Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break
- Thread starter Jeff Fritz
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It was a DAC that measured 0.0015%, yet sounded hard & bright (forget DBTs) - that's why I gave it as an example to Groucho who stated that he pins his DAc evaluation on THD & IMD figures
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Did I misspell "certainty" & made it come out sounding like "serenity" - oops spoonerism or freudian slip?So "if" and "maybe" aren't politicians' words after all?jkeny said:
You are basically using the "I built a DAC but messed up the wiring and it was crap, therefore all DACs don't sound the same." argument.
As I said before, in any discussion like this it is necessary to stipulate certain things, like "implemented properly" or "best practice". If you miss out a vital capacitor or mess up the circuit board layout, then it's anyone's guess what's going to happen - it may measure well one day, and badly the next. A THD test wouldn't show an under-specified voltage regulator just about to trip its current limit, but when it happened it wouldn't say anything about the validity of the test. All we can do is trust that the manufacturer knows what they're doing.
I think we fully agree on the point that running a good valid test is not easy. Unfortunately information that tests exist in high-end typical conditions without references on how to access them keeps them inaccessible.
Even the data taking or analysis is not trivial, as many people imply. Questions such was what should we do faced with a result of an ABX test where the score was 200 positive identifications over 1000 are not clear to most of us.
Anyone interested in DAC measurements can go the the Miller Audio site and find detailed reports freely accessible to the DACs and CD players he tested for HifiNews. For each test he takes many hundreds of measurements and gives a global result of fail or pass.
http://www.milleraudioresearch.com/avtech/index.html
http://www.milleraudioresearch.com/avtech/index.html
Make your case, but if you find what you say is not received with thanks, be prepared to walk away.
People out there in the real world make claims in all walks of life that are not predicated on any form of objective background. We buy expensive water and fancy bottles of wine based on entirely no robust physical evidence that we can detect any differences (in water) or anything like the grade of differences we can taste (in wine). And yet, if confronted by irrefutable objective evidence that the $100 bottle of red is indistinguishable from the $20 bottle of red, the oenophile tends to prefer to ignore the evidence and dismiss the person proffering that evidence as a joyless militant teetotaller with no sense of taste or smell.
Moreover, the industry that services those wine-lovers (whether the vineyards, distributors, or resellers) tends to meet the requirements of the wine-lovers, because those who buy 'better' usually buy 'more' - out of sheer enthusiasm. Those enthusiasts will also gravitate toward 'fellow traveller' media wine critics, and ignore the indignant cries of those brandishing their evidence. Whether the evidence to the contrary is incontrovertible, that wine lover will likely choose to support those who support their view, and shun those who don't. And, since 'there's no big difference' runs counter to the convictions and the conclusions of an enthusiast, this position tends to those who are more casual wine drinkers, leaving the whole enthusiast world to its own devices.
Whether the wine drinker, the distributor, the wine blogger, the vineyard owner, the store owner or anyone else involved in the whole process simply chooses to ignore the objective results, genuinely thinks there is an overarching set of criteria that can be accessed by the expert that are not based on strict objectivity, or instead even engages in some kind of cognitive dissonance is immaterial. The end results are the same. And banging the drum continually in the face of such a reinforced position is either wasted time, or hectoring.
Since you mentioned wine, when they do hard-core wine tasting, they use glasses like the black, opaque Riedel sommelier collection. That way you aren't influenced by price, labels, packaging or appearance--just taste.
http://www.winespectator.com/webfea...ly-Riedel-Pioneers-Opaque-Tasting-Glass_21749
This way you aren't prejudiced or have any expectation bias.
Truth and honesty prevails here.
http://www.winespectator.com/webfea...ly-Riedel-Pioneers-Opaque-Tasting-Glass_21749
This way you aren't prejudiced or have any expectation bias.
Truth and honesty prevails here.
i imagine thick wires covered with black velvet ,cable tasting.....
hmmm cable A doesnt soundgood with amp c and g, it does sound good with amp b.
cable C only sounds good with amp a , if a is connected to cd player c , and on and on.....
i think i prefer winetasting cables drive you nuts
hmmm cable A doesnt soundgood with amp c and g, it does sound good with amp b.
cable C only sounds good with amp a , if a is connected to cd player c , and on and on.....
i think i prefer winetasting cables drive you nuts
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Since you mentioned wine, when they do hard-core wine tasting, they use glasses like the black, opaque Riedel sommelier collection. That way you aren't influenced by price, labels, packaging or appearance--just taste.
http://www.winespectator.com/webfea...ly-Riedel-Pioneers-Opaque-Tasting-Glass_21749
This way you aren't prejudiced or have any expectation bias.
Truth and honesty prevails here.
Well, not really. The same debate about testing rages through the wine trade too.
From a sensory science perspective, the blind tests cited don't really point to anything robust at all. By removing the visual element and the opportunity to see the label in the test, you remove some elements of bias, but not enough to be considered in a forensic capacity.
It still makes the grandiose and unsubstantiated claim that differences can be determined when faced with two glasses of vaguely similar wine (and by 'vaguely similar' I mean not including one that is mostly vinegar, or would be sent back from analysis with the note 'this horse is unfit for work'). It presumes the the non-identicality of wines as a given, and then seeks to evaluate and rate these differences. The current feelings within the scientific fraternity is this presumption is a step too far and the conclusions drawn are just as haphazard as any sighted test, but come with a veneer of 'scienciness' that makes them appear something more objective than they really are.
Spoken in the true sense of someone who wants something hidden or has something to hide in test results. If the same debate rages through the wine community about blind tests, it's because they don't want a $20 bottle coming out as good or better than a $200 bottle.
A blind wine test doesn't resume anything at all about what is in the glass. It just makes for a completely unbiased judgement because you have no idea what you're drinking. You either like it the same, better or worse than what you are comparing it to.
The blind wine test is the same as with anything else if you want HONEST UNBIASED results.
Since you mentioned wine, when they do hard-core wine tasting, they use glasses like the black, opaque Riedel sommelier collection. That way you aren't influenced by price, labels, packaging or appearance--just taste.
http://www.winespectator.com/webfea...ly-Riedel-Pioneers-Opaque-Tasting-Glass_21749
This way you aren't prejudiced or have any expectation bias.
Truth and honesty prevails here.
But, ...I thought that the color of the wine was also very important!
And what about the quantity that we consume? ...Does that have an overall influence on the wine quality?
{When they taste they spit it right back; so how can they tell the true effect at the end?}
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Why? what they look at isn't the flavor, it's the color.
Some people want legs, some don't, it's a matter of expectation bias.
Some people want legs, some don't, it's a matter of expectation bias.
I can see people don't know what a blind test is.
A blind test does not mean you can't see, it means you are unable to determine which test condition is which, i.e. for ABX, you don't have any cues, other than sound, to tell you which X is. You should know, continuously, what A and B are, though.
Blind wine tastings mean that you have no idea which wine you are tasting. You can and should look at it for color and clarity.
A blind test does not mean you can't see, it means you are unable to determine which test condition is which, i.e. for ABX, you don't have any cues, other than sound, to tell you which X is. You should know, continuously, what A and B are, though.
Blind wine tastings mean that you have no idea which wine you are tasting. You can and should look at it for color and clarity.
There is a fundamental difference between wine and audio. Wine is the actual substance to be consumed. If you like the $20 bottle better than the $200 bottle, you simply do. It is all preference -- deaf, dumb and blind. Audio reproduces of the thing to be consumed (recorded music). I suppose if someday we have Star-Trek like replicators and there are really good replicators that reproduce a really good glass of your favorite Chanti, and there are "high-end" replicators, then the analogy could be complete. Because then the wine snob can look at the wine lover and say that while there is no evidence that his billet aluminum, four-unit $100k wine replicator is better than a good $1000 one, what it puts out just tastes more like real Chanti.
Tim
Tim
For the record, I spent most of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s either running, administrating, overseeing or occasionally being one of the listener panel on blind, level-matched tests. At a rough guess, I'd say that means I've been directly involved in level-matched, blind testing of about 4,000 audio products in my time.
Given that, I think I can speak with some certainty on the subject.
And no, simply putting wine in an opaque glass doesn't make anything like a completely unbiased judgement. It makes a judgment based on a more limited set of biases than a fully sighted test. The test is said to be run double-blind, which should eliminate experimenter bias. However, it does not state how many times each wine is tested, and with how many different tasters (in order to eliminate outliers skewing the results), whether the tasters are tasting the wine alone or in a group (in which case, the strongest personality in the group will often sway the others), how the tasters were selected and how their acuity of taste and smell were measured, whether they were experts in the field or untrained (and how, if at all, this shapes the test results). If they were drawn from the industry and knew one of their products - or one of their rival's products - were in the test, how that would shape their findings. Whether their confidence in responding is based upon strong variations in performance or a perceived need to be seen to be confident in responding.
Also, if the tester is moving from wine A to B to C to D to E and so on, at what point is his or her conclusions rendered useless from too many tests in quick succession? If a double-blind test involves one taster chewing and spitting their way through 75 wines in a morning, no amount of glass opacity will render the findings of that tester accurate. Failure to disclose that is inherently dishonest.
Most of all, however, it is not totally unbiased for the reason I stated earlier. The test inherently makes the assumption that there is a difference between wines under test and seeks to categorise those differences. In so doing, it avoids the higher-level test to see if two different wines taste identical under laboratory conditions. Failure to resolve this more fundamental identicality test means that any evaluation of subjective differences in taste performed in advance of such a test should be discounted as it was attained under objectively questionable conditions.
There. That's about a year's worth of regular objective criticisms levelled at blind tests in magazines, from direct experience. The subjective ones usually revolve around "You said X was bad. I own X. You are wrong and I'm telling everyone I know you are a fraud because you are in the pay of Y. The boss of X told me so."
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