While I agree there a limitations to blind testing, they are far less than sighted testing, and its a fact that big talking audiophiles always have a reason they can not do a blind test. The reason is they know their hearing is variable, and they really deep down do not want to lose their status among their friends.
Sorry for the late reply, i somehow missed your post.
The "far less than sighted testing" point is a bit surprising, as we could execute a sighted listening test in exactly the same way as the "blind" listening, of course except for the "blind" property.
So it seems imo a bit overstated to call it "far less", although i understand why one could think about it that way. In a somewhat mechanical approach every bias effect blocked out, would be considered to have a positive effect and if a test evaluated by an external reviewer, it surely will be counted.
But overall, the final benchmark for any test are _correct_ results and in this regard the "far less" description does not hold, as it is equally easy to get wrong answers in a "blind" test. A well known example for that is the enormous error rate in same/different trials, that sometimes reached ~80% when "same" is presented.
You said that "big talking audiophiles" know that their hearing is variable and that might be true, but why should that be an argument to not participate in controlled listening tests?
Or, more important, is that variable hearing taken into account in the usual "blind" listening tests, that are so often reported?
The fear to lose status might be an important reason, but it might be also that they fear to get forced to participate in not so well planned and executed "blind" tests, whos results nevertheless will be reported as universal truth.
After all, you and I can sit down and listen to a song on your stereo, and I can say, do you hear " blah blah blah" and you have a choice right now, yes I can, or say no and admit your hearing is not as good as mine. I win if you say no, I am the audiophile golden ear, you are just the unwashed wannabe listeners who spend huge amounts of money on a system that you can not even hear what I can hear on it!
Of course something like that will happen, but overall the group of "audiophiles" is imho as heterogenous as every other group too.
Bottom line, limitations or not, if they are not willing to submit to any type of non sighted test, they are just another person exercising their jaw muscles. Claiming there are limitations, whether mathematical or not, does not invalidate blind testing as a superior concept to sighted listening when others are wanting to see if they are really a qualified "golden ear" or just another wannabe.
Sure, but if you don´t want to become an expert in testing yourself, you have to rely on the honesty of the people planning and executing the test. I´ve shown/linked some example of the quite typical reactions of socalled objectivists when confronted with valid concerns wrt to their methodology and those weren´t really what you´d expect to see from reserachers trying to find the "truth".
Even today it is quite rare to find well documented listening tests not suffering from the old well known faults.
Of course, the fallacy to all this is, even if you hear a difference, which rendition is accurate to the record or cd or digital file, which is the reference, and the only reference when talking about audio playback.<snip>
What is supposed to be the reference is debateable, i´ve already described in earlier posts that at least to different point of views, wrt to this reference point, exist among the recording/producing people.
The "Hafler/Levinson fear" that you´ve mentioned might have a strong impact, but do you think that on the other side the fear to find confirmation for an audible difference after stating the impossibility of that said audible difference, doesn´t have an equally impact?
