[mmerrill99]

Arny vs Amir is a saga worth making a TV show of it. ^_^
if all this is true and I don't see why not, I'd call it normal science. you don't look too hard when you fail to demonstrate a difference, but once you do have one, then you can work on identifying it and see if it comes from what was tested of from a protocol mistake.
it's a good thing Amir worked on passing it, and it's a good thing Arny or Ethan could figure out where it was coming from instead of accepting it as the highres difference if it wasn't that.
I see this as progress, and imagine that if many people did try this ABX(because when Arny and Ethan talk, I figure many would take stuff at face value and never test it themselves), and failed, it is a rather small difference and it falls under the accepted error margin. because nobody said ABX was 100% reliable, not even Arny said that.
and maybe Amir has great hearing? maybe he is obsessed with finding out differences so he works more than other to achieve that goal? it's a good example of not taking stuff for granted. I kind of like it.
the question is, would people identify that one difference better in casual listening? and if they did, how would you know? if you explain what the difference sounds like and then give me twice the same file to try, there is a non null possibility that I will believe I heard that difference after it was suggested to me.

You fail to address the point - maybe you don't understand it. I gave these two tests as evidence of how skewed ABX blind testing in returning null results - how biased towards false negatives they are - both these tests, when examined after Amirs results, were discovered to have flaws which were considered audible (by their creators) & yet both tests stood for 15 years without anybody getting a positive result. A significant piece of evidence, if you ask me!

You fail to register this fact - instead talking all around it!!

You stated you had no evidence for how strong sighted bias was Vs the bias blind testing introduces & I'm giving you evidence of the strength of the ABX blind testing bias towards a null result. I'm also giving you evidence of just what care/expertise/motivation it takes to overcome this null bias in ABX bind tests.
 

whereas before you said "several DACs seem to sound the same once I have matched the loudness. and almost all "sound" different when I only do C (if only for loudness differences, but other biases kick in every time even if I match loudness for C)." I proceeded to ask you "Your claim is that you "other biases kick in every time even if I match loudness" in sighted listening - so you "hear" differences because of these biases." but you didn't answer so I'm confused what you are really saying

lol I knew after writing it that it would come bite me in the ass. ^_^ I went with "several DAC seem to" and "almost all "sound" different", but yeah the "every time" wasn't an accurate description, as it it was, I wouldn't have "almost all sound different", but they would all have sounded different. so my bad I pushed my opinion on this one instead of what is really likely to happen.

well, that's why I asked you to clarify your statement as you seemed to be saying we are a slave to these biases

If someone asked me to taste my food with my nose pinched

not at all. it's about assessing the right subject. if we're going for "which meal did you prefer?" then the all experience counts, and restaurants know that better than anybody else.

No, it's not about which meal do you "prefer", it's about which meal tastes the best when tasted in a normal manner, not in an unnatural manner.

but if the question is "which tasted better?", answering based on the all experience will have some people answer differently if they tested the 2 meals at home knowing both were made by the wife. now at a restaurant, if one is 3 times the price if the renowned chef came to talk to you and gave you an anecdote about this particular meal that uses some BS stuff from the other side of the planet. many people would feel like the food was better from all those added non gustatory biases.

But you are entering all side issues & scenarios which are not part of what I said was the test.

so the answer wouldn't really be about "which tasted better?" as taste would then be only one of the cues to decide.
to me that's wrong. because we don't deal with the question asked. outside of this, of course I too will enjoy a good service and it will indeed make me enjoy my meal better and possibly make me feel like the food tastes better. and I'm very much the kind of guy who wouldn't come back if the food was good and the service mediocre, so I'm not disregarding "the whole package" of experiences. but to answer "what's that smell", I should have to look around, the question is about smell and to answer it I should smell. it's really a matter of trying to talk about the correct thing. if someone asks me how I found a given restaurant, I wouldn't start blind tests, I would answer fro my global experience including the biases. because that's what I'm being asked about in this case.
when we're discussing sound and aren't actually talking only about sound while pretending we are, I estimate that we're misleading others, because we're not really talking only about sound. if it's made clear than fine, but if it's not and we keep the pretense that what we describe is sound, then IMO we should try to remove as much of what isn't sound as possible.

But this is exactly the point - we can never isolate the perception of sound from it's processing - we have perception because of the brain's processing of the signals. All perceptions are muti-modal or did I waste my time writing my last post explaining just what's involved in auditory processing? So your desire for a simplistic view of our perception of sound is contrary to science & what's known about auditory perception. You are mixing up audiology with auditory perception.

And, BTW, castle, I agree with you, ABX home testing has very little to do with science so why is it demanded of people as "proof" that they can hear differences?

I guess because it's an experiment that can be replicated under the same conditions and by other people. and it is falsifiable(if we decide to). so it has the look and the smell:wink_face: of objectivity. even if we're still very much dealing with subjects and senses.
on the other hand sighted evaluation isn't falsifiable and we can't really load other peoples preconceptions into our heads to try and replicate the test. else it becomes a blind test. so we never know if we heard something or if we think we heard it. and others have no mean to verify(without a blind test).

Our decisions resulting from sighted listening are testable i.e. how long do we keep & enjoy our selected device that resulted from our sighted evaluation? People can answer this for themselves. I reckon if a product improves the illusion of realism from my playback system then it is doing a good job. Does this mean that another device won't appear that improves this further - no, I expect such devices but they are fewer & fewer

and yes we are the result of our experiences and we interpret sounds based on our life and previous experiences. that + anatomy makes us unique individuals so all this is still very much subjective in the end. but isn't it better to deal with sound with what we know about sound instead of what we know about vision, social value of money or how sexually attracted we are toward the seller? I still think sound discussions should be about hearing.

As I said, if you want to talk about audiology fine but I'm not particularly interested in that very restricted topic.

I've read something about how it was being discussed if the jury should still look at the musician interpret while he's playing. because they realized they didn't always have the same verdict when the player "looked" like he was putting his "soul" into the exercise.
and you have a famous Stradivarius blind test to show how the same instrument seem to sound better when we know it is a strad. if we are to enjoy a concert more when we know there is a stradivarius, let go tell the audience there is one in every concert ever played. it's a rather cheap way to improve the experience. but it will not improve audio ^_^.

 

[castleofargh]

so it ends up with 2 factors:
1/which test is more reliable?
2/what are we talking about?
 
1/ I've agreed with you about abx or other blind tests not being100% accurate, and in your amir vs arny case, how loud and noticeable was the cue compared to the music? will I hear it if I sit in a chair and try both without controls? will I hear it if I focus on the guitar instead of that one cue? does that cue actually matter if it's so small that people failed to notice it for years? it's easy to dismiss abx because it's not perfect, but I don't see how sighted evaluation is better.
again I want some answers and I'll take an answer that has 30% chances to be right over one that only has 20% any day.  one step closer to the truth is all I want. you focus on showing how abx pushes toward null, but I have done plenty of abx with a positive result. so it's not a general plague that you're depicting. 
but it's not a problem is it? as when we fail an ABX we do not claim there is no audible difference. we only demonstrate that we failed the ABX test. only people who misunderstand abx are thinking we're making a point to say that all the stuff are the same. at least that's not what I'm saying when I admit to failing an ABX test. if others decides to misread what I say, that's not mine nor ABX's fault.
when we fail we just don't have proof that there was audible difference. when we pass, this is proof that we heard a difference and we can look further into that difference to see if it comes from what we tried to test.
I don't see it as a big issue. we know ABX is not 100% reliable and we don't make claims about the absence of result. we're interested in the positive results. they are very reliable.
 
on the other hand with a good talker you can convince most people of a great many things in a sighted evaluation. just going on saying "listen how digital this one sounds". boom you're not going to sell a lot of those today. 
so you see me as missing the point, I see you being super lenient about sighted evaluation as if it wasn't crippled by oh so many problems, starting by the impossibility to ever be sure of something. when I pass an abx with 20 trials, I know that I did really hear the difference. and to rule out statistical luck, I can just do more trials. it's reliable, it works, it's a scientific method.
and that's the main difference, with ABX I can get certainty of some things. with sighted evaluation all I get is the feeling that I heard something. and as I can get that feeling when there is no difference, I can never really trust myself.
 
2/ we obviously don't look for the same things and that's all. I call a cat a cat and when I'm asked about sound I want to reply about sound. for that reason I want to remove what I know of the device and how it looks.
when asked which device I prefer, then I will take all the device, the UI, the look, the different kind of inputs/outputs and how it sounds.
those are 2 different questions that deserve 2 different responses.

 

[mmerrill99]

so it ends up with 2 factors:
1/which test is more reliable?
2/what are we talking about?

1/ I've agreed with you about abx or other blind tests not being100% accurate, and in your amir vs arny case, how loud and noticeable was the cue compared to the music? will I hear it if I sit in a chair and try both without controls? will I hear it if I focus on the guitar instead of that one cue? does that cue actually matter if it's so small that people failed to notice it for years? it's easy to dismiss abx because it's not perfect, but I don't see how sighted evaluation is better.

Ok, so you want to judge the degree of audibility in the files? Well after Amir posted positive results for Arny's files others found positive results also & posted their results.

More tellingly, in the Winer case, many others heard differences in the AD/DA loopback files - differences which had remained elusive to them before

So the audibility of the differences are not restricted to the top 1% of the audiophile population - the restriction is in the difficulty of the test itself, not in the audibility of the impairments. As I keep saying, auditory processing is working on a set of signals which is not complete enough to come to one solution - it is constantly making a best-fit guess using the incomplete data. This condition of insecurity is not a condition we are psychologically comfortable with for reasons of survival, probably. We use any & all data which can better resolve this insecurity - one of the main sources of extra data is vision - take this away & deciding on what we are hearing becomes difficult - we second guess, we vacillate between, yes I heard it, no I didn't

Anyway, you seem to reject this every time I mention it

again I want some answers and I'll take an answer that has 30% chances to be right over one that only has 20% any day.  one step closer to the truth is all I want. you focus on showing how abx pushes toward null, but I have done plenty of abx with a positive result. so it's not a general plague that you're depicting.

Again, I know you don't want to face up to what I'm saying & are reverting to plucking figures out of nowhere 30%, 20%  

but it's not a problem is it? as when we fail an ABX we do not claim there is no audible difference. we only demonstrate that we failed the ABX test.

Oh, you mean ArnyK & Winer didn't use the lack of positive ABX results as "proof" that something wasn't audible?
You haven't seen the demand for someone to produce positive ABX results to "prove" their claim of hearing something?

I always find the reluctance of these same people to accepting positive ABX results as revealing of their church of belief from which they will not be swayed - when all analysis is exhausted & no explanation for the positive ABX result found the latest excuse is to accuse the person reporting the results of dishonesty. The whole idea of a proctored test was never mentioned in the 15 years that these tests reported only null results

only people who misunderstand abx are thinking we're making a point to say that all the stuff are the same. at least that's not what I'm saying when I admit to failing an ABX test. if others decides to misread what I say, that's not mine nor ABX's fault.
when we fail we just don't have proof that there was audible difference. when we pass, this is proof that we heard a difference and we can look further into that difference to see if it comes from what we tried to test.

Ah, this is the great lie about these tests. You are making claims for ABX testing being more powerful at getting at a more correct answer than normal sighted evaluation, right. For something to be called a test we need to know it's discriminatory power. We need to know what is the occurrence of false positives Vs the occurrence of false negatives. ABX testing is solely focussed on reducing false positives at the expense of increasing false negatives. We have no measure of the occurrence of false negatives in the test i.e missing actual audible differences which are not grossly obvious.

I don't see it as a big issue. we know ABX is not 100% reliable and we don't make claims about the absence of result. we're interested in the positive results. they are very reliable.

You don't know how reliable it is - that's the issue - it could be 10% reliable but you don't know.

on the other hand with a good talker you can convince most people of a great many things in a sighted evaluation. just going on saying "listen how digital this one sounds". boom you're not going to sell a lot of those today. 

I can more easily convince someone that they will not hear any difference

so you see me as missing the point, I see you being super lenient about sighted evaluation as if it wasn't crippled by oh so many problems, starting by the impossibility to ever be sure of something. when I pass an abx with 20 trials, I know that I did really hear the difference. and to rule out statistical luck, I can just do more trials. it's reliable, it works, it's a scientific method.

Sighted evaluation is normal evaluation & if you say that you are not a "slave to your biases" (which I think is now your position? BTW, Do biases come & go or are they fixed & immutable?) then why can't someone listen & evaluate without being affected by any bias? One increases the chances of this happening by listening over a week or so & not using a one shot blind test result done on a particular day with a smaller range of music, determine one's evaluation of a device

Yes, you can easily spot gross differences in ABX tests but why would you need to do an ABX test for such differences - aren't they so easily perceived that they are obvious? Can you tell me one ABX test where you weren't sure of what you heard & ABX testing solidified it for you?

and that's the main difference, with ABX I can get certainty of some things. with sighted evaluation all I get is the feeling that I heard something. and as I can get that feeling when there is no difference, I can never really trust myself.

2/ we obviously don't look for the same things and that's all. I call a cat a cat and when I'm asked about sound I want to reply about sound. for that reason I want to remove what I know of the device and how it looks.
when asked which device I prefer, then I will take all the device, the UI, the look, the different kind of inputs/outputs and how it sounds.
those are 2 different questions that deserve 2 different responses.

Fine, you keep responding in a tangential manner to my posts - bypassing the points I raise & just repeating that blind is better than sighted but without anything to back up this claim.

It's probably best we leave it at that

 

[watchnerd]

sigh
 
These are the same circular, never ending arguments that have existed since the invention of audiophile press in the 1970s...
 
Except now we have a lot more data from many many large scale, correctly-performed ABX DBTs.
 
Nothing new here.

 

[castleofargh]

yeah talking principles clearly get us nowhere. I would be willing to try and organize a few tests with blind test vs sighted and compare the results to show what is what in real life. but many tests I can think of, can't be validated in sighted evaluation... obviously as it is not a test method

if we fool people by not telling them it's a blind test( like with 2 devices not really used but shown as the stuff being tested), would it still be sighted evaluation? is the bias of thinking we're not doing a blind test strong enough for the subject to effectively behave as in a sighted evaluation? ^_^
this is the key point, if I'm allowed to lie to people about he nature of the tests, then I can totally prove that sighted evaluation is poo when it comes to tell reliably what we heard. if I must let people do their real sighted evaluation without lies as control, then I can't test anything and this all debate is a waste of time because sighted evaluation has no control and therefore cannot be trusted as being factual.
 
-1/we could test strong obvious differences, I imagine both sighted and blind would get it right.
 
-2/we could test no difference at all, then blind would end up around 50/50 and sighted thinking they test 2 different products, would from past experiments have at least some people saying they heard a difference when there isn't one. that's the reason why I personally don't trust sighted evaluation.
 
-3/and obviously we would want to test small differences at different levels of magnitudes to see when each would stop passing or stop saying that they heard a difference. but that one is tricky as between the ABX giving a little more null, and the sighted evaluation giving some positive response even when nothing is heard for at least some people, we already know the result and at the same time can't know for sure where the actual threshold is to decide who is more accurate. so I don't know how to get any information about which test is more reliable from this one when it's the one test that really matters. and if we introduce some of -2/, then we can double check how reliable are the claims of hearing something, but at the same time we're making the test more likely to be won by the willingly blind guys by adding something we know favors blind test. so we can't do it and cant control anything of have any answer about how reliable each are.
 
sighted evaluation, so unreliable that you can't even test if it's reliable.

 

[mmerrill99]

It boils down to two methods of evaluation - both of which can skew the results but in completely opposite directions - sighted towards false positives & blind towards false negatives.

But here's the practical differences as I see them:
- sighted evaluation of a audio device usually happens over a week or so using normal listening. This gives a far greater opportunity for evaluation. But if you are arguing that we are slaves to our biases then this point is mute as we will always hear what our biases steer us to hear. My experience is that we often form an initial conclusion about the sound but this can change over the course of the week's listening as we use different music or we listen at different times of the day or in different moods.

- I have never seen blind ABX testing repeated over a week with different music, at different times of the day, etc I have always seen a one shot test of maybe 16 or 20 trials. Maybe repeated a couple of times but that tends to be it

 

[watchnerd]

- I have never seen blind ABX testing repeated over a week with different music, at different times of the day, etc I have always seen a one shot test of maybe 16 or 20 trials. Maybe repeated a couple of times but that tends to be it

 
You just cited, in another thread, a Harman study with over 250 participants, which took place over many weeks and used many pieces of music.
 
Or are you talking about hobbyist type "test" that occurs at a meetup?

 

[mmerrill99]

- I have never seen blind ABX testing repeated over a week with different music, at different times of the day, etc I have always seen a one shot test of maybe 16 or 20 trials. Maybe repeated a couple of times but that tends to be it

You just cited, in another thread, a Harman study with over 250 participants, which took place over many weeks and used many pieces of music.

Or are you talking about hobbyist type "test" that occurs at a meetup?

Yes, both Castle & I were talking about typical ABX testing, not formal, rigorous testing carried out by people who know what they are doing.

 

[watchnerd]

Yes, both Castle & I were talking about typical ABX testing, not formal, rigorous testing carried out by people who know what they are doing.

 
Yeah, I haven't seen any of those that were even close to being experimentally valid.  Fun, sure.
 
Even the few times Stereophile has done an ABX test, I don't think it was more than 5 listeners, all in a single day.

 

[dprimary]

Most of the ABX tests I consider valid took months of planning and prep. If you have done ABX correctly you understand how small many of the differences can be.
 
Often I do hear big differences in testing, when I do it is called broken. 

 

[mmerrill99]

Yes, both Castle

Yeah, I haven't seen any of those that were even close to being experimentally valid.  Fun, sure.

Even the few times Stereophile has done an ABX test, I don't think it was more than 5 listeners, all in a single day.

Cool, we agree then!
But there are some that try to demand such "tests" as "proof" on the basis of
- removing one bias must be better
- if it's reported as night & day then a blind test would be simple to pass

Yea, it's no harm for an individual to listen blind but it's of less relevance than putting on another genre of music to listen for possible anomalies

 

[castleofargh]

but if it's reported as night and day difference, then indeed an ABX should be trivial to pass.

 
I know that I look like I'm pushing too hard for ABX(or blind tests in general), but it often was the only way to test audibility for myself, and doing ABX(or variations of it) has been a real eye opener in my audio journey. I seriously pity those who have to make that journey with sighted evaluation only(but then again, maybe we could go for "ignorance is bliss"). you keep going with your weird excuses that a lie is truth if it's always there and that sighted evaluation is ok with biases as we have them all the time, but I don't wish to live that kind of life(welcome into the matrix).
I have no doubt that without blind testing when it comes to audible differences, I would still be way more ignorant and less humble than I am now. I don't know it all, far from it, often I didn't get answers and that's super frustrating, but many many times it gave me at least a reason to be less gullible and I'm grateful for that. so I say to people, go ABX! get used to it, learn about the pros and cons, and make it your own tool.
 
anytime you argue that the results of a personal ABX are meaningless, I half agree. at the community level it's not 100% meaningless, but very close. why would I trust the results of a guy on the net? in fact I don't bring my abx results as evidence, I have never done that. at best I mention what happened to me when the subject is brought up, and that's it. it's my anecdotal story and people do what they want of it.
but at the same time, I feel like you're telling people to miss out on all the good it can do, while giving a free pass to all the night and day BS claims we have to face all year long. in short, I feel like you're pushing for ignorance as you're taking down ABX brick by brick, but have yet to bring something usable in it's stead.

 

[mmerrill99]

but if it's reported as night and day difference, then indeed an ABX should be trivial to pass. :wink_face:

There are two points to be made on this:
- there's no accounting for the over-enthusiastic hyperbole that people report - it happens in every hobby when people discover something they like
- auditory perception isn't so simple as this - what we can perceive as a widespread & significant effect on what we are hearing, can often become difficult to identify, isolate & focus on in a blind test - I gave ultmusicsnob's description of this as examples of just how difficult it is to find a "Tell" that we can use in blind testing even though in our normal listening we can constantly perceive one piece as better than another. I have tried to detail in my previous posts how this issue arises - it's a combination of the nature of auditory perception - it is at best a constantly updated best guess interpretation of the signals coming from the ears - combine this with a test that takes away a major source of extra data used by auditory processing (a blind test) & we get doubt, insecurity & second guessing about what we were so sure of in normal listening. As I said if we pinch our noses a lot of food will taste the same - that doesn't mean the food "actually" really tastes the same now, does it?

All this is similar to the proposition "well if you hear a difference then there must be a difference in the analogue waveform" Yes, absolutely agree with this but unless you know how auditory perception works then you don't know what differences to measure & what sort of test signals will best reveal these differences. For instance, it's not necessarily best to use a measurement tool that uses averaging like FFTs - it's not necessarily best to use sine wave test signals, etc, etc. Unless you have a theory of approximately what you are testing for it's difficult to create meaningful tests.

I know that I look like I'm pushing too hard for ABX(or blind tests in general), but it often was the only way to test audibility for myself, and doing ABX(or variations of it) has been a real eye opener in my audio journey. I seriously pity those who have to make that journey with sighted evaluation only(but then again, maybe we could go for "ignorance is bliss"). you keep going with your weird excuses that a lie is truth if it's always there and that sighted evaluation is ok with biases as we have them all the time, but I don't wish to live that kind of life(welcome into the matrix).

I'm sorry but to use your categorisation, you are only substituting one lie for another lie when engaging in such flawed blind tests - yes some people think they are fun (I find them boring), some swear by them ("has been a real eye opener in my audio journey") but the reality is that they are just as flawed towards null results as sighted tests are towards positive results (although I gave the reasons I think long term sighted listening is better than one-shot blind testing)

I have no doubt that without blind testing when it comes to audible differences, I would still be way more ignorant and less humble than I am now. I don't know it all, far from it, often I didn't get answers and that's super frustrating, but many many times it gave me at least a reason to be less gullible and I'm grateful for that. so I say to people, go ABX! get used to it, learn about the pros and cons, and make it your own tool.

Yes, you are more comfortable with this particular lie that is ABX testing, nobody is in any doubt about that but recognise it for what it is - just another anecdotal listening impression (an unnatural one where the participant has to have all sorts of expertise/focus/motivation & determination to pass the test's bias towards a null result).

Of course it has a pseudo-scientific ring about it but only to those who aren't scientific & don't know that perceptual tests are fraught with so many problems that only experienced practitioners can produce rigorous & trustworthy results.

anytime you argue that the results of a personal ABX are meaningless, I half agree. at the community level it's not 100% meaningless, but very close. why would I trust the results of a guy on the net? in fact I don't bring my abx results as evidence, I have never done that. at best I mention what happened to me when the subject is brought up, and that's it. it's my anecdotal story and people do what they want of it.

Yes, but an anecdotal story of someone hearing a particular audible artifact when playing song X with device Y has just the same evidentiary value - people can try this themselves - it doesn't require any unnatural way of listening or special determination to overcome

but at the same time, I feel like you're telling people to miss out on all the good it can do, while giving a free pass to all the night and day BS claims we have to face all year long. in short, I feel like you're pushing for ignorance as you're taking down ABX brick by brick, but have yet to bring something usable in it's stead.

The problem you seem to have is that you are not willing to face up to the fact that there are great issues to be dealt with in useful perceptual testing - it's not something that can be done informally & invariably gives a null result unless carefully administered by people knowledgeable in this field - yet you want to suggest this as something everybody should try or they will "miss out on all the good it can do"

In most hobbies there are BS claims - it's relatively easy to decide what is BS, what is iffy & what is worth looking into.

As I said before home ABX testing will hide differences so it's a great way to avoid changing your system & convince yourself that your system is perfect - but I doubt it's a great way of enjoying the hobby.

 

[watchnerd]

All this is similar to the proposition "well if you hear a difference then there must be a difference in the analogue waveform" Yes, absolutely agree with this but unless you know how auditory perception works then you don't know what differences to measure & what sort of test signals will best reveal these differences. 

 
Scarily, it's not as easy as this:
 
Because all sound is processed by your brain, you can "hear" things that aren't there, and verify it by looking at brain scans, if you are predisposed to do so.  In other words, you can "hear" (i.e. perceive) things that aren't even in the waveform.
 
There are many examples of this with musicians filling in gaps for missing notes, but the most impressive example is Poppy Crum's demonstrations with listening to records backwards.  When coached to hear it as noise, people here noise.  When coached to hear it as Satanic speech and shown lyrics, people hear it as speech and the language parts of their brain light up.

 

[XenHeadFi]

As I said before home ABX testing will hide differences so it's a great way to avoid changing your system & convince yourself that your system is perfect - but I doubt it's a great way of enjoying the hobby.

Well, I won't tell you how to enjoy your hobby if you don't tell me how to enjoy mine. Your closing statement says that my way is incorrect as I won't be "enjoying the hobby." 
 
I know how I am "enjoying the hobby." I have equipment that meets my expectations in terms of delivering sound from storage to my ears. I am now on the lookout for good, well-made music that I like, so I can purchase them and enjoy listening at home, on the go, or at the office. I enjoy my hobby by tinkering with DIY projects, because I like building things that I can use. I enjoy my hobby by researching the science of sound, including psychoacoustics and ABX/DB testing because I find those topics interesting. I might even enjoy my hobby by purchasing another set of transducers to, you know, enjoy a different sound through enjoying my hobby. The differences between my HE560's and say Senneheiser HD650 or HD800S are measurable and audible.
 
If I enjoy the sound then I will buy the headphones, and here we meet. I am enjoying my hobby my way. I hope you are also enjoying your hobby, in the way that you enjoy it.