PhilNYC;180473 Wrote: > Actually, almost every time I've posted on an audio forum that I > participated/conducted a single-blind test that resulted in people > hearing obvious differences in things such as interconnects, I've > received responses that the test was invalid because it wasn't a > double-blind test... :-)
The world isn't black and white. All else being equal, single blind tests are less reliable than DB, but they are much better than unblind when done carefully and in good faith (that is, both the experimenter and the subjects are genuinely trying to avoid bias, and would report it if they notice some confounding factor). If the effect you're trying to demonstrate exists is particularly unlikely or hard to believe, the standard of proof is higher (this at least is the Bayesian approach to statistics, and I think it's the one everybody uses in practice), and so people will naturally look for possible flaws in the experiment. And it also really depends a lot on the design of the test - some are much more immune to bias effects than others, irrespective of whether or not they are double blind. In the end we are not scientific researchers - we're just trying to decide for ourselves what sounds good. If the difficulty of doing a DBT is prohibitive, it's much better to do a SBT than none at all. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32352 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
