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Why blind listening tests are flawed

This may sound like pure flame war bait - but here it is anyway. Since rebuilding my system from scratch, and auditioning everything from preamps to amps to dacs to interconnects to speaker cable etc, it seems clearer than ever.

I notice that I get easily fooled between bad and great sounding gear during blind auditions. Most would say "That should tell you that the quality of the gear is closer than you thought. Trust it".

But it's the process of blind listening tests that's causing the confusion, not a case of what I prefer to believe or justify to myself. And I think I know why it happens.

Understanding the sound of audio gear is process of accumulated memories. You can listen to say new speakers for weeks and love them until you start hearing something that bothers you until you can't stand them anymore.

Subconsciously you're building a library of impressions that continues to fill in the blanks of the overall sound. When all the holes are filled - you finally have a very clear grasp of the sonic signature. But we know that doesn't happen overnight.

This explains why many times you'll love how something sounds until you don't anymore? Anyone experience that? I have - with all 3 B&W speakers upgrades I've made in my life just to name a few.

Swapping out gear short term for blind listening tests is therefore counter productive for accurately understanding the characteristics of any particular piece or system because it causes discontinuity with impression accumulation and becomes subtractive rather than additive. Confusion becomes the guaranteed outcome instead of clarity. In fact it's a systematic unlearning of the sound characteristics as the impression accumulation is randomized. Wish I could think of a simpler way of saying that..

Ok this is getting even further out there but: Also I believe that when you're listening while looking at equipment there are certain anchors that also accumulate. You may hear a high hat that sounds shimmering and subconsciously that impression is associated with some metallic color or other visual aspect of the equipment you happen to be watching or remember.

By looking at (or even mentally picturing) your equipment over time you have an immediate association with its' sound. Sounds strange, but I've noticed this happening myself - and I have no doubt it speeds up the process of getting a peg on the overall sound character.

Obviously blind tests would void that aspect too resulting in less information rather than more for comparison.

Anyone agree with this, because I don't remember hearing this POV before. But I'm sure many others that have stated this because, of course, it happens to be true. ;
larrybou
phasecorrect's avatar
phasecorrect
2,013 posts
 
I'm all for blind tests...the opposition is coming from hi-end makers, publications, etc...they have nothing to gain against lower cost competition...if they win...they were supposed to...lose, there goes bragging rights and their business...
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mapman's avatar
mapman
15,679 posts
 
When I used to sell gear years ago, blind listening tests for customers, though flawed for reasons the OP described, were the best tool available to help a customer decide what they liked best, AT THE TIME.

But Time Always tells.

From a buyers perspective, the best approach is to train your ears by listening to a lot of music as much as possible, as many ways as possible, then use that as the reference for determining where things stand with your setup. Then tweak and tune as needed to hit your target. Meanwhile, keep on listening along the way to as much as possible as many different ways as possible to know how things can and do really sound. At some point you will know the target when you hear it, and it probably will not even change very much, and only then will you be in a position to bring the hunt to an end.

SO the key is to know how your gear sounds and compares to everything else. BLind a/b listening tests are not needed.
mceljo
983 posts
 
Larrybou - what you need to do after listening to cables for days at a time and then declaring a winner is to have someone else switch the losing cable back in without you knowing. If you notice a change then maybe you conclusion was valid and if you don't the maybe the real difference was less than you perceived when you had full awareness of the changes being made.
electroslacker
255 posts
 
I've experienced a sighted test that was more informative than the blind test, but I was watching the listeners instead of the equipment. I was evaluating the Aleph 0's in my home system and had different friends over to experience them. In previous sessions there would be an extended silence as they listened. But with the Aleph 0's each visitor would talk instead of listen, ofter jabbering about how they liked the amps. This behavior reinforced my own uneasiness about them, and I "Pass'ed."

To me, this was a measurement of the system capturing the attention of the listener through music. When the mind is captured, it shuts down other activity, such as jabbering and comparing.

I can't prove it, but always felt like the A/B blind test was the antithesis of having the mind captured by music. It seems like the testing/straining/comparing parts of the brain would be lit up, and the fascinated/delighted/captured part of the brain would fade out, which misses the main point of the whole shebang.
zkzpb8
208 posts
 
Ok, as I mentioned - there are two important considerations. Level matched components - quick A/B with no time gaps. It can even be sighted, but those two things MUST happen in order to exclude variables that will cloud our judgement.

During the time it takes to swap out a component, your memory has failed you (and even shorter time than that). There’s no possibility that you can remember the sound well enough to make an honest comparison. If you could, you would be an oddity, and very rich and famous. If I played you a test tone - a single tone, not even anything as complex as a song. Then very slightly pitched the tone, unplugged the cables, plugged them back in again then played the new tone - you’d hear no difference. But if I quickly A/B’d them, everyone here would hear the very slight pitch difference.

I used to get tired of hearing about level matching. Level match this, level match that... However, when you experience how different something sounds when you change the volume (even just the smallest amount) you quickly realize how important it is to level match. Our hearing is not built to make comparisons without first making sure the levels aren’t skewing the test.

I still don’t understand all of the pressure from an A/B test - I do it all of the time in the studio. Does A sound better than B? Well, let’s see: listen to A, listen to B - let’s go with B - next... I don’t sit in a session and live with a sound for a week, make a change and live with that one for another week. When you see the power in making quick, A/B comparisons, your ears will very easily tell you what’s right.

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