Trust your ears?

[randytsuch]

I don't know how to respond to someone who tells me NOT to trust my ears for evaluating an audio system?

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendors- ... ost4541984

I felt sorry for the op, which is why I posted in the first place, but I'm not going to argue with some idiot over there.

[Aleg]

I always wonder if your bias is negative, will it also prevent you from hearing?
If so, it is an absolute nonsense argument, as nobody is unbiased.

[nige2000]

Think its just human nature to have a perceived outcome of any test however when your doing comparable testing any preconceived results become irrelevant
So of yes been bias doesnt stop your ears from working once a fair test has taken place

The op is low hanging fruit

There is few places you won't get and attacked for these sort of things

Here they just think your nuts and for the most part say nothing ;)

[Diapason]

Here they just think your nuts and for the most part say nothing ;)

:)

[randytsuch]

Think its just human nature to have a perceived outcome of any test however when your doing comparable testing any preconceived results become irrelevant
So of yes been bias doesnt stop your ears from working once a fair test has taken place

The op is low hanging fruit

There is few places you won't get and attacked for these sort of things

Here they just think your nuts and for the most part say nothing ;)

I've listened to my system after a change, expecting to hear a big difference, and heard little to no difference, and also the opposite, expected little and heard significant. As long as I can say that, I will consider my judgement to be relatively impartial :)
But I guess that's an advantage to modding and tweaking, you're always making changes, and you need to see if the new change is better, worse, or no change.

And I should have known better than to post that over at diy, but like I said, felt sorry for the op.

So I VERY tempted to ask the other guy to PROVE that wires are NOT directional, and the it will NOT make a difference. Why does the other side always want proof, when they can't produce any proof of their own, other than the its obvious type of proof?

For myself, I'm pretty convinced their are things going on at the molecular level, as the electrons pass through the crystalline grain structure of the wire, but I'm nowhere near qualified to have a theory whats really going on.

Randy

[jkeny]

I always wonder if your bias is negative, will it also prevent you from hearing?
If so, it is an absolute nonsense argument, as nobody is unbiased.

I actually reckon this negative bias is, in fact, a much stronger influence because of the way it is manifest - it's easier to fool yourself when you basically don't listen which I figure is what happens with this particular bias.

It's difficult to pick out differences in what we hear - it takes focus & concentration as well as an openness to being wrong in our pre-conceptions or surprised

It's much less effort to not actually listen & conclude that there is no difference without even realising that we didn't listen

We are all prone to this - think of how many times, in reading, you realise that you haven't actually read the last paragraph although it seemed to you that you did - your mind was rambling off on something else while reading this paragraph. Now picture how much more often this happens with something that you are not interested in i.e. not understanding what's written - it's possible to "read" through a whole article & not actually read it. This may be the concept of "thereness"

There are also other reasons why people don't hear differences - they simply don't know what to listen for as they are often not bothered to hear these differences because they consider them of no consequence. So they are caught in a catch-22 - they have a pre-conceived notion that these differences are of no consequence so they don't bother to ever hear such differences & therefore they don't recognise these differences i.e don't hear them.

A great example of this happened on Pinfishmedia forum where Vital organised 4 audio get-togethers over the course of a year or so - he called them DBI to DBIV, if you are interested in finding them on PFM. His main motivation was to check out if the DACs actual sound different as he hadn't heard it himself but yet read it all the time. So for the first 3 get-togethers, nobody heard any difference, either sighted or blind, between the DACS that were brought along to the sessions (there were a variety of DACs at many price points). The interesting thing began to happen on the 3rd session - some people, who had experience of the differences & therefore weren't negatively biased, could consistently hear differences sighted & blind but Vital wasn't convinced (I think this was in someone else's house?) so his last session, in his own home, with his own system was his final test.

When those people came, who could identify differences, he could then hear these differences consistently both sighted & blind. He still thinks the differences are small but attributes some of his former deafness to blind-testing i.e when not hearing differences in blind testing, it prevented him "actually" hearing these differences he now recognises.

This is one of the reasons I argue against the sort of blind testing we see being demanded as "proof" of actual differences - the default result of such blind testing is a null & this biases people negatively whereby they then don't hear what is there.

[Fran]

John, thats one of the best reasoned and logical explanations I've read in a long time about this. Bravo.

[jkeny]

Thanks Fran, I try my best to make sense of all this :)

For a long time now, I've been asking for such blind tests to prove themselves before any results are considered valid but this is always met with 101 bullshit excuses - "we don't consider null results mean anything" "if someone says it's night & day then it should be simple to hear it blind" "If we need training to hear the differences then it's of no significance"

If these tests had internal controls in them to catch this lack of attention or negative-bias or the numerous other reasons why null results are returned, we would see just how "valid" these tests are. I bet if anyone did a meta-analysis of null ABX results, they would find a statistically significant preponderance of wrong results in the trials at the end of the test rather than at the beginning (people get tired, bored, etc) It only takes a small number of wrong trials to make the overall result no better than random guessing i.e a null result

When challenged the best among them admit to the fact that home-run blind tests are untrustworthy & of no value but then counter with the cognitive dissonant position that they are better than sighted tests - they must be because they remove a known source of bias :). None of them will investigate the psychology of blind testing & just what biasing is introduced by the very test itself - when done in uncontrolled, home tests.

BTW, a lot of this reminds me of the judicial system in the US (sorry if this upsets our US members) - it seems to be premised on the idea that it's better to jail innocents than to allow a guilty person walk free.

[rickmcinnis]

I have found long term listening to a variety of music is the key.

Inevitably, the bad sounding component will make it itself known with enough time.

Most folks want to make a snap decision and these are the one's most prone to falling for the positive and negative aspects of the placebo effect.

I know there are those with super acuity for hearing specific things. I have found they can obsess on this one thing and are able to disregard other errors that others find just as annoying. I think the danger of focusing on a few "special recordings" for making sonic decisions can lead to one-dimensional appraisals. They well could turn out to be right in general in their assessment of the "thing" but not always.

AS one who has all to often leapt to conclusions about changes and components I have found there is much less chance of embarrassment if one takes their time and waits for the component evaluated to drive you crazy. All things will eventually but the bad stuff, once you hear the problem, a day or so away from the system will not make it go away. It will be there every time you listen.

There is no question, though, the best way for your system to sound good to you is to not listen to it for a day or so after some intensive sessions!

All systems will eventually bring on listening fatigue. But when you have it more right than wrong you can enjoy it for a decent interval.

As always a thought provoking post by Mr. Kenny.

I heartily agree with Nigel - shielding always sounds worse, unless you need it. Luckily neither of us do need it. One more reason to not even bother with a music system in the city. Same thing with small signal transformers, remove the shielding and hear a more open sound. Keeping your components out of metal boxes is best if you can get away with it. I think the shielding brings about lots of reflections.

[panda2rom]

I do agree with jkenny :)

And to be absolutly back to topics : trust your ears.
but JUST your ears.

It's pretty obvious visual will lead to bias : i won't talk about cable or small stuff. If you see me turning on a Mcintosh amp VS a plain looking sony, you will be biased.
There is actually a very serious study made on that subject ! Even trained ears are subject to bias, not just the newbs

The most stupid/common bias is about volume.
The louder always win.
So you have to be very carefull about that when doing testing.

Here is the study:

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=6338

And from Roger Russel webiste (that you all should read :P) :

"Floyd Toole presented a paper at the 97th convention of the Audio Engineering Society, November, 1994 titled Hearing is Believing vs. Believing: Blind vs. Sighted Listening Tests, and Other Interesting Things. Floyd originally worked at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada and then went to Harman International Industries, Inc., Northridge, CA. Floyd concludes: “Overall, though, it was clear that the psychological factor of simply revealing the identities of the products altered the preference ratings by amounts that were comparable with any physical factor examined in these tests, including the differences between the products themselves. That an effect of this kind should be observed is not remarkable, nor is it unexpected. What is surprising is that the effect is so strong, and that it applies about equally to experienced and inexperienced listeners.

Since all of this is independent of the sounds arriving at the listeners’ ears, we are led to conclude that, under the circumstances, believing is hearing, The bottom line: if you want to know how a loudspeaker truly sounds, you would be well advised to do the listening tests “blind.”