opaqueice;151490 Wrote: > Suppose we put a bunch of audiophiles in a room and played two systems > for them after explaining that one was much better than the other - > because it had fancy cables, power conditioners, a nice amp, or > whatever. We might make the systems look different externally, but > secretly the two would be absolutely identical. To properly control > this we would do the experiment with several different groups while > randomizing across all variables (for example switch which system we > explained was superior). We might also try the same experiment but > with no initial claim about which was better. Afterwards, we ask the > listeners which they preferred, and to explain why. > > What do you think would happen? > > Not only would almost everyone claim to hear a difference, they would > come up with elaborate descriptions of precisely how it was better - > clarity, PRaT, detail, bass extension, etc. If you don't believe me, > believe the scientific literature or all of the many, many examples of > this in the audiophile world (on this forum and other websites for > example). Versions of this experiment have been done, many times, and > the results are always the same. > > The point? In this case it would be absolutely clear that the > perceived differences were in the mind of the listener and not in any > intrinsic characteristic of the sound. Given that people hear > differences anyway, this demonstrates that we simply can't trust our > perceptions of these things, period.
Should you qualify the above by saying "subtle differences , or somewhat subtle differences"? Might the question be: At what level of difference does the ear/mind begin to fail us in distinguishing differences? An extreme example would be a transistor radio (remember those? :-) ) against a 100,000 system. I think most people would do well on that test. :-) It would be interesting to see a study on this. -- tomjtx ------------------------------------------------------------------------ tomjtx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7449 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29025 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
