Hi Dan, sadly no I can't drop by as once the meet idea was canned for now I had to do what my wife wanted so that when the meet happens she won't nag me to death about it. Being nagged to death is a real thing dude, trust me!
The double blind test takes too much time to explain quickly, but I think you could do a blind test well. Another thing I wanted to test in this manner was lossless versus 320 files. You could easily level match the volume ahead of time on a known file and have people listen and tell you if they felt one sounded better than the other (the subject can't know which file is which of course). The important thing is to keep things the same from trial to trial, and from subject to subject as much as possible. Same rig, same files, same length of listening, same volume level etc.
I would get 5 people and do ten trials each as you want to also account for chance results as best possible. I also would limit the listening length to about a minute per trial as listener fatigue can be an issue. Try to ensure that between trials the same break is provided for all subjects. If it is you who is doing the test do not give any hint at all, try to avoid any interaction with test subjects at all. Have somebody tell you when the file can be played and stopped so that you don't even look at the subjects.
Make the question simple, did either of the files you just heard sound better, which one if any? The subjects need paper and pencil to note their results on. Have the paper ready with each trial pairing listed eg. File 1 and File 2. As well, have the subjects use only standardized responses, sounds better, or can't tell apart. So for each subject you should collect ten trials where they listened to two versions of the same file (File 1 and File 2). If they felt one file sounded better they would indicate what file on the paper for each trial, or if they couldn't tell the difference. You need to keep track per subject which file was played first in each trial. It is very important that you keep good records of what file was played first for each trial and for each subject. If you mess up on your end, then you can't correlate things from the subjects end. Good luck if you do this! We will make sure to do it at our main meet if possible.
