Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...

[David Harper]

A long time ago I seem to remember reading that Julian Hirsch ( founder of "Stereo Review) arranged a demonstration in which a group of audiophiles were invited to audition a high-end system. Mark Levinson amp, Audio Research , Linn Sondek TT with some overpriced cartridge that I don't remember, a very expensive system back in the day (approx. 40 years ago). After they listened and responded with unbridled praise for the sound quality Hirsch revealed to them that they had actually been listening to a Pioneer receiver. They were furious. They said that they had been tricked. Hirsch was famous for his claim that all properly designed amps sound the same.

 

[BluesDaddy]

A long time ago I seem to remember reading that Julian Hirsch ( founder of "Stereo Review) arranged a demonstration in which a group of audiophiles were invited to audition a high-end system. Mark Levinson amp, Audio Research , Linn Sondek TT with some overpriced cartridge that I don't remember, a very expensive system back in the day (approx. 40 years ago). After they listened and responded with unbridled praise for the sound quality Hirsch revealed to them that they had actually been listening to a Pioneer receiver. They were furious. They said that they had been tricked. Hirsch was famous for his claim that all properly designed amps sound the same.

I recall Stereo Review set up a blind testing of amps and, I think, receivers of various price points and no one could identify a difference, much less which they preferred, on a statistically significant basis. I think the episode you're recounting was Bob Carver who claimed he could make his amp sound like any of the "high end" stuff. Sterophile has what I would guess is a fairly skewed recounting of it still up online. Julian Hirsch was roundly mocked by the subjectivist camp but was never refuted. I miss when audio magazines had integrity.

 

[David Harper]

I recall Stereo Review set up a blind testing of amps and, I think, receivers of various price points and no one could identify a difference, much less which they preferred, on a statistically significant basis. I think the episode you're recounting was Bob Carver who claimed he could make his amp sound like any of the "high end" stuff. Sterophile has what I would guess is a fairly skewed recounting of it still up online. Julian Hirsch was roundly mocked by the subjectivist camp but was never refuted. I miss when audio magazines had integrity.

you may be right my memory is vague about this episode.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi and welcome.
Firstly I suspect it may be hundreds rather than millions, there are not that many hifi enthusiasts who like doing that sort of test IME!

As far as I know there has yet to be a single controlled comparison published anywhere in the world showing what you assert.

There have been lots of friendly "bake offs" where friends compare things - I have been to several myself, but not in any sort of rigorous way and with mixed results IME.
The main problem is usually time from one "listen" to the next, and the difficulty of matching levels to 0.1dB for many enthusiasts who do not have the equipment required to do it, and often don't realise how easily the results change if this is not done. It is not just a question of swapping components and then listening, which is often all that is done.

One of my aquaintances bought some very expensive silver speaker cables after a demo at his dealer sufficiently amazed by how much better they were to pay thousands for them.
He is an academic and when his nephew asked if he could borrow them for an experiment, effectively some measurements followed by a a blind level matched listening test, as part of his physics studies he was glad to oblige. He went along to the listening test himself firstly expecting everybody to be amazed and confirm his earlier comparison and secondly to discover why.
To his shock and amazement, and believe me he was shocked, he heard no difference either with a level matched blind comparison although, as he said later, he was 100% sure there was a big gain from them when he first compared.

As far as different components in a device is concerned this is easy to be rational about. The only link between hifi components is between input and output connectors, so if one measures the changes at the output connector whatever is happening inside, be it due to components, pcb layout etc will all be revealed in the measurements.
If we measure the output the signal will have has amplitude, frequency and phase. There is nothing else.
We can measure these to a level better than human hearing, small hum effects of pcb layout or cable dressing, for example, which are too low to be audible but we see on the measurement.
If there is no change in the output of a level that is detectable by human hearing (and distortion audibility level is debated still) then the component can not actually sound different, any differences heard by a listener are probably placebo effect or non matched levels.

Have you seen this 8 year old level matched blind comparison?

https://www.audio-forums.com/articles/interconnect-cable-blind-listening-test.15/

Thanks Frank!

The emphasis is mine... People! Please read the article,
this one is golden. It made my day. please read before ...

Spoiler

View attachment 124786

 

[Blumlein 88]

I recall Stereo Review set up a blind testing of amps and, I think, receivers of various price points and no one could identify a difference, much less which they preferred, on a statistically significant basis. I think the episode you're recounting was Bob Carver who claimed he could make his amp sound like any of the "high end" stuff. Sterophile has what I would guess is a fairly skewed recounting of it still up online. Julian Hirsch was roundly mocked by the subjectivist camp but was never refuted. I miss when audio magazines had integrity.

I think Stereophiles recounting is rather honest and unskewed. Carver did the same thing with a Mark Levinson amp as the goal for another publication. For Stereophile the target was a larger C-J tube amp.

 

[Audiotestsystem]

Ok...on to other threads now.

 

[Robin L]

I think Stereophiles recounting is rather honest and unskewed. Carver did the same thing with a Mark Levinson amp as the goal for another publication. For Stereophile the target was a larger C-J tube amp.

The Carver Challenge | Stereophile.com

 

[Harmonie]

Please don't! Let the argument continue, because once this thread is closed, people will restart the argument elsewhere. Which will be closed as well, pointing to this thread. Eventually all discussion about this topic will be closed. Talking about the "Golden Ears" vs ABX/double blind will eventually become taboo. There clearly is a lot to be said by many people.

If you don't like the discussion, just ignore it.

You are 100% correct about these threads to reborn elsewhere (unfortunately) ....

It's not about ignoring it, I do follow the first pages and then I jump a few; it's just too much.

 

[audiophile]

Michael Fremer claims that he was the only participant who passed a double-blind listening test that compared amplifiers, but was called a "lucky coin" by the organizers

A "Golden Ear" or a "Lucky Coin"?
Editor: I've been called many things in my job as an equipment and music reviewer, but "lucky coin" ("Letters," May 1989) is by far the most aggravating. I confronted David "all amplifiers sound the same" Clark at the June 1988 CES and told him that I could hear differences among amplifiers and, furthermore, that anyone who couldn't ought not be reviewing them. He countered that unless I could demonstrate my ability in a double-blind test, my assertion was groundless.

When he called a few months later asking if I'd organize a double-blind test at the AES, I jumped at the opportunity. I worked long and hard, with help from many people in the audio community, to set up a test that would satisfy the measurement freaks, and I believe we did. I took my own test just once (like every other participant) with David Clark in the room, and scored five out of five correct identifications. Not only did I correctly identify "same or different," I volunteered which amp was which and got that right four out of five times as well.

Good enough? No. Statistically insignificant, I was told by the dominant Dr. Stanley Lipshitz wing of the AES. "Lucky coin," I'm called by reader Dayton. There's no satisfying those lacking discerning ears. They call it science. I call it jealousy...—Michael Fremer,

Blind Listening Letters | Stereophile

 

[MarkS]

IMO, objectivists (and I am one) do themselves no favors by insisting on ABX testing, or by claiming (though correctly!) that measurements trump listening. If the goal is to convince a subjectivist, you have to do it on their terms.

A subjectivist believes "my system sounds better with Component A than it does with Component B", where "component" could be a cable, an amp, whatever.

So a subjectivist-valid blind test would be to listen at leisure and at length, not knowing whether A or B was in the system, always starting with the volume at zero (and turning it up by ear), then deciding which component it was. Then do this multiple times, over days, weeks, or months.

Of course this is difficult in practice (you need someone to do the swap and then hide it well enough), but hardly impossible if a listener is truly interested in learning whether or not they can really hear the difference.

I find Fremer's 5 out of 5 ABX score intriguing. The probability that this was pure chance is 1/2^5 = 1/32. But if had come back the next day and had done it again, the pure-chance probability would have been 1/2^10 = 1/1024. And if he did it yet again the day after that, the pure-chance probability would have been 1/2^15 = 1/32,768. Now I'd be pretty darn convinced that he was indeed hearing a difference!

Of course Fremer quit after 5 tries, and declared victory. Which shows me that he was not interested in learning whether or not he was indeed just a "lucky coin".

 

[audiophile]

Now I'd be pretty darn convinced that he was indeed hearing a difference!

I bet you would not. You'd probably point out some issue with how the test itself was conducted or lack of proper documentation or some other excuse

 

[sergeauckland]

I bet you would not. You'd probably point out some issue with how the test itself was conducted or lack of proper documentation or some other excuse

My problem with the likes of Fremer reporting anything, is the lack of independent corroboration, so even if he claimed to have done 10x in a row, I wouldn't believe it.

Anyone serious about this sort of thing should/would commission an independent panel, as Quad did when they commissioned James Moir & Associates to investigate amplifiers sounding different.

S

 

[MarkS]

I'm assuming Fremer's results were witnessed.

I'm a true objectivist. If Fremer could reliably tell which amp he was listening to, I would then look for the cause through thorough measurement. If I couldn't find it, I would want to make slight build changes to the amps to see which resulted in the difference Fremer was hearing. Provided I could secure Fremer's continued cooperation, it would be very exciting to find a new dimension in sound reproduction!

 

[audiophile]

My problem with the likes of Fremer reporting anything, is the lack of independent corroboration, so even if he claimed to have done 10x in a row, I wouldn't believe it.

He mentioned Dr. Stanley Lipshitz from AES and David Clark, who organized the testing and pronounced him a "lucky coin" as a result – I guess those two people could confirm his words.

 

[sergeauckland]

He mentioned Dr. Stanley Lipshitz from AES and David Clark, who organized the testing and pronounced him a "lucky coin" as a result – I guess those two people could confirm his words.

I did write the 'likes of Fremer' rather than Fremer specifically. My complaint is that claims made in magazines and now on-line are seldom conducted with rigour and independently verified. Even this particular test, which seems to have been done rigorously, wasn't continued such as to get a statistically significant result.

But then it's not in anyone's interest, financial or reputational, to prove this one way or the other as continuing to sell stuff (including advertising) depends on people continuing to believe differences exist.

S

 

[ahofer]

I recall Stereo Review set up a blind testing of amps and, I think, receivers of various price points and no one could identify a difference, much less which they preferred, on a statistically significant basis. I think the episode you're recounting was Bob Carver who claimed he could make his amp sound like any of the "high end" stuff. Sterophile has what I would guess is a fairly skewed recounting of it still up online. Julian Hirsch was roundly mocked by the subjectivist camp but was never refuted. I miss when audio magazines had integrity.

That was January 1987, and you can find the old issues here: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/HiFI-Stereo-Review.htm

Here’s Jan 1987. The amp test is on page 80, but there’s also a letter about ABX on page 8: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archi...iFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1987-01.pdf

That article was a turning point for me. I was just getting an income of my own to blow on hifi gear. Like many others, I was sort of upset to read it, but it stuck in my mind. I had more or less the same setup from 1991-2018, so I didn’t think about it much. But then I went shopping and it all came up again. By this time, I could use the internet to see if that sort of testing had been replicated...and here I am.

 

[audiophile]

Here’s Jan 1987. The amp test is on page 80, but there’s also a letter about ABX on page 8: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archi...iFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1987-01.pdf

Oh, it's the same David Clark, who tested Fremer at CES one year later

 

[ahofer]

Oh, it's the same David Clark, who tested Fremer at CES one year later

Yes - if you read the letter on Page 8 it references some blind cable and CD player tests in other issues, also run by Clark.

 

[BluesDaddy]

My problem with the likes of Fremer reporting anything, is the lack of independent corroboration, so even if he claimed to have done 10x in a row, I wouldn't believe it.

Anyone serious about this sort of thing should/would commission an independent panel, as Quad did when they commissioned James Moir & Associates to investigate amplifiers sounding different.

S

Precisely. Self-reporting without corroboration from those who conducted the test is as meaningless as "my wife came in from the kitchen and asked what I did" claims.

 

[BluesDaddy]

That was January 1987, and you can find the old issues here: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/HiFI-Stereo-Review.htm

Here’s Jan 1987. The amp test is on page 80, but there’s also a letter about ABX on page 8: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archi...iFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1987-01.pdf

That article was a turning point for me. I was just getting an income of my own to blow on hifi gear. Like many others, I was sort of upset to read it, but it stuck in my mind. I had more or less the same setup from 1991-2018, so I didn’t think about it much. But then I went shopping and it all came up again. By this time, I could use the internet to see if that sort of testing had been replicated...and here I am.

Thanks for that. I held on to that issue for a long time but it eventually got tossed in a move. My father was a subscriber to Stereo Review and Audio for as long as I can remember when I was growing up, so my formative hi-fi years were largely influenced by those magazines. I subscribed myself upon graduation from college and continued through Stereo Review's myriad of changes until it finally became little more than an ad rag. I still prefer paper to read, though magazines tend to use print a little small for my comfort in recent years. But I'm not aware of any audio related magazine worth subscribing to.