There's a tipping point where the mastering on a song and the room you're in matter more than the equipment. I'd much rather spend $2k on a chair than upgrade any of my stuff. Heck, I think most people would eventually get more happiness out of hanging some art over upgrading a dac.
@@dougschneider8243 I guess what I meant was, it becomes increasingly difficult to find any clear way to upgrade without first hand blind AB testing. Things start to sound slightly different, not necessarily better or worse.
Interesting point. I do agree with better listening test, but I want to add that people who claim that there are no differences will also bring this bias into their listening tests and probably won’t hear any difference. I am just curious why so many people hear differences. Bias may be a factor, but as many listeners hear the same characteristics (for example in a particular cable) I don’t believe people can have the same bias on the same piece of equipment.
I've often wondered "why" as well, but I have come to the conclusion that most will err on the side of a change versus no change. It's just the way we're wired. I have a great example of that -- but I'll wait until a future video for that.
@@dougschneider8243 I think there is more and more science emerging, but it is not the kind of research that makes any money so it is up to enthusiastic audiophiles with not great resources to move forward. Can’t wait for the next video
I 100% agree with this. I have long grown weary of the self appointed hi-fi guru with his unsubstantiated, inflated claims. Claims then handed down - Decalogue like - to the credulous and gullible. I am tired of the guru with his nebulous, meaningless prose. Where clarity, not obfuscation, should be the order of the day. Good audio gear has less to do with matters of opinion and art and silly prices, and more to do with science. Thanks for the piece.
@@dougschneider8243 Ahhhh. But if only that was true. These 'god of the cracks' merchants are still out there. Peddling the same old nonsense to an unwary world.
@@Lif-999 Oh sure, they are still out there. But back when, the self-appointed gurus in, say, the print press (I'm talking 1980s through 1990s) had real clout. Whether they were speaking nonsense or not, what they said amounted in real sales. Today you have self-appointed gurus, but the weight at the cash register simply isn't there.
I love this!! I've been challenging these RUclips salesman that call themselves "reviewers" for years to prove that they can do what they claim they can do. It's so easy to make claims and never back them up with evidence and they all do it. I'm pretty sure a lot of them have shadow banned me for calling them out on their BS I asked them to instead of saying they can hear X SHOW US that you can If you can't SHOW it You don't KNOW it Talk is cheap
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 Hi, as we do not really know heet) why we are experience differences , I would like to hear from you what it is that you think should be ‘shown’? How would we know what to measure if we don’t know why we experience differences? Honest question
@@theaudiophilebarista2424 People claim that product A for example sounds a certain way or is better than product B If it's such an obvious difference they should be able to consistently pick out in a double blind ABX test which one product A is. That's how you SHOW people that you can do what you claim you can do.
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 If that is your standard then you have not been paying attention. I believe Michael Fremer and GR-Research did this live. A headphone guy (forgot his name) picked every model that they put on his head flawlessly and Jay’s Audio Lab just guessed a whole system from a blind position. So as far as I am concerned it has been proven that we can hear differences. Consistently. But a blind listening test tells us nothing about the ‘why?’. Why do we experience differences? As soon as we know that we can understand what we should measure. Alpha Audio just made a few interesting discoveries about measurements that matter. Check out their channel.
I always think the guy that spends a million on this stuf has no clue how the "reference " is supposed to sound , only the maker of the original recording is the reference since he was there recording it , the rest is just interpretation
@@cnfuzz Correct. But we can make the assumption that there's professional musicians that are playing on those recordings and that they are most likely playing in tune and in time. Therefore my initial comment above.
blind protocols are very important to say the least. But what is even more important is quick switching. We can not compare an aural memory real time sound. We have to be able to switch back and forth very quickly and shift our focus to specific qualities in our back and forth comparisons to get the real differences. We have to compare apples to apples so to speak.
This is completely true…. Only blind listening works.. is a 2000 power cable really better than. Properly shielded 40.00 cable…. Brave discussion Doug…. Cables are the biggest rabbit holes..
Everyone has an opinion however the only one that makes a difference is my own. Not that it's right or wrong but I'm the only one that has to live with it.
I think hearing differences between speakers and headphones are possible, but slight at times. With amps, much harder to hear. Dacs and Cables, basically near impossible and 99% of people should never care. I am sure there are outliers to each category, but they are rare.
Hi, let's not get too carried away -- there are lots of differences and they can be quite obvious. Years ago, at NRC, I was part of some blind listening and the differences were shockingly easy to hear. The thing was -- and what I learned -- is that the "winners" weren't necessarily the winners when the listening was sighted. And once you experience that sort of thing not once, but many times, sighted listening gets better because your "bias awareness" becomes very real and can be helpful.
@@dougschneider8243 But if a cheaper product scores higher maybe we aren't getting carried away enough about all this? That is kind of my point. Of course I am assuming more expensive was considered 'the best' in said test.
@@chungang7037 Hi, I might not be quite understanding what you first said. But I'll say that in terms of price, in hi-fi, price and performance don't correlate well.
Bragging rights. So much of so many hobbies is about bragging rights. And somehow, that has become almost entirely intertwined with how much you’ve spent on gear.
I have messed with testing things like this. At the moment record a song with both setups and level match then at 1khz. Then I put them both into editing software and splice them up. Mute and then the other and keep doing that and you'll find you can hear a lot of differences like that. No audio memory, if you don't look at it playing you'll never know when the switch happens so basically dubbel blind.
I did my own AB testing (though I knew what was plugged in on the day) Next time I forgot which was which and made a point to not pay attention to whether the switch was in or out. So I heard tiny differences between amps based on what I thought it was still, and found out it was the other amp and there really wasn't any difference to bother with. Albeit they were probably both still in class A mode (one pure class A, the other AB)
Point 1 Yes Humans are susceptible to influence. Point 2 Three components is Sound 1 changes can happen and the be buried in the noise floor of a different system,Input Trim or matching if the source doesn't go almost perfect into the Amplifier overdriven or under driven some of most of the Soundstage and Imaging details will be lost. It is very under estimated how we actually sense along with hearing sound. Noise Isolation vibration prevention is very important and can be confirmed with proper test equipment. Electrical and EMI has to be very specific!! I do Lab Grade filtering and suppression on my system to the level of studio recording. Some of us must be able to hear well otherwise that wax cylindrical player with the flared bullhorn from 1850 would still be popular.
I’ve heard a few A/B tests on RUclips from reviewers (recently Tharbamer & Thomas & Stereo) and can never hear much if any difference on my equipment. I have decent gear & can easily hear the difference between the dac in my AVR & and a separate dac (both played via the same hifi amp) - but I’m not aware of the difference between, say, the most basic speaker cable & Audioquest Rockets. Maybe whenever I hear sibilance or something I don’t like I should stop what I’m doing and dedicate the rest of that week to swapping out & A&Bing all my gear! Of course the biggest difference is always between what I hear now & what that thing I don’t have or can’t afford might sound like…
One of the many problems with testing components on your own by listening is that your ears is connected to your brain and brains can’t be trusted at all. I feel that I can hear a difference between my three dacs (2 delta sigma and 1 resistor ladder) but those claims are just really feelings and my guess is that if I was to do a true blind test I would have a hard time telling them apart.
@@dougschneider8243 that is some intense foreshadowing lol. I’m getting really excited by all this ”let’s cut thru the bs” but I can’t tell if it just my view on hifi that’s shifting and the algoritm overlord giving me what I want or if it is a bigger paradigm movement.
The most classic bias in the industry is building a component with an exaggerated upper mids frequency response (until piano higher octaves sound like breaking glass) and then mislabelling it as "more detailed".
Agreed! In particular, I don't want my amplifier to add [or take away] anything from the source material. An amp that does, is just a filter. A loud filter perhaps. But a filter nevertheless. I want my amplification to be as near to the notional ideal of 'a piece of wire with gain' as possible. So yes, don't patronise us with such meaningless epithets as 'detailed' or 'clarity' or that other perennial favourite. 'revealing'. Cheers.
@@cnfuzz Can you be specific about it? I have voigt pipe speakers with drivers specially tuned for such far east market MArk Audio Pluvia HD. Thi model has a little bit pronounced mids - voices, but it does not sound metallic at voices or piano reproduction at all as most of newer B&W speakers do.
On other thing to think about ... How can we have a credible discussion on RUclips (and a few other forums) when we can't post links and references? Say whatever you want... nobody can refute it.
It’s not just false positive differences. It’s also snobbery and bias. They are deathly afraid of a DBT. They will hear flaws in lower cost gear that may not be there. Especially if a set of speakers costing hundreds measures better than a speaker costing thousands. They hate and dismiss measurements unless those measurements reinforce thier opinion.
I truly think that if we consistently had better listening tests, we'd still hear a lot of differences, but what's considered Bad, Fair, Good, Better, Best would change dramatically from where we are today.
listening tests will and are still based on subjectivity . so, no matter how clever or detailed the test it's still a bunch of people agreeing or disagreeing on the same thing . thats called general consensus not "proof " .
Measuring better doesn't mean it sounds better. There are more people being snobby on the cheap end. They think they have the greatest thing ever because of some measurement when it's ehh at best. Most probably have not even heard high-end equipment and like to delude themselves because they can't afford better.
Expectation bias is very common.This can apply to food,or anything where our senses can be fooled. Manufacturers can certainly play on this and the smaller the differences and inability to prove those differences,the more they rely on perception. Jewellery cismetics, fancy packing,an elevated price tag and a sense of prestige can all play into this too.The expectation is generally positive,so an improvement will be "heard". This can also work in the opposite direction though,where if the listener has a bias against a product they won't hear a positive change. However,if a change is really far from subtle i think we can be more confident in our assessment. We don't need blind tests to tell us that a high end audio system sounds different from a laptop for example. There are certainly products around and claims that i'm skeptical about and yes,measurements are part of the reasoning because if said manufacturers aren't able to demonstrate on paper how something may,or may not work then they've been "developing " their "improvements" on intuition, or even guesswork.Listening has to be the final part of the process,but with solid science and engineering behind it.
I completely agree with what is being said and I would like to add a little something From the perspective of an acoustician and someone who has been specializing in hrtf for more than 20 years...When we talk about building a speaker, for example, small changes by themselves are not significant and cannot be detected, but when we add a number of small significant changes, we get a result that is sometimes indeed significant...We as humans are very sensitive to certain changes and much less to other changes, a lot of times because our brain compensates for the shortcomings, For example, from an experiment we did, we built the exact same speaker except that we made sure to control the resonance of the box for one pair very significantly compered to the other, when we measured the response curve of the speaker there was no significant difference between them and also in the hearing quality in blind tasting there was almost no difference but... but that was not the purpose of the experiment...The test duration was half an hour at a relatively high! volume,... the purpose was to see the level of fatigue the people have after,and almost without exception the level of fatigue the people had was the opposite from one pair to the other, which you can probably guess which pair is which :) (I believe because the brain worked much less hard to compensate for the unnatural sound addition of the box itself) By the way, to clarify, the music consisted mainly of live instruments that people know how they sound in real life
I have done nulls test with a Neumann KU 100 and pro tools. Many different cables and cable types. If you test a properly setup system that is also reviling, the differences in cables (USB, power, speaker, interconnect) are very apparent. If the tested system isn't throwing a proper sound stage or resolving the micro details there are little to no differences.
The thing is that people actually do hear differences ... that is not in doubt. The problem is that nobody can answer *WHY* they heard a difference. They need to take the extra step of tracking that difference down to something objective and repeatable. Otherwise we get the old problem that _"Declaration is not proof."_ Sit in your favourite listening chair... listen carefully to flutes and undistorted guitar ... now move your head an inch or two to each side of center... yep you will hear a difference. The "Why" question is answerable, because you changed the relationship between yourself and your speakers.
@@dougschneider8243 No ... that the difference they hear is because of whatever they're evaluating is what is in doubt. People are very easily fooled ... the circuitry is not.
How do you prove you heard something different? That is about the silliest thing I have ever heard. Even if there is a difference and a person hears it, there is no way to prove or not prove that the person actually heard a difference besides giving their subjective opinion. Either they heard something or they didn't. Either they are telling the truth or lying. If they lied to you, how would you prove that they heard a difference, there is no way to do that.
It's hard to know where to start with a comment like this one, but let first say that researchers in a variety of disciplines have known how to suss that out for bazillions of years. Also, do a little research on ABX testing.
@@dougschneider8243 You can prove there was a difference that SHOULD be audible or not audible to most people. You can't prove if the person actually hears the difference or not. How would you be able to tell what they hear or don't hear besides from what that person tells you? There are false positives as well as false negatives. You would have to have some pretty expensive brain scanning equipment to have a chance to tell if they heard a difference or not, if it is even possible.
@@Pete.across.the.street "You can't prove if the person actually hears the difference or not. How would you be able to tell what they hear or don't hear besides from what that person tells you?" Unless the person is simply playing with or lying to you for fun, what you do is a series of controlled tests where they identify differences or not. Whether or not they can hear the differences, or not, will come out if you have enough trials and look if it's statistically significant. Have you ever studied statistics?
when people talking about component A sounds better than component B, they usually talk about how they hear MORE DETAILS...in my book more details means more listening fatigue...or tight bass...for me tight bass is an oxymoron...live bass is always a little bit loose...
![If you can't hear this then you're not an audiophile [See description for link to followup video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/48PxwspDvrE/mqdefault.jpg)
There's a tipping point where the mastering on a song and the room you're in matter more than the equipment. I'd much rather spend $2k on a chair than upgrade any of my stuff. Heck, I think most people would eventually get more happiness out of hanging some art over upgrading a dac.
That's an interesting point, but to me, if someone has the means and wants to upgrade their system, I have no problem with that.
@@dougschneider8243 I guess what I meant was, it becomes increasingly difficult to find any clear way to upgrade without first hand blind AB testing. Things start to sound slightly different, not necessarily better or worse.
Interesting point.
I do agree with better listening test, but I want to add that people who claim that there are no differences will also bring this bias into their listening tests and probably won’t hear any difference.
I am just curious why so many people hear differences.
Bias may be a factor, but as many listeners hear the same characteristics (for example in a particular cable) I don’t believe people can have the same bias on the same piece of equipment.
I've often wondered "why" as well, but I have come to the conclusion that most will err on the side of a change versus no change. It's just the way we're wired. I have a great example of that -- but I'll wait until a future video for that.
@@dougschneider8243 I think there is more and more science emerging, but it is not the kind of research that makes any money so it is up to enthusiastic audiophiles with not great resources to move forward. Can’t wait for the next video
I 100% agree with this.
I have long grown weary of the self appointed hi-fi guru with his unsubstantiated, inflated claims. Claims then handed down - Decalogue like - to the credulous and gullible.
I am tired of the guru with his nebulous, meaningless prose. Where clarity, not obfuscation, should be the order of the day.
Good audio gear has less to do with matters of opinion and art and silly prices, and more to do with science.
Thanks for the piece.
We are glad you enjoyed it!
The days of the "the self appointed hi-fi guru" are over.
@@dougschneider8243
Ahhhh. But if only that was true.
These 'god of the cracks' merchants are still out there. Peddling the same old nonsense to an unwary world.
@@Lif-999 Oh sure, they are still out there. But back when, the self-appointed gurus in, say, the print press (I'm talking 1980s through 1990s) had real clout. Whether they were speaking nonsense or not, what they said amounted in real sales. Today you have self-appointed gurus, but the weight at the cash register simply isn't there.
I love this!!
I've been challenging these RUclips salesman that call themselves "reviewers" for years to prove that they can do what they claim they can do.
It's so easy to make claims and never back them up with evidence and they all do it.
I'm pretty sure a lot of them have shadow banned me for calling them out on their BS
I asked them to instead of saying they can hear X SHOW US that you can
If you can't SHOW it
You don't KNOW it
Talk is cheap
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 Hi, as we do not really know heet) why we are experience differences
, I would like to hear from you what it is that you think should be ‘shown’?
How would we know what to measure if we don’t know why we experience differences?
Honest question
@@theaudiophilebarista2424
People claim that product A for example sounds a certain way or is better than product B
If it's such an obvious difference they should be able to consistently pick out in a double blind ABX test which one product A is.
That's how you SHOW people that you can do what you claim you can do.
@@crazyprayingmantis5596 If that is your standard then you have not been paying attention.
I believe Michael Fremer and GR-Research did this live.
A headphone guy (forgot his name) picked every model that they put on his head flawlessly and Jay’s Audio Lab just guessed a whole system from a blind position. So as far as I am concerned it has been proven that we can hear differences. Consistently.
But a blind listening test tells us nothing about the ‘why?’. Why do we experience differences?
As soon as we know that we can understand what we should measure.
Alpha Audio just made a few interesting discoveries about measurements that matter. Check out their channel.
What about using rhythm and pitch as a criteria to judge sound quality? We can trust that there's professional musicians playing on our recordings.
Sure, people are free to use whatever means necessarily to determine if the sound appeals to them.
I always think the guy that spends a million on this stuf has no clue how the "reference " is supposed to sound , only the maker of the original recording is the reference since he was there recording it , the rest is just interpretation
@@cnfuzz Correct. But we can make the assumption that there's professional musicians that are playing on those recordings and that they are most likely playing in tune and in time. Therefore my initial comment above.
blind protocols are very important to say the least. But what is even more important is quick switching. We can not compare an aural memory real time sound. We have to be able to switch back and forth very quickly and shift our focus to specific qualities in our back and forth comparisons to get the real differences. We have to compare apples to apples so to speak.
A great point!
Yes, great point!
Hmm… this seems promising. Alright I’ll subscribe and will keep an eye on how you follow up on this.
Thanks!
This is completely true…. Only blind listening works.. is a 2000 power cable really better than. Properly shielded 40.00 cable…. Brave discussion Doug…. Cables are the biggest rabbit holes..
I'm not afraid of having discussions. But the point of having better listening tests is for ALL components. We'd be much better off.
FWIW ... 40+ years in electronics and never -- not even once -- have I seen a non-defective cable make the first little bit of difference.
Blind tests don't work, they are subjective. Plus the results are only valid for the person taking the test
A $2000 cable is never better than a $40 cable -- even if it does sound better, because 90% of people are not going to pay 2 grand for a cable.
Blind testing is still biased and objective and only valid for the person doing the testing. Doesn't avoid expectation bias
THE TRUTH IS!! YOU MUST BUY BETTER WINE!!!!!!✌️❤️👍🎼🎶🎶🎵🎶🎶🎵✨
Everyone has an opinion however the only one that makes a difference is my own. Not that it's right or wrong but I'm the only one that has to live with it.
Ultimately, as you being the purchaser for yourself, you're 100% correct.
You're missing the point! It's less about opinion - anyones opinion - and more about the science.
@@Lif-999 yup, trust the science.
I think hearing differences between speakers and headphones are possible, but slight at times. With amps, much harder to hear. Dacs and Cables, basically near impossible and 99% of people should never care. I am sure there are outliers to each category, but they are rare.
Hi, let's not get too carried away -- there are lots of differences and they can be quite obvious. Years ago, at NRC, I was part of some blind listening and the differences were shockingly easy to hear. The thing was -- and what I learned -- is that the "winners" weren't necessarily the winners when the listening was sighted. And once you experience that sort of thing not once, but many times, sighted listening gets better because your "bias awareness" becomes very real and can be helpful.
@@dougschneider8243 What do you mean by winners in this context?
@@chungang7037 The products that people consider "the best" among those tested.
@@dougschneider8243 But if a cheaper product scores higher maybe we aren't getting carried away enough about all this? That is kind of my point. Of course I am assuming more expensive was considered 'the best' in said test.
@@chungang7037 Hi, I might not be quite understanding what you first said. But I'll say that in terms of price, in hi-fi, price and performance don't correlate well.
Bragging rights. So much of so many hobbies is about bragging rights. And somehow, that has become almost entirely intertwined with how much you’ve spent on gear.
Thank you for shining a light on this important topic!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I have messed with testing things like this. At the moment record a song with both setups and level match then at 1khz. Then I put them both into editing software and splice them up. Mute and then the other and keep doing that and you'll find you can hear a lot of differences like that. No audio memory, if you don't look at it playing you'll never know when the switch happens so basically dubbel blind.
I did my own AB testing (though I knew what was plugged in on the day)
Next time I forgot which was which and made a point to not pay attention to whether the switch was in or out. So I heard tiny differences between amps based on what I thought it was still, and found out it was the other amp and there really wasn't any difference to bother with. Albeit they were probably both still in class A mode (one pure class A, the other AB)
Point 1 Yes Humans are susceptible to influence.
Point 2 Three components is Sound 1 changes can happen and the be buried in the noise floor of a different system,Input Trim or matching if the source doesn't go almost perfect into the Amplifier overdriven or under driven some of most of the Soundstage and Imaging details will be lost. It is very under estimated how we actually sense along with hearing sound.
Noise Isolation vibration prevention is very important and can be confirmed with proper test equipment.
Electrical and EMI has to be very specific!! I do Lab Grade filtering and suppression on my system to the level of studio recording.
Some of us must be able to hear well otherwise that wax cylindrical player with the flared bullhorn from 1850 would still be popular.
I’ve heard a few A/B tests on RUclips from reviewers (recently Tharbamer & Thomas & Stereo) and can never hear much if any difference on my equipment. I have decent gear & can easily hear the difference between the dac in my AVR & and a separate dac (both played via the same hifi amp) - but I’m not aware of the difference between, say, the most basic speaker cable & Audioquest Rockets. Maybe whenever I hear sibilance or something I don’t like I should stop what I’m doing and dedicate the rest of that week to swapping out & A&Bing all my gear!
Of course the biggest difference is always between what I hear now & what that thing I don’t have or can’t afford might sound like…
One of the many problems with testing components on your own by listening is that your ears is connected to your brain and brains can’t be trusted at all. I feel that I can hear a difference between my three dacs (2 delta sigma and 1 resistor ladder) but those claims are just really feelings and my guess is that if I was to do a true blind test I would have a hard time telling them apart.
@@lekmannen9990 That would certainly be interesting to test!
@@dougschneider8243 that is some intense foreshadowing lol. I’m getting really excited by all this ”let’s cut thru the bs” but I can’t tell if it just my view on hifi that’s shifting and the algoritm overlord giving me what I want or if it is a bigger paradigm movement.
The most classic bias in the industry is building a component with an exaggerated upper mids frequency response (until piano higher octaves sound like breaking glass) and then mislabelling it as "more detailed".
Total Spot on!
Agreed!
In particular, I don't want my amplifier to add [or take away] anything from the source material. An amp that does, is just a filter. A loud filter perhaps. But a filter nevertheless.
I want my amplification to be as near to the notional ideal of 'a piece of wire with gain' as possible.
So yes, don't patronise us with such meaningless epithets as 'detailed' or 'clarity' or that other perennial favourite. 'revealing'.
Cheers.
It's also a cultural thing , the Japanese idea of detail in sound is metallic overtones , you can hear it in the way they design instruments as well.
@@cnfuzz Can you be specific about it?
I have voigt pipe speakers with drivers specially tuned for such far east market MArk Audio Pluvia HD. Thi model has a little bit pronounced mids - voices, but it does not sound metallic at voices or piano reproduction at all as most of newer B&W speakers do.
On other thing to think about ... How can we have a credible discussion on RUclips (and a few other forums) when we can't post links and references?
Say whatever you want... nobody can refute it.
If only we could give the title of such references and tell others to google said title. Maybe one day.
@@Pete.across.the.street
LOL .... Touche. But giving titles also lists similar titles that can distract people. A clickable link is still the best.
@@Douglas_Blake_579 try googling alpha-audio Megatest speaker cables - 32 cables listened to and measured!
It’s not just false positive differences. It’s also snobbery and bias. They are deathly afraid of a DBT. They will hear flaws in lower cost gear that may not be there. Especially if a set of speakers costing hundreds measures better than a speaker costing thousands. They hate and dismiss measurements unless those measurements reinforce thier opinion.
I truly think that if we consistently had better listening tests, we'd still hear a lot of differences, but what's considered Bad, Fair, Good, Better, Best would change dramatically from where we are today.
listening tests will and are still based on subjectivity . so, no matter how clever or detailed the test it's still a bunch of people agreeing or disagreeing on the same thing . thats called general consensus not "proof " .
Measuring better doesn't mean it sounds better. There are more people being snobby on the cheap end. They think they have the greatest thing ever because of some measurement when it's ehh at best. Most probably have not even heard high-end equipment and like to delude themselves because they can't afford better.
Expectation bias is very common.This can apply to food,or anything where our senses can be fooled. Manufacturers can certainly play on this and the smaller the differences and inability to prove those differences,the more they rely on perception. Jewellery cismetics, fancy packing,an elevated price tag and a sense of prestige can all play into this too.The expectation is generally positive,so an improvement will be "heard". This can also work in the opposite direction though,where if the listener has a bias against a product they won't hear a positive change. However,if a change is really far from subtle i think we can be more confident in our assessment. We don't need blind tests to tell us that a high end audio system sounds different from a laptop for example. There are certainly products around and claims that i'm skeptical about and yes,measurements are part of the reasoning because if said manufacturers aren't able to demonstrate on paper how something may,or may not work then they've been "developing " their "improvements" on intuition, or even guesswork.Listening has to be the final part of the process,but with solid science and engineering behind it.
I completely agree with what is being said and I would like to add a little something From the perspective of an acoustician and someone who has been specializing in hrtf for more than 20 years...When we talk about building a speaker, for example, small changes by themselves are not significant and cannot be detected, but when we add a number of small significant changes, we get a result that is sometimes indeed significant...We as humans are very sensitive to certain changes and much less to other changes, a lot of times because our brain compensates for the shortcomings, For example, from an experiment we did, we built the exact same speaker except that we made sure to control the resonance of the box for one pair very significantly compered to the other, when we measured the response curve of the speaker there was no significant difference between them and also in the hearing quality in blind tasting there was almost no difference but... but that was not the purpose of the experiment...The test duration was half an hour at a relatively high! volume,... the purpose was to see the level of fatigue the people have after,and almost without exception the level of fatigue the people had was the opposite from one pair to the other, which you can probably guess which pair is which :) (I believe because the brain worked much less hard to compensate for the unnatural sound addition of the box itself) By the way, to clarify, the music consisted mainly of live instruments that people know how they sound in real life
I have done nulls test with a Neumann KU 100 and pro tools. Many different cables and cable types. If you test a properly setup system that is also reviling, the differences in cables (USB, power, speaker, interconnect) are very apparent. If the tested system isn't throwing a proper sound stage or resolving the micro details there are little to no differences.
The thing is that people actually do hear differences ... that is not in doubt.
The problem is that nobody can answer *WHY* they heard a difference. They need to take the extra step of tracking that difference down to something objective and repeatable. Otherwise we get the old problem that _"Declaration is not proof."_
Sit in your favourite listening chair... listen carefully to flutes and undistorted guitar ... now move your head an inch or two to each side of center... yep you will hear a difference. The "Why" question is answerable, because you changed the relationship between yourself and your speakers.
"The thing is that people actually do hear differences ... that is not in doubt."
Not always -- that they do hear difference is often in doubt.
@@dougschneider8243
No ... that the difference they hear is because of whatever they're evaluating is what is in doubt. People are very easily fooled ... the circuitry is not.
How do you prove you heard something different? That is about the silliest thing I have ever heard. Even if there is a difference and a person hears it, there is no way to prove or not prove that the person actually heard a difference besides giving their subjective opinion. Either they heard something or they didn't. Either they are telling the truth or lying. If they lied to you, how would you prove that they heard a difference, there is no way to do that.
It's hard to know where to start with a comment like this one, but let first say that researchers in a variety of disciplines have known how to suss that out for bazillions of years. Also, do a little research on ABX testing.
@@dougschneider8243 You can prove there was a difference that SHOULD be audible or not audible to most people. You can't prove if the person actually hears the difference or not. How would you be able to tell what they hear or don't hear besides from what that person tells you? There are false positives as well as false negatives. You would have to have some pretty expensive brain scanning equipment to have a chance to tell if they heard a difference or not, if it is even possible.
@@Pete.across.the.street "You can't prove if the person actually hears the difference or not. How would you be able to tell what they hear or don't hear besides from what that person tells you?"
Unless the person is simply playing with or lying to you for fun, what you do is a series of controlled tests where they identify differences or not. Whether or not they can hear the differences, or not, will come out if you have enough trials and look if it's statistically significant. Have you ever studied statistics?
@@dougschneider8243 that only suggests, doesn't prove
@@dougschneider8243 if you had proof that they heard a difference or not, you wouldn't have to ask them if they heard a difference or not.
Sorry there is a difference. You dont have trained audiophile ears to know the difference. Ahahahahah.
Did anyone say there are no differences with everything?
when people talking about component A sounds better than component B, they usually talk about how they hear MORE DETAILS...in my book more details means more listening fatigue...or tight bass...for me tight bass is an oxymoron...live bass is always a little bit loose...
Some people mistake brightness for detail because it stands out more. Components can be detailed without being bright and fatiguing.
@@Pete.across.the.street meh, it's very hard to have in audio...you either cut of some high frequncies or not, it's very hard to be in the middle...