Mnyb wrote: 
> ..."Galatea effect"...

Ah, yes. I misread the definition of the Galatea effect. I thought it
just was about underperforming (which I thought was odd), but I see now
that it also is about succeeding. 

And I must confess I often equate cynisism with realism. 

An objective component review would indeed be hard with ABX. I have
always been suspicious of ABX, as it, from a purely practical
standpoint, simply is too difficult to manage. It's almost as hard as
doing a doubleblind study on the effects of oil massage. Fugedaboudit. I
think a more fruitful way is to measure, measure and measure again. We
would perhaps need to develop more methods of testing. For instance some
people seem to believe that single test tones are not enough. Maybe they
have a point. Well, then develop a different method to investigate that.
It's not just about proving things, it's also about explaining why it is
a proof to the people that don't have the background to understand it by
themselves. And hearing/seeing is believing. Never waste time with
subjectivities. Always find hard facts and build on those. Yada yada.
(Why do these discussions always come to this?)

But I actually believe the optimal testing method is already since long
invented; the null test. It's extremely powerful, but more importantly;
it's also extremely transparent. Everyone understands it and it's hard
to argue that the test is inadequate, when you actually measure the
entire audio content of some complex piece of music and compare this to
the source. What could possibly be missed? And if you get a difference
at the -120dB level, this would be very difficult to hear. It's easily
tested, just attenuate a sound in a sound editor by that amount and see
if you can hear it with the volume knob unchanged. If you can, then add
a masking noise and we're done. 

By the way, doing a null test with the the entire audio chain would be
very unforgiving. There is a reason that we never see distortion figures
for speakers, in the way that we do for amps. Not to mention the
listening room.



Best Regards,
Gandhi

not often enough well recorded and mastered cds *|* dbpoweramp with
accuraterip *|* flac *|* fanless asrock z77e-itx intel i5-3570t *|*
ubuntu 12.04.1 lts 32-bit *|* lms 7.8.0 *|* brutefirdrc 3.0 (rewv5) *|*
transporter (balanced out) *|* thule ia252b *|* audio physic scorpio *|*
no fancy cables. *+* also some booms. *+* harmony 525s for them all,
including waking the server from s3.
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