Calling all golden ears

[CapMan]

So for our golden eared friends - imagine I blindfold you, drive you to a house someplace, walk you into a room, sit you down in front of a HiFi and play some tunes.

What are the chances you could reliably establish :

1. The size of the room you are in
2. The price point of the gear you are listening to ( say £1000, £5000, £10000, £50000)

Because if you can't do this I don't believe you can hear an Ethernet cable adding bass, a DAC adding clarity and smoothness, or power cables reducing distortion.

Question for the objectivists - is this a meaningful test ! What else would you want the listener to identify?

 

[Killingbeans]

Question for the objectivists - is this a meaningful test !

It's good for a laugh, but most likely won't change a thing.

Most of the participants will desperately jump to whatever ill-founded reasoning thay can to make the test result invalid.
Some will have a "I'll be damned" -moment, but shortly after they'll be back to business as usual, and they'll pretend the test never happened.

We might have big brains, but most of our behaviour is shared with even the tiniest "primitive" animals. When faced with a sudden realization of our own ignorance, it's a deeply unpleasant feeling, and our natural reponse is not acceptance, but to look for an irrational reasoning that'll make the feeling go away as quickly as possible.

It's better to give the few, who are genuinely curious, the knowledge they need to reach well-founded conclusions.

The rest will fight with teeth and nails to keep their blissful ignorance.

 

[suttondesign]

So for our golden eared friends - imagine I blindfold you, drive you to a house someplace, walk you into a room, sit you down in front of a HiFi and play some tunes.

What are the chances you could reliably establish :

1. The size of the room you are in
2. The price point of the gear you are listening to ( say £1000, £5000, £10000, £50000)

Because if you can't do this I don't believe you can hear an Ethernet cable adding bass, a DAC adding clarity and smoothness, or power cables reducing distortion.

Question for the objectivists - is this a meaningful test ! What else would you want the listener to identify?

Is this an A24 film?

 

[CapMan]

A24

I don't know what that is, sorry

 

[Sokel]

Price point is somehow easy if sane choices have been done,crank up the volume and look for strong impact (not ramble) along with crystal clear highs and deep-ish (30's) lows.
Room will follow I guess as everything out of order will start complaining and if untreated will start give away clues.

For insane choices I can't help.

 

[SSS]

So for our golden eared friends - imagine I blindfold you, drive you to a house someplace, walk you into a room, sit you down in front of a HiFi and play some tunes.

What are the chances you could reliably establish :

1. The size of the room you are in
2. The price point of the gear you are listening to ( say £1000, £5000, £10000, £50000)

Because if you can't do this I don't believe you can hear an Ethernet cable adding bass, a DAC adding clarity and smoothness, or power cables reducing distortion.

Question for the objectivists - is this a meaningful test ! What else would you want the listener to identify?

1. Size of the room estimation I could roughly but depends on acoustical damping. If completely damped so no reflection and thus no reverbation which would give no clue.
2. Price depends on what amount of equipment is in the stereo setup included. Electronics can hardly be judged if modern ones. Most will be the loudspeaker which I can at least say whether big bass, perfect mid, good highs. Low cost speakers can't do bass good. And I need some known tunes as example. If unknown music still the flatness of the speakers can be estimated.
3. Of course power cables and ethernet cables and cryonic treated mains fuses will not be heard.
4. Meaningful test, I doubt it.

 

[Roland68]

So for our golden eared friends - imagine I blindfold you, drive you to a house someplace, walk you into a room, sit you down in front of a HiFi and play some tunes.

What are the chances you could reliably establish :

1. The size of the room you are in
2. The price point of the gear you are listening to ( say £1000, £5000, £10000, £50000)

Because if you can't do this I don't believe you can hear an Ethernet cable adding bass, a DAC adding clarity and smoothness, or power cables reducing distortion.

Question for the objectivists - is this a meaningful test ! What else would you want the listener to identify?

A pretty stupid test, because someone with experience can put together a system for €/$2-3000 that can beat a system for €/$50,000, depending on how well or poorly it was put together.
So what exactly was that supposed to prove?

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

So what exactly was that supposed to prove?

I think his point was, he doesn’t think golden-ear types are as golden-eared as they think they are.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Equipment List | Tech Articles and Reviews

 

[CapMan]

A pretty stupid test, because someone with experience can put together a system for €/$2-3000 that can beat a system for €/$50,000, depending on how well or poorly it was put together.
So what exactly was that supposed to prove?

I was not making a point, rather putting a question out there. But your response answers the question rather well.

With absolutely no visual cues available and zero creation of bias (from the room size, it's decor, the equipment etc) would it be very hard to judge the actual value of the system in use ....

 

[Roland68]

I was not making a point, rather putting a question out there. But your response answers the question rather well.

With absolutely no visual cues available and zero creation of bias (from the room size, it's decor, the equipment etc) would it be very hard to judge the actual value of the system in use ....

Basically, this is nothing other than a real blind test.
We do such tests within a project in such a way that strangers do not know which device is running, or a thin fleece is hung up as a partition and illuminated from behind.

But what does "value" mean?
Value based on the RRP or actual selling price?
Value based on the sound (how?) or measured values?
Or, or, or...

I can remember the statement of an owner of an expensive hi-fi system (around €150,000/$). "In terms of sound, this is the best device (CD player) I have ever heard, but a rice bowl like that (not my words) is not coming into my living room.
Each of us has a different idea of value.