I must admit I cannot see why DBT are flawed. IMO if you listen to any kit without knowing what it is you are more likely to appreciate it's sound qualities. Having said that I know sound is not the only thing that matters and how it looks can be important but that's not relevant to how it sounds.
Well put Dev.
But hold on a cotton pickin' minute here, why would
anyone need or even want to do a blind listening test in the first place?
I defy anyone to go into a dealer's and demand the audition for a new pair of speakers or whatever to do the entire demonstration unsighted. We'll all chip in for the flowers if you like
It's a hobby and an interest to the majority of us so let's not ever forget that keystone of the entire debate. If I am buying a heart/lung machine or a suspension bridge across a gorge I want it objectively tested until I have run out of tests before I'm confident of it's performance and the last thing I would say is "I'll have the heart/lung machine in pink with a 30% discount" and "That bridge looks a bit wonky but I'll only let one vehicle across at a time to make sure, insurance will take care of the rest".
Stamp collectors cream their trousers if they find a stamp with a minor flaw for goodness sake, the camera guys spend left arm/right leg sort of money for a lens that for example gives them one more F stop to play with, car drivers get exstatic about 0-60 time at one second less than their previous car, so it puts our neuroticism about an octave of lower bass into true perspective. Whether all these uplifts in performance is worthwhile or relevant is neither here nor there in the great scheme of things IN THE CONTEXT OF A HOBBY.
The entire hi-fi chain is an illusion to begin with; it's the illusion of having the band/musican/orchestra playing in your living room and as for the stereo effect with three dimensional imaging and soundstaging, then if that isn't an illusion then I don't know what is and I have yet to see any measuring device that can give it a true qualitative value either.
Ask any true audiophile if he NEEDS a controlled DBT for any one of his purchases and he will tell you to "Piss off" or similar and quite rightly too. Why? Because all of it was paid for out of his own money for his own listening pleasure and nobody else's, so in his view what does he need some boring miserable individual bending his ear telling him what he doesn't already know about minute differences? I think it's only the sad hat's of this world driven by the politics of envy, or are too tightfisted to pay more than a tenner for any of their purchases who delight in inverse willy waving to get their rocks off through squawking about double blind testing. Good luck to you if that's your chosen path, but please don't come onto public forums widdling on everyone else's parade by saying yours is the right way and the rest of us need certifying for our stupidity, because by even inference that is exactly what you are doing
