I remember you from hydrogenaudio, where you made yourdisapproval of M&M clear. I'm glad we can at least agree on the wrongheadedness of this particular critique of M&M.
I stand by my disapproval but of course am open to consider good arguments against it.
I am sorry not being more clear in my wording as it obviously leads to a misunderstanding because we don´t agree on this particular critique.
I took objection to your argument:
"...... I have zero patience for the goalpost-moving argument 'but they didn't use pure hi rez recordings', because
neither did audiophiles who....."
My critique of M&M´s paper is based on the fact that it was published in a peer reviewed scientific journal and that the authors did imo set the bar quite high.
So - again imo - the critique should be related to the methodology used and to the question if the conclusions drawn are justified by the results. That is only about scientific methods and has nothing to do with anything other people are doing within anecdotical listening routines.
The authors wrote:
"....
Unlike the previous investigations, our tests were designed to
reveal any and all possible audible differences between high-resolution and CD audio....." (bold feature done by me)
although i admit that they left a backdoor open when writing:
"....many of which, according to published claims, occur within the commonly
accepted audio bandwidth."
but "many of which" doesn´t help, as they wanted to "reveal any and all possible audible differences" .
Well, not quite. It is indeed the flawed tendency of audiophiles to attribute a difference they hear (real or not) to 'hi rez'. M&M , quite correctly, posit mastering differences as a possible real reason differences are heard when consumes compare SACDs/DVDAs to CDs.
M&M´s explanation might be correct or not, i simply pointed out that they delivered no factual data for their assertion of better quality compared to most CDs, just got this impression of better quality in the same way the "audiophiles" did, namely with just sighted listening, which means it is at a first glance only anecdotical evidence.
But *their* protocol simply converted hi rez recordings to standard rez in real time, with the listeners given considerable latitude as to preferred listening conditions, and what it 'confirmed' was that under those conditions, evidence of difference was not forthcoming. Indeed , of all the tests Reiss reviews, M&M's comes closest to replicating how audiophiles 'normally' compare releases -- while removing the typically glaring issues of remastering and 'sightedness'.
That might be true - although for some reasons the usage of ABX tests might be already to distractive - does it help if the material used for the comparisons does not possess the "hi rez" property?
Maybe we should open another thread to discuss the specific problems in detail.
I'm familiar with the purpose of meta-analyses, thanks (for me, it's biomedical research). I'm not sure you realize the impetus of this particular analysis. There are commercial interests vested in something, anything that gives them a scientific basis, no matter how thin, to tout 'hi rez' delivery formats as a virtual *necessity* for a high quality consumer audio experience.
Again that might be true, but if you rate such speculative arguments higher than the scientifically based critique you´ve left already the scientific path. There are always financial interests involved (is there any audio invention known that was not accompanied by financial interests?) be it the audio field or biomedical research (or most likely every other field) and even if not, ego driven interests can imo often have comparable impact.
And there's a troubling claim of 'importance' for its results in Reiss's press release statements. When actually, at very best, if one accepts all of Reiss's choices for data inclusion and exclusion, it's evidence for a small population of listeners in the skinny part of the positive distribution tail who are hearing 'something', under highly optimized conditions. And yes, more research is needed. More hype is not.
Again might there be an exaggeration wrt to the importance, but if you relate it to the counterposition (i.e. that it is impossible to detect a difference) than even a small detectable effect could be considered as sensational and of course of importance.
