Would you be interested in blind test data?

[2Sunny]

Just wondering if I'm a lone oddball on this issue.

I'm so curious as to whether or not many high end speakers would come out ahead of much cheaper speakers in blind tests that I would happily pay a small fee for such info. I have zero idea how much it would cost to setup a facility that could do regular tests, but I have to think its in the 10s of thousands of dollars versus the 100s of thousands so maybe, just maybe, it would be feasible if enough folks wanted to try setting such an institution up.

I feel like in this day and age of information sharing if we could save people from spending $10k on new speakers when it turns out $5k speakers sound just as good according to blind testing than that would be a worthwhile goal.

Am I nuts or do other folks have similar thoughts?

 

[Chrispy]

Maybe Harman/Samsung would rent out their facility setup for such. Then you'd need a pretty good number of participants as well as speakers to test. Could get pretty pricey. Especially if you built ground-up. Would a gofundme type thing be able to gather such funding?

 

[Timcognito]

Just wondering if I'm a lone oddball on this issue.

I'm so curious as to whether or not many high end speakers would come out ahead of much cheaper speakers in blind tests that I would happily pay a small fee for such info. I have zero idea how much it would cost to setup a facility that could do regular tests, but I have to think its in the 10s of thousands of dollars versus the 100s of thousands so maybe, just maybe, it would be feasible if enough folks wanted to try setting such an institution up.

I feel like in this day and age of information sharing if we could save people from spending $10k on new speakers when it turns out $5k speakers sound just as good according to blind testing than that would be a worthwhile goal.

Am I nuts or do other folks have similar thoughts?

There are lots of variables that need controlling in blind testing and recruiting subjects that are matched, otherwise groups get large in number. Also there is no universal control or standard just B is better than A or C. So what happens when D come along a month later. I worked in medical devices and my projects were often in clinical studies which had standard practice or drugs as a control so there was an existing database for defined outcomes. The data Amir and others provide is a de facto standard that Toole, Olive and others linked objective data to audible outcomes. Also most expensive speaker manufacturers don't like being shown up by competitors with low price tags so the price to get them tested is not low. And even with data there are personal subjective preferences just like any other commodity.

 

[2Sunny]

There are lots of variables that need controlling in blind testing and recruiting subjects that are matched, otherwise groups get large in number. Also there is no universal control or standard just B is better than A or C. So what happens when D come along a month later. I worked in medical devices and my projects were often in clinical studies which had standard practice or drugs as a control so there was an existing database for defined outcomes. The data Amir and others provide is a de facto standard that Toole, Olive and others linked objective data to audible outcomes. Also most expensive speaker manufacturers don't like being shown up by competitors with low price tags so the price to get them tested is not low. And even with data there are personal subjective preferences just like any other commodity.

No doubt the list of potential issues that folks could point to as being potential pitfalls with such tests would be large. In some ways I think that would be beneficial to the idea because speaker manufacturers might be more willing to get involved knowing they could point to the limitations of said testing if they weren't happy with the results. As I envision it though I see a group of low priced speakers coming out of an initial round of tests that would set a baseline against which more expensive speakers could be tested going forward and whether or not a speaker manufacturer was willing to send in test speakers would be one added element for buyers to consider.

 

[Timcognito]

No doubt the list of potential issues that folks could point to as being potential pitfalls with such tests would be large. In some ways I think that would be beneficial to the idea because speaker manufacturers might be more willing to get involved knowing they could point to the limitations of said testing if they weren't happy with the results. As I envision it though I see a group of low priced speakers coming out of an initial round of tests that would set a baseline against which more expensive speakers could be tested going forward and whether or not a speaker manufacturer was willing to send in test speakers would be one added element for buyers to consider.

I'll bet that's going on at Elac, KEF and others. I think the expensive boutique speaker guys are not looking for a high volume mass market offerings, just like Ferrari and Maserati. Part of their perceived value is exclusivity. Many do not use Klippel scanners at all.