't really tell A from B unless they 'know' already. For the second case, a possible answer is , the test obscured the difference (but then you must explain: how)? Another answer is....

C'mon, step up to the plate and take a swing. Tell us which test method resolves these questions, and what that means for both sighted and blind claims of difference.

(fixed that for you).


Olive's aware that consumers won't be doing DBT of loudspeakers. Instead he's using DBTs to interrogate what consumers tend to like in loudspeaker sound. And then Harman/JBL (and other companies) use that information to design loudspeakers that will tend to sound good to consumers. *THAT* is the service, from a consumer standpoint.

NB, he doesn't claim 'every' listener will prefer loudspeakers that are preferred by 'most' of the trained (and untrained) listeners tested. Until we get to the age of 'personalized preference analysis' (a la, 'personalized medicine')or somesuch, that goal is beyond us.




Yes, Olive knows that. His tests are not ABX, which is suitable for validating *difference*. His are DBTs of preference, not difference. You must still control for 'sighted' bias when investigating preference.

Points 3-4 are moot, given this basic misunderstanding.



Just so (though I'd bet that 99% of people here change some part of their AV setup more often than the average consumer), but does that mean their claims about their choice are 'true' in anything beyond a purely subjective sense? If they bought A instead of B because A 'sounded better' to them, does that mean A and B 'really' sound different? This matters because there are *multitudes* of difference claims out there about everything from cheap tweaks (cut a rubber ball in half and use it as a cable lifter! a veil is lifted!) to lossless formats (FLAC sounds worse that WAV! Even my wife could hear it!) to the most expensive boutique hardware (you don't know what good sound is until you've spent this kind of money, peons!). What's a poor consumer to believe?




Well, there are *software* abx comparators now, for comparing audio files, at least. As for the millions served argument, it says nothing about the *truth value* of individual claims. It says more about what people care or don't care about.


It looks like you didn't read the comments below the blog post, where Olive addresses this....but anyway:

Sighted evaluations are certainly *incomplete* in that they ignore well known effects of cognitive bias. Which works out well in manufacturer's/seller's favor! And no one suggested 'forbidding' customers from doing 'sighted' comparisons. The idea, I think., is for the consumers to realize what they can and cannot glean from them.


Actually I buy stuff 'sight unheard' often -- and yes, in those cases I base decisions on what is probably audible, which in turn is based on what 'technical specifications' (bench performance) and others' audio research tell me.

I hardly think that's unusual.

(bold emphasis mine) A report from the real world! Some here seem to have lost track of it.

No question that if we want to detect at the bleeding edge, to test the very *concept*, we need to optimize the conditions for detection. So this is what scientific research into perception does. Train your subjects, use the right probes and hardware and test....

But that's far from the scrum of the audio hobby. In the scrum, we have 'day and night' claims like the above emanating routinely from actual posters/reviewers. To test a particular golden ear's particular claim that he hears --I'm assuming he, though conceivably it might be Enid Lumley or May Belt -- 'night and day' difference between condition A and B, we need only let that particular subject listen to A and B under conditions he considers revealing.. but make sure it's (double) blind and level matched.

If the subject scores no better than chance, it's not scientifically dispositive of audibility of A vs B generally. Someone else might do better/the same subject might do better, after *real* training. But it will test this golden ear's ears, and his 'night and day' belief ...in their current operating condition. ;>

I, personally, think *that* would be hugely informative to consumers...as well as entertaining.

Intelligibility in particular has been a longstanding subject of acoustic research. You might simply scan the AES library archive and find titles/abstracts that pertain. Quick search of 'intelligibility' here brought up 614 hits

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/online/search.cfm

Rod Elliot has had an ABX switch DIY build project up on his site for years. Don't know anyone who's ever built it though.

http://sound.westhost.com/abx-tester.htm

I delivered Steven. I showed how many tests I have passed on this forum. The very tests we demand as proof of audibility. What is the end results. Even more angst on your behalf. It reasons that folks should never take your requests for such evidence seriously. The technique was used as a debating tactic in the past hoping the poster couldn't go and run any double blind tests or was afraid of sharing the same. Now we have proof of that in the way you and the rest of you react to said data.

I don't slash my wrist when someone says something in the Internet if that is what you are asking. I don't go to those forums. Or read what Neil Young has to say. Why would you go there and suffer this way? And which one of them have you endeared by your conduct? If you were the least bit effective those forums wouldn't exist. But exist they are and thriving. This means that your approach is dead wrong. Being mean and nasty, not having proper credentials to espouse what audio "science is," lacking personal experience in both listening tests and measurements, posting mostly information-free, is not working.

Lack of common sense is not noticed either. Do I look like one of the people on those forums? I don't, right? Yet you seem to have serious beef with me too. I constantly share technical references, measurements, listening test results, etc. I should be the perfect model of how you want people to behave. But no. You are more upset at me it seems than many others.

So no matter which way one looks, your mission is a personal one unrelated to what the merit of the topic itself. You want self-satisfaction of being a forum expert which is fine but you need to dress better for the occasion. Look not to what others could do to change, but what you can do different. Start running blind tests. Share them here. Buy the papers in questions. Allow, just for a moment, for technical explanation from people you don't like to sink in. It is just possible that they know more than you in these topics.

Back to your point anyway, if someone is not trying to convince me of something, I could care less what they are discussing among themselves. I don't measure my worth in how many people I walked across the crosswalk thinking they are blind when they can see for themselves. If they walk in front of the car, that is their doing. If they ask me to walk in front of a car, then I will roll up my sleeves to tell them different .

That is why I don't go to those forums or care what they have to say. The Neil Young Pono thing is really beyond believable to me. I think they have their head screwed up wrong and will go out of business soon enough. Why on earth do you choose to worry or waste forum bandwidth on it? I mean when was the last time you ran into someone who said they are going to buy one? Why the angst and worry?

Again, think of what you could do different. Neil Young and crew will continue doing what they want. They have not heard of you, nor care what you have to say about it.

No, it is the opposite. You, Steven, need to incorporate that into your audio lingo moving forward. Don't go posting on Hydrogenaudio that there is a "train wreck" on AVS Forum because we dared to run the double blind tests presented to us and managed to pass them. Or that an award-winning paper by Stuart et al showed there can be a fidelity loss in conversion of high resolution audio to CD specs. These are opportunities to learn and self-examination of your audio understanding. It is opportunity to think about who led you to the conclusions that these data points invalidate. I can tell you it was not me. Yet you go on and argue with me, and continue to support the people and views that led you astray.

I don't care what you knew. I care that none of you, including Arny himself would present the very data you have. That you believe when Arny says he has no copy of that article. I would not put myself in his camp in a million years as you are, lest you want some of what I just said about him to rub on you.

That aside, if you know that, you need to mean it. When someone says they compared two amps and the sounded different, your reaction shouldn't be to go and hang them in a public square. Your conduct needs to reflect what you say you know and it does not in any form or fashion.

They are amazing revelations in light of the personal you all have on these forums. Because if that is true, then when anecdotal reports of the same are made here, the few of you would not gang beat the poster.

I don't know and I don't care. What I care is you objecting to me expressing the very same conclusions above. That you do it with such fervor that shows that you are giving lip service to these words as a debating tactic.

You don't even listen when the logic is not technical. How many times have I explained that me downloading high-resolution masters has no impact on you. There is nothing but goodness from more choices in content delivery to us. This alone should have made you take my side. But no, you are going to oppose this on principal. "How dare you talk about something better than the CD?" It is as if you are getting patent royalties from CD format.

No, you are the problem here and now Steven. I am explaining the science of audio. I am providing copious references and back up. I am providing informed opinion. I am practicing objectivism in the best way possible. That this doesn't sit well with you is a problem we can solve by you changing. What someone random Joe thinks is neither here, nor there. It is just a misdirection to change the topic of you disagreeing with the very bible you say you read every night before going to bed.

There you go. Just like I said above. ignoring the most common sense aspects of this topic.

That aside, what should we outlaw from audio research Steven? Should AES change its charter and only accept speaker papers? Do you think no one should research skin rash and only the only medical research should be for cancer?

jkeny and I disagree on many audio topics and have had pretty heated arguments. On this topic though, he has my utmost respect. A guy who doesn't believe in such methodology, puts aside his personal opinion and bias and runs the test.

You on the other hand claim to care and value double blind ABX tests. Here we have Arny, the "ABX man himself" creating a test and what do you do? Won't run and report it? How can you continue to post with a straight face Steven? You can keep trying to change the topic to other people but I post what I am posting because *you* need to learn and change. Don't worry about others. You are in the hot seat. And the seat has never been hotter....

Then you should. Because not knowing or caring when DBT results are *pertinent* renders your torrent of verbiage irrelevant.


*Talk* and *hype* are not 100% congruent. You like to *talk* and downplay the impact of the *hype*; I fight the *hype*. Again, you eventually, after long interrogation, usually admit that the audible differences are likely to be tiny at best, and that the *major* hit to home audio SQ come from elsewhere. So why isn't *that* your message? It is certainly not the message the consumer gets.

For such a helpful person, it's curious how many people on 'your side' you rub *the wrong way*. On several forums already you're (in)famous for gushing out vast clouds of signal-obscuring 'technical' noise. Your shtick is *known*, your reputation precedes you. But keep fighting the good fight, dude! Hearts and minds.

My hearing seems to brick wall at 12KHz. Until now I was thinking that made me a crippled listener. Now I see I am only partially crippled.

It makes me wonder how many people on this forum have gone partially deaf by the time they have acquired such expertise and installed their dream systems. My loss seems a combination of age, abuse, and medication damage. Presumably many of us are also affected similarly but this is the first time I have seen others who are considered experts and/or trained listeners admitting impairment in public.

The one thing I see potentially oversight is the assumption that your hearing and Arny's hearing are equally bad. The attenuation in treble definitely affects the ability to hear harmonic distortion because the harmonics shift up into the higher frequencies by their very nature. Subtle differences in treble attenuation or notching could be responsible for at least some of this difference in your DBT performance vs his.

This is a very active thread and difficult to keep up with!

I did check out davidgriesinger.com and am fascinated.

Rod's box must be operated by another party, whom must be present in the room; introducing a clear path for bias and 'tells' to enter.




The test IMO should be automated, and performed by one participant at a time; without any time constraints -

The lion share of the papers that you have loosely referenced document the measurement of the Intelligibility of the spoken word - Speech Intelligibility.


While relevant, far from being on point - no?


Please bridge the divide of understandings, if such a bridge exists?

Many of us figured out where he's truly coming from a long time ago.

@amirm
Something I really, really don't understand: why should we post the results of our foobar ABX tests? I took them, and failed to get significant results. What good would do to the forum to know that my results are the same as chance? It's not fear of admitting that we can't hear a difference: hell, this is the very point of the objectivists! Wouldn't it be ridiculous for the objectivists to claim that there is no difference and then pass the tests?
And if we heard such a difference and we were dishonest, wouldn't it be easy to cheat and give wrong answers?

Why do you insist so much? What good could possibly come from a list of tests with a 50% result?

So sensitive (emotional) we become sometimes when listening to music.
So sensitive are our ears @ discerning some type of familiar speaker's distortions.
So sensitive (personal) we can become attached to words, @ reading them and writing them too.
So sensitive we can be @ being criticized, objected, submitted, argued, [email protected] times.

When we feel detached that's when we give up and live less.

________


One word, one typo, one single error, mistake of any sort, and it can change the entire perspective.
I think it is similar with sighted (cited) and un-sighted (double-blind) listening audio (music) testing.

We tend to attach stronger solidity to our own beliefs; naturally, it permits us to look for something right in our own lives.
It's not always easy to put ourselves in disbelief towards our own life's experiences. ...It's something we learn from circumstances, from karma.

It's true that when we go to our local audio "boutique" store that there is no black veil to be found in sight.
And it's true too that snobbery is part of any life's avenue, including our audio world.
High-end audio stores are accommodating to the frequent regulars (trading/lending/exchanging audio equipment; mainly used).
And it's true too that money and time take priority over doing our job right.
We accord more interest in well appearance, in people well dressed and well mannered, simple in their few spoken words and discretely waving their credit cards.
If looking for something not too expensive, asking more questions, dressing casual, ...we are looked upon as not that much deserving interest.
We usually judge from appearance, and we like less objection and discussion possible but the paycheck. ...Our "bonus".

In high-end audio stores they have several rooms with different setups and different audio gear and @ different price points.
The main room is the "open" one, the main testing zone; for both hi-end audio dealers and audio customers.
We all have been there, I had. ...And not just once and not just @ one place; but during all our life and everywhere.

I truly think high-end audio would be a much better world for all of us if audio dealers were setting their audio stores for their clients, and not for themselves.
...Like having a room's facility to always perform controlled speaker's listening, blind.
It is certain that it wouldn't be perfect, but @ least closer to our audio goal in the pursuit of our aspiration in music reproduction closer to the real thing.

I feel disconnected @ times reading some comments in audio forums, and with good understanding reason.
Though it is still my objective to advance in this continuously developing hobby I chose.

No trolls here, or they are everywhere and all the time. ...Just raising the word "troll" is condemning our own identity.
Snobbishness? ...That too. ...We are slave of our own imposed finances by the surrounding system of societies and classes we had to create in order to survive. And with it we had to let go of some fundamental human values.

Yes, one word can make a big difference in a phrase, a line, an element of risk, terror, trembling and shaking; "dishonesty".
We are anti-antidote, anti-doctrine, anti-mechanism, anti-deception, anti everything that rings "not right".

____________

Ok, what speakers would you recommend to a nice young fellow with say between $1,000 and $25,000 to spend? ...More or less, depending.
And why?

You, me, I, he, them, all of you they turn us on. And I have become comfortably numb.

The obvious answer is to support his suppositions!


Your results are typical, which is one of his many points. By you admitting to such, evidences/supports his general hypothesis.


So like all engaged in debate, he is acting like a strong advocate for oneself; nothing out of the ordinary about it.


Your results are of value to not only him, but all objectively striving to reach a conclusion(s).

I am always worried about what state my mind is in, especially when my body is in the state of California.

"My latest work on hearing involves the development of a possible neural network that detects sound from multiple sources through phase information encoded in harmonics in the vocal formant range. These harmonics interfere with each other in frequency selective regions of the basilar memebrane, creating what appears to be amplitude modulated signals at a carrier frequency of each critical band. My model decodes these modulations with a simple comb filter - a neural delay line with equally spaced taps, each sequence of taps highly selective of individual musical pitches. When an input modulation - created by the interference of harmonics from a particular sound source - enters the neural delay line, the tap sequence closest in period to the source fundamental is strongly activated, creating an independent neural stream of information from this source, and ignoring all the other sources and noise. This neural stream can then be compared to the identical pitch as seen in other critical bands to determine timbre, and between the two ears to determine azimuth (localization) of this source."

Seems quite similar to what I understand to be the basis of pitch perception: individually tuned hair-like sensory nerves in the cochlea all resonating to narrow frequency bands. I suppose all the hair-like nerves in my cochlea that detect above 12KHz snapped off or melted a decade or more ago.

Thanks for the links. It is going to take quite a while to catch up to the point I can contribute something of value here I guess.

Frank's been in the business for over 40 years - starting by modifying Dynaco equipment so he's got a reputation to uphold. There's a 30 day money-back guarantee as is with all his equipment.

I'm fairly sure that if you call or e-mail him, he'll give you measurements on the piece.

Yes, John has provided us a very good reading link (the one just above your quote).

You can imagine that you have such extreme case of clairvoyance to know who good someone's hearing is, and what content they listen to but I am not going to follow you there past the ledge.
With what? Showing that you don't care enough to run double blind tests? Believing hobbyist run tests like Meyer and Moran? Believing in dusty magazine articles with more hobbyist tests? Forum talk confused with real audio engineering and knowledge?

When someone asks me about Pono I tell them one thing and it was in my last post: it is nonsense and they will go broke. There is nothing else to be said when you are not even arguing with anyone interested in his product.

You want to fight imaginary enemies who are not in the room with you, go ahead. But don't ask me to join the insanity of it. I value my common sense too much to leave it outside of the forum .

First of all I did not "admit" anything. That would imply you convincing me of something which you did not. You had not bothered to ask me, nor read my countless other posts online about it. Instead you were operating under a set of assumptions which was easy for me to correct once you asked me.

Also small means technically small enough for average joe to not be able to hear in blind tests. Once you hear it though, it becomes something else. Here is another prime example from HA forum which I am confident you have seen:

[quote name='Wombat' date='Dec 9 2014, 15:18' post='884131']
After complaining at amir i listened these samples the first time Peace of cake to abx down to 0.125.

foo_abx 2.0 beta 4 report
foobar2000 v1.3.4
2014-12-10 00:10:25

File A: 30 Hz noticable jitter 0.0125.flac
SHA1: 7349f9f6449777a2c33693251099a6ed58821382
File B: no jitter.flac
SHA1: 262cd6c4d4c73502a0142f867b00aae013fd13ce

Output:
DS : Primärer Soundtreiber

00:10:25 : Test started.
00:11:29 : 01/01
00:11:39 : 02/02
00:11:51 : 03/03
00:12:03 : 04/04
00:12:14 : 05/05
00:12:45 : 06/06
00:12:59 : 07/07
00:13:15 : 08/08
00:13:28 : 09/09
00:13:46 : 10/10
00:13:46 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 10/10
Probability that you were guessing: 0.1%

-- signature --
8c03ed033758c82830a239ea2a5f3f5ff12c910f
[/quote]
Here is a person who was a total non-believer in audibility of this distortion that Arny had created. Like you he implied I had made up my results as he could not believe it was possible. I explain to him precisely what the artifacts were and what do you know? It is now "peace of cake" for him to hear the artifacts.

Up until now the propaganda and forum posts from people like you had made him believe otherwise. More so he had joined the fight. Had I not caused him to pause, he would have gone on believing the junk science the few of you have made up. And he is someone who actually knows about signal processing and audio. Certainly a lot more than you. But still dragged into the ditch by propaganda machine.

How many examples does it take for you to stop misleading people Steven and realize the limits of your knowledge?

I pride myself in conducting myself professionally. That doesn't mean I want to make friends with everyone. The nature of these discussions and the emotional way people like you react to them means that not everyone will be happy. Not going to compromise the integrity of the discussion or give you a free pass to beat up others with misinformation.

BTW, when I went to HA forum to look up the above post, I see that you yet again are complaining about a thread on another forum. You provided a link to that food fight Here is what you say: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums...8/#post1025440

Btw, labeling me as a 'forum troll idiot that just begs for attention' is such a classy move, Gene. Or is that Clint 'evolution? it's a hoax!' DeBoer's doing? Between this and that shadowbanning episode, I have to wonder....

Doesn't look like you are getting along or making any friends when someone calls you such names. Your status also says you are banned now. If you value cordial interactions, what happened there?

What is that Robert?

A few reasons:

1. I want us as a group of objectivists to practice what we preach. We need to be on record in having run such tests and not just talk about them. Negative or positive outcome does not matter in this regard.

2. I want us to have a first hand feel for not being able to tell the identical difference that someone else taking the same test can. I have been through that and it is a humbling and "mind opening" experience. I can write 10,000 posts and you will never know what that feels like until you take the test. A test where objectively you know the difference must be there but it evades you. No longer will you be so ready to dismiss other people's observations out of hand and on principal.

3. I want to show that some of the people who shout the loudest about this or that distortion not being audible, don't have critical listening abilities. And what they say is not based on personal experience but rather what they have read and believe.

And to clarify, I am not at all asking everyone to do this or most. Just the people arguing with me who use DBT in every other word. They have to live up to that in a small way at least to be credible.

As to dishonesty, it can be caught sometimes as we did with Arny's MP3 test where the results showed him finishing most trials no faster than voting (i.e. did not even bother to listen). In general though you are right that we can't do that and I am fine with it. It is the limit of what we can get done online with most people posting under aliases and such.

But I'm pretty sure every single one of the objectivists took the test, at one time or another. And nobody is denying its negative outcome.

Similarly, nobody is claiming that there is no difference. Nothing is the same. It's the audibility of the difference that matters. I believe that for most of the objectivists the experience is not humbling, is infuriating. I know I was infuriated when I begun to realize how many lies there are in this hobby (lies are everywhere, of course, but hifi is one of the Petri dishes of lies!).

See 2. I am convinced that they become objectivist exactly because of their experience with blind tests (especially single blind tests, the one where a friend switches the stuff being tested). Who wouldn't want to live in a world where something that costs twice is twice as good? As kids, we believe everything. Experience progressively shows us how many lies we are constantly told.

Besides, I believe that critical listening abilities are only required for those that are developing new technologies. They turn people into flaw searchers instead of listeners. If you think about it, people come here to find ways to solve problems with their equipment. Instead, you are suggesting that they have to find more problems.

It's that we don't know what to do. I am an 100% objectivist. We admit that we don't hear most of the claimed differences. Hell, that is our starting point. If I say that I can't get a date with Julia Roberts, what is your reply? That I have to prove it?

Again, what's wrong with what Arny did? He said he can't hear differences. What difference does it make how he did it? The emphasis is on "CAN'T". He tried a couple of times and gave up. If you keep going and hear a difference, your score will get better and will asymptotically go towards zero. If you don't and you keep going, you will stay on 50% for all eternity. What is the point of twisting your brain and ears to squeeze out a difference that, given what you have to do to detect it (you know, search for a significant segment, listen to it over and over again, blah blah...), will mean absolutely nothing from a music listening point of view? Just to claim that you can hear it?

Anyway, thank you for your reply