Sighted Testing IS King!! Silly me - all those years wasted...

[FLZapped]

Rant mode on

I'll quote an audio reviewer named Mike Kuller who answered the question as to why he believes ABX testing is different from other observational (sighted) testing:

Because when normally listening to music, NO DECISION is involved. Relaxed listening to music is a "right brain" function. To make a decision about X requires switching to a "left brain" function. And this has to be completed in the split seconds that audible memory is quickly fading.

This is not true. You are constantly evaluating what you are listening too, even before you start playing the music. You'll go and pick out different music on different days based on mood. This is an evaluative process. You may find yourself listening to a piece that yesterday was great and today is grating.....an evaluative process.....

Pretty clear indicaton that the brain halves do not function independantly of each other as is being eluded to here. While one hemisphere may dominate, it does not, by any means, ignore the other, unless forced to do so. Enter the DBT and sensory deprivation(damn, you mean science understands this already?).

The writer also doesn't seem(want?) to understand that the differences, if audible, will stand out in a switched test, making the decision process moot. They are different or not, and that is usually the criteria for such a test. Looking for what one prefers requires the use of a MOS test and is a totally different subject matter.

Music is a very insensitive program source for identifying differences because it is dynamic and constantly changing. Audible memory fades quickly. Audibility DBTs for use in psychometrics were designed to be used with test tones, noise artifacts and distortion products where they are very sensitive because the sounds are constant. Even pink noise is more sensitive than music, but is limited in its usefullness.

Music is fairly close to noise as a model and therefore can generally be used as a testing source where noise would be used. No big deal. One just has to understand it's limitations. This argument is only valid to those who don't understand that these limitations are already well known in the scientific community.

One of the oustanding problems is that audiophiles wouldn't accept testing with tones, even though that's all music really is when you get down to it. The scientific community continues to bow to their pressure in order to appease them, which is impossible, they're hopelessly infected with Audio Nervana Nervosa.

Mr. Kuller has done nothing except to spew hyperbole. He only understands enough to apease the audiophile in himself and the crowd he hangs with.

Cables have been tested to death for decades and no one, but no one has been able to find any property that doesn't boil down to L-C-R. Period. This is all very easily predicted by math(oh damn, a science) and so far, no one has proven any of the theories wrong on this. There have been some refinements along the way, but when you get right down to it, the basic formula, or theory if you will, still holds true. Therefore, the selling of cable and/or wire as a needed "sonic upgrade" in one's system is nothing more than psychology. The making of a passive component somehow active against all known physics. Of course, audiophiles reject this notion as easily as they do any test that shows the folly of their supposed wisdom. Heaven forbid that the audiophile community ever accepts that machine testing is orders of magnitude beyond our hearing capability when it comes to measurement of minute differences among components.

If audiphiles were really serious about the truth, they would be beating down the doors of the cables companies to perform tests run by an independant laboratory and freely publish the results. Why won't the cable companies do this voluntarily, because their three-ring marketing manuevers would be exposed for what they are, a circus of psychological manipulation designed to spur impulse buying.

rant mode off

-Bruce

[E-Stat]

Cables have been tested to death for decades and no one, but no one has been able to find any property that doesn't boil down to L-C-R. Period.

Except of course for shielding and noise rejection. Speaking of which, what metric quantifies the shielding characteristics of say Belden 19364 SJT cord or 89259 coax? I just reviewed the specification sheet for each and could not locate any. What did I overlook?

rw