adamslim;143980 Wrote: > Do people think that double-blind tests are genuinely accurate?
One thing to consider is who is doing the testing. I would put forward the view that a serious professional reviewer should use double blind as a matter of course, but for individuals, just buy what you want after reviewing and auditioning by whatever means you like! A reviewer has a lot of influence and is being paid to be fair and non-partisan, so I think it's a cop out to resort to vague language and not subject expensive equipment to some reasonable, repeatable procedure so that someone else can repeat it and understand what the reviewer means. At the moment most reviews just contribute to the poor impression many people have of audiophiles. How often do you read "audiophiles will buy anything" on news groups or web sites? I've seen it many times. It may not matter to some audiophiles, but it's something that a lot of people are passionate about and it's not nice to be a laughing stock, hence I think it is behind some of the very aggressive stances people take. Of course the issue is that magazines have financial pressures too and don't want to annoy advertisers and there's nothing like a blind test or measured performance to really define a relative quality between two products. I would also guess that one of the more difficult aspects is peer pressure, especially if you are a member of an audio club - or on a forum like this. If several people say a component is better is better than another, then there can be a lot of pressure to agree, even if you don't hear the differences - or even feel it sounds worse. I've bought gear because people say it's good and been very disappointed. I bought cable once because it was being lauded and when I plugged it in it was much worse than the existing cheap mains cable I was using. Of course then there is the usual discussion on system matching etc., but I had wasted a fair bit of money by that stage. -- CardinalFang You're only young once, but you can be immature forever... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CardinalFang's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=962 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28368 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
