Audiophiles Who Don't Trust Their Ears...

[JackD201]

Gotta be blind not to see the patterns.

 

[microstrip]

You know Mike, now that you mention the possibility, you have introduced a bias. I will no longer be able to read Keith's posts without experiencing expectation bias.

Most of the time it is the dangerous thing about some audio measurements - they can introduce expectation bias.

 

[bonzo75]

We'll just have to read them blind.

 

[bonzo75]

Most of the time it is the dangerous thing about some audio measurements - they can introduce expectation bias.

Actually, I agree with this. Amir probably turned down auditioning Martin Logans because they measured badly in the Harman tests

 

[amirm]

Actually, I agree with this. Amir probably turned down auditioning Martin Logans because they measured badly in the Harman tests

No, it is the opposite. Never had looked at their measurements and thought they were excellent loudspeakers. Then I heard them in ABCD blind comparison to others and now hear their flaws all the time. The measurements are hugely secondary to that effect.

 

[bonzo75]

No, it is the opposite. Never had looked at their measurements and thought they were excellent loudspeakers. Then I heard them in ABCD blind comparison to others and now hear their flaws all the time. The measurements are hugely secondary to that effect.

I find this with many components that once you start hearing flaws, you hear the flaws more. So after I like some component, I ask around for what weaknesses others have perceived, see if I can hear them, and also try it in different set ups. Sometimes I can hear those weaknesses and they bother me, sometimes not.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Tim, Thank you for your clarification and definition of what is meant by "trusting your ears". I did not interpret the OP in this way.

My question then becomes, why does one want to identify "very small differences"?

Because it is a learning experience. And kind of fun, in a geeky sort of way.

If it is to make a buying decision, my view is pretty simple: If I can not hear the differences between two pieces of electronics, under my normal, sighted evaluation method of auditioning components over a long period of time in my own system, then I decide that it is not worth spending much money to buy the new piece of electronics, be it an amp, preamp or phono amp (electronic component). It is simply a question of value. So in this case, I trust my ears enough to tell me whether or not to buy a component.

Because when it comes to hearing small differences, nothing beats quick switching between the component being tested. Sighted, long or short term, is just not reliable, IMO, and that opinion is confirmed by blind listening. And while you may not do it to make buying decisions, it will probably effect them, because you'll probably find out how vanishingly small the differences are between many components with huge price differences.

For the kinds of things that you are describing (very small differences between electronic components), if I can't hear the very small difference, it doesn't really matter to me whether or not my ears can be trusted, because I will not buy the component.

Exactly. So give blind listening a try and see what you hear when you don't have all of your non-audio biases fully engaged. Again it's a learning experience. You may find that you can't identify differences you thought you heard sighted. You will almost certainly find that differences you thought were obvious are actually very small, and pretty hard to differentiate.

Now, before someone jumps in and starts questioning methology, let me just admit that it was very casual, very unscientific. It proved nothing. But it showed me what I could and could not hear. Two DACs I swore I could hear a difference between became impossible to differentiate when I compared them blind. Two headphone amps I thought were very different were actually reasonably close, and not so easy to ID when I didn't know which one I was listening to. I learned at what bit rate codecs (digital file compression) become more or less transparent to me. But it was not a controlled study and it was not carried to a statistically significant outcome. I proved nothing to anyone but myself. But I really enjoyed it and learned from it. It doesn't matter what can be "proven." But when we're choosing gear, what we, as individuals can actually differentiate is pretty important. Is there a difference between some things I couldn't differentiate? Probably. Would that difference be revealed in controlled testing? Almost certainly. But if it's that small, so small that we can't consistently hear it with our eyes closed, it isn't a difference that matters. MHO. YMMV.

Tim

 

[NorthStar]

NorthStar, I am just curious. Do some posts from members here come across as dishonest to you? This is far off the OP, but I am struck by your comment. Written another way: What is the point of posting in this forum, if not with honesty?

No, not @ all Peter...it's only a simple word...perhaps not the perfect word, but still a word. I think all I read here @ WBF is 100% accurate and honest...accurate as in the eyes of the beholder. So I simply reiterated the word "honesty", for lack of a better word. Please Peter don't assume something out of thin air; keep it simple just as I used a simple qualitative word for my appreciation to all your answers. And sorry that I couldn't find the exact word @ the time..."straight-to-the-point" would have been preferable perhaps.

* I also used the word "honesty" with you because it applies to you @ the highest level. Everyone is honest, everyone is open-minded, some more than others, that's all...they register on various levels...depending on how we read and interpret what our ears and eyes can decode. :b
I think you overreacted by looking @ the opposite side...not what I said...not what I intended to say...didn't even cross my mind that some folks can be dishonest, even if what they hear is not the full picture. And besides, how many music recordings are there that fully capture the live essence?
Most of them (the vast majority) are manipulated after the real fact, embellished, compressed, volume level adjusted, equalized, balanced, dynamically corrected, etc. ... and that's what our ears are hearing...non-constant, incoherence, fabricated, antiseptic, phased dis-alignment, speed variables, going into the red, and all the flaws of most music recordings from most media.

Oh yes, some sound subliminal...putting us in trance and make of us true believers. The more accurate your system setup the more revelator of all the music recording flaws and the more we fly away from them and in search of a better musical world...it starts with the quality music recordings of the music we love, and tweaking our gear around them...I believe some setups are better @ Blues, others a Chamber Classical music, others @ Rock and Heavy Metal and RAP, others @ New Age/Alternative, ...Electronica, Jazz, Vocals, Chorals, Organ, Operas, World...Tango, Flamenco, Samba, Salsa, African, full Orchestral, ...

I've read here in the past that a good loudspeaker should reproduce all music genres equally well. Well, it just ain't so from the stand-point of my ears.
They can say that to themselves or whoever else want to believe them...I'm just not buying. ...Even if the pair of loudspeakers are Magico or Wilson Audio or Revel or any other ultra high-end brand from Italy, Germany, France, ...anywhere.

But who wants to have six or seven different listening rooms in their home for all the various music genre they like.
No, common sense let us pick one or three pairs and we play with that, and we develop our own listening style, with a more concentrated music genre we like the most. We balance things for our set of ears in our rooms; we learn to live with it and appreciate it and be happy. And we also learn to trust our ears for what they tell us is totally honest. ...In tandem with our brain. And some days we are more predisposed than others...our ears and brain are more relaxed and ready to perform optimally.

 

[PeterA]

No, not @ all Peter...it's only a simple word...perhaps not the perfect word, but still a word. I think all I read here @ WBF is 100% accurate and honest...accurate as in the eyes of the beholder. So I simply reiterated the word "honesty", for lack of a better word. Please Peter don't assume something out of thin air; keep it simple just as I used a simple qualitative word for my appreciation to all your answers. And sorry that I couldn't find the exact word @ the time..."straight-to-the-point" would have been preferable perhaps.

* I also used the word "honesty" with you because it applies to you @ the highest level. Everyone is honest, everyone is open-minded, some more than others, that's all.

Thank you NorthStar. I like the word "candor" to describe such things. It conveys forthrightness which I find refreshing in most conversations. Clarity also helps. Audio prose often lacks this clarity which is perhaps one reason that measurements and precise descriptive language is welcome by so many. The challenge arises when one is struck by the utter beauty of the music convincingly portrayed by the most effective audio systems. How does one convey that emotional experience to someone who was not there to hear it?

 

[microstrip]

No, it is the opposite. Never had looked at their measurements and thought they were excellent loudspeakers. Then I heard them in ABCD blind comparison to others and now hear their flaws all the time. The measurements are hugely secondary to that effect.

We all have different ways of listening. It is curious that you seem to be mainly listening for flaws. When I listen to speakers in an appropriate system I listen mainly to the excellent and exceptional aspects of their performance and if they suit me I am prepared to forgive some aspects where the competition sounds better.

 

[microstrip]

I find this with many components that once you start hearing flaws, you hear the flaws more. (...)

I agree with you. If I really find flaws in a component (perhaps sometimes unfairly, I recognise) I immediately forget about it - we have so much excellent equipment around, why insisting on something that did not appeal to me?

 

[NorthStar]

Thank you NorthStar. I like the word "candor" to describe such things. It conveys forthrightness which I find refreshing in most conversations. Clarity also helps. Audio prose often lacks this clarity which is perhaps one reason that measurements and precise descriptive language is welcome by so many. The challenge arises when one is struck by the utter beauty of the music convincingly portrayed by the most effective audio systems. How does one convey that emotional experience to someone who was not there to hear it?

Thank you; "candor" it is then. :b ...Sorry for my French limited heritage...not easy to think and dream in another language than the one we have the most expertise with.

It's funny sometimes what our brain can interpret of just a simple word, viewed on the total opposite of its meaning, and associated to the person who used it.
Yes, "candor" instead of "honesty"...that'll do it. ..."Forthrightness" ?

 

[Yuri Korzunov]

Most of the time it is the dangerous thing about some audio measurements - they can introduce expectation bias.

Agree. If measure and after listen

 

[PeterA]

Most of the time it is the dangerous thing about some audio measurements - they can introduce expectation bias.

Yes. If one sees frequency responses of two speakers, and one appears flatter than the other, will that not introduce a bias when later listening to those two speakers, unsighted or otherwise? What about the amplifier with a lower distortion measurement or different Class A bias rating? I would think that that would also influence the way one thinks about the components when trying to hear differences.

I would think to be consistent with controlled unsighted testing, the listener should not be aware of how the component measures, its specifications, or what type of speaker it is.

 

[PeterA]

No, it is the opposite. Never had looked at their measurements and thought they were excellent loudspeakers. Then I heard them in ABCD blind comparison to others and now hear their flaws all the time. The measurements are hugely secondary to that effect.

Amir, Reading that the Martin Logans are flawed and seeing graphs of the Harman test results in these forums showing the poor preference results has introduced expectation bias against these speakers. Knowing this now predisposes me to disliking them if I hear them in the future. Fortunately you have not specifically described their flaws so that I do not know what to listen for the next time I try to enjoy them in my friend's system.

I have always thought the more one knows the better, but I wonder now what effect learning all of this information has on one's ability to honestly asses the performance of something that he has read so much about.

This may be an unintended consequence of posting measurements and describing flaws of specific products on these forums. The more we read, perhaps the less likely we are to trust our ears precisely because of expectation bias. Does this get to the heart of the objectivist opposition to expectation bias? If so, would the objectivist not argue for ignorance of any measurements until after the component is heard?

Then the question is, should measurements confirm what one hears, or should listening confirm what one expects to hear from viewing the measurements? And is it different for the designer than it is for the end user?

 

[amirm]

We all have different ways of listening.

Thankfully we don't in general but let's keep going....

It is curious that you seem to be mainly listening for flaws. When I listen to speakers in an appropriate system I listen mainly to the excellent and exceptional aspects of their performance and if they suit me I am prepared to forgive some aspects where the competition sounds better.

Not true and I am speaking for you, not myself. When you listen to a loudspeaker you have no idea of what something is supposed to sound like. None of us do. What we magically seem to do, is search for flaws. It is absence of flaws that then yields the adjective of "excellence."

This is easily demonstrated. Take your clock radio and turn up the volume to 100%. The sound gets distorted. And all of us can hear that distortion and as such, rate that experience as negative. We are all good at hearing such flaws and removal of them all is what gains our praise.

The loudspeaker blind tests I participated in has been taken by hundreds of others with majority coming out of with similar results. So we are not different, no matter how hard you try to factionalize us.

When you listen to a new loudspeaker you immediately focus on what it is doing. Are the voices natural? Is the bass good or boomy? Are the highs clean or tizzy?

Your doctor does the same thing when you see him. He looks for what is wrong with you because that is what he is supposed to do. Likewise, if you are comparing a set of loudspeakers, you naturally and intuitively search for what is wrong with a loudspeaker you prefer less. That is the job at hand, not talking about going fishing with your doctor .

Now, that said, just like your doctor, I am different than you in that it has been part of my training and audio journey to find artifacts by ear, and be able to correlate it with technical deficiencies. So while my preferences are no different than majority of people here, my analytical abilities have been improved so I can arrive at the "answer" faster and more reliably.

Does the above stop me from also detecting excellence as you imply? Of course not. What a silly statement to make. You play a great sounding system with great content and I start dancing to its tunes as fast as the next guy . Make that an AB test though and all of us will search for flaws that detract from one system but not the other.

 

[amirm]

Then the question is, should measurements confirm what one hears, or should listening confirm what one expects to hear from viewing the measurements?

What do you think the answer is?

 

[Gregadd]

This a not a thread on blind testing. It is about trusting ones ears. Indeed if hearing, or the ears is the only sensory perception in play one could argue the subject is even more dependent on his ears in a blind test. It is human nature to favor a test that yields results we already believe to be true and vice versa.

Amir, Reading that the Martin Logans are flawed and seeing graphs of the Harman test results in these forums showing the poor preference results has introduced expectation bias against these speakers."

Nor is this a thread about Martin Logan I was and still am a long term fan of some of the Martin Logan lline. I also owned the ML CLSI and briefly owned the ML Aerius. I tried to read all the reviews and measurements available. I also listened to my audio buddies ML CLS. No measurement ever changed what I beleive I was hearing. Yes there was a time I believed it was the best, No doubt there are "better speakers out there including the ML Statement e2.
Having someone say the ML( I do not remember which was under evaluation)is flawed as a matter of opinion does not bother me. Representing it as a fact is another matter. Even more intriguing would be the claim that you made that decision after observing measurements and ignoring what you heard in favor ofI these measurements. I have previously stated I find that fascinating behavior.
Basically what you are saying is; you heard the Martin Logan; liked it,;then you heard it blind compared to others and liked it less. Possibly our opinion was supported by measurements. Good ffor you. What speaker is not flawed? Transducers are generally considered the most flawed in the audio playback chain. To me when the CLS was in the right room and associated with the correct equipment, it brought to reality the incredible potential of the electrostatic genre and adequately addressed many of its shortcomings. To me saying it is flawed, or that you changed your opinion, or that you heard speakers that sounded better is just part of the audio journey.

 

[NorthStar]

What do you think the answer is?

A balanced combination between a group of attentive/trained listener's sound (music) preference and correlated with the measurements of the audio electronics involved, including the mechanical/electrical loudspeakers...a pair of them (stereo), and inside a properly acoustically treated room. :b

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Yes. If one sees frequency responses of two speakers, and one appears flatter than the other, will that not introduce a bias when later listening to those two speakers, unsighted or otherwise?

Not unsighted. If it's unsighted you won't know what speakers your listening to so the measurements will have no impact on your judgement. But your point is well-taken. If you know a speaker measures a certain way, that's the way you'll expect it to sound. This is how expectation bias works. The specs, the looks, the reputation, the price...all of these things influence our impressions rendering objectivity difficult to impossible. Of course audiophiles are immune, so that's good.

Tim