Hearing is believing.
Unfortunately the reverse is also true, what you believe you will hear.
An argument commonly used by the debunkers to explain why audiophiles hear differences between e.g. cables.
This is called expectation bias.
As far as I know, nobody has ever said that expectation bias works one way.
As a consequence, what you don’t believe you won’t hear.
So much for the debunkers.
The solution is an obvious one, do your listening test unsighted.
This removes your expectation bias.
As you have no clue about what is playing, you can fully focus on where it is all about, the sound and the sound only.
A very pragmatically but highly relevant question is how to conduct your unsighted test.
Anybody familiar with science knows that the right experimental design (and the right experimental setup) is crucial.
The wrong experimental design will invalidated the experiment by design.
A methodology often recommended is ABX.
You listen to A, you listen to B and then somebody randomly plays A or B.
For you this is the X and you have to identify if X=A or X=B.
A couple of trials are needed.
Each time you have a 50% change to guess right.
But to guess right 2 times in a row has a likelihood of .5x.5=.25, 3 times=.5x.5x.5=.125, etc.
Maybe it is nice to run an ABX test now.
Just try this one: http://www.sieveking-sound.de/abx/
Basically what you have to do is:
- detecting a difference
- labelling this difference correctly
If you do see a difference between X1 and X2 but you already forgot the exact difference between A and B, you do detect a difference but your labelling will be at change level.
Obvious if this depends on short time memory (our auditory memory belong to it for small details) there is the likelihood that you do notice a difference but due to wrong labelling the score will be not significant.
I have the feeling that ABX might yield to many false negatives.
It might be the wrong experimental design for detecting small differences.
Unfortunately the reverse is also true, what you believe you will hear.
An argument commonly used by the debunkers to explain why audiophiles hear differences between e.g. cables.
This is called expectation bias.
As far as I know, nobody has ever said that expectation bias works one way.
As a consequence, what you don’t believe you won’t hear.
So much for the debunkers.
The solution is an obvious one, do your listening test unsighted.
This removes your expectation bias.
As you have no clue about what is playing, you can fully focus on where it is all about, the sound and the sound only.
A very pragmatically but highly relevant question is how to conduct your unsighted test.
Anybody familiar with science knows that the right experimental design (and the right experimental setup) is crucial.
The wrong experimental design will invalidated the experiment by design.
A methodology often recommended is ABX.
You listen to A, you listen to B and then somebody randomly plays A or B.
For you this is the X and you have to identify if X=A or X=B.
A couple of trials are needed.
Each time you have a 50% change to guess right.
But to guess right 2 times in a row has a likelihood of .5x.5=.25, 3 times=.5x.5x.5=.125, etc.
Maybe it is nice to run an ABX test now.
Just try this one: http://www.sieveking-sound.de/abx/
Basically what you have to do is:
- detecting a difference
- labelling this difference correctly
If you do see a difference between X1 and X2 but you already forgot the exact difference between A and B, you do detect a difference but your labelling will be at change level.
Obvious if this depends on short time memory (our auditory memory belong to it for small details) there is the likelihood that you do notice a difference but due to wrong labelling the score will be not significant.
I have the feeling that ABX might yield to many false negatives.
It might be the wrong experimental design for detecting small differences.
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