[bobsmith]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILikeMusic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Agreed, and no offense meant. But what you are saying is fundamentally different than many of the others in these types of threads in that you seem to agree that the fundamental philosophy of DBT is sound, but that a long-term (to the extent that it's credible that long-term listening is somehow more acute than short-term) listening test hasn't been run yet, and I have no argument there. But you do realize that even if such a test were to be run the hard-core subjectivists would doubt it and claim some other flaw, and the bar would just be set further and further out so that testing becomes impossible no matter what you do. That's the kind of thing I was referring to...

No offense taken...Just a fun debate

. Yes, I do believe theoretically that a properly designed DBT can be one appropriate way of testing under the right circumstances. The problem is more about implementation than theory.

I do however think that there are some inherent problems with DBT that cannot be corrected. As I said before, I think that the human brain is much better at spotting differences when it knows what to look for. This does not mean that those differences do not exist. When the brain is "searching" for differences, it can miss even very obvious ones that objectively exist. I will use the Photo Hunt example again. You can stare at two photos with very substantial differences for even minutes before actually "seeing" those differences. Try it yourself Photo Hunt . During that time, your eyes are darting between the photos probably dozens of times. I guarantee that if you knew in advance what differences to look for, you would be able to find them much more quickly and accurately.

Because of this, I think a DBT has the potential to make it harder, possibly much harder, to spot actual real differences that exist.

 

[ILikeMusic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif @ILikeMusic: I really cannot be bothered reading through the debate. Were the methodological criticisms damning, or just mere squibbles? Like I said, if sonic differences are not discernible in a simple DBT (one that lasts for months, to placate bobsmit, say), then they're too small to be bothered with.

The objections are mostly based on the common 'impossible perfection' fallacy, i.e. moving the goalposts out (in this case by requiring more and more time) until testing becomes impossible/impractical.

 

[jonathanjong]

@bobsmith: My point still stands, I think. If it's really so hard to discern a difference, then there's practically no difference worth fussing over.

@ILikeMusic: OK, but at some point the (say) among of time required becomes ridiculous. Do we really care if the difference between two cables requires 4 years to discern? Some might, but most won't. And we can take a poll to see how long consumers are willing to wait for differences to emerge. There'll be some...special ones who would pay thousands for a very subtle difference discernible after fifteen years, but so what?

 

[bobsmith]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif @bobsmith: My point still stands, I think. If it's really so hard to discern a difference, then there's practically no difference worth fussing over.

I think it depends on the nature of the difference once you discover it, and the nature of the person. Certain differences, once noticed, can become quite irritating, and for certain people once they notice something like that, it drives them crazy. I am one of those people. I found a week ago that there is a rattle deep in the dashboard of my car. It probably has been doing it for months but I didn't notice until my wife mentioned it to me. Now its driving me nuts, and I can't stop listening to it, so I am taking apart the dashboard this weekend to find it. You may not be the same kind of obsessive type person I am, but I bet quite a lot of head-fiers are.

 

[jonathanjong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobsmith /img/forum/go_quote.gif You may not be the same kind of obsessive type person I am, but I bet quite a lot of head-fiers are.

Fair point, and I guess that's an empirical question too. However, at this point aren't we really comparing "good" and "better" sound? I'm personally interested in whether or not it's worth the money to recable or buy more expensive cables or buy more expensive amps, etc. And I think (again, an empirical question) most Head-Fiers are interested in this too. So talk of annoyances might be something or a red herring.

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobsmith /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think it depends on the nature of the difference once you discover it, and the nature of the person. Certain differences, once noticed, can become quite irritating, and for certain people once they notice something like that, it drives them crazy. I am one of those people. I found a week ago that there is a rattle deep in the dashboard of my car. It probably has been doing it for months but I didn't notice until my wife mentioned it to me. Now its driving me nuts, and I can't stop listening to it, so I am taking apart the dashboard this weekend to find it. You may not be the same kind of obsessive type person I am, but I bet quite a lot of head-fiers are.

Sibilance can be like that. You might hear it only on certain recordings that are in your collection, and/or it is sometimes something you might not really pick up on until you have been listening to your recordings and system for a week or more. Then you hear it and it bugs you to no end.

Which reminds me of an experience I had about three years ago . . . . Late one Friday night, I changed something in my system at the end of a listening session before I went away for the weekend. When I got back, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the sound of my system as my first listening session progressed, and I began to hear a harshness that was not there before. Each listening session I became more and more annoyed at what I was hearing, i.e., it just did not sound as good as I remembered. At the end of the second or third day, I went to pull out my equipment from my cabinet (to see if something was loose or broken), when I saw-- and then recalled for the first time -- that I had changed something just before my trip. I changed it back, and voila, the old sound returned.

 

[terriblepaulz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilS /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't disagree with most of what you said (except for the ridiculous hyperbole in the first sentence and the part about a case based on eye witness testimony not surviving cross), but it is not directly responsive to what I said, which directly responded to your point that evidence that is based on perception or observation is "bad evidence" in a court of law. It's not. That's a matter of opinion. Another opinion is that DBT's are "bad evidence" because they do not mirror the conditions under which people normally listen to music, and they involve test parameters designed to obscure differences that can be perceived or can be perceived over time. Again, it's fascinating to the extent to which the "scientific viewpoint" will only consider one side of the argument. It seems very "unscientific" to me. And as a lawyer, who presumably has dealt with experts, you know that they often are just plain, flat wrong, or as unreliable as the eyewitness testimony upon which you so readily cast aspersions.

I would love to argue the law stuff more, but meh, I can't send you a bill. I'm surprised I'm getting an argument on the whole "human perception is unreliable" thing. I thought Descartes had that nailed a long time ago. Am I the only one here who has seen Rashomon?

 

[Nightmare]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobsmith /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do however think that there are some inherent problems with DBT that cannot be corrected. As I said before, I think that the human brain is much better at spotting differences when it knows what to look for. This does not mean that those differences do not exist. When the brain is "searching" for differences, it can miss even very obvious ones that objectively exist. I will use the Photo Hunt example again. You can stare at two photos with very substantial differences for even minutes before actually "seeing" those differences. Try it yourself Photo Hunt . During that time, your eyes are darting between the photos probably dozens of times. I guarantee that if you knew in advance what differences to look for, you would be able to find them much more quickly and accurately. Because of this, I think a DBT has the potential to make it harder, possibly much harder, to spot actual real differences that exist.

Two things:
1. The two photos can be objectively shown to be different by anyone with a basic knowledge of Photoshop. This is analogous to two pieces of gear producing different bench test results in the audible range. No reason to DBT tubes against solid state; they are shown to produce differing bench test results.

2. A valid DBT of, say, interconnects can be conducted even if the test subject is informed of the reputed benefits of the high-dollar cables. "Either A or B is said to give more air and spaciousness to music. Please concentrate on these qualities during the test." I predict no influence on the outcome.

 

[malldian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif Like I said, if sonic differences are not discernible in a simple DBT (one that lasts for months, to placate bobsmit, say), then they're too small to be bothered with.

Are you new here?

 

[rds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by terriblepaulz /img/forum/go_quote.gif Am I the only one here who has seen Rashomon?

Nope

 

[b0dhi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ILikeMusic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Every DBT experiment does that. If there are differences in impulses along the aural nerves that the brain can detect then the test subject reports it... and if the brain can't detect it then it's irrelevant.

Uh, no. Not at all. The audio stimuli being presented to the brain and how the brain chooses to, or is able to, make use of that stimuli are two entirely different things. Do some reading on differences in hearing ability between the blind and the sighted. See here: Human echolocation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif @bobsmith: My point still stands, I think. If it's really so hard to discern a difference, then there's practically no difference worth fussing over.

That might be valid for you, but not for the debate in general. What may be subtle, or even undetectable, to you and I may be easily audible to someone else. It's almost certain that ITDs between early-reflections on surfaces, to you and I, are subtle, probably to the point of being undetectable. To some people without the sense of vision, though, these sounds are heard with such acuity that they are able to navigate and gauge the size and rough shape of objects by sound alone (see link above).

One of the huge flaws in the DBT methodologies I've come across has been that they assume that someone that says they're a golden-ear (whether corroborated anecdotally or not), is one. That's bad experimental design. If your experiment aims to test the limits of human hearing, you must make sure your test subjects are able to hear at the limits of human hearing. How many DBT studies do this? Indeed, is this even possible using subjective ABX/DBT methods when the experiment itself, if it is a subjective DBT/ABX, aims to test the limits of hearing acuity? (I say subjective DBT/ABX because these tests rely on the test subject's high-level opinion, rather than the measurements of the low-level hearing mechanism itself).

It should be evident by the earlier example of sighted vs blind people that hearing ability/acuity is not a constant. The brain is not an oscilloscope. It is a learning machine.

Simply sitting someone down at an ABX, taking their word for fact when they say have incredible hearing, producing a predictably negative result, then extrapolating that result to mean that nobody can hear subtleties the experiment was testing for is not Sound Science, it's Sound Kindergarten.

I'm sure good DBT/ABX tests are possible, and I personally use ABX to train my own hearing, but let's not over-simplify the matter.

 

[jonathanjong]

@b0dhi: But again, if the differences are only discernible to a select group of people, then I submit that it's not a difference worth bothering with. The conclusion of the DBT is not invalid, it just has to be qualified. The DBT will conclude that, "There is no statistically significant audible difference between Setup A and Setup B, among a random sample of population X." I don't care whether there's really a difference or not, I want to know if there is a difference that is discernible by most Head-Fiers (say). If most Head-Fiers cannot hear a difference then, extra testing notwithstanding, it's more rational for me to believe that I won't be able to either (ceteris paribus, there's no reason to believe I'm special).

And on a related note:
Quote:

Originally Posted by malldian /img/forum/go_quote.gif Are you new here?

LOL. Point taken.

 

[Nightmare]

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0dhi /img/forum/go_quote.gif One of the huge flaws in the DBT methodologies I've come across has been that they assume that someone that says they're a golden-ear (whether corroborated anecdotally or not), is one. That's bad experimental design. If your experiment aims to test the limits of human hearing, you must make sure your test subjects are able to hear at the limits of human hearing. How many DBT studies do this? Indeed, is this even possible using subjective ABX/DBT methods when the experiment itself, if it is a subjective DBT/ABX, aims to test the limits of hearing acuity?

Not sure where you got this. No valid DBT makes any assumptions about the test subject, and the subject doesn't need to be a golden-ear for the test to be valid. Ideally, the test would include as many subjects as possible. It would, of course, be a bonus if test subjects were also given a clinical hearing test for purposes of further data correlation.

Results of DBTs on self-proclaimed golden-ears are important, though. Mostly because they are generally the ones making claims of audible differences, and should therefore be the ones to support the claims with a DBT. It's also important to realize that we can't know if a negative result invalidates the claim about the audio gear, or the claim about being golden-eared. Although (tellingly) self-proclaimed golden-ears rarely agree to participate in DBTs.
Quote:

Originally Posted by b0dhi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Simply sitting someone down at an ABX, taking their word for fact when they say have incredible hearing, producing a predictably negative result, then extrapolating that result to mean that nobody can hear subtleties the experiment was testing for is not Sound Science, it's Sound Kindergarten.

Extrapolating a result in the way you describe would demonstrate a flaw in the person who made the extrapolation, not a flaw in the testing method. Objectivists aren't saying the myth of, say, high-dollar cables has been proven false. Only that no one has yet proven it true in a scientifically valid test.

EDIT:
Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathanjong /img/forum/go_quote.gif @b0dhi: But again, if the differences are only discernible to a select group of people, then I submit that it's not a difference worth bothering with.

That may be true enough as a practical matter, but if even one person can find an audible difference in a valid DBT, we must conclude that the difference actually does exist.

 

[b0dhi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightmare /img/forum/go_quote.gif Not sure where you got this. No valid DBT makes any assumptions about the test subject, and the subject doesn't need to be a golden-ear for the test to be valid. Ideally, the test would include as many subjects as possible. It would, of course, be a bonus if test subjects were also given a clinical hearing test for purposes of further data correlation. Results of DBTs on self-proclaimed golden-ears are important, though. Mostly because they are generally the ones making claims of audible differences, and should therefore be the ones to support the claims with a DBT. It's also important to realize that we can't know if a negative result invalidates the claim about the audio gear, or the claim about being golden-eared. Although (tellingly) self-proclaimed golden-ears rarely agree to participate in DBTs. Extrapolating a result in the way you describe would demonstrate a flaw in the person who made the extrapolation, not a flaw in the testing method

I thought we were discussing whether different amps/cables/whatever were audible? In that context, the test subject is important. You point out that the error is in the individual making the false extrapolation, and I agree, but that's exactly what we see occuring: -

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightmare /img/forum/go_quote.gif Objectivists aren't saying the myth of, say, high-dollar cables has been proven false. Only that no one has yet proven it true in a scientifically valid test.

That isn't what has been said. The implication (and sometimes explication) made by The Audio Critic et al has always been that all these "golden ears" claim cables/amps make a difference, yet they fail in DBTs, therefore amps/cables don't make a difference. This is precisely the flawed extrapolation you mentioned.

For the claim that "amps/cables do not make a difference" to carry some weight, there must be either:

-An objective measure that doesn't depend on subjective hearing acuity. One possible way of doing this is a direct measurement and comparison of aural nerve impulses. For me this would be the most convincing study.

-A subjective DBT/ABX test, but with a pre-test determination to ensure that the test subject(s) are/does in fact represent the apex of possible human hearing ability. The difficulty in making such a determination makes me wonder whether this test can carry weight except for positive results.

For the record, I have no position one way or the other regarding amps/cables/pebbles/etc.

 

[jonathanjong]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightmare /img/forum/go_quote.gif That may be true enough as a practical matter, but if even one person can find an audible difference in a valid DBT, we must conclude that the difference actually does exist.

Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. Depending on how the study is run and how the data are analyzed, one person's results might not be able to generate a statistically significant result. Also, there's no "must" in experimental science. That's what I was trying to say with the Duhem-Quine thesis. In this case, the auxillary hypothesis could be "Participant A is not delusional" or some such. That is, the assumption that Participant A is suitable for the study is rejectable. Finally, I'm not sure a cable or amp or whatever that is only discernibly better than stock ones (or cheaper ones) to ONE person (or very few people, for that matter) is a difference worth shouting about. And perhaps such a result (viz., a discernible difference among a select group of individuals) tells us something about this sub-population rather than the equipment tested. Perhaps.