Trust your ears

[Allan F]

On 5/9/2021 at 11:57 AM, skikirkwood said:

I thought I could trust me ears, but clearly I could not. This happened almost 10 years ago I think. And ever since, every time I read a "professional" review in an audiophile publication, or a comment in a forum like this, when someone says "trust your ears", I just kind of laugh. Confirmation bias is a very powerful tendency we humans all have.

 

Your story is a good example of confirmation or expectation bias, but IMO it does not support your conclusion to most of those who "trust their ears". That is because they do not draw conclusions based solely on listening immediately after making an equipment change. Rather, they listen to a variety of music with which they are very familiar over an extended period of time to determine if they hear a difference. And that necessarily also involves comparisons. They have no cause to share your laughter.

[Allan F]

20 hours ago, skikirkwood said:

I have friends who have spent $17K on network streamers, huge amounts of money on high end speaker and interconnect cables and always challenge them to a $1000 bet they can't distinguish something like their $17K streamer to one one of my Raspberry PIs, both outputting to the same DAC. Nobody has taken me up on my offer to date.

 

So what! This says far more about you than it does about them. You apparently have a need to prove that you are right, whereas they are content - as am I and most who trust their ears - to be guided by their experience and simply enjoy the music. They have neither the need nor the desire to take you up on what they see as needless (annoying?) challenges. 🙂

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, Teresa said:

I have a question: why is a thread called Trust your ears in the Objective-Fi forum?

 

I must say that the same question crossed my mind, and I was somewhat concerned that my replies might be Off Topic. 🙂

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, skikirkwood said:

So my point, as someone who has a scientific background, is the mantra "trust your ears", ubiquitous among subjective audiophiles, is nonsense, due to confirmation and expectation bias. No need for graphs and charts.

 

You apparently believe, wrongly IMO, that subjectivists will always hear differences because of expectation or confirmation bias. The subjectivists that I know neither insist nor expect to hear differences with every change they make to their systems. Rather, they may hear differences after repeated listening sessions over a period of time. OTOH, such an exercise of critical listening may also satisfy them that there are no audible differences. Expectation or confirmation bias can work both ways. If someone, by reason of "a scientific background", is convinced that there are no differences to be heard, he/she may not hear them notwithstanding that they do, in fact, exist. While graphs and charts may indeed prove something, the lack of them hardly equates to "nonsense".

[Allan F]

On 6/18/2021 at 2:43 PM, skikirkwood said:

Rejection of mainstream science has become a key feature of the political right in the U.S. And increasingly around the world. Denial of climate change (it hit 101 here in Palo Alto yesterday), the anti-vax movement, and more recently the response to Covid-19 over the last 15 months. The latter causing mass deaths that could have been avoided in the U.S., Brazil, India and elsewhere. 

 

I see the same thing happening in the audiophile world.

 

Your analogy is bogus. There is no reasonable dispute regarding climate change or the misinformation regarding vaccines or COVID-19. Those are all matters of fact. OTOH, the debate between subjectivists and objectivists regarding whether differences can be heard is both a matter of opinion and one of reasonable dispute, regardless of the latter group insisting that only they can be right.

 

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, March Audio said:

Im afraid that's simply not true.  There has been probably 100 years of objective scientific research into what we can and cannot hear.  It is very far from mere opinion.  How do you think lossy formats such as mp3 and AAC were developed.

 

Surely, you are not seriously suggesting that people can't hear the difference between lossy formats such as MP3 and lossless Red Book standard audio. And despite your opinion to the contrary, the issue under discussion is very much a matter of opinion based, in the case of subjectivists, on repeatable experience. Accordingly, I see no point in carrying on this "debate" any further. Bye!

[Allan F]

13 minutes ago, opus101 said:

I'm not even sure its a matter of opinion. Subjectivists experience differences, objectivists (presumably) don't...The difference is more substantial, its a difference of experience.

 

I used the term opinion, i.e. opinion based on experience, in contrast to the objectivists' belief that the issue is a matter of settled fact. Now please excuse me while I leave this forum and move to my living room to enjoy listening to music. 🙂

[Allan F]

14 hours ago, March Audio said:

Proof that God does not exist and that black is white.

 

https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4

 

Shouldn't it more appropriately be called the Un-Babel fish?

[Allan F]

2 hours ago, kumakuma said:

Asking someone to identify an object that they know nothing about though is similar to asking questions like "Did you forget something?"...

 

Or, perhaps better still IMO, "What did you forget?" Or, when you are trying to find a lost object, "Where did you put it?" 🙂

[Allan F]

3 hours ago, kumakuma said:

It seems to me that the fundamental problem is that many subjectivists want to have their cake and eat it too.

 

They want to be able to freely share their opinions on the rest of the forum without being "harassed" by objectivists AND come into this sub-forum to attack those with a more objectivist view of the world.

 

The "problem" you refer to is, at least with respect to this thread, the result of a topic Trust Your Ears that intentionally or otherwise invites replies from subjectivists. I agree with Teresa who, appropriately in my view, questioned whether this topic belongs in the Objective-Fi forum.
 

[Allan F]

9 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Where’s the personal insult? I will take action. 

 

Apparently, some people seem to think that disagreement with them or criticism of the content of their posts is a "personal insult". Go figure! 🙂

[Allan F]

13 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It's also not lost on me that @March Audio seems to find his way into every argumentative thread. 

 

Good to know, and to see that others are not alone in making that observation. 🙂

[Allan F]

1 minute ago, March Audio said:

They are simply individuals that are peed off because I have disagreed with them and or shown their comments to be wrong.

 And I suppose you are not when you can't resist unnecessarily repeating exactly the same comment three times like an echo chamber. 🙂

 

1 hour ago, March Audio said:

With a perfect example from @manueljenkin above.

 

1 hour ago, March Audio said:

With a perfect example from @manueljenkin above.

 

1 hour ago, March Audio said:

With a perfect example from @manueljenkin above.

 

[Allan F]

19 minutes ago, March Audio said:

Im not what?  It was just an excellent example of the disruptive behaviour @kumakuma , I and others have been referring to.

 

If you will excuse a political analogy, you sound not unlike Donald Trump's self-serving description of his "perfect conversation" with the leader of Ukraine that led to his first impeachment. 🙂

[Allan F]

5 minutes ago, Jud said:

That’s what I’m saying I believe I recall: Toole and/or Olive referring to an orientation given listeners they characterized as untrained, and when I tracked down the orientation, it did indeed talk about how to listen for flatter frequency response.

 

Do I assume correctly that you are referring to this? Harman's How to Listen

[Allan F]

On 6/22/2021 at 10:30 AM, pkane2001 said:

 

Toole published his first speaker research in 1985-6 (years before joining Harman) that indicated that certain measurements of loudspeakers correlated extremely well with subjective preferences of "advanced" listeners. The subjects were given minimal instructions and were not trained before taking the test, AFAIK. For those early studies, they were chosen from among musicians,  sound-recording engineers, and audiophiles.ing less consistent results. 

 

Before joining Harmon, Floyd Toole was Senior Research Officer of the Acoustics and Signal Processing Group at Canada's National Research Council, where he used the facility's anechoic chamber to measure speakers.