Professor wrote:When I introduce people to hi-fi or introduce students to recording I encourage them to use A-B testing. Listen carefully and see if you can hear a difference.
Ahh, but there's the catch-- you're not taking psychology into the equation! The many times people may be blinded by the fact that they had just spent so much time and/or money on something that they fail to be objective when auditioning the material. In an "A-B" test, you still now which is which and are not able to objectify your response. The only true way to gauge the performance of a device is through a true, double-blind ABX Comparator, a device which had been discontinued long ago (I truely belive that the HiFi/expensive cable/etc. intustries had something to do with this... or the fact that people who do spend (unjustified) exorbinant amounts of money on gear don't want to know that thier money has been squandered). A double blind test is, to me, the only way that you can take the psychological factors out of the equation and have a truely objective listening test.
It's interesting-- a couple years back we did an ABX here at a gathering where we compared a recording done on a DAT and the same recording put through ATRAC 4, ABX'd and played through an AudioMedia III card (actually it was three samples-- bird song, the ocean and music.). It turned out that the highest score anyone was able to get, in terms of correctly identifying the DAT versions against the ATRAC versions was 68%. And that was the high.
Now there are alot of people that swear up and down that they can
hear the difference between a DAT and a minidisc, and I submit that there are times when it becomes apparent, but I wonder how many of those people have taken the element of prior knowledge out of the equation and actually based thier descisions
purely on listening. I don't think you can do it if actually know which sound source is which-- it's natural for the brain to make preconceptions... this is what makes us humans.
Now I also believe that the same holds true for alot of the HiFi world. If you go and spend $6,500 on a cable, without knowing exactly how it differentiates between a normal cable, you're going to hear $6,500 worth of your hard earned cash of a difference. When people make high claims about the "world of difference" that one device brings to the world, you must realize that this is a subjective opinion, one that has no merits in the real, scientific world.
Without an exact signaling, or measuring, as to what has been changed, I don't think that a claim of excellence, nor a large price tag, is a valid reason to justify such a purchase. Keep in mind that we, as humans, are succeptible to flaws in our logic (it's just human nature) and we, as listeners and as engineers, can be led just as far as the village idiot. I see this, too, rearing it's head in the pro audio world-- who here hasn't heard a claim of "use this tube to warm up your digital signal" or "use this all-discreet electronic device to keep your signal path pure." I mean, these are claims not unlike "if you die on this day, when the Hale Bopp comet passes, you will be taken away on a space ship and transported to heaven,"-- religous based faith appeals. Perhaps if I were to see the data provided about how the signal was trated to a foot massage and then had it's grapes peeled for it and then given unlimited sex and peanut butter all night long, then I could justify spending that much on a cable, but until you show me that the signal transfer is 45,000% better, I have to laugh in the face of everyone that does pay for a cars-worth of cable, or a house's-worth of an audio system. PUH-LEEEZ!
Look, this isn't a religion-- engineering is a science. Twisting knobs and buying high priced gear does not an audiophile nor engineer make. Actual real-world proof (data) about what does what is the only thing that can stand up in this world, not faith-based claims. Perhaps it makes people happy to spend hundereds of thousands of dollars on thier listening equipment, but I think it's a bunch of unjustified cock and balls and I don't fall for it.
open for flames.
