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

ahofer

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How about; "It's impossible to express yourself and avoid having it twisted by some troll, somewhere." ? Jim

he’s a super nice guy AFAICT, but he went off the rails a bit on that one. As we’ve experienced here: Most of us understand bias is implicit in humans and we can’t avoid it. But some folks haven’t encountered the research at all, find the idea profoundly disconcerting and sort of automatically view it as an insult. Especially if their business demands they claim otherwise.

Found the quote. It’s Karl Popper:



“Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.”
 
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The only wholesale rejection I see here is claims that are asserted as facts yet unsupported with evidence.

I agree, but many people simply coming to an audio hobbyist forum to discuss with others may not expect to be hammered by demands they set up a test lab in their living room. If they balk at that, the floodgates open on here and it certainly doesn’t appear entirely good-natured.

It doesn’t seem to be just me and a handful of folks posting in this thread ( and others across this board where you see a poster start a thread and it ends with them stating they won’t be back...) that notice this.

but I’ve said my piece, and I appreciate the response and alternate POVs.
 

GDK

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many people simply coming to an audio hobbyist forum to discuss with others may not expect to be hammered by demands they set up a test lab in their living room.
I agree, but I think that people posting without taking some time to get to know the community first is poor form.

It’s like walking into a stranger’s home, opening up their fridge and then complaining that they don’t have anything that you like to eat.o_O
 

Emlin

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I agree, but I think that people posting without taking some time to get to know the community first is poor form.

It’s like walking into a stranger’s home, opening up their fridge and then complaining that they don’t have anything that you like to eat.o_O

Worse than that, they tell you that they have somehow intuited that using the supplied mains cable is bad, even though the measured temperature is the same as that of their own fridge.
 

Inner Space

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I agree, but many people simply coming to an audio hobbyist forum to discuss with others may not expect to be hammered by demands they set up a test lab in their living room. If they balk at that, the floodgates open on here and it certainly doesn’t appear entirely good-natured.

I'm sorry you feel that way - but the responses aren't really bad natured. They're just ... weary and exasperated. Was it @sergeauckland who said it's like yet another someone coming on a fairly advanced aeronautics forum, and saying, hey guys, I can flap my arms and fly?

The "demands" for "test labs in their living rooms" are a way of saying, no, you can't flap your arms and fly, because if you tried, you'd fail.

There are plenty of other forums where you can get together and talk feverish fantasy. We're not exactly depriving anyone of their human rights in preferring mature discussion in this one rare place.
 

sergeauckland

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I'm sorry you feel that way - but the responses aren't really bad natured. They're just ... weary and exasperated. Was it @sergeauckland who said it's like yet another someone coming on a fairly advanced aeronautics forum, and saying, hey guys, I can flap my arms and fly?

The "demands" for "test labs in their living rooms" are a way of saying, no, you can't flap your arms and fly, because if you tried, you'd fail.

There are plenty of other forums where you can get together and talk feverish fantasy. We're not exactly depriving anyone of their human rights in preferring mature discussion in this one rare place.
It wasn't me, but I wish I had. Weary and exasperated is right, though.

I don't contribute to most other audio forums as their entire ethos is 'trust your ears, science doesn't know everything and all opinions are equally valid.'

What's the point of posting there? Similarly, unless somebody has a genuine query, which they have taken the trouble to investigate, and now would like some help with, there's no point posting their experiences of cable lifters here.



S
 

Jimbob54

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I'm sorry you feel that way - but the responses aren't really bad natured. They're just ... weary and exasperated. Was it @sergeauckland who said it's like yet another someone coming on a fairly advanced aeronautics forum, and saying, hey guys, I can flap my arms and fly?

The "demands" for "test labs in their living rooms" are a way of saying, no, you can't flap your arms and fly, because if you tried, you'd fail.

There are plenty of other forums where you can get together and talk feverish fantasy. We're not exactly depriving anyone of their human rights in preferring mature discussion in this one rare place.

Yup- you can see little pockets of nonsense springing up even on ASR. One person says how (superflous) device X has transformed their listening- night and day differences. Someone else validates this view and within the page or 2 people are saying how they are going to order one to solve problems they never knew existed. Without wishing to sound like some kind of fascist- that kind of talk IMO should be challenged.
 

ahofer

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krabapple

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I've heard this objection a number of times. I think it is a more reasonable objection to the controls of double-blind than most others.There have been a number of tests that allowed listener's to take as much time as they like, and kept the observers out of the room to counteract that effect.

Every ABX anyone has ever done using the foobar plugin fits that description.
 

krabapple

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If someone does a DBT of two DACs that measure so accurate that they sound the same, but fails to properly volume level them and feels they sound different, you don't attribute it to a perceptual bias?


No. I'd attribute *preference* (typically for the louder one) to standard perceptual bias.
 

krabapple

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I envy you. Like quite a few others, I was driven to learning cognitive science/Kahneman et al. in the last few years through stress and desperation. I could not comprehend how 40% of the population appeared to me to be totally insane on quite a variety of topics. A lot of the craziness is amplified by social media silos and the pandemic. This all scared the bejesus, and made me feel quite stupid.

I understand it better now. Humans were not designed to be logical.

Humans were not designed, period. :)
 

Robin L

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DSJR

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he’s a super nice guy AFAICT, but he went off the rails a bit on that one. As we’ve experienced here: Most of us understand bias is implicit in humans and we can’t avoid it. But some folks haven’t encountered the research at all, find the idea profoundly disconcerting and sort of automatically view it as an insult. Especially if their business demands they claim otherwise.

I know the thread and the individuals well, but honestly and as I tried to post in replies there, you need to work with your average audio customer or couple. Results aren't predictable at all, no two people are quite the same, at least at the upper mid to higher audio gear 'level' and tastes in speaker finish and so on vary so very much, making the academic study as discussed there just a little out of whack in my opinion. So easy to be tribal and to follow blindly the guru at the head of the particular forums (here too) and not to question or do research for ones-self. I should bloody know, it took me forty years of subjective evaluation and 'trusting my ears' before I totally fooled myself in an A-B comparison and the 'penny' finally dropped! I'm now all but ex-communicated from many of my former forum haunts because I'm too darned objective, as Serge has found and mentioned in a recent post (maybe it's the county in which we live, I don't know :D ).
 

ahofer

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Every ABX anyone has ever done using the foobar plugin fits that description.

The other question is why there is pressure unsighted that is absent sighted. Few seem to take the step and realize it is because it turns out to be difficult? And why, exactly, is that?
 

ahofer

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making the academic study as discussed there just a little out of whack in my opinion
Yeah, that was why I pointed out that while I could design a better way to audition products, it was totally unrealistic from both a market structure and consumer preference point of view.
 

sergeauckland

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The other question is why there is pressure unsighted that is absent sighted. Few seem to take the step and realize it is because it turns out to be difficult? And why, exactly, is that?

What has annoyed me many times is the logic failure in those that deny the validity of a blind test because ' I can clearly hear the difference sighted, but can't when tested blind, therefore the blind test is wrong.' There's too much stress in a blind test, (because I'm afraid I'll get it wrong and my credibility will suffer). Blind testing isn't how people use HiFi, I need weeks to decide which I prefer and so on.

If something is so bloody similar that it takes weeks to decide, even sighted, does it matter which? They're the same, just buy the prettiest.

S.
 

raistlin65

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What has annoyed me many times is the logic failure in those that deny the validity of a blind test because ' I can clearly hear the difference sighted, but can't when tested blind, therefore the blind test is wrong.' There's too much stress in a blind test, (because I'm afraid I'll get it wrong and my credibility will suffer). Blind testing isn't how people use HiFi, I need weeks to decide which I prefer and so on.

If something is so bloody similar that it takes weeks to decide, even sighted, does it matter which? They're the same, just buy the prettiest.

S.

I really think many of the stress arguments about DBT are bad faith arguments. I find it really hard to believe that anybody is overly stressed by that. Just seems like something many people put forward to discredit DBT.

Well, other than the internal stress that goes on when one has to confront that their beliefs are wrong. There might be a few who experience that.
 

rdenney

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What has annoyed me many times is the logic failure in those that deny the validity of a blind test because ' I can clearly hear the difference sighted, but can't when tested blind, therefore the blind test is wrong.' There's too much stress in a blind test, (because I'm afraid I'll get it wrong and my credibility will suffer). Blind testing isn't how people use HiFi, I need weeks to decide which I prefer and so on.

If something is so bloody similar that it takes weeks to decide, even sighted, does it matter which? They're the same, just buy the prettiest.

S.
Abso-freaking-lutely. This is a point I have made many times in many contexts.

And I have learned it the hard way, over and over. Just one example: I owned a very nice, hand-made B&S Symphonie F tuba (the smaller tubas that I use mostly for chamber music), from the first generation of those instruments made in the GDR before unification. It was beautiful. But the dang fifth-valve branch was too short and the fingering patterns were too much different from what my hand wanted to do as a result. And it only had five valves, which was adequate for an F tuba but that sixth valve does provide some interesting capabilities.

Comes my way some years after buying that tuba: A newer six-valve version from the last generation of those instruments made right around the time of unification. It had nearly all of the best features, plus the sixth valve and a fifth-valve branch that was long enough. But it lacked the hand-work detailing of the earlier model. I played both for a couple of weeks. I lost sleep over it, and enlisted the opinion of far better players than myself who politely avoided saying the obvious, "it doesn't matter Rick, you suck on either one." My wife liked the older one because it was prettier (subtly but undeniably so) and it definitely had more historical interest. I thought I could detect a slightly greater singing quality with the older one, but then the newer one was easier to play because of the added valve and tubing.

Biases abound and from all directions.

After two weeks, one good friend blew away all the angst: If you can't decide after two weeks of going back and forth, the difference just isn't that important. Choose one. The decision was easy after that: Playability, which directly impacts whether I can easily play the right pitch in tune, trumps ethereal qualities that I can't put my finger on.

This isn't like the larger sum of money I spent for my big B-flat tuba that I use for large ensembles. (Actually, for both my big tubas.) I played one note, heard what bounced down from the 20' ceiling in that room, and knew I would buy it. No angst, just figuring out how to put the money together. That was much more sensible: It's worth spending the money for a big effect that is obvious, but those are not the effects that require poetry. It may not be worth spending the money on subtleties so fine that we are afraid to subject them to controlled testing.

Do people need to spend money so badly that they will focus endlessly on fine effects while completely ignoring gross effects?

Yes.

Rick "not innocent of this self-delusional imperative" Denney
 
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rdenney

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I really think many of the stress arguments about DBT are bad faith arguments. I find it really hard to believe that anybody is overly stressed by that. Just seems like something many people put forward to discredit DBT.

Well, other than the internal stress that goes on when one has to confront that their beliefs are wrong. There might be a few who experience that.
Hmmm. Well, for me, blind testing is exhausting, requiring layers of concentration on details I don't normally care much about. That does not make it unrealistic, though, because if I can hear them with conscious attention, I will also hear them when thinking about other things, I just won't formulate a conscious reaction to it. We are often bothered by things we don't dig deeply enough to understand.

Blind testing is also judgmental in ways most of us find uncomfortable. Whatever we think of our perceptual ability is getting put to the implacable test.

That in no way tempts me to discredit it, beyond the usual warning (mostly to myself) that hearing a difference does not mean one is better than the other. Detecting the difference is necessary but not sufficient to formulating a preference.

What I do think are often bad-faith arguments are the claims that the differences are noticeable and profound, made by people who don't actually hear the difference but (in the most charitable case) assume it's their own lack of ability or sophistication and therefore choose not to own up to it.

Rick "data driven, but not always happily so" Denney
 
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