[1] I'm not an expert in sound science, but rather I'm a professional musician. My understanding is that many blind audio tests are done with short clips of sound, but the curious thing is that in evaluating a musician's sound we would never think that we could pick up all the details in a short clip.
[2] There is a body of knowledge in sound science that is based on blind tests.
1. Although you initially identify the issue, you then proceed to ignore that issue and go off at a tangent. ... I too was a conservertoire trained, professional orchestral musician for a number of years but I later transitioned to audio engineering. The transition was nowhere near as easy as I imagined, as I had to re-learn much of what I thought I knew. The reason for the difficulty was not only in realising there are significant differences in nomenclature but in fully appreciating those differences. For example, musicians talk in terms of pitch, while engineers talk in terms of frequency. At a superficial level, pitch and frequency are just different terms for essentially the same thing but dig deeper and the relationship between pitch and frequency is far more tenuous and not at all as simple as it superficially appears. Musical nomenclature has evolved to describe the perception of music, while the engineering/scientific nomenclature has evolved to describe the physical properties of sound and as a trained musician, one is typically not taught, nor ever has to learn, how profound this seemingly insignificant difference is! As Pio2001 in effect states, you are therefore essentially confusing art and science: When "evaluating a musician's sound" it is impossible to "pick up all the details in a short clip" because it is impossible for a musician to incorporate every "detail" of their artistry (musical and technical ability) in a short clip! Articulation, phrasing, timing, tuning, volume and other attributes are the basic musical tools/properties but crucially, on their own, they are all meaningless. It's the different combinations of these properties, their execution and juxtaposition/context (based on the musician's interpretation and what they are trying to communicate) which is what we are trying to evaluate from a musical perspective. By definition, juxtaposition/context and communicating an idea/feeling all take time, a very considerable amount of time when evaluating a musician as we generally wish to evaluate a significant number of different juxtapositions and ideas/feelings. As far as sound science is concerned, none of this is relevant! Instead of numerous properties and combinations and juxtapositions of properties, sound has only two fundamental properties, there is nothing else, no context, no meaning, just amplitude and frequency! The word "the" on it's own and without context has no meaning, it cannot be used to evaluate say an actor, one needs considerably more words, context and time to do that. However, the word "the" (on it's own) contains a wealth of sonic information, information which can be analysed, compared and even "evaluated"!
2. Can you give any examples? I'm not saying there aren't any, just that I personally can't think of any off the top of my head. Sound science is not based on and does not use blind testing at all. The exception to this rule is the branch of sound science known as psychoacoustics. Psychoacoustics can be thought of as the attempt to reconcile sound science with the human perception of sound. It therefore combines three basic areas; sound science, anatomy/physiology of the ear and brain function. The first of these has, in effect, been completely understood for nearly 200 years! The anatomy/physiology of the ear is quite well understood but brain function far less so. One of the major difficulties of psychoacoustics is that there is no one human perception of sound, every human ear has at least slight physiological differences, in addition of course to every individual having different brain function and therefore everyone perceives sound somewhat differently. For these reasons, psychoacoustics has to rely, to a certain extent, on testing people, and concluding with generalities/averages based on extrapolation (as it's obviously not possible to test every human being who ever lived). However, it is not correct to say that even psychoacoustics (let alone sound science) is based on blind testing. Blind testing is typically used in psychoacoustics as supporting evidence for a theory which is actually based on sound science, physiology or both and most commonly used to define practical limitations as opposed to the higher theoretical limitations. For example, the ultimate high frequency limit of human hearing is not defined by blind testing, it is defined by the anatomical and physiological limits of the human ear. Where blind testing is useful is in identifying a generalised maximum limit in practise, rather than the anatomical/physiological limit which is only a theoretical maximum (and unachievable in practise). Anyone claiming they can hear beyond that physiological limit can therefore only be either deliberately lying, inadvertently lying (a victim of say a perceptual invention of their brain or serious failure of their testing methodology) or not entirely a human being. And, anyone claiming they can hear beyond the generalised (tested) practical limits are almost certainly lying (deliberately or inadvertently) or not entirely human.
The difficulty with audiophile claims is that some of them fly in the face of long established, uncontested, known science and are just plain stupid/ignorant. Others fly in the face of anatomical/physiological limitations and are just impossible. And some claims are just highly improbable, even under near perfect conditions, which audiophiles virtually never attain and commonly deliberately avoid, thereby making their claims literally unbelievable! Cables are a good example, the "night and day" differences often described by audiophiles flies in the face of the known science of sound, electrical engineering and human anatomy and can be utterly dismissed as deliberate (or inadvertent) lying!
G
