Yes Mr. Anonymous Troll posting under an alias.  BTW I'm really Bill Gates. ;-)

Right, that would involve admitting to less than perfection. ;-)

Quote

But I will stop challenging "double" on HA (a world that can decide its own definitions). I’m happy to admit when I’m shown wrong (it always means I learned something). I wonder if others here feel the same.

There are dozens of people on the web, some posting right now on this thread who can't be convinced of much of anything real, no matter how much academia, science and practice is provided.

But I did say that I'm new to audio forums and that's correct. I've decided to upgrade my setup and started reading late last year (Nov.-Dec., I think). Then I joined HA, CA and AVS with this login.

Hi SAM anonymous, on what basis will the "upgrade" be made?

Btw, if you insist on taking only the high road and refusing to resort to slogging, exactly what fear would you have from someone reporting to your employer?
Fear of audiophiles?  Have you seen these type folks in person? 
A(mmar) J(adusingh)

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2015-03-29 10:41:42

Yes Mr. Anonymous Troll posting under an alias.  BTW I'm really Bill Gates. ;-)

You consider me a troll. It's not my intent, but I can't help you with that.

...just wanting to challenge and be challenged.

I'll tell you why I will remain anonymous. Some members on other sites, who used to use use real names reported people contacting their employers. Some people went to another member's employer's web site and posted stuff on the forum from there. And the straw that broke to real-name-camel's back was an exchange between John Atkinson and yourself on Usenet about 12-14 years ago. You were both rude and nasty.

Nice job of covering up for the golden ears who made death threats, harassing phone calls at all times of day or night, posted 100's of libelous comments based on my son's death, and made aggressive use of child pornography.  Atkinson bought these guys lunch and provided them with other perks. They loved it. Never happened anyplace else.

I was just rude and nasty? I'll take that as a complement!

Quote from: saratoga on 2015-03-29 04:49:58

If you think that the design of scientific studies is of interest to HA but not scientific journals, you are going to have a rough time when you finally submit those papers.  Actually, if these are real studies involving people, you are likely to have trouble when you meet your first IRB and have to pass the statistical review.

Either English isn't your native tongue or, more likely, you have not read all my posts. Understandable, since there are too many and some are too long.
I'm either a middle-aged scientist with a long list of already published articles on my CV, or I'm a pimply-faced teen pounding on the keyboard hoping to score HA points instead of trying to get laid... You don't know. You won't know.
IRB? Internal Review Board?

I don't know if we have one, but if so, they are not involved in submitting papers.

I bought most of the old stuff in the 80's (very happy with it) under the influence of sighted listening and salespeople in audiophile salons.... and maybe some chemicals.

My answer to the question "how much do you want to spend?

For that, I'm in need of squishing out most, or hopefully all, of my biases. Well that's the goal. I have always bought a piece at a time, so I'll start with headphones.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2015-03-29 14:15:41

Nice job of covering up for the golden ears who made death threats, harassing phone calls at all times of day or night, posted 100's of libelous comments based on my son's death, and made aggressive use of child pornography.  Atkinson bought these guys lunch and provided them with other perks. They loved it. Never happened anyplace else.

I was just rude and nasty? I'll take that as a complement!

Well, yeah. You weren't scary like the others. I left out the gory details, but thanks for making my point for me.

ABX is an outstanding tool (Thanks for your part in bringing it to us Arny!), but I'm sure many are like me in that doing automated ABX testing of actual hardware, say for example external EQ boxes or speaker wires, is fraught with so many problems that us average consumers don't have the means to do it easily and properly by ourselves and without assistants. Of course the main setback is that other than Arny, I don't think any of us OWN any ABX switchers such as the QSC, etc.

Although full blown ABX  switcher machines  internally have the means to do precise level matching and to simultaneously switch both inputs AND outputs, simpler ABX devices which force the experimenter to level match by external means and that do only one A/B switch, say inputs OR outputs, would still be quite useful. It seems to me that many of us already have two of the major components necessary to achieve these goals: a stereo receiver with electronic input selection (and ideally electronically selected A/B speaker outs), plus an outboard computer to do the blind selection, score tallying, X source randomization, etc. The only thing missing is the interface which could allow some computer program to externally control our receiver (or AVR, preamp/amp, whatever) and a big piece of black tape to obscure our receiver's front panel display! [Yes, there is a way to cheat, by peeking under the tape, but this isn't for publication purposes; it's just for fun.]

The computer's external control could be via RS-232 port, ethernet port*, or mini jack remote control communication port (which some brands have) or perhaps more universally through an IR blaster which gets placed under that black tape we put over the front face of our receiver, the other end obviously wired to our computer.

Arny, has anyone tried to rig up such a thing or has it ever been marketed?

I don't think any such point was made. What happened on rec.audio.opinion (RAO) in the late 90s and early Y2K seems to have been a very isolated event. I think that there were serious plans at the time to co-opt RAO as a sales tool. Later on magazine-owned conferencing web sites provided an alternative. RAO is still a wasteland.

A friend of mine is spending time in court defending himself from a driving charge when he was miles away at the time. There is only one eyewitness, the alleged harmed party.

The lesson is that anybody can cause you a lot of inconvenience over just about anything if they so desire. While the RAO crowd  couldn't go after me at my work, they did go after me at my church and with my local police department. It was all just words.

Quote from: SoundAndMotion on 2015-03-29 13:21:03

My answer to the question "how much do you want to spend?

Not sure if its residuals from said chemicals, but I asked no such thing. Perhaps you learned scrying while away? 
A budget is certainly useful if you are going to float for advice on forums....but I'm not clear if that is your intent, or how you might perceive such data, given your day job. It most certainly won't be "DBT" type derived advice on most forums.

Quote from: SoundAndMotion on 2015-03-29 13:21:03

For that, I'm in need of squishing out most, or hopefully all, of my biases. Well that's the goal. I have always bought a piece at a time, so I'll start with headphones.

If you consider software ABX to be single blind, will that be sufficient?

OT question: why is double blind always stated, when for example, fb2k isn't double?

Quote from: SoundAndMotion on 2015-03-27 09:52:22

OT question: why is double blind always stated, when for example, fb2k isn't double?

Do you now concede you were mistaken and that fb2k ABX IS double blind? Or do you contend it is single blind?

I don't consider software ABX to be blind, single blind or double blind. I consider describing a test using software ABX as some level of "blind" to be dependent on the circumstances.

People don't talk about it very much but fb2k ABX is a fantastic sighted listening aid as much as it is a double blind testing tool [just click A and B and never even examine X]. It let's you pick whatever files you want, synchronizes their playback [assuming they were made properly], applies DSP or Replaygain optionally, switches at any point you want, loops a favorite section, and most importantly switches nearly instantaneously between A and B at the listener's discretion. Echoic memory is fleeting and being able to flip between two options so quickly and easily greatly improves one's sensitivity.

Well, now that you know what you know (2015), what is your intended method for parsing? You mentioned joining three forums. Are the issues related?

I did find the discussion of using ABX in one's private life earlier in the thread quite useful. I will get fb2k running on one of our macs, and like castleofargh, I'll test file formats with it on myself and my son (if he cooperates). We'll decide if we want to rerip all our CDs and what we'll buy in the future. I don't think I'll do anything fancy in choosing headphones though. I will try to figure out Sean Olive's best performers. He won't say, but several people have speculated. He uses the Senn HD 518, I think, for his virtual headphone setup. That might be worth a listen.

I'm a bit skeptical of blind testing headphones the way I've seen done, even by Olive et al.
Then again I am a skeptic.

Not DBT when used like this

Quote from: SoundAndMotion on 2015-03-30 09:55:35

Not DBT when used like this

In fact used this way I described, never even clicking X, it isn't even a test. There is no question to answer, you never get asked one,  and the user never inputs any response. It is just a nifty way to listen to A and B, with great flexibility to repeat certain favorite parts, and the identities of A an B are labelled, i.e. told to you before you even click the button to start their playback. [When you select any two songs to A/B compare from your foobar playlist the one on the top of the list is always A, the one below, adjacent or many cuts away, is always B.

I don't consider software ABX to be blind, single blind or double blind.....It was a semantic point about the meaning of a word, not a judgement on quality.

I’m guessing that what first looked like interest and an offer to help, was really an attempt to bait me into saying something you’d find amusing. If so, success! See my first response to you.

If not, and you are interested (my mistake). My questions were: how can I remove bias from my decisions and what role would ABX play for me at home.

Great, me too! Did he do more than the virtual headphone. I thought he did, but didn’t find it with a quick and dirty search. Why are you skeptical?

Quote from: krabapple on 2015-03-27 21:08:30

I contend that you are making distinctions without a difference.

Sean Olive's setup at Harman uses an automated system to present loudspeakers in random order, behind a curtain.  The subject controls when the 'switches' take place, and his answers are recorded and tallied by software.

Are you suggesting because it's done with no human tester intervention, it's not *effectively* double blind?

I'm saying that if Dr. Olive or an associate was in the room AND unaware of what's playing, it IS double blind.

Quote from: mzil on 2015-03-29 19:04:15

ABX is an outstanding tool (Thanks for your part in bringing it to us Arny!), but I'm sure many are like me in that doing automated ABX testing of actual hardware, say for example external EQ boxes or speaker wires, is fraught with so many problems that us average consumers don't have the means to do it easily and properly by ourselves and without assistants. Of course the main setback is that other than Arny, I don't think any of us OWN any ABX switchers such as the QSC, etc.  Although full blown ABX  switcher machines  internally have the means to do precise level matching and to simultaneously switch both inputs AND outputs, simpler ABX devices which force the experimenter to level match by external means and that do only one A/B switch, say inputs OR outputs, would still be quite useful. It seems to me that many of us already have two of the major components necessary to achieve these goals: a stereo receiver with electronic input selection (and ideally electronically selected A/B speaker outs), plus an outboard computer to do the blind selection, score tallying, X source randomization, etc. The only thing missing is the interface which could allow some computer program to externally control our receiver (or AVR, preamp/amp, whatever) and a big piece of black tape to obscure our receiver's front panel display! [Yes, there is a way to cheat, by peeking under the tape, but this isn't for publication purposes; it's just for fun.]  The computer's external control could be via RS-232 port, ethernet port*, or mini jack remote control communication port (which some brands have) or perhaps more universally through an IR blaster which gets placed under that black tape we put over the front face of our receiver, the other end obviously wired to our computer.  Arny, has anyone tried to rig up such a thing or has it ever been marketed?

  Seems to me that the easiest way to do a hardware ABX box today is base something on an Arduino processor driving one of the USB relay boards I've talked about here before.  USB Relay board

Easiest? For those of us who own or are willing to buy a network addressable receiver, which brand new cost under $300 and open box and refurbs  I've seen for as little as $199, simply plugging an Ethernet cord into the back and running an app on our smart phones, tablets, or computers seems markedly easier to me; there's nothing to solder, build, or assemble. The existing control apps are usually free and exist for Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo, Marantz, Sony, and Pioneer, they just lack an ABX test interface to randomly select between two user assigned inputs for the X, and a way to tally votes. [Although any of us could do that tallying with pen and paper. It is the automated, randomized selection of X by a robotic test administrator which stymies us enthusiasts from running hardware ABX tests on our own, for fun.]

I see the recent exchanges have been deleted (34 posts now found in the recycle bin) - no harm, really.

Can I ask a question?
Based on people's descriptions given here, it seems that there is more reliance on non-echoic memory being used in ABX tests than I have seen admitted to elsewhere.

The two common reasons given for using ABX testing that I've seen promulgated on audio forums are that a) memory is unreliable & therefore short-term echoic memory is the only reliable way to do A/B comparisons.

& b) removal of knowledge is needed to eliminate a major biasing factor.

From earlier in the thread this demarcation/categorisation of memory was given "My understanding is that auditory memory goes through 3 stages: perceptual auditory storage (aka echoic memory), which lasts up to 300 ms; synthesised auditory memory, lasting 1 to 30 sec; and generated abstract memory, which can last very long."

Do people agree with this categorisation & can I ask what are the reliability quota for the various forms of memory used in ABX & any studies that back up these quota?