Theres a difference between unreliable and worthless.
Maybe you can explain how an unreliable report from someone anonymous, with no way of knowing if what was heard was real or imagined, can be worth something to me.
Theres a difference between unreliable and worthless.
Maybe you can explain how an unreliable report from someone anonymous, with no way of knowing if what was heard was real or imagined, can be worth something to me.
The yt link I put, I wanted to hear whether other people like the sound which I like to.
.... It was meant to be the only thing which was said, solely about a sound preference.
Possibly you consider your own sighted listening impressions being worthless as well?
Of course not. But that's not what we are discussing, is it? I would never insist that my personal impressions are worth anything to anyone, but me. And I do blind testing when I want to be sure, even for my own decision making.
"I would never insist that my personal impressions are worth anything to anyone, but me."
Guess you missed that part.
A mic'd youtube video isn't going to say anything about how it really sounds.
You can't argue about preference either.
Your own sighted listening impressions are either worthless or not. If they're worthless, so it should be to the other people. If they have a certain worth in it, so it should be to the other people.
Worth and value are relative and subjective, so I reject your premise outright.
Your judgement of what sounds better or different is worthless to me, if sighted. I have no way of knowing that what you heard was real or all in your head. I have a life-time of experience knowing and judging what I hear and how I hear it. I have a little more to go by when using my own judgement, hence the increased worth ... to me only. Despite this, I still resort to blind testing, as I know my own limitations.
Furthermore, even blind listening impressions are not reliable. They might be more reliable than sighted impressions because of avoiding bias induced by knowing what's in system, but they're not completely reliable because the nature of listening is subjective. There's no even guarantee that blind listening should be more reliable than sighted listening because of a different mind state when blind listening and sighted listening. Especially when blind test is done in a situation when a person might fear he/she will be judged by the results and a personal reputation will be in the line.
Yeah, but that everyone else's sighted impressions are worthless to you except your own, that tells something about you and really nothing about those impressions. Which worth is in those it's unknown. But you deem it worthless, well it's you.
Anyway why someone's blind impressions should mean more to you? What if that particular person is simply incompetent in discerning quality even when he listens it blindly? And what if blind listening disturbs the focus of that person because he bugs his own mind with various thoughts going through his head instead of focusing to listening to the music?
You overestimate blind listening impressions, at first place.
My or yours or anybody else's blind listening impressions are still subjective. They can still be inaccurate. They can still be even wrong. It can still be in your head.
Of course, your own listening impressions may have a worth to you, even in case they would hypothetically be objectively worthless. As you say, worth is subjective, so to you it the objective value of it doesn't necessarily even matter, if your own subjective opinion on them is different.
Your own sighted listening impressions are either worthless or not.
You overestimate blind listening impressions, at first place.
My or yours or anybody else's blind listening impressions are still subjective. They can still be inaccurate. They can still be even wrong. It can still be in your head.
There's no fear of judgement or reputation loss if you're doing blind testing for yourself. There's no different mind state, except for the elimination of knowledge about which component is playing -- and that's a huge source of bias if not controlled. So, why don't you try it? You may learn something about yourself.
Blind tests don't prove a negative. No test can. If a difference is detected in a blind test by others, that is a proof of the positive. That's valuable information to me and to anyone else who cares about real differences.
There's no possible outcome in a sighted test done by others that is of value to me. Sorry. It's unpredictable regardless of the outcome.
That statment is completely illogical and false. Classic "the world is black and white, and shades of gray do not exist" thinking.
There are many perceived sighted sonic differences that are clearly audible. However, at a certain threshold range, sonic differences become tiny and difficult to discern, and then disappear. Intelligent and informed people have a pretty good idea when blind testing is necessary to "filter out" psychological influences. By informed I mean people who are aware of the findings of scientists and psychoacoustice researchers who have observed, tested and confirmed audibility limits, and had their findings verified by repeated tests.
To me, a HUGE difference is one that can be heard in blind or sighted testing 100% of the time.
There's always an elaborate hand-waving excuse about why you need to peek instead of trusting your ears. And the hand-wave excuses are always the same old ones, dusted off and trotted out as if they were some profound revelation.
I'm lazy, really, to care for setting up a blind test. But it's not all. This process is boring. I'd rather allow myself to make a mistake than do this as a usual routine when choosing equipment. There is in fact even more reasons. One is that I like to do things alone and I really hate asking anyone else to assist me, those are favors and I carefully pick whenever I ask any favor.
If I told you that to remove boredom from the process I don't even necessarily listen to the same samples when making A-B comparison but rather going for quantity to reach conclusions for me...but it's true. I used to do (sighted of course lol) A-B on same samples until it became boring. Then I started to avoid it. To me, hifi is about fun, if it's not fun to me then I'm out.
So the only reason I'd do blind test is curiosity to see results. But to make it a routine when picking equipment...I'd rather kill myself than do this.