[Willakan]

Those tests are pretty funny, but they tend to reinforce the "all snobby science people laugh at poor audiophiles" stereotype...

 

[xnor]

While some aspects of that test are funny I think that it shows a very serious issue. People are neither dumb nor cloth-eared yet percieve ("hear" is the wrong word here) a difference solely based on someone telling them that they are listening to a tube amp.
Basically the same happens with expensive cables and other exotic (read: snake oil) products. There are so many different types of distortion of the human mind going on here... it's mind-boggling.
 
To me it's no surprise that such groups get smiled upon by "ordinary" people. Trying to inform them is like talking to a brick wall, for they are profoundly convinced of hearing differences - sadly, not with their ears.

 

[Koolpep]

There is one absolute truth. But no single person can determine it, as everything we experience is perception.
 
Ask 5 witnesses of a car crash which color the cars had. They all saw the very same thing, still their mind bends and changes memories/perception. We in the head-fi forum are fighting over nuances in sound and perception that is way beyond what most people might even recognize as "different"
 
The brain is a crazy instrument and it plays us well.
 
There is no spoon.
 

 

[xnor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koolpep /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
The brain is a crazy instrument and it plays us well.

To the delight of the industry.
 
 
It is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

 

[Syan25]

Matrix quote?

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

 
I've heard about but never read the newer 44.1 vs 88.2 paper, so I won't comment about it.  Maybe Nick can shed some light on it for us, since there's no mention of any of the details or testing methods in the abstract.

I bought the paper so I have read it all, NOT JUST THE MISLEADING ABSTRACT, there are numerous methodological and statistical issues with it. For starters the recording chain. There were two mics connected to a microphone pre-amp and the L and R outputs were split and taken to two different ADCs (one had an external clock and the other did not)  one operating at 88.2 (external) and the other at 44.1 (internal)  - the 44.1 ADC fed a digital recorder and the 88.2 ADC fed a Mac Book Pro. The 88.2 was also downsampled to 44.1 using Pyramix. So there are three variations 88.2, 44.1 native and 44.1 downsampled from 88.2. Lets call these variations A, B and C
 
? Does anyone here actually know any recording engineer that would record at 44.1 native ? No, you record high and then downsample later so this is a strange test but we'll let that go for now.
 
There were five different musical samples used,  the process was the same for each
 
For each sample the three variations were presented in the following pairwise comparisons AB AC BC (randomly) - each pairwise test was run 4 times i.e AB presented twice and BA presented twice but randomly - however this means that each ABX test block for a pair was a mere 4 trials - far below a sensible n which would be at least 10.
 
Then they decide to do 2-tailed T-tests - this means that getting it wrong significantly more than chance shows up as a positive result and also that the bar is half as high for significance - this is just plain wrong - the point was to show that listeners can discriminate between samples not whether they get it wrong more than chance. 3/16 were significantly worse than chance - the other 13 were exactly at chance levels - so the experimenters separate these groups out and analyze them separately - this is iffy if not outright dodgy.
 
Then they pick the results apart by musical sample for the 13, remember each block is 4 trials.  This extra cherry-picking however still does not help much, on no occasion did any participant choose correctly 4/4 times - the average correct choices level for the 13 was never above 68.5% on any sample on any pair -  adding the 3 outliers back this drops so that it never exceeds 63.625% - by using dubious stats they declare these levels significant by invoking signal detecttion theory but they never give us the raw data for us to analyze - I have asked the author repeatedly for the raw data !
 
Remember that aggregated detection levels were exactly at a chance level ! - this is why you use big numbers !
 
Then there are other questions about how they assured the levels in the pairs were the same (given how many hoops the signal went through) and that there were no identifying artifacts in the switching (see the 1984 BAS test on Ivor Tiefenbrun) which may have been picked up - details are absent here.
 
In fairness this was a conference paper so the expectations are a bit looser but I cannot believe they got a free ride on this when they presented.
 

 
 

 

[xnor]

Oh boy..

 

[Arnaldo]

The Swedish label BIS - very prominent in the classical market - was until recently recording all their productions in native 44.1 kHz 24 Bit PCM, for release as stereo/multichannel SACD. They release about 3 new titles per month, or 36/year.
 
BIS started recording their SACDs in DSD in the early 2000s, but quickly switched to 44.1/24 because of editing limitations inherent to the DSD format. It was only this year that they decided to go to native 88.2 kHz 24 Bit PCM, as disclosed by the company owner, Robert von Bahr, on the SA-CD.net website.
 
Among other classical labels, Audite also records in native 44.1/24, while Tudor records in 48/24.
 
Quote:

? Does anyone here actually know any recording engineer that would record at 44.1 native ? No, you record high and then downsample later so this is a strange test but we'll let that go for now.  

 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

There is one absolute truth. But no single person can determine it, as everything we experience is perception.
 
Ask 5 witnesses of a car crash which color the cars had. They all saw the very same thing, still their mind bends and changes memories/perception. We in the head-fi forum are fighting over nuances in sound and perception that is way beyond what most people might even recognize as "different"
 
The brain is a crazy instrument and it plays us well.
 
There is no spoon.
 

A brilliant summation of what we are up to!
 

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

The Swedish label BIS - very prominent in the classical market - was until recently recording all their productions in native 44.1 kHz 24 Bit PCM, for release as stereo/multichannel SACD. They release about 3 new titles per month, or 36/year.
 
BIS started recording their SACDs in DSD in the early 2000s, but quickly switched to 44.1/24 because of editing limitations inherent to the DSD format. It was only this year that they decided to go to native 88.2 kHz 24 Bit PCM, as disclosed by the company owner, Robert von Bahr, on the SA-CD.net website.
 
Among other classical labels, Audite also records in native 44.1/24, while Tudor records in 48/24.
 


 

I stand corrected.
 
 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

What do you guys think about quasi-sighted tests, where the subjects think they see what's going on but are actually tricked, i.e. by a switch that doesn't even work, but still clearly hear the difference when the switch is flipped?
JJ mentioned such a test in the audio myths video where he had a switch to change between "tube" and "transistor" amp, but the switch actually didn't do anything. He invited some guys including audiophiles and they "almost unanimously liked the tube amplifier." All but one of the EE's he invited didn't have a preference and this guy went up to the switch, flipped it a couple of times, listened at the speakers and finally detected that the switch didn't do anything.
 
I'm certain that in a proper blind test this clearly erronous preference would not have shown up.

I love them.
 
Quote:

Those tests are pretty funny, but they tend to reinforce the "all snobby science people laugh at poor audiophiles" stereotype...

They're just mad because they got proven wrong.
 

 

[Heidegger]

Quote:

Albedo, are you basically suggesting that human hearing is more accurate and precise than even the best scientific audio measuring equipment today?  If both DBTs and well-done scientific measurements show that two pieces of equipment are the same would you accept that or still try to push your point forward that scientific testing is irrelevant?
 

It depends what aspect of hearing you're comparing. Human hearing can be very precise, for example in our ability to locate the source of a sound when waves reach one of our ears before the other. This is one factor to keep in mind when judging SACD. I think Ethan said that null tests don't cover certain aspects of audio, e.g. depth of soundstage. As to your second question, which I grant wasn't addressed to me, I would accept the measurements, but would still want to listen to the two pieces of equipment in question because the ultimate criterion for me is what I end up perceiving.
 
 

 

[b0ck3n]

No, Ethan said that "depth of soundstage" is something inherent to a recording, as in placement of mics and instruments, locale etc. The frequency response of a speaker or headphone can affect this to some extent. I've found that a U-shaped frequency response makes for a "deep and wide soundstage", while the opposite, well, you can fill in the blanks.

 
Quote:

It depends what aspect of hearing you're comparing. Human hearing can be very precise, for example in our ability to locate the source of a sound when waves reach one of our ears before the other. This is one factor to keep in mind when judging SACD. I think Ethan said that null tests don't cover certain aspects of audio, e.g. depth of soundstage. As to your second question, which I grant wasn't addressed to me, I would accept the measurements, but would still want to listen to the two pieces of equipment in question because the ultimate criterion for me is what I end up perceiving.
 
 

 

 

[Syan25]

Music is based on imagination and creative listening - expectation, repetition, metaphor - it is all there....so hearing isn't always about what is exactly there....and that is as it should be,,,,where would Mozart be - without that sense of metaphor making his musical variations all the more deceptive, original  and enjoyable....it delivers something different than what we are remembering hearing before.....
 
Hearing is filled with memory...
 
Audio tests however are a different can of fish...

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

In short: Yes, as in selective attention -> http://www.mind-meditations.com/concentration-attention/selective-attention-inattentional-blindness/
 
It seems like that once we shift our focus from the enjoyment of music to the serious business of analyzing, there is much easier to go bilateral, than evoke the plasticity of the brain (Absolute Pitch are developed mostly in the first 6 years of life afterwards a general developmental shift from perceiving individual features to perceiving relations among features makes AP difficult or impossible to acquire) and finding out what exactly is going on. This I find rather disturbing as I've said before that: "speakers of European languages have been found to make use of an absolute, though subconscious, pitch memory when speaking." 
 
Depressing as it is there are some interesting facts to consider about AP as in the case of blind musicians..
 

Have you got any more evidence of such? I really like the idea that when we are sighted we really can hear differences that are not just placebo. Or is what you are describing just placebo in another name?