Comparative Listening Tests
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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Welcome back amirm. I thought you had left to spend more time on the science forum. Do you care to respond to any of the posts that were directed to you?
I agree with Ron also, but perhaps not 100%. That is very absolute. I agree that we should continue to audition components, continue to pursue tweaks, and continue to listen for significant or subtle differences. Perhaps I could be more realistic, circumspect and skeptical about my and your expressed conclusions. We don't always attempt to do the best we can, but many of us do try. Intellectual honest is a bit tougher to judge in others, and in ourselves. I do realize that I fool myself all the time, about listening conclusions and many other observations.
At Axpona there was a grand piano in the lobby of the hotel. As we were getting close to it one of the manufacturer reps sat there and started to play a nice Elton John tune. We walked up to the Piano and enjoyed him doing so. Until he sang that is.
Here is the thing: if anyone's stereo reproduced that piano sound the way it was, they would cut off their wrists and jump out of the tallest building they could.
So no, you don't learn a thing from listening to live piano a million times and then listening to someone else's performance on a recording from audiophile perspective. We hide behind such false pretences to make our opinion count more should we be situated that way. It has no logical or physical reality to match it as likeable as the theory is. Or else, musicians would clean our clocks good and have the best audio systems. Which they do not.
amir, Are you claiming that the sound of that live piano, even in a controlled blind test, would resemble absolutely nothing of the (piano) recordings we cherish? If so, how can you identify the sound of a piano on a single one of your CDs? Was there really absolutely NO RESEMBLANCE between the live piano and a recorded piano? Do you mean like a gunshot not resembling the sound of a kitten purring? Surely, this is not an accurate statement.
With all due respect, you should get out more and hear a variety of live instruments, including pianos, in a variety of settings. You will learn that various instruments (and different pianos) sound different from each other, and that there is no absolute sound. But most or all pianos do resemble each other and they are identifiable on most recordings. Without ever having heard a real piano, you would have no basis for knowing whether or not your system remotely resembles the sound of a real piano. I bet, even blindfolded, you could identify the sound of a piano on your audio system, if you wanted to. But perhaps you think that all pianos do sound alike, just like all cables sound alike, and those of us who hear differences are deluding ourselves.
He's yanking chains Steve otherwise he wouldn't be back so often with more ridiculousness
.david
The members (crew) could rent one of those if they would, and sail all the seas listening to the waves and stop @ all world's ports for live music adventures.
Wouldn't it be nice... :b
Wouldn't it be nice... :b
The members (crew) could rent one of those if they would, and sail all the seas listening to the waves and stop @ all world's ports for live music adventures.
Wouldn't it be nice... :b
Ahoy Mate....I'm ready for paradise....beautiful Clipper
Gregadd said:
Why would you need to assure that? The purpose of the test is not to confirm THAT there is a difference, the purpose is to determine IF there is one. Should you really “need” assurance for whatever reason, go and measure or do a sighted test first, the latter for those “audiophiles who walk blindly expecting to discern a difference when in fact there is none”.
Is that any better than audiophiles who walk blindly expecting to discern no difference when in fact there was one?
Is that any better than audiophiles who walk blindly expecting to discern no difference when in fact there was one?
You mean people like Klaus who are not even aware of their biases & ABX testing only reinforces their biases - they're so duped by it that they feel compelled to try duping everyone else in their evangelical fervour.
OR deflect when they do hear a difference as Klaus has done!!
FWIW, I am the one who made those comments to Peter and others - if one doesn't have exposure to live music, then I don't pay that MUCH attention to what they are saying, plain and simple. Some of these people still make valid arguments sometimes, others know science well, others know recordings and performances quite well, but at the end of the day, for me the subject of this hobby is live music and how to reproduce it with electronics and recordings. I still enjoy reading various peoples' comments.
I see no mutually exclusive purpose here. It can be used to discover or confirm the existence of a difference.
The point is we ought to be sure the test is capable of revealing a musical difference. For example if we claim device A is less fatigueing we ought to listen long enough for fatigue to set in.
At Axpona there was a grand piano in the lobby of the hotel. As we were getting close to it one of the manufacturer reps sat there and started to play a nice Elton John tune. We walked up to the Piano and enjoyed him doing so. Until he sang that is.
Here is the thing: if anyone's stereo reproduced that piano sound the way it was, they would cut off their wrists and jump out of the tallest building they could.
So no, you don't learn a thing from listening to live piano a million times and then listening to someone else's performance on a recording from audiophile perspective. We hide behind such false pretences to make our opinion count more should we be situated that way. It has no logical or physical reality to match it as likeable as the theory is. Or else, musicians would clean our clocks good and have the best audio systems. Which they do not.
Like it or not live music is and must remain our standard. Otherwise we are just chasing our collective tail. That is the fatal flaw of the scientific/measurement approach. Perfect measures don't produce musical results.
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Live music is for me also a vital reference... but sure it is not necessarily an absolute reference for those others who listen to music purely for it's sonic beauty or whatever other attribute floats their boat. We are all actively shaping our sounds for our own needs when putting gear together.
Systems that can be very natural with sensational coherence, tonality, presence and dynamics (my main preferences in attributes) aren't then by default necessarily going to be great at every type of music either. Some music lovers might have other goals than purely just the faithful recreation of any original event whether it is acoustic or amplified and synthesised.
That's why we really just have to be our own judges about what is indeed best. To each our own ultimate listening happy place.
Systems that can be very natural with sensational coherence, tonality, presence and dynamics (my main preferences in attributes) aren't then by default necessarily going to be great at every type of music either. Some music lovers might have other goals than purely just the faithful recreation of any original event whether it is acoustic or amplified and synthesised.
That's why we really just have to be our own judges about what is indeed best. To each our own ultimate listening happy place.
The last blind test I participated in I was asked to rank my preference of three kinds of vodka. They were sipped pure from freshly poured shot glasses, all room temp. I ranked them consistently every time. Now imagine if unwanted variables are introduced maybe something as seemingly trivial as the shape of the glass or the temperature of the vodka. Would that have skewed results? If they had been mixed into cocktails instead of pure, would I be able to tell any differences at all? This is what real controls are. They need to be rigid. If you can't or won't do it that way, don't bother. A test you can't trust is just as bad as ears you can't trust.
Gregadd said:
Some questions: 1. Why would the fact that a listening test is done blind conceal real differences? 2. How do you know that differences are real and not imaginary? 3. What test is appropriate to determine real differences?
If you say that any difference heard by a panel of audiophile listeners in sighted tests is real without any doubt and the panel fails to reliably hear this difference in a blind test, would you blame the blind test as such?
If you think that the test procedure should be adapted to match particular needs then just do it. When amateur audiophiles are constituting the test panel there should be no budget constraints.
Again, it is not the absence of knowledge that conceals the differences, it is the practical conditions in which you realize the test.
Also again, if people cared for positive tests they would know about it since long. But objectivists usually prefer to ignore this subject. Did you ever subjected yourself to a proper positive test?
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