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And neither does he. And neither do you (about you). Because the science is investigating what people prefer in THE SOUND WAVES. (Small chance that I am wrong
Again: but you don't know that you are right, and can't call his preference out as not being scientific, or "not being aligned with the science," if the science allows for the existence of preferences like his. And...again...he (and I and others) are speaking from personal experience. Unscientific personal experience yes, so caveats attend (as they would to literally every inference we make every day of our lives!). But if you are being a cautious scientifically minded person, you'd also note the limit of what you can extrapolate. Did the conditions, stereo set up, tracks, type of surround etc used by me or Symhpra match exactly those used in the studies? If not, you have to add yet another caveat to the claim that you can confidently extrapolate from the studies TO THE SITUATION Symhpra drew our conclusions.
Perhaps if the exact situations and source material in which we preferred the stereo were played to many people, a majority (or at least a significant proportion) would have agreed the surround was off-putting and gimmicky, or not adding that much, or preferred the stereo too.
This is why you have to be cautious about exactly how much you can extrapolate with confidence to the SPECIFIC claims someone has made, before you go browbeating them for being Against The Science.
and he and you have indeed done such scientific studies on your own preferences, but in general the people wasting everyone’s time with personal anecdotes are referencing their sighted listening, and also, even if they do a controlled self-test, not logging enough data on it to conduct statistical analysis of their own preferences either.)
It's impossible to produce scientific studies for EVERYTHING anyone may want to discuss here (or elsewhere in life). So anecdotal impressions are given, where most of us acknowledge the confidence level is lower vs rigorous bias-controlled testing. Best to make peace with it.
Note that most here have given anecdotal impressions of sound, including the owner of the site (who also uses sighted listening tests as well).
You certainly have the right to not care about any sighted/anecdotal evidence and just ignore it. But most here seem to realize some level of practicality and can exchange subjective reports provisionally, while also availing ourselves of whatever science there is on certain subjects.
If all that is "wasting your time" I'd suggest you will remain frustrated here and may be more comfortable sticking with Hydrogen Audio.
But people anecdotally expressing here where their preferences lie (I don’t do it BTW, and you seem to be assuming that I do) are really talking 99% of the time about their bias,
Again...there's another assumption, not a scientific claim. (That is, if you are claiming that for instance 99% of the time people's subjective descriptions are not accurate or related to reality at all).
and actually don’t know where they would sit on the topic in a controlled test, but the ODDS (your emphasis) are that they would fall in line with the science. (Cue heated, futile debate from several here about how oneself couldn’t possibly be wrong about one’s own preferences.)
Of course one can be wrong about one's own preference. But it has to be carefully stated what one MEANS by such a claim.
If I were a pure subjectivist and I test out two crazy priced "high end" AC cables, a black one and a red one, maybe I would say "I preferred the sound with the red one in the system."
Now, in one sense of "preferred" that person was almost certainly right. He did in fact have the subjective experience of preferring the sound
with the red cable.
But the other question - the one we care more about here - is what EXPLAINS that preference. It's a matter of identifying causation.
If the subjectivist thinks he preferred the sound of the system with the red cable because the red cable actually changes the sound waves of the system, he'd in all probability be wrong. He's misconstrued the cause of his preference.
In all likelihood, the cause of his preference was a bias of some sort. Maybe he likes the color red, or something influenced him, but in any case we know that PERCEPTION of sight and sound can be influenced by biases and expectations. Just like the perception of shades of gray can be influenced in optical illusions, or wine can "seem to taste different" if put in different bottles.
So when we call someones experience or perception "wrong" we have to be nuanced about exactly what we are claiming.
I may prefer a non-neutral speaker in sighted tests. That's a fact. But I may prefer a more neutral speaker in blinded testing. That helps identify what caused my preferences (e.g. sighted bias effects): it doesn't erase them.
As for surround sound: If I participated in the studies cited by Toole, I may well be part of the majority cohort preferring the surround in those situations. But I wouldn't know for sure unless I was one of the subjects to see where I land. Further, we can't be sure that my own experiences with surround vs stereo are close enough to those in the test set up, to confidently extrapolate that I was in error inferring I preferred the stereo sound over the surround.
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