opaqueice;152710 Wrote: > Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there is *always* a placebo > control, even in those tests. Don't underestimate the power of > psychology - taking a sugar pill and believing it is a cholsterol > lowering drug may actually lower your cholesterol... and even if it > doesn't, it's better to remove the possibility by controlling for it. > > > > I'm sure if you feel under pressure it will affect your performance, > although I'm not sure whether it will decrease it or actually enhance > it. It would be interesting to find out. > > Suppose we ran a blind trial on digital cables and got a null result > (no significant differences). I think I can summarize things like > this: > > Hypothesis 1: there is a condition, blinditis, which affects people > only while they undergo blind tests, which causes them to think they > can hear the same difference they heard while not being tested, when in > fact they can't, and therefore they "fail" (meaning their choices are > consistent with random) the test. > > Hypothesis 2: the differences between cables are too small to be > perceptible. > > Occam's razor applies in this situation, I think...
I can't really disagree. I think I have to claim agnosticism in this situation(the ultimate cop-out? :-) I really only wanted to point to the possbilty that blind tests might possibly have some flaws with regard to audio testing: that they might not provide us with a definitive answer as to what gear we are going to enjoy the most or think is better. -- tomjtx ------------------------------------------------------------------------ tomjtx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7449 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29353 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
