opaqueice;373432 Wrote: > > With sufficient statistics, these tests will find -any- ability to > discern differences, no matter how small or uneven, even if the > experimenter is too rigid or dumb to adapt the test to focus on the > interesting cases. For example even if 9 out of 10 pairs of samples > were absolutely identical, so that only the 10th pair had audible > differences, a test which equally treated all 10 pairs would -still- > find a statistically significant difference if you took enough data. > In a more realistic case, where the differences were easier to hear in > some samples and harder in others, the test would do just fine. > > Moreover the experimenter has the discretion to "zoom in" on segments > and/or listeners that look promising, so if there was one "good" sample > it would be trivial to focus on it and exclude the rest. > > The facts are that these tests are skewed very much in favor of the > listener - they will detect even a very poor ability to hear something. > And yet, time after time after time, audiophiles that claim to be able > to hear "night and day" differences in (say) cables fail miserably when > blind. > > It's -totally- obvious (based on countless such experiments and the > last century of science on hearing and perception and psychology) to > any sensible person why this is, and yet audiophiles continue to ignore > the elephant in the room. You don't get the point. What you call "with sufficient statistics" will always remain below the confidence point. If -say- there can only be 0.01% samples which can be different, whatever the number of samples examined, it won't change this percentage: there will only be 0.01% of chance in finding *any* difference. So, the test will fail. Because 99.99% of samples (and thus, 99.99% of partial tests) won't show any difference.
And, in fact, the broader the audience, the closer to the theoretical difference the test gets : the more people making the test, the closer to the 0.01% of people having passed the test we get. So, in fact, in order that the test could *possibly* succeed in showing *any* differences, the differences should cover 92% of the samples. This is why I say it measures something else. ;) And please keep elephants away from this. :D -- Themis SB3 - North Star dac 192 - Denon 3808 - Sonus Faber Grand Piano Domus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Themis's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14700 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=56425 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
