Richard Clark $10,000 Amplifier Challenge - Why Couldn't Anyone Pass this Test??

@geoffkait 

Yes, I did read the article. I don't understand your question though? Nowhere in it are they talking about differentiating between "live" instruments? Which was the basis of my post as I was responding to your statement:

" Why couldn’t they pass the test? The same reason why a panel of experts cannot tell the difference between a Stradavarius and any other well made reasonably good sounding violin."

I then provided a real life example disproving this statement.

@Nordicnorm Not sure what you're referring to when you say they were not live instruments. Here's a link to a discussion of the two Stradavarius tests.

http://www.thestrad.com/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell-stradivarius-violins-from-modern-instru...

@geoffkait 

Hmmm. Interesting. Perhaps there isn't as much difference between violins? What do I know? I'm only a trumpet player. ;^)

That doesn't mean that musicians are unable to tell the difference between other instruments (as in my Oscar Peterson example).

nordicnorm
@geoffkait

Hmmm. Interesting. Perhaps there isn’t as much difference between violins? What do I know? I’m only a trumpet player. ;^)

>>>>>>I actually think it doesn’t necessarily mean that at all. I think there may very well be significant differences between/among good violins that trained musicians cannot distinguish, or cannot distinguish in a test, in particular a controlled blind test. Some people don’t test well. 😀 My evidence: exhibit no. 1 is that some of the worst sounding audio systems I ever heard were those of musicians. Now, all you musicians out there, please don't send me a bunch of angry emails, I'm sure some of you can hear OK. 😀

nordicnorm
That doesn’t mean that musicians are unable to tell the difference between other instruments (as in my Oscar Peterson example).

>>>>>Actually, I suspect it might mean that musicians may not be able to tell differences between other instruments. It’s the process or perhaps the test subjects themselves that’s flawed somehow. Can trained musicians tell the difference between cables? Power cords? Fuses? Can you?

Notwithstanding my personally-held belief that high end stuff sounds better to me, I am willing to concede that some of the claimed superiority I (we) claim to hear in amplifiers or perhaps cables as well is due to the fact that the products we are attempting to A/B are not level matched to within a very tight tolerance.  There are just too many people that seem to fail these comparison tests when the products are level matched to ignore the statistic totally.  I think.