michaelab
desafinado
IMO it's far easier to convince yourself of a differenece that doesn't exist than to convince yourself there is no difference when one does exist - the motivation to hear non-existent differences is usually much stronger too. In the past when I've "heard" differences I've generally gone along with whatever the consensus in the room was, not willing to admit that in fact I knew inside that I'd heard no difference. If I heard a clear difference it would be hard to deny to myself. You always know, when you're being honest with yourself, whether you heard a difference or not. What you say to the other people in the room is another matter though, perhaps in order to save face.
Your example of how to trick a cable non-believer is amusing but it's not of any scientific value, other than illustrating a point of human psychology. In order for an ABX test to have any validity, the people being subjected to the test must not know what is being tested, just that they are being asked to say if they can identify whether, on each listen of X, whether X is A or B. Your example immediately put the non-believer in the situation of wanting to "prove" to the believer that cables made no difference so he disregarded what he was actually hearing and just made sure his resposnes showed he could hear no difference. It's likely he was quite able to hear the polarity inversion but wasn't about to let the cable believer have his triumph by admitting it.
When I mean "honest" I mean honest to myself. I know when truly when I've heard a difference and when I haven't. I always evaluate everything on the basis that it is potentially audible and I don't attach any emotional reaction to these things at all. Sometimes during testing of cables I've even walked up to my equipment, changed nothing, and then sat down again and listened to the same track again and quite frequently it appears to sound subtly different, and I KNOW I haven't changed anything. This illustrates the problem with human hearing memory, which is that it's pretty awful. To really be able to hear a subtle difference requires many repeated listens back and forth in relatively quick succession, slowly starting to focus on perhaps just one aspect of the sound that you think might be changing and then concentrate on that. Otherwise you haven't a hope of reliably detecting a small difference. That method is obvioulsy as valid for determining that, in truth, there is no difference that you are able to detect.
Michael.
Your example of how to trick a cable non-believer is amusing but it's not of any scientific value, other than illustrating a point of human psychology. In order for an ABX test to have any validity, the people being subjected to the test must not know what is being tested, just that they are being asked to say if they can identify whether, on each listen of X, whether X is A or B. Your example immediately put the non-believer in the situation of wanting to "prove" to the believer that cables made no difference so he disregarded what he was actually hearing and just made sure his resposnes showed he could hear no difference. It's likely he was quite able to hear the polarity inversion but wasn't about to let the cable believer have his triumph by admitting it.
When I mean "honest" I mean honest to myself. I know when truly when I've heard a difference and when I haven't. I always evaluate everything on the basis that it is potentially audible and I don't attach any emotional reaction to these things at all. Sometimes during testing of cables I've even walked up to my equipment, changed nothing, and then sat down again and listened to the same track again and quite frequently it appears to sound subtly different, and I KNOW I haven't changed anything. This illustrates the problem with human hearing memory, which is that it's pretty awful. To really be able to hear a subtle difference requires many repeated listens back and forth in relatively quick succession, slowly starting to focus on perhaps just one aspect of the sound that you think might be changing and then concentrate on that. Otherwise you haven't a hope of reliably detecting a small difference. That method is obvioulsy as valid for determining that, in truth, there is no difference that you are able to detect.
Michael.