[arnyk]

  ABX tests test memory, not sound quality.
 
ABX tests force an unnatural choice in an unnatural environment.
Our ear-brain does not react favorably to ABX tests.
 
That's why they are garbage for sound quality.  It hasn't stopped them from owning the world of sound arguments.
 
Which is why sound as a whole is so crap right now.  The ABX test and it's garbage results have caused this

 
Ah, the usual simplistic anti-science propaganda that one can read all over the web!
 
Any listening test that involves comparing two sounds requires that one of them be in the listener's memory. Any listening test that does not involve comparing two sounds fails to be a test because it does not involve a fixed reference.  
 
So you want me to believe that audiophile tests don't involve memory. Good luck with that!
 
Please tell us about a listening test that does not involve making choices. If a listening test does not involve making choices, then it can't be used to guide purchase decisions and what good is it?
 
The assertion that the brain does not react well to ABX is just an assertion without evidence or proof, but so are the rest of the claims, above.
 
ABX is not the reason why sound as a whole is crap because sound as a whole is not crap. If you don't like modern technology, then go back to legacy technology. ABX says that a lot of it is really pretty good.
 
However, ABX is not the be-all and end-all. it is not the only DBT-based methodology. What is of the essence is the right tool for the job at hand. All that we need is a listening test methodology that fails to have the egregious failings of the usual audiophile listening evaluations. Got one?

 

[arnyk]

 
Science?   Haha.
 
Your belief that the science of the human senses is settled is incorrect and highly flawed.
 
Science as whole isn't about being settled, it's about discovery.
 
The science of our human senses, in particular, is very much unfinished.  Claiming you can finely measure the abilities of the human brain is foolish.
 
If science was "finished" some of us would have robot girlfriends and robots could mimic our kid's voices.  But they can't and who knows if they ever will.
 
Here's science, explained by someone smarter than all of us, who spent his whole life in the field:
 

 
 
You are deflecting. All of science does not have to be settled for science to be advantageously used. 
 
The correct statement is "All findings of Science are provisional until something better is discovered".  
 
Let's follow your argument that we can't measure the abilities of the human brain and that we need to do that to do effective listening tests. How then is any listening test valid?
 
Let's take your document:
 

• It needs to use all available sensory data from a modern smartwatch/ wearable CPU device
• It needs to be portable and self-contained to allow for mobile use and multiple playback locations
• It needs to account for the musical style preference of the test subject
• It needs to stress half-song units as it’s shortest measurement, rejecting fast-switching between samples
• It needs a name as easy to remember as AB Test or Blind Test

 
(1) Is false because all sensory data includes knowledge of which UUT is playing at any time, and that admits all sorts of sighted bias.
(2) Is no problem for ABX because there are ABX testers that run on Smartphones.
(3) Is false be no matter what genres of music we prefer, we listen to them all with the same ears.
(4) Is false on two grounds - the bogus constraints that it introduce can be met by ABX, but from science we already know that human memory for subtle details is only a few seconds.  Half song segments have been used and they are too long to maximize listener performance.
(5) Is false, because what's important is the test itself, not its name.  A rose by any other name is still a rose.
 
 

 

[castleofargh]

  Science?   Haha.
 
Your belief that the science of the human senses is settled is incorrect and highly flawed.
 
Science as whole isn't about being settled, it's about discovery.
 
The science of our human senses, in particular, is very much unfinished.  Claiming you can finely measure the abilities of the human brain is foolish.
 
If science was "finished" some of us would have robot girlfriends and robots could mimic our kid's voices.  But they can't and who knows if they ever will.
 
Here's science, explained by someone smarter than all of us, who spent his whole life in the field:
 

“The whole point of science is that most of it is uncertain. That’s why science is exciting–because we don’t know. Science is all about things we don’t understand. The public, of course, imagines science is just a set of facts. But it’s not. Science is a process of exploring, which is always partial. We explore, and we find out things that we understand. We find out things we thought we understood were wrong. That’s how it makes progress.” – Freeman Dyson, 90, Mathematical Physicist

having you of all people trying to explain to us what science and skepticism are, that's rich. remind me thanks to what amazingly reliable method you made your opinion on how you can discriminate highres from CD? yeah right.

 
the fact that scientific people know better than to take anything for granted isn't a free pass to call any scientific conclusion unreliable. just like the fact that ABX isn't 100% reliable doesn't change the fact that it will be 100% more reliable than your sighted listening, or the messed up testing method you wrote about(oh please are you serious about that nonsense?).
 
I made my mind from the fact the there is no conclusive evidence to this day showing that people can tell high res apart from a CD. then I conducted different forms of blind test(mostly abx) and systematically failed to get above guessing statistics. from those facts, I decided that I wouldn't benefit from highres and that it would be paying more to hear the same. kind of dumb from that perspective.
on the other hand, you have your opinion that has found zero evidence to be true up to this day, yet you decide that everybody and even science are wrong, while you of course are right and know better...
who's the narrow minded guy that doesn't try to learn anything?

 

[upstateguy]

 

  ABX tests test memory, not sound quality.
 
ABX tests force an unnatural choice in an unnatural environment.
Our ear-brain does not react favorably to ABX tests.
 
That's why they are garbage for sound quality.  It hasn't stopped them from owning the world of sound arguments.
 
Which is why sound as a whole is so crap right now.  The ABX test and it's garbage results have caused this

 
Ah, the usual simplistic anti-science propaganda that one can read all over the web!
 
Any listening test that involves comparing two sounds requires that one of them be in the listener's memory. Any listening test that does not involve comparing two sounds fails to be a test because it does not involve a fixed reference.  
 
So you want me to believe that audiophile tests don't involve memory. Good luck with that!
 
Please tell us about a listening test that does not involve making choices. If a listening test does not involve making choices, then it can't be used to guide purchase decisions and what good is it?
 
The assertion that the brain does not react well to ABX is just an assertion without evidence or proof, but so are the rest of the claims, above.
 
ABX is not the reason why sound as a whole is crap because sound as a whole is not crap. If you don't like modern technology, then go back to legacy technology. ABX says that a lot of it is really pretty good.
 
However, ABX is not the be-all and end-all. it is not the only DBT-based methodology. What is of the essence is the right tool for the job at hand. All that we need is a listening test methodology that fails to have the egregious failings of the usual audiophile listening evaluations. Got one?

 
I've ABX tested, but would you say null testing better?

 

[icebear]

  ...
 
I program tests that others have designed in various fields, so I'm familiar with the basic mechanics of testing and analyzing results. 
I do believe in bias so I am trying to work traps for that into my testing.
If you are interested in this, I posted some initial thoughts ....

 
You have to eliminate all other influences but the music if you want to measure body parameters.
This can not work while the test person is mobile. This can only work in a controlled lab environment.
Otherwise you will have unsurmountable issues to control your baseline.

 

[Music Alchemist]

I decided that I wouldn't benefit from highres and that it would be paying more to hear the same. kind of dumb from that perspective.

 
Great replies, guys. Saves me a lot of typing.
 
If a hi-res download comes from a different master, it could sound different enough from the CD version to be worth buying (and there are some exclusive releases as well)...but they usually don't disclose the source of what they are selling, so it's a gamble. Thankfully, most of the hi-res albums I have are different masters.

 

[cjl]

  ABX tests test memory, not sound quality.

Every time you listen to music (or other audio) and try to determine how good it sounds, you are to a large extent using memory. You are comparing it to your memory of how previous experiences of listening to music went. You are comparing it to the memory of the last time you listened to your speakers. You are comparing it to the memory of the last time you went to a concert. Since your brain is not able to process two audio streams simultaneously to do a true, real-time comparison, any comparison of audio must inherently involve memory. It isn't a "flaw" of ABX testing, it's inherent to the entire concept of listening to audio.

 

[arnyk]

  Every time you listen to music (or other audio) and try to determine how good it sounds, you are to a large extent using memory. You are comparing it to your memory of how previous experiences of listening to music went. You are comparing it to the memory of the last time you listened to your speakers. You are comparing it to the memory of the last time you went to a concert. Since your brain is not able to process two audio streams simultaneously to do a true, real-time comparison, any comparison of audio must inherently involve memory. It isn't a "flaw" of ABX testing, it's inherent to the entire concept of listening to audio.

 
All true.
 
The retention period for information you hear depends on the level of detail you are trying to retain about it.  At this point there has been quite a bit of research about this, and we can attach some numbers to these things.
 
For example, the most detailed memories we have are sometimes called "echoic memory" and are like we have a highly detailed echo of the sound bouncing around in our brains. It only lasts for a few seconds to a few dozen seconds. Of course people vary in this ability, but after a few minutes everybody has lost the accurate memory of the very smallest details.  
 
The least detailed memory you might have of something we hear are abstract details such as the name of the piece of music, who played it, where, or perhaps some exceptional thing that happened at the event such as a person in the audience fainting. Those memories can last for a lifetime. Everthing else is somewhere in-between.
 
The way that this effects audiophilia is that we can't possibly have long lasting memories of the very smallest details of audible events, so after a little while everything we hear looses a little detail, and we can't be sure that the exact same sound is in fact the exact same sound.
 
Thus, close temporal jusxtapositioning or quick switching with time synching is required to accurately compare small sonic details.
 
I don't think that this knowledge was widely understood in say the 1970s when we started doing our first more carefully controlled listening tests, but by depriving ourselves of sighted cues, we quickly noticed it and started coming up with listening strategies for dealing with it.
 
The scientific literature started picking this stuff up, and at this point quite a bit is understood about it. "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Levitin has a lot of factual information about it. Cheap little book, but not always an easy read. http://daniellevitin.com/publicpage/books/this-is-your-brain-on-music/

 

[cegadede]

 

 ABX tests test memory, not sound quality.
 
ABX tests force an unnatural choice in an unnatural environment.
Our ear-brain does not react favorably to ABX tests.
 
That's why they are garbage for sound quality.  It hasn't stopped them from owning the world of sound arguments.
 
Which is why sound as a whole is so crap right now.  The ABX test and it's garbage results have caused this

 
Ah, the usual simplistic anti-science propaganda that one can read all over the web!
 
Any listening test that involves comparing two sounds requires that one of them be in the listener's memory. Any listening test that does not involve comparing two sounds fails to be a test because it does not involve a fixed reference.  
 
So you want me to believe that audiophile tests don't involve memory. Good luck with that!
 
Please tell us about a listening test that does not involve making choices. If a listening test does not involve making choices, then it can't be used to guide purchase decisions and what good is it?
 
The assertion that the brain does not react well to ABX is just an assertion without evidence or proof, but so are the rest of the claims, above.
 
ABX is not the reason why sound as a whole is crap because sound as a whole is not crap. If you don't like modern technology, then go back to legacy technology. ABX says that a lot of it is really pretty good.
 
However, ABX is not the be-all and end-all. it is not the only DBT-based methodology. What is of the essence is the right tool for the job at hand. All that we need is a listening test methodology that fails to have the egregious failings of the usual audiophile listening evaluations. Got one?

 
I've ABX tested, but would you say null testing better?

They test different things : null testing will show if there are possibly audible differences between two things (be they records, amplifiers, cables etc), by definition things that get a perfect null can't be differentiated by ear (by anyone) ; abx testing will determine if the persons being tested (and only them) can hear differences.

It's possible to not get a perfect null (in other words, there be differences between two audio samples) and nobody notice it in a abx test.

Enviado do meu telégrafo usando Tapatalk.

 

[arnyk]

   
I've ABX tested, but would you say null testing better?

Null testing rolls every kind of mathematical imperfections up into just one number.
 
That includes:
 
Polarity
Timing differences
Level
Frequency response
Phase response
All forms of nonlinear distortion
Every kind of noise, both random and repetitive.
 
Some of these are very simplistic like level, polarity and timing.  Timing doesn't even matter because of the delay between making and playing the recording.

 

[wahsmoh]

I listened to a song today that I was able to conclude the two bitrate versions sounded different in one portion of the song that really tested the high and low frequencies..
 
The Promise by When in Rome.. a one hit wonder 80s song. I found the rare CD and compared it to the 256kbps mp3 I found on iTunes and a mp3 I ripped myself from the CD.
 
The two 256kbps versions sounded identical and the point in the song where they sounded different from the lossless FLAC CD version was at 1:32 when the percussion does the "dooga dooga dooga" and then you hear the reverb from the voices echo between L/R channel.
 
The slam of the percussion isn't as tangible on the .mp3 as the lossless. Also the decay of the vocals is longer on the FLAC versus the two .mp3s I tested.
 
So I confirmed what I heard on the Dr. Chesky binaural recordings. I have a very resolving setup so I found out. I have also tested other .mp3s (320kbps) versus FLAC and have struggled to find any difference at all so I guess it really depends on the quality of the master because the more detail in the bass and upper frequencies, the more likely it will get cut off at the high and bottom end from lossy compression.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I listened to a song today that I was able to conclude the two bitrate versions sounded different in one portion of the song that really tested the high and low frequencies..
 
The Promise by When in Rome.. a one hit wonder 80s song. I found the rare CD and compared it to the 256kbps mp3 I found on iTunes and a mp3 I ripped myself from the CD.
 
The two 256kbps versions sounded identical and the point in the song where they sounded different from the lossless FLAC CD version was at 1:32 when the percussion does the "dooga dooga dooga" and then you hear the reverb from the voices echo between L/R channel.
 
The slam of the percussion isn't as tangible on the .mp3 as the lossless. Also the decay of the vocals is longer on the FLAC versus the two .mp3s I tested.
 
So I confirmed what I heard on the Dr. Chesky binaural recordings. I have a very resolving setup so I found out. I have also tested other .mp3s (320kbps) versus FLAC and have struggled to find any difference at all so I guess it really depends on the quality of the master because the more detail in the bass and upper frequencies, the more likely it will get cut off at the high and bottom end from lossy compression.

 
You also need to convert all the lossy files from the lossless ones yourself; otherwise, you may just be listening to two different masters.
 
By the way, iTunes downloads are 256 kbps AAC, not MP3.