Why Do People Come To Computer Audiophile To Display Their Contempt For Audiophiles?

[mmerrill99]

The strange thing is, if we are to believe that we are slaves to sighted bias, when we see these people perform we will be so influenced by their appearance that how they performed blind will have no actual significance to what we perceive them now sounding like.

 

It's a strange, strange world, according to some, isn't it?

[mmerrill99]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

Hi Teresa.  There are situations where blind A/B testing works very well.

Yes but what I believe Teresa is reacting against is the use of A/B testing as the de-facto "proof" that something is perceivable or not - this is one of the techniques of choice for the display of 'contempt for audiophiles'.

 

I admire your attempt at even-handedness in your viewpoint but there is a lopsidedness (dare I say bias) to this view - most everyone knows the reasons that sightedness/knowledge can be a bias in sighted listening - how many of those who promote A/B blind testing actually want to examine the possible flaws in it & admit to " specifics that might make a particular test valid or not."? I have seldom if ever, seen such a view expressed, otherwise we would have a far more balanced understanding of just when A/B blind testing is useful/valid & what the potential pitfalls are in conducting such a test. The absence of such a view is evidence of the lack of even-handedness in consideration of A/B blind testing

 

[mmerrill99]

1 hour ago, plissken said:

The issue is that by it's very definition, listening to A for a while, and upgrading to B and declaring all manner of superlative is A/B.

And that is enough to satisfy you that someone hears a difference? No repeats needed to provide statistical significance? What statistical level satisfies you & why?

[mmerrill99]

2 hours ago, plissken said:

Because you are stipulating a change, that isn't able to be captured by instrumentation, and to not back it up with human trials is problematic.

Maybe you should consider your instrumentation approach - are you measuring everything that is perceivable?

Asking Teresa to do human trials to 'prove' she hears what she claims is a bit over the top in a hobby, no?

[mmerrill99]

21 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Last I understood, this "hobby" was about obtaining High Fidelity

If you circumscribe 'high fidelity' by what limited testing reveals then I don't agree.

If you describe high fidelity as better perceived realism & insight into the music reproduced then I would agree & last I understood, that seems to be what most audio forums are about - people stating what they hear & others using this information & evaluating it themselves by their own listening.

 

What's your definition?

[mmerrill99]

3 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Do you see how you resist Sal's attempt to circumscribe in your first paragraph, and then in your second paragraph make your own attempt to circumscribe?

I was circumscribed when I was young - nothing I can do about it

I'm giving my impressions of what the 'hobby' is about - sure there are 'audio forums' that don't fit my definition, I confess!

[mmerrill99]

21 minutes ago, firedog said:

No, Jud, you have it wrong. The point of the hobby is to listen the way a chosen few listen.

I would put it differently - there are a chosen few who insist on others conforming to their biases when listening (of course they try to insinuate that they don't have biases - they like to think of themselves as objective)

[mmerrill99]

13 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Good point, but perhaps not "perfectly well". You might encounter just a few buffer underruns, unless of course, you are a really fast typist

 

Not sure what buffers are being talked about here but does the input to & output from buffers happen concurrently or does the buffer get filled & then filling is turned off while emptying happens?

Just a consideration about the electrical noise happening while filling & emptying are happening & whether the concomitant electrical noise can have any subsidiary effect?

[mmerrill99]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

In isochronous USB audio, one packet consisting of many samples is sent every 125µs. These packets have to be stored in a buffer, so that they can be doled out to the DAC at an appropriate sampling rate.

There are spikes at 8KHz (125uS) seen in some measurements - are these spikes due to electrical noise from the buffer getting samples every 125uS or from the USB receiver handling these packets or both?

 

As far as I know, anytime there is bursty electrical activity (packet processing) the electrical noise generated will also be bursty & may effect other sensitive areas i/e clock, Dac

[mmerrill99]

27 minutes ago, mansr said:

The noise is from the USB interface handling the incoming frame. The subsequent buffer has nothing to do with it.

OK, but is the buffer filled in a bursty manner & does this not result in bursts of electrical noise, not necessarily at 8KHz ?

[mmerrill99]

5 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Most likely due to electrical crosstalk between the two circuits. This shouldn't happen in a well-designed interface. If the path from the USB input is not properly isolated, the 8KHz signal can potentially leak all the way to the DAC output.

Ah yes "well designed" is a great phrase which I always see mentioned but seldom do people give the specifics of what it means.

just because we don't see this 8KHz noise spike on the outputs of the DAC doesn't mean it's not affecting other chips/clocks & intermixing with their own self-noise.I wouldn't subscribe to such a linear view as you seem to take.

[mmerrill99]

14 minutes ago, mansr said:

In my good ADC (Tascam UH-7000) there is some 8 kHz noise visible if the pre-amp gain is turned up high. With standard line level inputs, this amount of gain is not needed.

Does this mean that the 8KHz noise may affect low level signal linearity in your Tascam?

[mmerrill99]

22 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

It may not be there at all. Or if it is present and 'intermixing' on the digital side, it may result in jitter. 8KHz is not signal-correlated, so even if it adds jitter, it will sound like uncorrelated noise.

Sure we don't know if it's there or not - I was just pointing out to you that absence of 8KHz spike does not mean that it is eliminated - it could be intermixed

I think you are confusing the idea of correlated jitter - it doesn't have to be correlated to the audio signal - correlation to any periodic signal will result in it NOT sounding "like uncorrelated noise"

[mmerrill99]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

When I say uncorrelated noise, I really do mean it's not correlated to the audio signal. Noise correlated to any fixed frequency will produce a constant tone, hum, high pitch, etc, but it will not vary with the audio signal. If you hear a constant pitch tone from your DAC, then perhaps you have an 8KHz issue. I hear no hum or other fixed sounds from my DAC. Do you?

I said it could intermingle with self noise from other devices. Who said this intermodulation would necessarily result in audio band hum?

[mmerrill99]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

So what would be the result of such intermodulation with an 8KHz signal? What's the effect on the analog output?

Well, it would require some deep analysis but what I'm questioning are your binary contentions that either we see 8KHz on DAC output or it's completely eliminated or the other alternative you gave that we hear a hum or it has no other audible effects.

[mmerrill99]

4 hours ago, Teresa said:

There are lots of things that are not measurable and not just in audio/video.

I don't believe that is the problem - I believe that it's just that these people are lazy thinkers - they know how to do an FFT & that's as far as their thinking goes for revealing something that is reported as perceivable when listening to dynamic signals.

 

Do they really think that FFTs of fixed tones are going to reveal what is audible?

[mmerrill99]

5 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

 

One precondition is that one must trust the source of the advice, must value the opinion. This process is not entirely objective. Sometimes it is far from objective and depends in part how you are treated by the person who is offering the advice.

" The heart ... first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it." Anthony de Mello

[mmerrill99]

3 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

The "ear/brain system" is the most fallible tool to use in sighted evaluations of a High Fidelity system.

So, what your saying is that it's not the "ear/brain system" that is fallible - it's the "ear/brain/vision" that is fallible?

Pity as that is what I use all the time when I listen to & enjoy my music system. Should I not do that?

 

What happens when you do your "blind test" & it "proves" that there is no difference between A & B - does your ear/brain/vision system stop being fallible or when you go back to sighted listening of A & B  you have to keep reminding yourself that the pretty, shiny one does not sound better?

 

Or have you simply replaced one bias in this fallible system with another opposite bias?

 

Chose your bias!!

[mmerrill99]

12 minutes ago, firedog said:

It's also true that sighted listening changes what we hear - that's well established. 

Nope, the correct phrase is "CAN change what we hear" but so can smell, mood, lighting, worry, tiredness, company - any number of things!

 

What would you say is the best way to eliminate these influences on what we perceive?

 

Teresa has found that over longer term listening the variations in each of these other biases may well cancel out - in other words her mood listening one day is likely to be different to her mood on another days listening, her tiredness one day, different to her tiredness another day & so on. Over long term listening, these factors will vary so much that what is the essence of  the sound becomes apparent - the characteristic sound of the device, if you like.

 

On the other hand, blind A/B testing focuses so much on eliminating just one bias sigthedness/knowledge that it ignores all the other biases/influences in how we perceive. It tends towards a one shot at "proving" what is audible.

 

See the problem?

[mmerrill99]

22 minutes ago, firedog said:

By the way, to understand how much sight effects our auditory perception, watch this:

No, this is not a good example as it is showing a very specific conflict between how we process speech & how we use visual as well as auditory clues to predict/analyze what is being said. The mistake often made is to try to generalize this specific illusion to the statement "how much sight effects our auditory perception"

 

What is generalisable is that all perceptions use whatever information is available to try to solve the particular puzzle that is perception. Why is perception a 'puzzle'? Because there is usually not enough information within the signal stream to come to one specific solution that matches the signals being received - there are many possible ways those signals could have been generated & the job of our perception is to select the most probable from all the possibles in double-quick time!!

[mmerrill99]

20 minutes ago, firedog said:

Unfortunately, our brain will often continue to allow sight to override what is coming into our ears. We are creatures very oriented towards sight. 

You obviously can listen and enjoy how you like - and should. I think what Sal and some others are reacting to is using sighted listening as some sort of objective, authoritative yardstick. It isn't. Even for our own ears. We should at least acknowledge that. 

It's fine to say, "I like this better and that's what I'm listening to."; That isn't the same as saying, I added this to my system and I KNOW for a fact  that it does x (reduces noise, lifts veils, firms up bass, etc)", because I heard it. 

 

A better approach would be "it sounds better to me, but I haven't tested it non-sighted, so I could be fooling myself."

I think what Teresa is saying is that a test which asks you to taste food with your nose blocked is of no value when she tastes all her food without her nose blocked.

 

What is the point of the test? To show that blocking your nose will depress your taste sensation to the point where almost everything tastes the same?

[mmerrill99]

12 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

No, I'm trying to improve S/N ratio on these forums. Somewhat unsuccessfully, I might add  so the suggestion to move on is perhaps appropriate.

One man's signal is another man's noise

Didn't Paul Simon have a song title like this - "One man's ceiling is another man's floor" - obviously all about living in an apartment ?

[mmerrill99]

11 minutes ago, firedog said:

 

Sighted listening is well established as a major influence in peoples decisions about what sounds better. That is, people's evaluations of which component sounds better/different are directly and consistently affected when they know which components are being played. Even "large/obvious" differences can magically disappear when we don't know which components are playing. 

The other factors you mention might have some effect, but it certainly isn't established how they work or even if the same variable might work in opposite directions at different times. And it hasn't been shown that they can cause large changes in our perception. Sight can. We know that. 

Have you got a study which shows that people are CONSISTENTLY affected by sight of the audio devices? Not statistical averaging but CONSISTENT.

 

So you don't know what effect other factors might have in what we hear & yet you rely on just eliminating sight as the gold standard test?

 

I was giving an alternative justification for Teresa's view about blind A/B testing as I interpret it.

 

But here's the crux of the matter - you keep saying that sightedness affects hearing & yet after a blind test which "proves" that A & B sound the same, this bias magically disappears - now A & B sound the same, sighted. Pleas explain how the CONSISTENT major bias is suddenly no longer extant?

[mmerrill99]

 

19 minutes ago, firedog said:

yes, but you are just speculating.It's possible other factors exist, but you're speculating on whether they do and how much influence they have. 

Well, isn't discovery & science about speculation & examining what might be the flaws in current thinking/experiments? I would have thought objectivists would be looking at this critically themselves & not dismissing it out of hand.

If there is no evidence about the influence of these factors then why not? Are you saying that lack of evidence means they have no influence or that people are just not bothered investigating this aspect?

 

How do we know the relative strength of these factors in their power to influence what we perceive? For instance,  inattentive blindness exists for auditory as well as visual perception where we don't see something obvious because our attention is elsewhere. Working memory load is strongly related to this & therefore mood, worry, etc. are factors that may well influence hat we hear.

 

But the whole point is that Teresa listens over the long term, yes sighted. Whose to say that her technique doesn't arrive at a more accurate evaluation than a one shot blind A/B test which is what is considered the gold standard?

19 minutes ago, firedog said:

There have been lots of demonstrations of people "knowing" that one component sounds much better than another, but not being able to tell which is which when the components are behind a curtain.

Sure & what does this tell us?

There have also been blind tests repeated many times, at different times, where no difference is heard until someone identifies the difference & then it's heard blind.

What does this tell us?

 

What is actually being examined in the test?

[mmerrill99]

21 minutes ago, mmerrill99 said:

But here's the crux of the matter - you keep saying that sightedness affects hearing & yet after a blind test which "proves" that A & B sound the same, this bias magically disappears - now A & B sound the same, sighted. Pleas explain how the CONSISTENT major bias is suddenly no longer extant?

@firedog - can you answer this before moving to another point, please?

It's something that I'm interested in hearing an explanation for.