The fact that Atkinson showed up here

[firedog]

6 hours ago, esldude said:

I don't think that passes muster with those complaining about the challenges.  The offer to compensate is so it isn't a waste of time.

No, I’m just not interested and consider it a waste of my time. His compensation doesn’t change that for me. Make it $100K and I’d start to think about it.

[esldude]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

No, I’m just not interested and consider it a waste of my time. His compensation doesn’t change that for me. Make it $100K and I’d start to think about it.

I have to note, that sounds like more than disinterest.  Sounds like someone having little confidence, and only willing to try it for a long shot chance at a big payoff.  

 

And it doesn't have to be you.  We have at least dozens making claims and yet no one, not one, not a single one is willing to take up one of these challenges?   

 

 

On the other end of the scale, I have put up a few threads asking people to listen for and choose differences.  Nothing involved beyond some time and listening at your convenience and comfort of your own home.  Plenty of excuses made there.  Yet out of thousands of views I don't think as many as 20 risked even the chance of simply being wrong.  Nor were they confident enough of being right to simply make a choice.   I applaud those who did.  If one knew nothing other than all the night and day differences from the teeny tiniest of sources claimed, one would think at least a hundred or more would give a listening test a try.  Somehow people who trust their ears lose that trust when they have to do more than listen willy nilly and spout some opinions.  Opinions they hold very dearly, but apparently not so confidently.  

[firedog]

4 hours ago, esldude said:

I have to note, that sounds like more than disinterest.  Sounds like someone having little confidence, and only willing to try it for a long shot chance at a big payoff.  

 

And it doesn't have to be you.  We have at least dozens making claims and yet no one, not one, not a single one is willing to take up one of these challenges?   

 

 

On the other end of the scale, I have put up a few threads asking people to listen for and choose differences.  Nothing involved beyond some time and listening at your convenience and comfort of your own home.  Plenty of excuses made there.  Yet out of thousands of views I don't think as many as 20 risked even the chance of simply being wrong.  Nor were they confident enough of being right to simply make a choice.   I applaud those who did.  If one knew nothing other than all the night and day differences from the teeny tiniest of sources claimed, one would think at least a hundred or more would give a listening test a try.  Somehow people who trust their ears lose that trust when they have to do more than listen willy nilly and spout some opinions.  Opinions they hold very dearly, but apparently not so confidently.  

I  decided several years ago that all the arguing and testing etc don't  really add to my enjoyment or knowledge. In the past I have sometimes perceived a small superiority of hi-res when doing a proper comparison to Redbook.  I don't always hear it on every recording. It seems to mostly be audible on certain types of arrangements and instrumentation (mostly acoustic instruments/arrangements). 

 

I know of lots or Redbook recordings that sound great. If there is a high res version of  a recording that appears  to have been properly produced and is the "studio master", I'll generally buy it instead of the Redbook. But it isn't a big issue for  me. It's more important that the basic recording and mastering are well done.

 

Same with PCM vs DSD. Lots of both types I think sound great. On my previous setup with a Mytek DAC I preferred the sound when upsampling everything to DSD. With my present setup I think PCM sounds better and don't convert. My setup now converts DSD to PCM internally anyway, and to be honest I don't think I've lost anything - in fact I think this setup sounds better playing internally converted DSD than the previous one did playing back DSD natively. 

 

I can't be bothered testing cables etc. I just try to buy properly made ones so I know they aren't somehow screwing up the sound. Couldn't be less interested in the arguments about them.  

 

Same with MQA. To find out what all the hype was about I bought a modest MQA DAC.  I've tested and compared and haven't found it to be consistently superior. I heard some MQA recordings I liked better and some I liked less than the non-MQA version. I don't know if I was comparing versions from the same source in all of those cases. So purely in terms of the SQ aspects of MQA I'm not overly interested. I certainly don't hear the "across the board" superiority that the audio press keeps telling me is there. I mostly just hear that it sounds different.  Sometimes not by much. 

 

In fact one of my main complaints about the audiophile world is the tendency to exaggerate small differences and say they are night and day type differences. I think it happens all the time. So whenever I hear a hobbyist or a professional make claims like "my system sounded completely different"   after switching a component or "component A was vastly superior to component B"  when both are good components - I'm skeptical about how large the differences actually are.  I think audiophiles are so focused on the hobby and listening so hard to hear differences that often small changes are perceived as large ones. I guess it helps justify spending ever larger sums on upgrades as you go  further and further along the scale of diminishing returns for your additional dollar. 

 

So no, it really is disinterest in always comparing everything to arrive at the "TRUTH". I think there are aspects of audio that we aren't going to get to a definitive "proof"  about anytime soon, and I certainly don't have the ability, setup etc to get to the "TRUTH". In the end, as long as I'm not buying something that is clearly snake oil, I only care about what I hear. Because even if I'm fooling myself, I'm still hearing that. 

 

 

[semente]

10 hours ago, esldude said:

Maybe we could start a business to digitally record at 24/384 vinyl which was digitally sourced.  That way it would have the goodness of its pass thru the LP/analog world, and be hirez  excuse me HiRez***********

 

And this would be an even bigger scam.  

 

You could save yourself some of the trouble:

 

[esldude]

6 minutes ago, semente said:

 

You could save yourself some of the trouble:

 

True, but then it wouldn't be genuine LP/analog sound.  Just a digital simulation. 

 

Or I could do this and say I didn't.  That would increase the scammy quotient.

[Andyman]

On 12/29/2017 at 8:06 PM, Ralf11 said:

 it is NOT quite probable to throw 5 heads or tails in a row - maybe JA meant "possible"

 

IIRC back decades to intro. stats, the P() would be 1/2 to the 5th power, a rather small likelihood 

 

Careful Ralph. You don't know how many times he flipped his coin. If he did so at least 62 times (and let's face it, there's probably not much else to do around the Stereophile/MQA offices these days), it would indeed be probable.

[Mordikai]

5 hours ago, firedog said:

 

In fact one of my main complaints about the audiophile world is the tendency to exaggerate small differences and say they are night and day type differences. I think it happens all the time. So whenever I hear a hobbyist or a professional make claims like "my system sounded completely different"   after switching a component or "component A was vastly superior to component B"  when both are good components - I'm skeptical about how large the differences actually are.  I think audiophiles are so focused on the hobby and listening so hard to hear differences that often small changes are perceived as large ones. I guess it helps justify spending ever larger sums on upgrades as you go  further and further along the scale of diminishing returns for your additional dollar. 

 

Yes! This is a chronic problem and it's not just the magazines, even your average forum participants do this a lot. 

[james45974]

1 hour ago, Mordikai said:

Yes! This is a chronic problem and it's not just the magazines, even your average forum participants do this a lot. 

even more, it is a societal problem.  You name it, movies, television, food, cars, on and on! 

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, Andyman said:

 

Careful Ralph. You don't know how many times he flipped his coin. If he did so at least 62 times (and let's face it, there's probably not much else to do around the Stereophile/MQA offices these days), it would indeed be probable.

 

Very droll. :-)

 

My statement was based on experience. For the blind listening tests on amplifiers that I organized at Stereophile's Bay Area show in 1989, we had 56 sessions each with 7 presentations of 2 amplifiers. To decide which amplifier would be playing for each of the 7 presentations, I used a random number generator to flip a virtual coin 400 times. There were several occasions when I got a string of 5 sames in a row, a couple of 6 sames, and one of 7.

 

If you are about to tell me that 56x7 = 392, not 400, I discarded strings of 6 or 7 sames as not being appropriate for a listening test: asking a listener to identify "Same or Different" when every presentation in a session was one or the other would lead  him to start second-guessing his answers.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Streophile

[Sal1950]

On 1/1/2018 at 10:10 PM, wdw said:

The issue is not whether you imagine your position to be correct, that is a debatable point, but more so the malice that you write into them.   You constantly offer these silly BS $$ challenges.  Please go back to hacking Hillary’s emails.  I personally believe this site as  a whole should put you on ignore.  

Queue Cogley and Kamakame.

Some people have the confidence to put their money where their mouth is.

Others can only run their mouths.

[crenca]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

 

My statement was based on experience. For the blind listening tests on amplifiers that I organized at Stereophile's Bay Area show in 1989, we had 56 sessions each with 7 presentations of 2 amplifiers. To decide which amplifier would be playing for each of the 7 presentations, I used a random number generator to flip a virtual coin 400 times. There were several occasions when I got a string of 5 sames in a row, a couple of 6 sames, and one of 7.

 

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Streophile

 

 

This math/probability/outcome is correct.  

[Sonicularity]

19 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

This math/probability/outcome is correct.  

 

Also, removing tests of 6 or 7 similar presentations impacts the research, regardless if this data edit is known by the test subjects.   Why allow the test subjects to take a trial where at least 2 of the presentations must be different?  Just make it random and tell everyone it is random.  

[crenca]

7 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

 

Also, removing tests of 6 or 7 similar presentations impacts the research, regardless if this data edit is known by the test subjects.   Why allow the test subjects to take a trial where at least 2 of the presentations must be different?  Just make it random and tell everyone it is random.  

 

You sure about this?  I thought removing outliers was valid in such things.  I happen to have two close relatives (what are the odds?  ) who are PhD statisticians I could ask if I get motivated to drop one of them an email...not that I am...

 

[Sonicularity]

11 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

You sure about this?  I thought removing outliers was valid in such things.  I happen to have two close relatives (what are the odds?  ) who are PhD statisticians I could ask if I get motivated to drop one of them an email...not that I am...

 

With statistics, I'm rarely sure.  I'd run the numbers on how often I'm sure, but I couldn't be sure about the results. 

 

In the scenario mentioned above, it seems to me that the assumptions could be altered, but I don't know about the results, but it seems likely.  If I tried a similar test using only 2 presentations, and both samples had to be used for every session, everyone would either get both right or miss both.  The results would be different if the same presentation could be used for any session, where only a single miss could occur.  I think it would change both the assumptions and the results.

[Ralf11]

https://www3.nd.edu/~apilking/Math10170/Information/Lectures 2015/Topic 10 Basic Probability.pdf

 

re: outliers - typically, it is ok to remove outliers when there is a valid reason to do so based on the experimental design - not as described above

[crenca]

3 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

...I discarded strings of 6 or 7 sames as not being appropriate for a listening test: asking a listener to identify "Same or Different" when every presentation in a session was one or the other would lead  him to start second-guessing his answers.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Streophile

 

9 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

https://www3.nd.edu/~apilking/Math10170/Information/Lectures 2015/Topic 10 Basic Probability.pdf

 

re: outliers - typically, it is ok to remove outliers when there is a valid reason to do so based on the experimental design - not as described above

 

Are you saying that JA's test design was flawed in that he tried to influence the outcome in the way he describes in the above quote?

[John_Atkinson]

1 minute ago, crenca said:

 

 

Are you saying that JA's test design was flawed in that he tried to influence the outcome in the way he describes in the above quote?

 

Think about the test situation. The listeners are told they are going hear a sequence of comparisons and are asked with each comparison to identify if the sources were the same or different. If there is a run of 6 or 7 where the correct answer is "same," - not unlikely, as I showed in my earlier posting - then my experience with blind testing - and I have a  lot of experience, please note -  is that people start to second-guess themselves. This becomes an interfering variable.

 

Ideally, of course, a careful experimenter would subject the listeners to a brain-wipe after each comparison so that they had no memory of what just happened, but then we would have had an army of zombies to care for when the testing was concluded :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[jabbr]

9 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

Are you saying that JA's test design was flawed in that he tried to influence the outcome in the way he describes in the above quote?

I wouldn’t say that — I’d results were close might have some influence but unclear

[crenca]

2 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Think about the test situation. The listeners are told they are going hear a sequence of comparisons and are asked with each comparison to identify if the sources were the same or different. If there is a run of 6 or 7 where the correct answer is "same," - not unlikely, as I showed in my earlier posting - then my experience with blind testing - and I have a  lot of experience, please note -  is that people start to second-guess themselves. This becomes an interfering variable.

 

Ideally, of course, a careful experimenter would subject the listeners to a brain-wipe after each comparison so that they had no memory of what just happened, but then we would have had an army of zombies to care for when the testing was concluded :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

I am not even an amateur (let alone an expert) in experimental design.  My gut reaction however is that your instinct/experience around "second guessing" and "interfering variable" is wrong.  I suppose I have a 50/50 chance of being correct   No doubt someone with some expertise in this area will correct me.  Perhaps they will have something to say about this zombie situation as well...I better go check my guns...  

[John_Atkinson]

3 minutes ago, crenca said:

I am not even an amateur (let alone an expert) in experimental design.

 

So why, then, do you feel confident in expressing an opinion?

 

3 minutes ago, crenca said:

  My gut reaction however is that your instinct/experience around "second guessing" and "interfering variable" is wrong.

 

Scratch a "junior objectivist" and you find a subjectivist who relies on his "gut feeling" instead of factual evidence. :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

So why, then, do you feel confident in expressing an opinion?

 

 

Scratch a "junior objectivist" and you find a subjectivist who relies on his "gut feeling" instead of factual evidence. :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

Ha!  all too true.  My "gut reaction" is based on a stat course I took many moons ago in college (I did get an A after all), but like you said it's probably not worth the digital ink it is printed on.  I could get into a conversation with one of my relatives, but I'm betting there is someone here who has some actual expertise in this area that will weigh in.

 

Besides, I actually think your "ok" doing what you did, but not for the reasons you did it.  How's that for a subjectivist answer!!   

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

I actually think your "ok" doing what you did, but not for the reasons you did it.  How's that for a subjectivist answer!!   

 

Pretty good!

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

[Andyman]

On 1/2/2018 at 6:54 PM, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

So Atkinson is Father Grandier?  Really?         Then who is Cardinal Richelieu?  Your attempt at highbrow falls a little flat for me.  Perhaps I'm missing the point.

 

 

Hmm - well I'm starting to feel like Vanessa Redgrave

[Abtr]

On ‎3‎-‎1‎-‎2018 at 7:56 PM, crenca said:

You sure about this?  I thought removing outliers was valid in such things. ...

 

Well, in a number of replications of an experiment, a so called statistical 'outlier' would be an individual test result (or data point) that is more than 2 standard deviations removed from the mean result, assuming that the data is normally distributed. If JA in his experiment simply counted the total number of correct and incorrect responses, then the data is not normally distributed so there are no outliers. Anyway, the exclusion of runs of 6 or 7 where the correct answer is "same," is part of the experimental design; it has nothing to do with statistical outliers..

[christopher3393]

3 hours ago, Andyman said:

Hmm - well I'm starting to feel like Vanessa Redgrave

 

  Brilliant.