cliveb;410715 Wrote: > I think you may have misunderstood the end goal of ABX testing in audio. > The endpoint is NOT "does A sound better than B". It's much simpler: > "does A sound DIFFERENT than B". No preference judgements are called > for: simply the detection (or otherwise) of an audible difference. That > strikes me as eminently measurable and open to statistical analysis.
I think you meant - "does A sound DIFFERENT than B because it is producing an audibly different pattern of sound waves". That question can only be answered with either blind testing or measurements plus some knowledge (gained via blind testing, of course) of perceptual thresholds. But I don't agree that that is the -only- question one might want to answer. If I had to choose between two components, I would greatly prefer a blind comparison to a sighted one, because I think it's the best way to determine which sounds better and which I would be more satisfied with in the long run (or whether it matters at all). Sometimes such tests are possible in audio show rooms, and I find it's -very- instructive to try. One rapidly starts to understand which aspects are important, and how easy it is to be absolutely confident you hear a difference - and then be utterly wrong. And on that topic, I would vastly prefer if audio reviewers would do their analyses blind - I find audio reviews nearly useless as they are. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38815 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
