An interesting experiment

[MajorFubar]

Can we come to an agreement, whereby if anyone resurrects this darn thread again, the men with the electrodes will visit the poster's house and send five million Volts up his EDITED.

 

[steve_1979]

Why?

An experiment showing how expection bias can effect how we hear things would make an interesting and informative article for your readers?

<snipped>

Prof, (c) is a very good point and it not what any magazine would want to get involved in, why would they? Maybe if they wanted to shoot themselfs in the foot.

Personally i think it should be done within the forum, as i put earlier in the thread. I do think abx testing has flaws, which to be credible shouldn't have. If it was 100% acurate all the time it may be taken more seriously. This is why (a) i dont really believe in it and (b) i dont really believe in it.

It doesn't matter what magazine is approached - absolutely none would be stupid enough to risk the whole HiFi bubble bursting if there was any risk that such ideas as all well-made interconnects, similarly spec'd products etc sounded the same. Although a number of people do believe this, I'd bet that ABX testing would "prove" it. I share your scepticism that ABX testing is fairly pointless but I cannot come up with any convincing reasons why. It seems perfectly logical that the shorter the period of time we compare segments of tests the better but is it? Is long term memory where our brains are intuitively continuing to remember these niceties are actually more reliable? It would be rather interesting (to me, at least) if some differences are proved to exist but are so small that spending huge amounts of money obtaining then actually appreciating them becomes pointless to all but the excessively rich.

Maybe not quite in the same league but heavier than air flight was considered to be imposible to the point that only nutty people would persist in trying such folly. So I doff my cap to anyone who persists in asking those more difficult questions which may not be possible to answer but still need to be asked again & again. Does anyone know if minds haven't been changed by such repetition or are just assuming so? Is it not easy enough to ignore such threads? It just seems that the same people have to throw in their less than complimentary remarks ad naseum every time such questions are asked.

Indeed.

I think you've got your quotes a bit mixed up there. I didn't say some of the stuff in that quote box with my name on it.

Just for the record - While I agree that ABX tests do have some limitations, they are a scientifically valid method to use in some situations.

 

[DavieCee]

Just to add my tuppence. It's a small subjective sample and only an opinion but anyway........

Lossless v 320kbps v 256 kbps is very hard to come to a conclusion but I would rather know that I have the best source available to cut out any doubts. I can listen to music at 128kbps but if you listen to bass notes they start to get loose & wooly at 192 kbps and are annoying by the time you get to 128kbps.

For background music it is a non-issue.