Do you really trust your ears?
- Thread starter caesar
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da ear bone's connected to da, goosebump bone, da goosebump bone's connected to da, heart bone, da heart bone's connected to da, pupil bone ...
Frank
Once again, Vince, very nicely put: "peels off distortion" is a good way of expressing the modus operandi people should adopt in assessing the performance of a configuration ...It is gratifying when one successfully peels off distortion from their system. In my case, I just have to depend on the creators of the CD I am listening to to get it right.
After all the distortion, and obfuscation is cleared, you are left with the limitations of your speakers. I will be the first to recognize my system may not match well with, "Death Metal."
Frank
Bingo!
i do trust my ears. however; i don't trust them in a short audition....particularly in a group. yes, i'll have an opinion about what i'm hearing. but i always defer to how i percieve a piece of gear sounds in my system over a few days or a week ideally. i have my personal routine that i follow for listening tests which include recordings i have used over the years. i need to make sure i'm relaxed and under no time constraints and i need to make sure i'm feeling good and enjoying my listening.
if i find i'm stressing over trying to figure something out; i'll start reading a book or go do something else and come back fresh to the question. (which is why i put no validity into blind testing). i need to have three or four sessions with similar conclusions to form strong opinions.
the process of gear upgrades should be fun and a process of discovery, not a chore. also; any audition should include time with casual listening where it's just the music and not the sound. no agenda.
bottom line. i'm very happy with the result of my system synergy with my approach. my system does what i have always wanted it to be able to do.
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One should know the difference between, "Different," and, "Clearer." The only time I accept different is when I am listening to someone else's system. Then, if the music is lovely to listen to, I compliment their system. If it is aggravating, then I just smile.
I do.... 100%
But also take into consideration some point of view from reviewers I tend to like or are alligned to my preferences.
But also take into consideration some point of view from reviewers I tend to like or are alligned to my preferences.
i usually read everything i can on several components to "screen"...there is often something about character one can glean. Sure, i probably miss some things that way, but i cannot listen to everything. but ultimately, once i have shortlisted a few things, it is all about my own ears, my own taste, my own wallet, as STeve says. i am always open minded to learning (hence often why i participate in this kind of forum)...but ultimately i keep my own counsel. one thing i do find useful is to read everything about a component AFTER i have bought it...but this time, looking for the more nuanced comments (perhaps impedance, isolation, fuses, etc)...sometimes, you pick something up that seems minor at the time when ou are in "screen" mode...but once you own it, these details can sometimes make a big difference. just my two cents.
This is, of course, at odds with the audiophile conventional wisdom that says subtle qualities only reveal themselves through extended listening, and claims that quick-switching between components being tested is the foundation of the invalidity of AB/X testing. You are, however, right as rain with the scientific and statistical community which claims, and offers good evidence that differences are more accurately identified when the A/B switching is fast, and that listening over time only allows the time to muddy the waters with perceptual bias. They say it is even worse if you're judging preference instead of simply listening for differences, as humans are notorious for preferring the familiar. My experience is consistent with yours. I've had new components in on trial, given them a couple of weeks of good listening, completely convinced that I heard a difference, only to put my reference back in at the end of the trial to A/B, and been incapable of telling which was which. Trust. But verify.
Tim
Fact is that memory traces decay rather fast, it's actually a matter of seconds, and errors may become huge, even for simple tasks. There is abundance of evidence for the rather poor performance of auditory memory, as far as comparison tests are concerned. I'm currently reading literature relevant to this aspect. e.g.
Bachem, "Time factors in relative and absolute pitch determination", J. of the Acoustical Society of America 1954, p.741
Bodohoska, "Immediate and short memory: recall of simple auditory stimuli", Acta Psychologica 1976, p.341
Kinchla, "A diffusion model of perceptual memory", Perception & Psychophysics 1967, p.219
and no, I would not trust my ears because of 1. experimental bias and 2. poor auditory memory. That's why I bought all of my gear without any prior auditioning.
Klaus
There is also plenty of data which indicates that what the brain interprets is pretty consistent from brain to brain, and that, in fact, the brain compensates for minor hearing deficiencies to bring us closer to the same "truth," not further apart. So while I agree that the ears are the final arbiter, they are only the arbiter of what I like; no more, no less.
Tim
garylkoh
WBF Technical Expert (Speakers & Audio Equipment)
There's plenty of data on the norm, but unfortunately, scientific repeatable testing for outliers is very much more difficult - which is when we rely on anecdotal evidence.
Sometimes, when I'm doing design, I have a problem in a narrow frequency range. Like a high-Q resonance. It can be very difficult for instruments to pick this up because an impulse won't be long enough to excite it, and it may be a resonance that is created by a frequency that is in the tweeters and a separate one in the midrange, where even a slow sweep does not show it up easily enough.
This is where I rely on my ultimate "instrument" - my sister.
I grab her, and play the piece of music that excites the resonance, and she will go F3# or something. Perfect pitch is when you play a scale, and then play one note, and you are able to identify it. She has perfect absolute pitch, and can ALWAYS identify the note being played. Even in isolation. Play her a single note out of nowhere and she can identify it.
However, eventually, after all the instruments are done, it is still my ears that tell me what I like. I still have not found the entire suite of measurements that I can make that will determine that I will like the *final* design sans listening. On the other hand, I would have no clue where to start if I didn't have measurements. So, measurements and instruments are a foundation. Without a foundation, the house will fall over. The best foundation will give you the best possibility that you will end up with a great end-product.
In the end, it's got to be your ears. Otherwise it's like buying a flavor ice cream because somebody else likes it. Doesn't mean you can't find opinions to trust, but it's too personal a choice to buy w/o listening, and that doesn't even take into account how something might sound in your system/room. Best you can do is make educated guesses until it's in your rig. Issue really is, some people trust their own ears and some don't.
As for fast A/B switching, I think it's the only way to go. I don't trust sonic memory, too many variables introduced as time passes. Only useful way to compare dacs forex. is to put them into different inputs of a preamp and switch among them. Am doing that now w/a few, all being fed by synced Squeezeboxes.
Reminds me of the old Chico Marx bit where he's in bed with a guy's wife. Husband shows up at the bedroom door, and Chico looks at him, annoyed. What? You gonna believe me or your own eyes?
As for fast A/B switching, I think it's the only way to go. I don't trust sonic memory, too many variables introduced as time passes. Only useful way to compare dacs forex. is to put them into different inputs of a preamp and switch among them. Am doing that now w/a few, all being fed by synced Squeezeboxes.
Reminds me of the old Chico Marx bit where he's in bed with a guy's wife. Husband shows up at the bedroom door, and Chico looks at him, annoyed. What? You gonna believe me or your own eyes?
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Agreed throughout. Absolute pitch, by the way, is a wonderful gift to a musician. I'm sure a sister with it is quite a gift to a speaker designer. As I've often said, speakers are the wild card, the weak link, the least predictable and most eccentric piece of the playback chain. Almost all of the best of them have their strengths and weaknesses. I believe a good designer could design a reasonably transparent DAC, preamp or amplifier on paper. Speakers are not so predictable. That's why they are, for me, the right place to choose my color after I've made sure everything up to that point is relatively neutral and absolutely powerful.
Tim
Lot of good points all around.
It seems to me that a/b/x testing is good for distinguishing differences, but it can be weak on letting you distinguish preferences.
It won't tell you, for example, if a system is fatiguing.
Only an extended audition will do that.
This is the perfect audio debate -- enough to keep all sides involved forever and no magic bullet to end it.
We could all save a lot of time by just conceding that I am right.
And I'd be happy to perform this service in each and every debate.
Because...........I'm a giver.
It seems to me that a/b/x testing is good for distinguishing differences, but it can be weak on letting you distinguish preferences.
It won't tell you, for example, if a system is fatiguing.
Only an extended audition will do that.
This is the perfect audio debate -- enough to keep all sides involved forever and no magic bullet to end it.
We could all save a lot of time by just conceding that I am right.
And I'd be happy to perform this service in each and every debate.
Because...........I'm a giver.
Read Sean's blog. The people at Harman have found AB/X testing very useful in distinguishing preferences, and in areas outside of high-end audio, where there is a mysterious cultural bias against such testing, it is used to distinguish preferences all the time. Fatiguing? Now that's a unique attribute specifically related to long-term listening. That would be a challenge for AB/X testing. I wonder, though, if you could correlate AB/X testable attributes with sounds that are found to be fatiguing over the long term? I'll bet you could. I'll bet sounds perceived to be too bright or harsh in quick-switched AB/X listening tests would be exactly the same that would be considered fatiguing in long-term listening.
I wonder if anyone is running these kinds of tests? Sean, are you listening? Any testing going on at Harman to identify sonic attributes that are fatiguing, then map these to attributes that can be quickly identified in AB/X tests?
Tim
I think we need to first clarify what the different purposes are between an AB/X test versus a Preference Test. AB/X tests are designed to measure how reliably you can detect ANY audible difference between two components. You switch between component A and B, and then indicate whether X = A or B. It doesn't attempt to establish a preference.
Preference tests allow the listener to compare A versus B (paired comparison test) or compare A versus B,C,D... (a multiple comparison test) and the listener rates or rank orders each test object on a preference scale. The test assumes that there are audible differences between the test objects. If the audible differences are near threshold, a preference test is probably not the right test.
I've designed some hybrid tests for testing different power amplifiers that combine AB/X with preference. The listener indicates what X is, and also rates A and B on a 10-point preference scale. If they can't reliably identify X - then you can assume their preferences are meaningless or statistically random (and typically they are).
The tests typically last 20-30 minutes and we've found no effects related to fatigue, particularly if the listeners are well trained. Listener fatigue tends to set when tests are too long (> 40 minutes) or the listener's task is too difficult. I suspect that listening at high SPL's (+90 dB) and listening to highly distorted sound could also cause an early onset of listener fatigue in listening tests. We normally listen at comfortable playback levels unless we are testing for dynamic compression and max SPL capability. For ethical reasons, these are two parameters we'd rather establish via objective measurements, or else use the marketing/sales team as our listeners
[just kidding]
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I think we need to first clarify what the different purposes are between an AB/X test versus a Preference Test. AB/X tests are designed to measure how reliably you can detect ANY audible difference between two components. You switch between component A and B, and then indicate whether X = A or B. It doesn't attempt to establish a preference.
Preference tests allow the listener to compare A versus B (paired comparison test) or compare A versus B,C,D... (a multiple comparison test) and the listener rates or rank orders each test object on a preference scale. The test assumes that there are audible differences between the test objects. If the audible differences are near threshold, a preference test is probably not the right test.
I've designed some hybrid tests for testing different power amplifiers that combine AB/X with preference. The listener indicates what X is, and also rates A and B on a 10-point preference scale. If they can't reliably identify X - then you can assume their preferences are meaningless or statistically random (and typically they are).
The tests typically last 20-30 minutes and we've found no effects related to fatigue, particularly if the listeners are well trained. Listener fatigue tends to set when tests are too long (> 40 minutes) or the listener's task is too difficult. I suspect that listening at high SPL's (+90 dB) and listening to highly distorted sound could also cause an early onset of listener fatigue in listening tests. We normally listen at comfortable playback levels unless we are testing for dynamic compression and max SPL capability. For ethical reasons, these are two parameters we'd rather establish via objective measurements, or else use the marketing/sales team as our listeners
My mistake, I was using AB/X too broadly, to identify all blind comparison tests. Interesting, though, that there's typically no control in a preference test. I assume if the split is close enough to even you assume no real preference just a desire to have an answer to the question?
I think the listener fatigue people are talking about here is not short-term fatigue that would compromise your subjects, but the long-term fatigue some audiophiles experience that keeps them from enjoying long listening sessions.
Tim
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