The Difficulties in Component "Shootouts"

Were both pieces fully warmed up when you compared them?

When I sense that something isn't quite right it causes me to get rid of whatever doesn't work (assuming I can figure out what it is)...a pair of "balanced" Mogami cables didn't work, possibly due to the fact that my amp wasn't actually balanced and these Mogamis didn't like that (I've used Mogami stuff in pro work and have a great very quiet Jelco/Mogami din cable for my TT). Bought a pair of beautiful and relatively efficient floorstanders to pair with a low wattage single ended amp, and I kept leaning in wondering where the treble clarity was...put my previous speakers back in the system and they sounded so good I sold the new speakers, proving the point that one should never buy speakers without first hearing them. I eventually replaced my less efficient speakers with some I'd actually heard. 

@dgarretson - Yeah, I let them warm up for at least an hour, but that's not really my point.  The Oppo is not fully broken in, so I'm expecting the low-level detail to improve.  But my point was not to illustrate which was better, but to discuss the difficulty in A/B comparisons due to the adaptation and acceptance of what we are hearing by the human brain.  I don't how old you are, but we used to listen to and enjoy music on tiny transistor radios. 

"Nothing seems missing and I think that’s because the human ear has a way of filling in the missing pieces when we listen to music."   

Nope.  Our brains do that.  With speech, it's called phonemic restoration.  With music, it sometimes referred to as a missing fundamental.  It's an illusion.  Happens quite often, especially in classical music where the composer intentionally writes an unresolved cadence or cord.   The brain wants to resolve any dissonance or missing fundamental.

Many years ago, I participated in a very comprehensive study by Eastman Kodak. Professional filmmakers (cinematographers, producers,directors, editors, etc) were invited to a 2 day screening for comparing different motion picture film stocks. The control was rigorous. The same scene with the same lighting was shot using the same camera with the same lens. The footage was projected by the same projector on the same screen.

It was extremely easy to tell the difference in sharpness, grain structure, color palette, gamma, etc. There was much discussion of how a film stock can be used creatively for the ’visual style’ or ’look’. Yet, there was a general consensus that within a few minutes of viewing, it didn’t matter. Our brains simply accepted that the content was being told in this manner. The content became more important than the mode of the delivery.

So-called "shootouts" are virtually useless for choosing an audio component, imo. Many sonic differences between audio components are subtle and nuanced. They are best and most reliably revealed over time.

I think "shootouts" are an unnecessarily violent means of determining the validity of a component as it only determines which component is a faster or more accurate shot.

the ear/brain does fill in.

That is literally it’s job, how it fundamentally operates.

This is why shootouts with quick switches quickly become invalid and the only way to do a real listing test where your ear/brain does not do the fill in trick, is to long term single analysis, with maybe quick switches at times. But not the one day back and forth shoot out thing.

To be specific, for you to hear words spoken, your ear and brain, together, have a massive parallel library of words they have prepped and on the edge of being heard.

Visual systems are the same, it is the heart of the meaning in the Rorschach test, and involves a thing called pareidolia, like when you see faces on cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Your ears do the same. Your eyes have a library of learned shapes, and also a library slated toward ancient enemies and dangers, fundamental animal fear aspects of creatures and whatnot. Visualization of things that disgust us, and so on. It’s not just learned, it’s instinctive, built in as a part of the basic programming. We have contrast, then color then we learn to recognize objects, then we build up a library in our brain of objects seen prior. We overlay them on top of the new in order to identify them soonest. The same mental pre-cog ’fit on top of’ library the eye has built, has a parallel in how the ear works.

Too much constant pressure of attempting to see differences will cause the brain to loose the ability to see differentials. Ie, if we don’t move our eyes, our vision will literally ’grey out’, as non moving objects will cease to be recognized. When it moves around too much, even if it is almost identical each time, can result in overload and a confusion shut down. Ie, try watching a film where the camera moves around too much. You can take it for a while ..but a few things settle in, one, nausea, and then 2, inability to visualize.

Our ear has similar but different aspects of these uncontrollable basic or instinctive level fundamentals in design and operation.

When you hear the beginnings of the word, your brain fills in the rest and moves on quickly to the next word, and listens to the beginning of it, and fill it in and moves on to the next, and so on.

When we hear a cymbal crash, we only really hear the start of it and we fill in the rest. Unless we are careful to hear it like a new language and not do the fill in thing, even though the given sound is exactly as before, closer than any language accent differences could ever be. Essentially, we have to defeat our language hearing and interpretation centers... in order to hear the differences between two amplifier’s reproduction of the same cymbal sound. We are not wired to do that, we are wired to use the mechanism, in all things aural.

There’s still more aspects of emotions and instinct that I’m not covering, like desiring to repeat due to emotional satisfaction (listening to old music we like), aspects of love, lust, satiation from eating, and so on. All tied in to visuals and hearing.

This is how we manage to get to the act of ’real time hearing’. Otherwise we’re slower than the speaker, when it comes to recognizing what they are saying. This effect of true ’new information’ post processing is noticeable when learning to hear through a thick accent or learning a new language. You have to wait to process, you can literally feel your mind thinking and processing and then the interpretation of the accent finally comes out of your brain/ear, and arrives as a thought of what they said. Seriously, try it and pay attention.

So yes, short a and b listening tests, over time... will ERASE differences as the ear is doing it’s standard fill in tricks in all the subtleties and micro subtleties.

The pros, or people more learned at this, can learn to shut down the precog aspect of human hearing but it will eventually overcome and confuse them too, if the listening A/B tests are too frequent and close together.

audiophiles who can easily hear and consistently hear differences and micro difference are probably a combination of more learned hearing, more capable hearing and also have learned to defeat the pre-cog mechanism that is in-built.

So, in essence, it has always been that A/B tests, their very MEANING was at fault right from the first conception.

Thus, the staunch advocate of A/B testing and the idea that the audiophile differences are all bull, is the thing that is at fault.

The no difference crowd was wrong as their testing regimen was faulted.

Not logically faulted but faulted by the very mechanism of being a human...

So, no, there’s no such thing as a simple A/B test. Human issues and human body design make it a invalid test for almost any participant you can encounter, even the most well trained ones. And the validity of the test quickly reaches zero as the test goes on.

Short shoot outs, ok. Long term, more than a few tries, forget it. We tire quickly and the differences get swamped by the very act of being a human.

the differences are valid, but not observable by humans in long term a/b testing, where everything mushes together, an effect of the very mechanism of human hearing itself..

Thus the barb and spear by which the ’no difference crowd’ attacks, is an invalid regimen. Their crown, their pinnacle in examples (exhibit a) in the ridiculousness of the audiophile world, is entirely invalid. By all knowledge of the human brain and ear system, it’s an invalid exhibit and example.

The next domino of logic to fall in that chain of mulled over aspects, is that:

Those who don’t understand or value those differences either can’t hear it, can’t grok it, or are indulging in their inbuilt capacity to fill in, or can’t separate the mechanism out (like some can) and actually hear the new sound, the new accent, the new micro differences. Ie, they literally are not listening. Literally.

That does not mean you can’t get along and enjoy music, though. It just means they hear differently, and are wired differently.

And if you hear those micro differences, then they’re valid to you, even in the face of those who say otherwise.

If they say otherwise, they probably don’t know what they are talking about.

If they did know, their argument would disappear.

But wait, there’s more!

Your ear/brain’s next trick: Learning to separate/differentiate - signal from noise.

 Re, "Burn-in
Could it be, Guappo" that the ’burn-in’ is occuring in your brain? ;-)

This is your brain. 🧠 This is your brain on drugs. 🍳

I’m all for any test that works for you. The problem I have with long term testing is that many audiophiles believe there is no long term audio memory, or they actually don’t have long term memory. So where does that leave us? Back at Square One. No one ever said it was going to be easy. If it was easy everybody could do it and there would be no debate. Besides whatever kind of test you wanna pick there will always be someone who will screw it up. There are just too many things that can go wrong. Plus a lot of folks don’t know what they are hearing or what to listen for. Can you believe it? An ordinary man has no means of deliverance.

geoffkait

This is your brain. 🧠 This is your brain on drugs. 🍳

I have not yet figured out how to insert images/emo's.
Sorry!

Re. Learning to separate/differentiate - signal from noise.
When ones brain is in ’Fried Egg’ mode; it will work incredibly hard to make sense of noise. Don’t believe it!

@chayro

My experience is pretty much consistent with yours. If there’s a real difference in sound associated with a new piece - wire or component - it’s most evident to me in the first few seconds of listening after making the change. The new/different does seem to become less evident with longer exposure, yet, somewhat paradoxically, longer exposure is often needed to decide if "different" is actually "better".

Tidal vs Spotify serves as a convenient example. Spend a few hours listening to Tidal then switch to Spotify (both via their premium offerings and each through the same system). Spotify initially sounds kinda murky. Listen longer to Spotify, and it doesn’t seem that bad....tolerable for sure. In this example, however, it doesn’t take much exposure time at all to decide sound quality from Tidal is not just different but better.

If they say otherwise, they probably don’t know what they are talking about.

If they did know, their argument would disappear.

Good posts, @teo_audio  

Additionally,  On temporal lags and reconstruction...

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/time-on-the-brain-how-you-are-always-living-in-the...

My hearing is hard to quantify unlike herring which, clearly, is a fish. I've been hired to work at a concert later this month where the performers are using all their own stuff but the concert producer doesn't trust them. Consequently, my job seem to be to oversee or something, and I'm getting my normal excessive fee so it should be a great gig...I can get drunk!