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With some of those speakers, I wonder whether it is easier for them to bring their speakers to you, or for you to bring your Klippel to them?

There are other people with Klippel machines, so other machine may be closer or the operators more muscular for larger speakers.
 
You continue to misunderstand, Newman. If you think I'm being inconsistent you just aren't paying attention.

I've said a billion times on this forum that I agree that looking to measurements, and the information gleaned from blind test studies, is clearly a reasonable guide for anyone to use in seeking a loudspeaker. That includes you and anyone else.

However, that is on the basis that...as I've argued here...that the measurements (derived from blind testing) would actually relate to how you will perceive the speaker in your sighted listening conditions! And the only way that makes sense is if sighted listening has at least a relevant level of accuracy, to really perceive the sound correctly. That is the only way to make sense of the relevance of the measurements and blind listening data, to the sighted conditions in which you'll use the speakers.

The reason I criticized you, is that you both misrepresented my argument as usual, and you have attempted a justification that just doesn't work to resolve this. You are wedded to telling people sighted listening is just so inaccurate and unreliable, therefore you refuse to include in your account admitting any accuracy to sighted listening. So you've left a yawning hole of incoherence.

Remember the science! Sighted biases can literally distort how we hear the sound, right? It's why audiophiles can "perceive" sonic traits that aren't even there, in cables and such. That's the whole problem; you can't treat what we "hear" as simply direct apprehension of the sound waves, you have to remember its a perceptual system involved where your perception may not end up matching "the sound waves."

So in your "resolving of the conundrum," whenever you talking about "what we will HEAR" you have to remember that what we HEAR isn't just some direct apprehension of the sound waves, but the result of a complicated perceptual system that puts together a sonic impression. What we "hear" in that sense can be more, or less accurate, to what is happening in the actual sound waves.

You can't conveniently forget that when you are trying to establish the relevance of blind tests/measurements to sighted listening!

I pointed this out when you said things like "use controlled listening tests if we want to choose the gear that produces sound waves themselves that we most prefer,"

That does not establish how the sound we perceive in the controlled listening tests translates in to what we will perceive in our sighted listening! You may prefer the sound waves in blind listening, but will you prefer them in sighted listening? If not, what does it matter what you'll prefer in the scenario in which you won't even use your speakers? But if there will be continuity between the sound you perceive in blind listening to what you'll perceive in sighted listening...then there has to be some level of accuracy when listening sighted!

You told us how: One of the nice things about choosing the red pill, is that it takes us closer to hearing the sound waves that the recording production team heard,

And yet, if you are taking the distortions of sighted listening seriously, then how can you presume that in listening to that neutral speaker at home, that you are perceiving the "actual sound waves" - that is the actual sonic character of that sound? If your sighted bias so distorts this picture, then how can you presume you will perceive "what the recording production team heard?"

You see, you've left precisely the conundrum utterly untouched and unresolved. In fact you are in literal contradiction unless you can resolve this.

The problem is to become more coherent, you'll have to accede that what we can apprehend in sighted listening will be, to some relevant degree, accurate to what the "sound waves" are actually doing. But...you don't wanna do that. That's your bias working, not mine ;-). I can tell you why it's reasonable for you to appeal to measurements and blind test results! But you can't tell me, coherently, why you can do so...thus far.

I'm on your team, actually, but you can't recognize it because you always presume, at the first sight of subjective language or description, that you must whack-a-mole that back in to submission.

Not to disagree with what you write here, but I think it's important to always keep in mind that our sighted listening impressions can change - from time to time, from day to day, from time of day to time of day, and when we're talking about fine details of sound, even from moment to moment. For example, you and I have both mentioned and agreed in another thread that our systems don't sound 100% identical to us day in and day out.

So for me the importance of sighted listening experiences is that they're the entire point: I listen to my system sighted; that listening experience is what counts and it's why I do my best to get the best (or best-for-me) equipment I can find within my budget. And of course, yes, my sighted experience connects to the measurements, for sure. But my sighted experience also varies from the measurements, because it varies from itself from day to day and so on. Not radically varies, but varies to an extent which would surprise me if I were not aware of, and did not believe in, the power of our human perceptual systems to make sh*t up on a regular basis to help us stay alive and sane. :)
 
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I agree with you there. I just tried licking the screen and it tasted nothing like pizza.
You guys never dropped some pizza on your laptop screen and licked it off did you? It does taste like pizza.
 
Quite a few people here appear to disagree with this statement. [ie sighted listening is useful and has some relationship to blind listening.]
Including Floyd Toole and Sean Olive. Let’s see if you prove them wrong, below.
That "sighted listening has some relationship to blind listening" is fully supported by the Harman listening data. Fig.17.12 in Toole's book, which he chose to use to illustrate this relationship,
That’s not what Toole says he was illustrating with that chart. He says the chart illustrates that “what listeners see changes what they (think) they hear.” So let’s use the chart to examine that statement.
and which I discussed in detail in an earlier post in this thread, shows this:

blind: A=B > D=C
sighted: A=B > D>C

where = means that the ratings of the two speakers were within statistical errors (ratings difference of 0.3 or less).

All ratings were in the range 5.5 to 8, so just for fun I generated 4 random numbers in this range as the ratings of the 4 speakers. This was the result of doing this five times:

randomly generated ratings:
A=D > B=C
C > A=D > B
A > B=C > D
B > C > A > D
C > B=D > A
OK, and I will assume that you applied the same error bar size to assign a “=” etc.

So you can see that, if there were no relation between blind and sighted listening, it would be very unlikely for the sighted ratings to correspond as closely as they do to the blind ratings. (There are various statistical methodologies to quantify just how unlikely this is, but I'm not going to go through that exercise.)
An interesting presupposition of your analysis is that the sighted listening scores need to be completely random for there to be no relation.

Look at the first two columns A and B (black, white) in Fig 17.12. Those speakers are visually identical, and their sound waves are statistically indistinguishable. Remarkably, when sighted, their relative scores compared to one another are exactly the same as when blind. Why? Because listeners are effectively still blind in relation to the difference between those two speakers, so the blind test result is replicated wrt difference. I don’t think you gave consideration to the fact that A vs B is blind both times.

You are mistaken if you think that I and others think that sighted listening leads to random scores. (If that is your test, then it’s a straw man.) It’s just that, when sighted listening factors come into play, they are strong enough to dominate, ie “change what people (think) they hear”, and that is too big an issue to proceed on the basis that sighted listening is telling us what we need to know about the sound waves themselves.

So the only debate that is reasonable to have is whether this unquestionable relation between blind and sighted listening is "useful" or not.
Wait a minute. You misquoted @tmtomh when you said people disagree with his statement and then quoted it as “sighted listening has some relationship to blind listening”. He actually said “sighted listening is useful and has some relationship to blind listening”.

To dispute his statement, you have to dispute it as a logical AND statement, that both attributes are true simultaneously.

Secondly, even if it were assumed that we do have “a relationship” between sighted listening impressions and blind listening impressions, it won’t help us if it is not useful.

And that’s where it all comes crashing down, since you admit below that ‘useful’ is undefined. A broken clock has an “unquestionable relation” to the time of day, and I could claim that it is actually more useful than sighted listening impressions, because unlike sighted listening, we can predict when and how often it will be telling the truth. But still not useful enough to rely on it as a timepiece.

A key attribute of utility is reliability. We can rely on a well-controlled listening test to be about the perceived attributes of the sound waves themselves, but we cannot rely on a sighted listening test to do that. Everyone has unique cognitive biases including unconscious biases, and like @tmtomh pointed out, they are fluid in time (short and long term). How is one supposed to rely on that? Even if you worked out and documented “a relationship” between your own personal sighted listening impressions and your blind listening impressions…it might not be the same tomorrow, or next month. Or it might. Useful?

And sighted biases are so multi-faceted, so many possibilities, that they can’t all be covered. Some are near-universal, like a preference for large speakers (and if you brought the same analysis to Toole’s chart for that factor you would conclude it is an “unquestionable relationship”), and yet, you might have a personal bias in favour of small speakers because you are aware of their typically stiffer cabinets and lower baffle diffraction, and so your sighted listening leads to the opposite relationship to the one Toole’s chart indicates. Useful relationship? Reliable?

Here is a scenario that I have read on numerous occasions by audiophiles: you read a very positive review of a speaker and you go and audition it. You verify that you hear much of the attributes reported in the review (evidence that sighted listening is insightful about the sound waves?), and you love what you are hearing enough to buy the speaker. Your experience at home is splendid. Then you read another review of it by a reviewer who you hold in deep regard, but he describes a very irritating sonic aspect. Now you start hearing that sonic aspect at home too! And once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. (More evidence that sighted listening is insightful about the sound waves?)

Analysing the scenario, what aspect of the sighted listening impressions is reliably correlated with the sonic attributes of the sound waves themselves? Probably none. But were any of them actually in the sound waves? Possibly…probably…maybe…some? Which ones? Dunno. Can we rely on those (presumed) correlations? Er, no. Useful? Definitely not.

As you can see, I am not saying that it is impossible for “a correlation” to exist, but it just isn’t useful, because it can be overridden at the drop of a hat.
I think it is. Matt thinks it is. Kal thinks it is (as confirmed by his taking the time and effort to do sighted subjective reviews). Many here think it is not.
Ask Kal if his work would get published in Stereophile if he omitted the sighted subjective reviewing component. :)
Since "useful" does not have precise definition, there is no way to settle this argument definitively.
I’m very disappointed to see that you are not completely persuaded by Matt’s insistences. ;)

I’m going to restate from a post I made in this thread only a few days ago, apologies.

- The critical factor is that the listening tests must be blind or double-blind - sighted tests cannot be trusted. - Floyd Toole #285

- If you want to obtain an accurate and reliable measure of how the audio product truly sounds, the listening test must be done blind. - Sean Olive https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/

Are you sure that your resistance to this authoritative conclusion on the matter is not, possibly at a level of unawareness, underpinned by a feeling that your sighted listening experiences seem just too real to not be ‘about the sonic attributes of the sound waves themselves’?

cheers
 
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Regarding this and your previous posts, I think we are generally on the same page.

I'm not trying to settle the matter of how accurate sighted listening is. My point is that that the credence someone puts on sighted listening is ultimately a personal call, and I think people can take a range of approaches which can be justified. Someone buying speaker completely on the measurements, never hearing them, can be justified. Someone buying speakers that they can't find measurements for, by auditioning wherever they can find them, can be justified. And anything in between.


Not to disagree with what you write here, but I think it's important to always keep in mind that our sighted listening impressions can change - from time to time, from day to day, from time of day to time of day, and when we're talking about fine details of sound, even from moment to moment. For example, you and I have both mentioned and agreed in another thread that our systems don't sound 100% identical to us day in and day out.

Agreed. But that will be the situation whatever speaker we buy, so it wouldn't be a point in favour of any particular approach.

So for me the importance of sighted listening experiences is that they're the entire point: I listen to my system sighted; that listening experience is what counts and it's why I do my best to get the best (or best-for-me) equipment I can find within my budget. And of course, yes, the my sighted experience connects to the measurements, for sure. But my sighted experience also varies from the measurements, because it varies from itself from day to day and so on. Not radically varies, but varies to an extent which would surprise me if I were not aware of, and did not believe in, the power of our human perceptual systems to make sh*t up on a regular basis to help us stay alive and sane. :)

Yes. For someone on a forum like this, who recognizes the variable of sighted bias, and who is fine with evaluating speakers in sighted conditions, one rational can simply be "well, those are the conditions I'll be using the speakers, and if one speaker has some bias effect that makes it 'sound better' to me in sighted listening, I'll choose that one."

I think that's legit. One can say the bias effect in liking the sound may be too inconsistent, so it's better to go with the speaker that measures better. But that again is to imply that one's sighted listening is accurate enough to discern those differences, even if that means "over time." Otherwise, what's the case for choosing the "better" measuring speaker relative to bias effects?

I can see the justification some would have to audition two different speakers, find themselves enjoying A more than B, but still decide to purchase B because it measures better in terms of adhering to "ASR-approved" measurements. Maybe it's because they would just feel more assured about the engineering, or that over time it would prove to be the more satisfying speaker.

Personally, I can't do that. I basically have a "love it or leave it" reaction to speakers. If I am not drawn in to the sound of a speaker I never warm up to it. Whereas whenever I have been drawn to the sound of a speaker that experience never falters. The things that attracted me remain and never go away. I wouldn't take the chance of "Well, I've listened to speaker A and B 4 times now, and every time I've loved speaker A and not once really liked speaker B...but speaker B measures a little better so I'll go with that one. No can do based on my own, long, picky experiences with speakers . But I think it makes sense for others.

But, of course, the issue I've brought up pushes on sighted listening a bit further: it suggests you don't have to stick with the idea that sighted listening is hopelessly inaccurate so one can only use it if one presumes it's all distorted bias effects. The issue suggests that sighted listening is not as hopeless for apprehending real sonic characteristics as some presume. You can not assume that sighted listening is hopeless in terms of accuracy, while also thinking the actions of Harman Kardon make sense, or the recommendations on this site make sense. You are trying to work a square peg in to a round hole at that point.
 
Pink Panther theme eh? Clearly angling for the ASR audience.
Also, the track is recorded so good, phantom image will lock at the perfect center even with a pair of Logitech computer speakers ;)
 
Secondly, even if it were assumed that we do have “a relationship” between sighted listening impressions and blind listening impressions, it won’t help us if it is not useful.

And that goes both ways, right? If the blind listening impressions are useful for predicting what consumers will enjoy sighted, that has to be explained.

I may be ignorant of this, but as far as I know Harman did not test whether their speakers, designed from blind tests, also produced higher scores in sighted listening.
Am I right? Or if they did, what were the results?

If such tests were ever done, and it showed no reliable relationship between sighted preference scores and blind listening scores, that would seem to indicate a failure in the whole project, given they were designed for sighted listening.

If there was a reliable correlation, that could only mean that sighted listening does track enough with blind listening, to be worthwhile.

And that’s where it all comes crashing down, since you admit below that ‘useful’ is undefined. A broken clock has an “unquestionable relation” to the time of day, and I could claim that it is actually more useful than sighted listening impressions, because unlike sighted listening, we can predict when and how often it will be telling the truth. But still not useful enough to rely on it as a timepiece.

But your "broken clock" can not be a proper analogy here. A broken clock is wrong just about all of the time.

If sighted listening was analagously wrong - just about all the time - then...once again!...the relevance of blind tests to predicting listening perception would be moot!

You just can't get around this problem.


A key attribute of utility is reliability. We can rely on a well-controlled listening test to be about the perceived attributes of the sound waves themselves, but we cannot rely on a sighted listening test to do that. Everyone has unique cognitive biases including unconscious biases, and like @tmtomh pointed out, they are fluid in time (short and long term). How is one supposed to rely on that?

You will be experiencing cognitive biases whether you buy any speaker. So talking about cognitive biases being fleeting doesn't point one way or the other. UNLESS sighted listening is accurate enough that you will more reliably hear the "better" speaker over the worse speaker. And, here we are, once again.
 
Regarding this and your previous posts, I think we are generally on the same page.

I'm not trying to settle the matter of how accurate sighted listening is. My point is that that the credence someone puts on sighted listening is ultimately a personal call, and I think people can take a range of approaches which can be justified. Someone buying speaker completely on the measurements, never hearing them, can be justified. Someone buying speakers that they can't find measurements for, by auditioning wherever they can find them, can be justified. And anything in between.




Agreed. But that will be the situation whatever speaker we buy, so it wouldn't be a point in favour of any particular approach.



Yes. For someone on a forum like this, who recognizes the variable of sighted bias, and who is fine with evaluating speakers in sighted conditions, one rational can simply be "well, those are the conditions I'll be using the speakers, and if one speaker has some bias effect that makes it 'sound better' to me in sighted listening, I'll choose that one."

I think that's legit. One can say the bias effect in liking the sound may be too inconsistent, so it's better to go with the speaker that measures better. But that again is to imply that one's sighted listening is accurate enough to discern those differences, even if that means "over time." Otherwise, what's the case for choosing the "better" measuring speaker relative to bias effects?

I can see the justification some would have to audition two different speakers, find themselves enjoying A more than B, but still decide to purchase B because it measures better in terms of adhering to "ASR-approved" measurements. Maybe it's because they would just feel more assured about the engineering, or that over time it would prove to be the more satisfying speaker.

Personally, I can't do that. I basically have a "love it or leave it" reaction to speakers. If I am not drawn in to the sound of a speaker I never warm up to it. Whereas whenever I have been drawn to the sound of a speaker that experience never falters. The things that attracted me remain and never go away. I wouldn't take the chance of "Well, I've listened to speaker A and B 4 times now, and every time I've loved speaker A and not once really liked speaker B...but speaker B measures a little better so I'll go with that one. No can do based on my own, long, picky experiences with speakers . But I think it makes sense for others.

But, of course, the issue I've brought up pushes on sighted listening a bit further: it suggests you don't have to stick with the idea that sighted listening is hopelessly inaccurate so one can only use it if one presumes it's all distorted bias effects. The issue suggests that sighted listening is not as hopeless for apprehending real sonic characteristics as some presume. You can not assume that sighted listening is hopeless in terms of accuracy, while also thinking the actions of Harman Kardon make sense, or the recommendations on this site make sense. You are trying to work a square peg in to a round hole at that point.
But, of course, the issue I've brought up pushes on sighted listening a bit further: it suggests you don't have to stick with the idea that sighted listening is hopelessly inaccurate so one can only use it if one presumes it's all distorted bias effects. The issue suggests that sighted listening is not as hopeless for apprehending real sonic characteristics as some presume. You can not assume that sighted listening is hopeless in terms of accuracy, while also thinking the actions of Harman Kardon make sense, or the recommendations on this site make sense. You are trying to work a square peg in to a round hole at that point.

Let us presume sighted listening is indisputably hopeless in terms of accuracy. Would that change how people buy speakers?

You'll listen, for a multitude of reasons you'll feel better about one than the other. We already know such things involve some commitment mentally. Once you have decided something you become invested in it. You buy it, you are happy, it is unlikely to change. Lots of people do this with amps, preamps, DACs which we know all sound the same (with some tiny number of exceptions). There really is no point in listening to those, but that is how many audiophiles decide on those anyway.

Now my presumption is not true with speakers, but one of the big surprises about Toole's work is how these other factors beyond just sound can dramatically alter one's opinion of what they hear sighted. So the truth leans in that direction. What you hear sighted is not just sound.

I think I understand clearly what your position is by now, and I think as right as it feels you are misguided. Sighted listening with things we know better like amps, and DACs needs no ability for us to test it blind or design it by now without listening. Psycho-acoustics in time determined what is audible and not with electronics. There is no need to claim that DAC blind tests only have relevance if we can hear the difference sighted. That does not even make any sense.
 
Now my presumption is not true with speakers, but one of the big surprises about Toole's work is how these other factors beyond just sound can dramatically alter one's opinion of what they hear sighted. So the truth leans in that direction. What you hear sighted is not just sound.

I didn't feel too surprised by that. I'm certainly not a scientist, but starting with psychology courses in university, and then getting heavily in to the Skeptical literature for decades, the nature of bias and human error have been of interest to me for a long time. As I've said before: If people can imagine they are being anally probed by aliens, the average audiophile can certainly imagine a reduction of midrange glare in his new DAC :)

I think I understand clearly what your position is by now, and I think as right as it feels you are misguided. Sighted listening with things we know better like amps, and DACs needs no ability for us to test it blind or design it by now without listening. Psycho-acoustics in time determined what is audible and not with electronics. There is no need to claim that DAC blind tests only have relevance if we can hear the difference sighted. That does not even make any sense.

I wonder if you could re-state that. I have a feeling I know what you mean, but if I read it literally I can't make sense of it.

I'd say blind testing is relevant for DACs and amps in a similar way: the only reason I'd care about a DAC being distinguished from another in blind tests, is if that related to what it's possible I'll hear in sighted listening. Likewise, if they were indistinguishable.

BTW, did you take a listen to the speaker comparison video I posted a bit earlier? I'd be curious what your reaction is, even if we are just evaluating the youtube recording itself, do you notice any sonic differences between the B&W and Wharfedale? I'm going to guess you certainly will. And I wonder if you think it is obvious enough that you don't need blind testing to have some justification in your perception.*

*(BTW, I'd be very worried about handing my work over to any sound mixer who could not identify the sonic differences in that recording...)
 
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I didn't feel too surprised by that. I'm certainly not a scientist, but starting with psychology courses in university, and then getting heavily in to the Skeptical literature for decades, the nature of bias and human error have been of interest to me for a long time. As I've said before: If people can imagine they are being anally probed by aliens, the average audiophile can certainly imagine a reduction of midrange glare in his new DAC :)



I wonder if you could re-state that. I have a feeling I know what you mean, but if I read it literally I can't make sense of it.

I'd say blind testing is relevant for DACs and amps in a similar way: the only reason I'd care about a DAC being distinguished from another in blind tests, is if that related to what it's possible I'll hear in sighted listening. Likewise, if they were indistinguishable.

BTW, did you take a listen to the speaker comparison video I posted a bit earlier? I'd be curious what your reaction is, even if we are just evaluating the youtube recording itself, do you notice any sonic differences between the B&W and Wharfedale? I'm going to guess you certainly will. And I wonder if you think it is obvious enough that you don't need blind testing to have some justification in your perception.*

*(BTW, I'd be very suspicious of handing my work over to any mixer who could not identify the sonic differences in that recordinI think I understand clearly what your position is by now, and I think as right as it feels you are misguided. Sighted listening with things we know better like amps, and DACs needs no ability for us to test it blind or design it by now without listening. Psycho-acoustics in time determined what is audible and not with electronics. There is no need to claim that DAC blind tests only have relevance if we can hear the difference sighted. That does not even make any sense.
I think I understand clearly what your position is by now, and I think as right as it feels you are misguided. Sighted listening with things we know better like amps, and DACs needs no ability for us to test it blind or design it by now without listening. Psycho-acoustics in time determined what is audible and not with electronics. There is no need to claim that DAC blind tests only have relevance if we can hear the difference sighted. That does not even make any sense.

Okay restated:

We don't need to hear amps or DACs differently sighted for designing them according to known limits of our hearing or to results of blind tests. You don't require such things to be audibly different sighted for this to be so. There is no need to claim that DAC blind tests only have relevance if we can hear the difference sighted.

I did not watch/listen to the videos.

Even amps can be audible, like SETs. Each one I've heard is a clown-house level of coloration. Some still like them and yes you can hear it blind and sighted. Over time we might sometimes hear differences in amps as they were better, but not perfect (push-pull tubes). I think with those you would be in position where sighted bias might overwhelm or make random how those were ranked vs hearing them in a blind listening comparison. I would not say that if sighted listening bias overwhelmed one's opinion that it was foolish to continue improving the amps by finding out what helped in blind listening. Because eventually, amps improved enough you cannot hear them as sonically different. Yet some people insist or even revel in hearing differences that are only bias unrelated to performance. That is why I think it is illogical to insist speaker blind testing is not applicable because bias scrambles the evaluation sighted vs hearing only the sound. There is a path to improve. The spinorama measurement has become a standard.

I'd would like a chance to do the Harman listening with a panel or two and a couple of their better speakers to see which I would pick. I've fooled people before when I had a pair of Soundlabs and Hales Signature Two speakers side by side in room. Stereophile measurements indicate the Hales have a smooth off axis response (probably a little too much treble from the looks of it). They were very solidly built and didn't have any resonance I don't think. I used a Tact to measure and EQ the Hales to match the Soundlab Aura's. Twice I had friends come in and listen to an album or more. Only to ask them which speakers they thought they were hearing. Both said the Soundlabs, but it was the Hales. I would never have thought that possible. Especially the first time it was a freaky experience. I believe you have some Hales, would have guess that would be the result?
 
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Note I've bolded your use of the term "purely from a SONIC standpoint."

Everything I'm discussing is tied in to what one means by that. Would you mean from the "sonic standpoint" of the objective facts, measurable, about the sound waves? Or from the "sonic standpoint" in terms of what a listener will actually hear - that is, their perception of the sound.

It's both. Humans cannot hear everything that is measurable, but everything that humans can hear can be measured, and the latter includes all of the ways in which domestic rooms and other environments affect the sound waves generated by a speaker.

So when you write of an audiophile selecting a speaker for satisfaction purely from a sonic standpoint, do you mean:

1. Caring only about the actual sonic facts in regard to the sound waves, established by measurements and blind testing?

Or

2. Caring about how the sound as you will actually perceive it when using the speakers?


It's quite clear that most here approach speaker measurements and blind test studies as relevant to #2. That is, we only really care about the "purely sonic" performance of a speaker, established in measurements and blind test studies, insofar as one can expect to perceive that performance when we buy that speaker, listening in sighted conditions. Otherwise, we are right back to the question of "why care about #1 as a guide to buying speakers?" Why care about "accuracy" in a speaker if you will not "accurately perceive" that accuracy in the real use case condition of the speaker?

Because "accuracy" (stated another way: "perfection in reproduction to the source", is a goal, not a reality. Like anything else worth striving for, if you work towards perfection you can achieve high performance (so said an oft-quoted football coach in slightly different words).

The best way to mitigate our biases will be blind testing. But if you can't do that, how do you mitigate your biases in sighted listening?

First of all, by being aware of them. Then, if you can acquiesce to the fact that you have been consciously and unconsciously conditioned in various ways, and then work to understand and blunt the impacts that this has on your ability to formulate opinions and make decisions, then you've already made great progress.

Does this mean that "at first" visual bias will corrupt our perception, but this fades and then our perception of the sound, in sighted conditions, becomes more accurate over time?

Cheers!

It can if you choose for it to. Others are content to maintain different priorities and follow a different path. Lots of these "others" tend to spend a large proportion of their audio system budget on binding posts and interconnects.
 
That’s not what Toole says he was illustrating with that chart. He says the chart illustrates that “what listeners see changes what they (think) they hear.”

Saying that sighted listening changes what you hear (compared to unsighted) is not the same as saying it completely invalidates what you hear in any and all sighted contexts. Such claims are an obvious misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the research ...
 
Saying that sighted listening changes what you hear (compared to unsighted) is not the same as saying it completely invalidates what you hear in any and all sighted contexts. Such claims are an obvious misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the research ...

"Sighted listening changes what we hear" seems more reasonable than "sighted listening completely invalidates what we hear" - because the latter is an absolute statement that leads, as @MattHooper has repeatedly said, to the absurd conclusion that what we hear sighted is totally random and has no bearing at all to measurements, blind listening results, and so on.

But IMHO this seemingly obvious point doesn't get us very far, because "changes" and "invalidates" are not actually opposite or mutually exclusive options we have to choose between. How much or how little sighted changes our hearing - and how much or how little we can know or predict how it changes our hearing - has a direct bearing on how useful or useless sighted listening is, depending on the situation in which we're trying to use our sighted listening to accomplish something.

If sighted listening changes what we hear only subtly, only a little bit, it can nevertheless completely invalidate what we we hear if our purpose in sighted listening is to make very fine distinctions between similar-sounding speakers in order to decide which ones to buy and to live with for the next several years. It's not extreme, or illogical, or against common sense, or an insult to other members' hearing abilities or experiences, to say this.

Along these lines, it strikes me as strange and unrigorous for anyone to assume that if they slightly prefer Speaker A to Speaker B in a sighted listening comparison and happily live with Speaker A for years afterwards, that this means Speaker A is actually more enjoyable to them than Speaker B would have been. It is entirely possible - and IMHO probably the most likely scenario - that Speaker B would have been just as enjoyable to them over the long term had they purchased it. (I am not saying this applies to significant or major perceived preferences - I'm talking about fine details that often drive one's final choice after auditioning and comparing multiple speakers and winnowing it down to 2-3 finalists that you think all sound very good.)

If, on the other hand, our purpose is to compare a bunch of speakers and rule out the ones that are clearly non-starters - can't play loud enough without bass distortion; lack sufficient bass extension; seem to beam at higher frequencies, seem to have goosed "showroom sound" treble - then sighted listening can be very useful indeed, even if it changes what we hear. Similarly, if we happen to be working in sound production and our purpose with sighted listening is to check a soundtrack and communicate to others how we'd like them to tweak it (for more sub-bass impact on an explosion, or for better dialogue clarity, and so on), then sighted listening can also be very useful.

So it's not about how "good" our hearing and brains are (which IMHO is the issue that's really lurking behind some folks' defense of sighted listening here). It's about the purpose for which we're engaging in sighted listening - in other words, it's about in what situations it can be useful.

Finally, I must return again to the crucial fact that our sighted listening is inconsistent with itself, and that this internal inconsistency is greater than many of us like to admit, and less predictable than many of us like to admit. So if you tell the sound engineer to give the explosions more low-end impact and to increase dialogue clarity, I would argue that ideally you should take what they give you and run a quick blind comparison with the original version of the soundtrack to make sure the change you think you're hearing can survive scrutiny from your own hearing apparatus. Conversely, if they give you the tweaked version and you don't hear a difference, it would behoove you to run a quick blind comparison to make sure that your auditory memory of the original is accurate - it's possible the tweaked version does sound different if you compare the two without knowing which is which.

In practical reality it might not be possible to take this step. And if one is very experienced and has a wealth of past projects done in the same workflow with feedback from others and consumers to back it up, then one might reasonably have sufficient confidence in one's sighted listening abilities to feel that the end result will indeed be better - or at least better enough, most of the time - that it's functionally equivalent to checking everything with proper blind tests. Fair enough. But that utility in that kind of situation does not apply across the board to any and all situations in which one might be making sighted comparisons of sound coming out of speakers.
 
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So "sighted bias" only significantly changed the results for a comparatively cheap looking, inadequate seeming (in those days) system. "Sighted bias" did not significantly change the results for similar looking speakers.

This is the result of the Olive-Toole research.
I don't think this is “the best” interpretation of the results. It's important to acknowledge that the only significant finding in this experiment, which can only be confirmed with properly calculated and reported t-statistics and p-values adjusted for the multiple pairwise comparisons of means, is that visual cues seem to enhance the evaluations of speakers A and B. It's worth noting that speakers A and B receive equally favorable evaluations in both blind and sighted conditions, but their evaluations tend to be more positive in the sighted condition. Additionally, I'm uncertain whether the presence of visual cues has a diminishing effect on the evaluation of the subwoofer and satellite combo. While there is a difference in evaluations of this combo across conditions, it remains unclear if this difference is statistically significant. Determining whether means are statistically different from each other cannot be done by eyeballing error intervals. Confidence intervals are related to error but represent distinct concepts. Of course, the computation of appropriate statistics and p-values relies on having (standard) error to do the calculations. Consequently, I am also uncertain if respondents evaluate speakers A and B more positively compared to speakers C and D in the blind condition.
 
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Saying that sighted listening changes what you hear (compared to unsighted) is not the same as saying it completely invalidates what you hear in any and all sighted contexts. Such claims are an obvious misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the research ...
I think everyone, at least on this forum, agrees with the first part of this statement. I am also under the impression that nobody on this forum agrees with the second part of the statement. It is impossible to invalidate a perception, so the second part is a strawman to me. "Perception is reality" as someone says. I would add, it is subjective reality. However, one inescapable conseqence of Olive and Toole's studies is quite simple -- if one wants to judge a pair of speakers just for the sound they make, one should rely on auditory cues only. To paraphrase the title of another book, people are free to enjoy their biases (and in whatever context that rocks their boat).
 
Along these lines, it strikes me as strange and totally unrigorous for anyone to assume that if they slightly prefer Speaker A to Speaker B in a sighted listening comparison and happily live with Speaker A for years afterwards, that this means Speaker A is actually more enjoyable to them than Speaker B would have been. It is entirely possible - and IMHO probably the most likely scenario - that Speaker B would have been just as enjoyable to them over the long term had they purchased it.
The likelihood of this is supported by our adaptation to repeated exposure to stimuli. Over time, the sound of (almost) any speaker system, especially if associated with its visual presence, will become accepted as normal and reference.
 
The likelihood of this is supported by our adaptation to repeated exposure to stimuli. Over time, the sound of (almost) any speaker system, especially if associated with its visual presence, will become accepted as normal and reference.
Plus managing possible post-purchase cognitive dissonance.
 
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