Anyone tried blind testing DACs?

[Space is the Place]

So you think he is wrong then?

Blimey Keith gets a lot of stick doesn't he?

I think he "has seen the light" he's become an evangelical objectivist and as a consequence is at odds with many hobbyists who like messing with stuff.

He's also playing the objectivist mind trick a bit like Obi Wan Kenobi, but instead of droids it's Dacs

"this isn't the Dac your looking for..."

He's effectively stopped me buying another Dac because his message... it wont sound any different than any competently designed Dac blind, has got through (i know this myself but don't want to admit it), he's using "the Force" to save me money!

Well done Obi Wan Keithobi (i'm not sure it's the message you should be sending though!)

Move along...

 

[gints]

Does somebody tried to hire blind person to compare dacs? So much less trouble to hide things.

 

[h.g.]

I get that you're saying it's not necessary to generate science where there's an established body of science.

It is a little bit more than that. Scientific knowledge builds on what has been learnt before which makes it nigh on impossible to do anything effective in a particular area without becoming familiar with the basics. To make a contribution to mankind's scientific knowledge you would be required to do more and become familiar with what is going on at the coal-face in order to place your contribution in context. No reputable scientific journal would accept a paper without.

Very few experiments are intended to make a contribution to mankind's scientific knowledge. Most are intended to make a contribution to the local knowledge of a person or company which could have been obtained in other ways but an experiment was considered preferable due to lack of knowledge, faster, easier or whatever. The motivation to follow science and the scientific method would be to remain aligned with scientific knowledge. In order to build support for audiophile beliefs that are in conflict with existing scientific knowledge clearly the procedures of a scientific experiment should not be followed. The objectives need to be sorted out first before a suitable experiment can be designed.

As I said we're talking at cross-purposes in this way.

I don't think we are. I am fairly confident you do not have a reasonable grasp of the basics of the scientific view of how sound perception works.

I just want to puncture this idea that "if you want to know for sure if something is audible or not, just listen blind".

As demonstrated by statements like this which simply don't map onto the scientific view of audibility. The many different audiophile views of how sound perception works are mostly in conflict with the scientific one. This includes most from both the subjective and objective camps.

When it comes to a hobby interest there is nothing much wrong with having faith in nonsense if you are having fun. If audiophile "blind tests" are no longer fun then perhaps there is a case for quietly reading a text book on sound perception. It will almost certainly be wisest to pick one that covers scientific knowledge without covering home audio. It is not that the home audio coverage will necessarily be audiophile but that you won't be in a position to spot that it is until you have a grasp of the scientific view.

The principle is true, but you'd need a large scale effort to do an experiment really well, so the 'just' part of that sentence is wrong.

After nearly half a century of the day job involving a significant amount of work with people taking measurements and some direct involvement I have seen that the most important contribution to the quality and reliability of experimental data is the integrity and care of those involved. Within bounds, the size of the group and the sophistication of the hardware are secondary. Competent people with an understanding of the basics of sound perception should have little difficulty performing valid audibility experiments at home.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

I don't think we are. I am fairly confident you do not have a reasonable grasp of the basics of the scientific view of how sound perception works.

<snip>

When it comes to a hobby interest there is nothing much wrong with having faith in nonsense if you are having fun. If audiophile "blind tests" are no longer fun then perhaps there is a case for quietly reading a text book on sound perception. It will almost certainly be wisest to pick one that covers scientific knowledge without covering home audio. It is not that the home audio coverage will necessarily be audiophile but that you won't be in a position to spot that it is until you have a grasp of the scientific view.

Would you be able to give a very brief summary of the scientific view of sound perception? I’m particularly interested in something on the oft-repeated claim that aural memory is very short lived, in light of the observation that I can instantly recognise a voice, or piece of music, I haven’t heard for decades, or continue to be able to distinguish an oboe from a bassoon, say. But I’m also interested in things like why some people are more sensitive to timbre or pitch, while others are acutely sensitive to timing, say. Just some basics, no more than one of your customary short paragraphs so hopefully not too taxing?

 

[darrenyeats]

Hg, I don't disagree with your overall thrust. But some of your statements seem odd to me. Maybe they are just oddly expressed. Or, I'm misinterpreting these statements because of the very lack of knowledge you suggest. (I acknowledge sometimes I am wrong.) I won't tackle all of your post; can you unpack the following?

The motivation to follow science and the scientific method would be to remain aligned with scientific knowledge. In order to build support for audiophile beliefs that are in conflict with existing scientific knowledge clearly the procedures of a scientific experiment should not be followed. The objectives need to be sorted out first before a suitable experiment can be designed.

How would we find evidence to support a hypothesis, let's say one that contradicts well-established theories, without following the procedures a scientific experiment? Any specific example that explains what you mean will do - it doesn't have to be in the area of audio. Or if I've misinterpreted, please explain how.

 

[Purité Audio]

Would you be able to give a very brief summary of the scientific view of sound perception? I’m particularly interested in something on the oft-repeated claim that aural memory is very short lived, in light of the observation that I can instantly recognise a voice, or piece of music, I haven’t heard for decades, or continue to be able to distinguish an oboe from a bassoon, say. But I’m also interested in things like why some people are more sensitive to timbre or pitch, while others are acutely sensitive to timing, say. Just some basics, no more than one of your customary short paragraphs so hopefully not too taxing?

Perhaps check out ASR’s ‘Audio Reference Library’,
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/audio-reference-library.30/page-2
James Johnson particularly, his Signal Processing and Psychoacoustics might be a goo place to start, there is a lot of material.
Recognising a voice even hugely distorted is a different mechanism from trying to compare two audio presentations, this is covered in the Harman research, I will endeavour to find a link.
Keith

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Thanks, Keith, but I was hoping for something a tad more succinct for starters, than a page of links to published material.

 

[Joe P]

Steve,

Have a look at this.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15779526/

Only the abstract is available free, but maybe that’s enough.

Joe

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Steve,

Have a look at this.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15779526/

Only the abstract is available free, but maybe that’s enough.

Joe

Thanks, Joe. I was doing OK until I got to this bit:

Results obtained with this paradigm suggest that the brain stores features of individual sounds embedded within representations of acoustic regularities that have been detected for the sound patterns and sequences in which the sounds appeared. Thus, sounds closely linked with their auditory context are more likely to be remembered. The representations of acoustic regularities are automatically activated by matching sounds, enabling object recognition.

You know that thing I said upthread, about writing style and jargon designed to exclude the lay reader...

But actually, it’s a wider point I wanted to make, which is that the science of perception is, I believe, still relatively immature. And in most respects, science (eg physics) describes and explains properties by dint of what they do, not what they are. Their effect on other observed stuff, not their intrinsic nature. I wonder whether we can truly understand perception until we understand consciousness, and by that, I mean understand it’s intrinsic nature.

 

[Joe P]

Steve,

Convoluted impenetrable writing is a peeve of mine. It's certainly seen across the sciences, but every academic discipline — even English — has its share of jargon-laden, incomprehensible, shitty prose. Sometimes it's down to laziness, other times to pretentiousness, and yet other times to the writer not having the skill to write with clarity and verve.

Turns out that convoluted impenetrable writing is also Steven Pinker's peeve, so much so that he wrote a magnificent book about the problem and a possible solution. It's called The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. I've been recommending it to everyone since.

It's interesting that all the scientists I admire for one reason or another — Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, EO Wilson, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feyman — are brilliant in their field yet make considerable effort to explain their discipline to lay readers.

Here's an excellent example of making a bit of math and physics understandable.

Joe

 

[Joe P]

P.S. What really irks me is when someone insinuates I'm profoundly ignorant or thick as pig shit when the person suggesting that has gone to zero effort himself (it's almost never a women) to be understood. It's usually takes the form, "I could try to explain this to you, but you clearly lack the needed training and the ability to reason about the subject..."

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

P.S. What really irks me is when someone insinuates I'm profoundly ignorant or thick as pig shit when the person suggesting that has gone to zero effort himself (it's almost never a women) to be understood. It's usually takes the form, "I could try to explain this to you, but you clearly lack the needed training and the ability to reason about the subject..."

Yep, I’ve long taken the view that if I properly understand something, I should be able to explain it to my mum. In fact, I’ve used that method to test my own level of understanding many times - rehearse explaining it to mum, and see where I get stuck...

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Always liked Carl Sagan, and Feynman’s physics for the layman stuff. It’s reminded me to order a copy of Six Easy Pieces to go with my copy of Six Not So Easy Pieces.

 

[herb]

Steve,

Convoluted impenetrable writing is a peeve of mine. It's certainly seen across the sciences, but every academic discipline — even English — has its share of jargon-laden, incomprehensible, shitty prose. Sometimes it's down to laziness, other times to pretentiousness, and yet other times to the writer not having the skill to write with clarity and verve.

Turns out that convoluted impenetrable writing is also Steven Pinker's peeve, so much so that he wrote a magnificent book about the problem and a possible solution. It's called The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. I've been recommending it to everyone since.

It's interesting that all the scientists I admire for one reason or another — Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, EO Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feyman — are brilliant in their field yet make considerable effort to explain their discipline to lay readers.

Here's an excellent example of making a bit of math and physics understandable.

Joe

In the 1920s in England there was a cult that used 4 dimensions to explain mysticism. In 3 dimension space speed was an angle in 4 dimensions, 90 deg was max so the speed of light was an absolute. Moving entities had a 4th dimension time body - moving in 3 dimensions was development. I suspect that Sagan was a bit of a mystic on the quiet

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

In the 1920s in England there was a cult that used 4 dimensions to explain mysticism. In 3 dimension space speed was an angle in 4 dimensions, 90 deg was max so the speed of light was an absolute. Moving entities had a 4th dimension time body - moving in 3 dimensions was development. I suspect that Sagan was a bit of a mystic on the quiet

I think you are right. He did get across an air of mystical wonder in the BBC series Cosmos, as I recall, and his book/film 'Contact' was somewhat mystical, too.

 

[h.g.]

How would we find evidence to support a hypothesis, let's say one that contradicts well-established theories, without following the procedures a scientific experiment? Any specific example that explains what you mean will do - it doesn't have to be in the area of audio. Or if I've misinterpreted, please explain how.

We have seen examples in this thread so we do not need to look far. Audiophiles believe in audiophile nonsense that is in conflict with scientific knowledge because they see or feel support for it and are unfamiliar or somehow able to push aside conflicting scientific information. They generally lack the relevant technical knowledge to recognise what is scientific knowledge and what is not and therefore don't weight the former strongly in the way technically literate people do. This undoubtedly helps when it comes to pushing away conflicting scientific knowledge. As does simply not being aware of it.

A common thing to do is to postulate an unscientific hypothesis where the quantity to be measured in an experiment is unmeasurable. Either because the quantity has associations but is too vague to be precisely defined, isolated and measured or it simply can't be measured because it doesn't exist. An example of the former are notions of being able to hear things in the future that can't be heard immediately in the present for various reasons and an example of the latter would be that we have some single clean exact sound perception like a microphone but various things are getting in the way.

Of course the whole point of unscientific hypotheses is not to perform experiments (or at least not scientific ones) but to sow what is known in the computer world as FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the minds of those that are technically illiterate. It is a form of marketing and an effective one so long as the target is technically illiterate. The target though does tend to consider it to be evidence whereas a technically literate person would recognise it as hand waving (not wrong but unknowable/vague and likely irrelevant) and to be all but irrelevant in comparison with scientific evidence/knowledge.

So know your audience and set your hypotheses accordingly.

PS Apologies to those that consider this thread is getting a bit past it's use by date.

 

[Joe P]

An audiophile is simply a person who values high-quality sound reproduction.

I wish some people understood that instead of using the term as an insult or insinuating that if someone is an audiophile they must hold an irrational view of the world.

Joe