[Prog Rock Man]

Sighted listening - you can see what you are listening to. As used in the vast majority of review situations, both with hifi media and hifi forum members giving their opinions on hifi.
 
Blind listening - you cannot see what you are listening to, but you are not tested as to whether you can hear a difference or not. You are asked to judge the sound on sound alone. Some hifi media do this, What Hifi, Hif Choice as part of their reviews. Many hifi makers state they they also do blind listening to help evaluate products, but only Harman Internation to my knowledge have published their methods and results.
 
ABX listening - more of a test, where you try to identify two or more products without any clues (in a well run test) as to which is which.
 
For me -
 
Sighted listening tells us that image, brand, features, looks are very important when judging sound quality.
 
That is backed up by blind listening where, once people do not not know what they are listening to any more, some products do surprisingly well and vice versa. So we know that sight has an influence on perceived sound quality.
 
ABX listening tests tell us that many claims by hifi companies and reviewer's (both professional in the media and amature on forums) lack substance, as people can no longer differentiate between some hifi porducts at all (cables) and struggle with others (e.g amplifiers). But with speakers it becomes a lot easier.

 

[Willakan]

Sighted listening isn't totally worthless, but in an ideal world, all audio reviews would be done blind and volume matched.:veryevil:

 

[rymd]

No blind or ABX test is completely "blind," however, and you can still form strong biases (in addition to possible preconceived biases before you start the test ) without seeing what you're listening to. And then again, ABX/blind tests don't simulate regular listening conditions. Listening to music in the same way as I took ABX tests would be torturous. What do you mean about "what tells us most about hifi" though? If it's telling whether a $2000 cable upgrade was worth it, of course it would be best (but still not ideal) through abx tests

 

[Uncle Erik]

Sighted listening has some value when products are obviously different, like the various frequency responses from headphones and speakers. Amps are also sufficiently, and measurably, different to expect differences.

But for gear that shows no measurable differences, or differences that fall below human audibility, it's safe to sat that the perceived "differences" are attributable to placebo and expectation. Those will be a problem with gear that can be differentiated with test gear, but I'll accept someone's subjective evaluation of headphones because I know an actual difference exists.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

By 'what tells us the most' I mean reality vs claim.

 

[Jalo]

The best and proven scientific and statistical experimental model is a truly randomized double blind ABAB design with at least a sampling number of 50 with all dependent variables control for.  The negative of this design is the usually high cost associated with such design.
 
Dependent variables=things like open or closed mind as to cable effect, burn in effect etc.  Years of hifi experience and demonstrable hifi knowledge etc.
 
In hifi,there are so much preconceive notions that without fully blind study even as to the purpose of the study, personal biases will always interfere.

 

[zotjen]

Quote:

By 'what tells us the most' I mean reality vs claim.

Well if you don't know what you're listening to, then you don't know what the claim is.
 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Many claims are made by hifi makers and reviewers, which when subjected to ABX testing are found to be false. The reality is that sighted testing shows us that there are many other influences on how hifi sounds.

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

I know this is a little off topic, but I find when a product has been talked about by the community for a couple of years, the collection of thoughts in a concentrated thread is pretty darn good. 
 
In other words, there's another type of listening "communal subjectivity"  or maybe "dialectic subjectivity," or something.
 
 

 

[JadeEast]

^ I've heard the term "Intersubjectivity" used in other areas, but not in regards to audio.
 

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

^^^ Interesting. Thanks for that.
 
From Wiki here:
 
Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology and sociology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced (subjectively) but by more than one subject.
 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Intersubjectivity certainly explains why sighted testing results, even when they contradict all the evidence that science has to say it just should not be so, are still very strongly held.
 
 

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

Agreed.  It's just a fancy word for group think. Still, even thought the first take may be in error, I find that given time the "group think" often comes around to a legitimate array of experiences, it seems to me. What do you think?

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Absolutely. I have joined in with a flavour of the month product and bought a cable just because so many said it was excellent. The forum is full of Grado for rock and AKG for classical and Bose is rubbish. I wonder how they would do blind tested?
 
However, I still cannot fully square how so many honest and sensible people (with money, sometimes lots of it) who all claim to hear differences are apparently being fooled. There is something in me that wants cables to be genuinely different so I can return to the majority of the forum and not be sidelined here in Sound Science.