Quote Originally Posted by Feanor View Post
The whole topic of blind testing, (single or double), is pretty stale.
It is stale because it is too rigorous for the majority to do well, and stand under scrutiny. Sorry, but there is too much evidence that sighted testing introduces too many biases to be reliable.

On the one hand, even the most rigorous DBT cannot prove that there are no differences, ONLY that they can't be heard by a statistically significant portion of people under the conditions of the test -- the latter is a significant caveat (as E-Stat implies).
If it cannot be heard, then there is no differences PERIOD. DBT is about what we actually hear without the biases of a sighted test. If we take the equipment or cable out of sight, then we are listening much like a blind person would....with our ears only.

Recently I listened to a number of (relatively) low cost interconnects and I thought I heard differences which I described in another post. My testing certainly wasn't blind. I wouldn't bet a dime that I could tell the cables apart in bind tests, and what's more, I wouldn't blame the condition for the fact. Unlike some audiophiles I'm willing to admit that some (at least) of the differences I hear are my imagination.
Not only your imagination, but different seat placement which affect what you acoustically hear, the colorations of the speaker you listen too, and the source material itself. As Dr. Floyd Toole and Dr. Peter D'Antonio has proven - move your head a inch or more from the central measured seating position, and what your hear perceptively changes. This is even if you sit your butt in exactly the same place. If you head is not in a measure vice, then you will hear subtle changes in the frequency response, and time arrival of the signals from the speakers(two channel mostly).

There reason IC and speaker wire testing is so hard to do objectively is because

1. The rooms resonances must be completely eliminated at the seating areas. In other words, you have to neutralize the room's effect on the sound.

2. The room has to be quiet enough so that low level details in the mix are easily heard.

3. The speakers MUST have the necessary resolution to make subtleties audible, because the differences in IC are subtle at best.

4. You must level match the sources to within .5db's because any differences above that are judged as perceptively better to the ear.

5. You have to analyze your sources(software) for any inherent characteristics that would affect what you hear.(i.e recording based colorations or errors within the source itself).

Outside of this, subjective comparisons could be made, but not objective ones.