Robin Bowes;410600 Wrote: > darrenyeats wrote:[color=blue] > I've said several times on this forum that I believe that some > differences are not immediately audible in short listening tests. > Rather, they reveal themselves over longer-term listening by way of, > e.g. listening fatigue - one tires of listening to a particular > source. > > I'm not really all that hung up on testing, blind or otherwise. I think > > El Dunderino put expressed my views perfectly when he said: > > "I plan on using the TP to listen to music rather than gather audio > engineer friends and break out the oscilloscopes to start measuring." >
I do believe that the primary use for all of this equipment, TP/DACs/speakers/etc. and the considerable expense involved in acquiring all of the above, is for the simple, and subjective enjoyment of music. Don't get me wrong, I am a fanatical advocate of randomized, double blind tests, etc. when the "primary endpoint" is something which is actually measurable. The problem here is that many individuals seem to think that you can take the scientific concept of a double-blind randomized controlled trial and apply it to areas which one could argue are distinctly non-scientific. This is a fallacy. To illustrate, when investigating the role of one drug vs. another--the field in which double blind controlled trials have come to the fore--there is almost always a definitive primary endpoint and several secondary endpoints eg reduction in mortality, reduction in morbidity, measurable decrease/increase in a particular lab parameter. All of these are measurable and definitively quantifiable. Even concepts like quality of life, which may at first glance seem subjective, are assessed on a ratified, tested scale so that there is some standardization and reproducibility. Without this level of objectivity in endpoints, it is hard to design a relevant double-blind, randomized controlled trial. In testing audio, the endpoint is as subjective as it gets ie "Does A sound better than B". Therefore, the design of any double-blind study is compromised right from the start. If, on the other hand, there was a standardized test to measure "audio quality", enough people were tested on identical equipment to sufficiently "power" the study, AND the results were readily reproducible by other investigators/listeners, then we'd be getting somewhere and all this talk of putting everything to the test via DBT would be justified. As it stands, I think that conclusions can be drawn from one's own DBT or A/B testing but to try and play this off as "scientific" is not entirely accurate. By extension, the die-hard mentality of some towards double blind testing in a field that has not been sufficiently prepared for it is not always justified. Oh, and Robin, its El Duderino ;) -- El Duderino ------------------------------------------------------------------------ El Duderino's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8171 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38815 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
