[castleofargh]

I heard not what I expected to hear. About 3 weeks ago the heart of my system, a 20 year old Sony TA-E9000ES Multi-channel Preamp/DAC went silent. I was quite disturbed by this, since the unit features a mix of inputs and outputs I use but are no longer found on today's Pre-Pros. At any rate, realizing the Sony was for the most part receiving input from stereo sources I recognized a 2.1 preamp could replace the Sony. Looking into it, I purchased a 2.1 Parasound P6, hoping it would deliver a sound as I had become accustomed to from the Sony. To my surprise, I did not get what I expected to hear. Instead, I got more low volume detail and a black as coal background. I also got better bass management. So, all in all, the new Preamp is working out nicely. It makes me think, had not the Sony went silent I may have never known that anything better was out there, meaning I did not know I did not know. The point being, enlightenment and exposure are two elements needed to know much of anything regarding the appropriate equipment needed to enjoy recorded music.

The notion that our expectations can alter what we perceive won't turn a donkey into an orbital station. The suggested behavior is that once we recognize something using a bunch of patterns we're familiar with, the brain may dismiss some of the extra information. Basically, once we think we know what we're dealing with, we don't "want" to bother with the details. Probably to avoid overloading the brain with too many senses and too much data.

If the preamp still looked the same and you didn't know it wasn't the Sony anymore, then maybe you would have been inclined to assume that everything was as usual and that would have allowed your brain to ignore some possible changes in the sound. That's a more likely scenario as you get all the known patterns first, giving the opportunity for the related expectations to "decide"/cause to ignore some of the rest.
On the contrary, you knowing the Sony pre is dead, that this one is a different device, your eyes confirming it, all those cues are telling your brain about things that are not the usual patterns. The expectation is more likely to be that the sound coming from it will also not be usual. You might very well have thought that a pream is a preamp and that it wouldn't change the sound. That is certainly an expectation leaning toward not bothering with extra details of a known result. But in this scenario, that idea has first to face the other knowledge and sensory cues(not even audio ones) I mentioned. And all the other stuff rejects the model for your expectation. It's new, it looks different, it's different, etc.

At least that's how it makes sense to me. I don't know nearly enough to claim that my made up model is accurate^_^.

 

[redrol]

For myself, I mix, play music, produce a little.
I do not allow myself to have 'brain burn' so in practice I always have different room sources to compare with. Also I play guitar and saxophone (and others not well). I compare headphones and IEMs to what my brain has learned is correct. The reference is always real life, IE, how do I hear something in a normal natural context.

I fully understand placebo as well am influenced by it.

For me when something sounds 'real' as in real life, my brain goes CLICK and starts engaging. I don't have a clue if other folks work like this, but I do. I can't be happy with good enough, or close.. it has to be correct.

I do have a 'real' job that has nothing to do with music. This allows me lots of 'down time' to allow my brain and ears to rest. Then when I try gear I know within minutes if it sounds like I expect.

Is this a fools errand? It's hard to know the right way to review iems.

 

[peskypesky]

It's hard to know the right way to review iems.

I just do it this way: If I have two IEM's (or headphones) I want to compare, I use a splitter for the audio signal, so that both sets are being driven. I put one set, listen for a bit, then put the other set in. I do this with a few types of music. I usually have a clear preference pretty quickly.

This does not mean that the pair I like are "better". Only that I prefer the sound.

Is it a blind test? No. A blind test would be better. But no way for me to do that.

 

[peskypesky]

Basically, once we think we know what we're dealing with, we don't "want" to bother with the details. Probably to avoid overloading the brain with too many senses and too much data.

You know, one time, I was sitting on a train car near NYC, and there was someone gabbing loudly on the phone, and the longer he gabbed, the more annoyed I got. I could tell everyone else on the car was getting annoyed too as this guy just kept yapping. My blood started to boil and I was thinking of how many other people on the car were wanting to yell at him to shut up.

So I started thinking: Why was I so annoyed with his gabbing? It wasn't so loud that it was causing physical pain. So it's not a pain thing. What is it? Why is it so irritating? And I realized, it's because we all HAD to listen to him. We had no choice. He was, in a sense, monopolizing our brains and forcing us to focus on something that made zero difference to us. Our brain's have limited bandwidth, and he was hogging up too much of it. Our senses and brains were being flooded with useless data....and I think there is a strong evolutionary urge to stop that from happening....so that we can focus our attention on important matters.


Like comparing IEM's.

 

[Sterling2]

The notion that our expectations can alter what we perceive won't turn a donkey into an orbital station. The suggested behavior is that once we recognize something using a bunch of patterns we're familiar with, the brain may dismiss some of the extra information. Basically, once we think we know what we're dealing with, we don't "want" to bother with the details. Probably to avoid overloading the brain with too many senses and too much data.

If the preamp still looked the same and you didn't know it wasn't the Sony anymore, then maybe you would have been inclined to assume that everything was as usual and that would have allowed your brain to ignore some possible changes in the sound. That's a more likely scenario as you get all the known patterns first, giving the opportunity for the related expectations to "decide"/cause to ignore some of the rest.
On the contrary, you knowing the Sony pre is dead, that this one is a different device, your eyes confirming it, all those cues are telling your brain about things that are not the usual patterns. The expectation is more likely to be that the sound coming from it will also not be usual. You might very well have thought that a pream is a preamp and that it wouldn't change the sound. That is certainly an expectation leaning toward not bothering with extra details of a known result. But in this scenario, that idea has first to face the other knowledge and sensory cues(not even audio ones) I mentioned. And all the other stuff rejects the model for your expectation. It's new, it looks different, it's different, etc.

At least that's how it makes sense to me. I don't know nearly enough to claim that my made up model is accurate^_^.

Interestingly enough, I know my appraisal of greater detail at low volume and blacker backgrounds is factual, since it's a condition which manifests itself only from digital input, which I can easily comprehend as being divergent from earlier preamplification's DAC via memory of familiar music, as well as from comparison to music processed by my OPPO DAC, since it has always yielded similar results to the aforementioned Sony TA-E9000ES. At any rate, my expectations were greatly exceeded.

Now, I ran out of my favorite blend of coffee yesterday however I did not notice, or that my wife replaced the coffee with another blend. Upon having a cup of that blend this morning I remarked that it tasted different than usual. So, where's the expectation bias here. I'll tell you where, it's nowhere in sight. My sense of taste was enough to discern the coffee blend did indeed have a different taste, and my ears are enough to know the P6 is delivering sound with more detail than that of the Sony, whether I do or do not have any sort of mental condition which might be described as wishful thinking. So perhaps we should consider expectation bias as a possibility but not a condition which will ALWAYS produce an unreliable or untrustworthy outcome.

 

[bigshot]

It's hard to know the right way to review iems.

I don't think you can review the way IEMs sound as long as they are in the acceptable range. People's ear canals are different, and one person's ears might hear something different from the same set of IEMs. I think all you can do in a review is focus on features and comment on whether the IEMs are capable of reproducing a broad range of frequencies with some degree of balance. Any comment on sound quality beyond that depends on who is doing the listening.

The same thing goes for speakers. Without knowing the room the speakers will be placed in, all bets are off. Acoustics are often overlooked in audio reviews. They act as if speakers have a fixed response, which they might in theory, but never in practice.

 

[bigshot]

I ran out of my favorite blend of coffee yesterday however I did not notice, or that my wife replaced the coffee with another blend. Upon having a cup of that blend this morning I remarked that it tasted different than usual. So, where's the expectation bias here.

As Castle already so colorfully said, bias won't turn a donkey into a space station. Self evident is self evident. Different coffee tastes different for a dozen different reasons.

Bias is most important when two sources are similar. That's where it can skew the results. As long as we aren't talking about transducers, most audio gear falls into the category of "sounding similar". Look at the specs of amps and DACs. They all measure audibly flat from 20 to 20 with inaudible levels of distortion. There is no reason to expect that there will be an audible difference... EXCEPT for the fact that the listener just paid a grand for one of them, or one of them has a fancy case with beautiful glowing lights on it. We do controlled tests of audio electronics because the differences are likely to be small, if they exist. We are testing to see if those small differences matter or not. Blind is the best way to do that.