[ry_goody]

I understand that ABX testing is a pretty solid way to see if a person can hear a difference. But, I'm starting to really question if it necessarily shows the best results. I remember back in the day when I first started this hobby I would convert albums to 192 kbps from lossless and listen and see if I could tell a difference, when I thought I heard the difference I would load up the ABX in foobar and give it a go. I could never successfully ABX a 192 mp3 to a lossless, there were times I would swear I heard a difference, but I could never ABX it. That was last year, today I can very easily ABX 192 to lossless, 256 if it's a well produced recording and even 320 in some very specific circumstances. Some of the stuff I can ABX very easily now is some of the same stuff I could never successfully ABX back in the day. Which made me realize, ABX'ing is kind of like a skill in itself. A skill that I would guess a good 99% of the population doesn't have when it comes to like 256mp3 vs lossless.

This really makes me disregard ABX as a valid test to see if it's placebo or not because doing an ABX test and trying to pinpoint the differences is really alot different than just relaxing and listening and seeing if the differences appear. It takes some skill to consistently ABX things.

What do you all think about ABX?

 

[Garbz]

I personally disagree with it, it's too scientific for something as subjective as audio. That's my opinion. Also it's worth mentioning that the ear can be trained to hear different things. I can't hear a difference between a well encoded mp3 and a cd, my friend can, with great consisency. But he can't hear slight problems in frequency response, i can.

 

[IstariAsuka]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ry_goody ABX'ing is kind of like a skill in itself. This really makes me disregard ABX as a valid test to see if it's placebo or not because doing an ABX test and trying to pinpoint the differences is really alot different than just relaxing and listening and seeing if the differences appear. It takes some skill to consistently ABX things. What do you all think about ABX?

All this tells us about ABXing is that we should utilize people who are known to be very good at ABX tests when performing them.

That way, since they'd be good at the skill, surely they'd be able to notice the difference between, say, cables if they actually do exist. And if the people who are known to be awesome at ABXing things, and who have excellent ears, cannot hear a difference then the difference is a lot less likely to exist, and if it does is probably trivial. On the other hand, if these same people could consistently tell the differences between things, then we'd know a difference does exist.