Quote from: Josh358 on 2011-02-20 19:33:31

The questions here are what is practiced, what is practical, what is confusing, and the degree (if any) to which long-term listening allows one to hear differences that aren't apparent during short-term listening. Which is a lot of questions. There are also questions of experimental design, e.g., ABXes of 44.1 kHz sampling that are in fact ABXes of 44.1. kHz sampling using certain algorithms with certain source material under certain conditions, and produce contradictory results as a consequence.

What makes you think that long-term listening is at all revealing of differences? Tom Nousaine has shown that a pool of experienced listeners cannot even reliably detect 4% distortion under long-term listening conditions (link), even though 4% distortion can be discerned with 100% accuracy under formal ABX test conditions (as shown later in the same article). Clearly, this suggests that ABX tests are in fact highly revealing of non-imaginary differences.

Quote from: Josh358 on 2011-02-20 19:53:07

It's not so much that I'm faulting ABX, as that I'm faulting any test that suffers from a particular constraint, sighted or unsighted. One of those is, as you say, the selection of source material. In practice, I find that this is particularly troubling with some resonant phenomena. It's no secret for example that some ribbons have serious distortion spikes at certain frequencies.

But then you have to fault every possible scientific test, don't you?  They all suffer from constraints, every single one of them.

Of course that's why scientists repeat tests many times and refuse to accept them until other scientists have repeated them with the same results.
And even they they never report anything as an absolute truth but say things like "The probability of X lying somewhere between Y and Z is 99%", or if they don't then they aren't being scientists when that happens.

Ed

I repainted my bedroom.

Let me give you a real world example of that, involving vision, rather than sound. A few days ago, I repainted my bedroom. A previous sloppy paint job had left a ragged paint border on the edges of the wooden floor. After I pulled up the dropcloths and paint, I immediately noticed a new spot of paint, no more than a few millimeters wide. Sure enough, when I probed it it turned out to be a small fleck of paint that had fallen off the dropcloth. I would not have been able to make that determination in a real time A/B test, not without nauseatingly painstaking repetition, anyway. But the variations in the border had been recorded in my long-term memory, so I saw the difference immediately.

Once you know where to look for that spot of paint, ABXing becomes trivial.  No one has suggested that it is not OK for people to form subjective opinions, just that they should be verified though objective means.

Thank you for your anecdote.  Keep trying.

But I was answering Specific Impulses's question, "What makes you think that long-term listening is at all revealing of differences."

Quote from: Josh358 on 2011-02-22 19:13:41

But I was answering Specific Impulses's question, "What makes you think that long-term listening is at all revealing of differences."

Which is trivial and not particularly useful or interesting if someone is trying to argue that ABX is flawed because some artifacts can only be revealed through long term exposure.  From what I've experienced, a common "artifact" being offered by placebophiles is listening fatigue.

If someone is going to claim fatigue as a difference, the burden falls on him to demonstrate it.

An AES paper authored by Soren Bech that resulted from research connected with the 1980s Eureka Project demonstrated that listener fatigue in listening tests was an interfering variable. IIRC, his conclusion was that a blind test should be limited to less than one hour, to minimize the effect of the variable.

Using short time spans to not make it unnecessarily bothersome for him is fine (good practice, no objections).

Quote from: greynol on 2011-02-23 07:51:27

If someone is going to claim fatigue as a difference, the burden falls on him to demonstrate it.

An AES paper authored by Soren Bech that resulted from research connected with the 1980s Eureka Project demonstrated that listener fatigue in listening tests was an interfering variable. IIRC, his conclusion was that a blind test should be limited to less than one hour, to minimize the effect of the variable. I don't have the reference available right now, but I can post it if requested.

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2011-02-23 12:39:35

Quote from: greynol on 2011-02-23 07:51:27

If someone is going to claim fatigue as a difference, the burden falls on him to demonstrate it.

An AES paper authored by Soren Bech that resulted from research connected with the 1980s Eureka Project demonstrated that listener fatigue in listening tests was an interfering variable. IIRC, his conclusion was that a blind test should be limited to less than one hour, to minimize the effect of the variable. I don't have the reference available right now, but I can post it if requested.

The paper in question appears to be online and freely available:
Soren Bech AES paper URL 

Because I'd think that doing many short AB[X] sessions would both satisfy the "long-term" requirement that S wants, as well as compensate for listener fatigue.

My point is that when a subjects claims a difference is only heard in the long-term (ie after becoming very familiar with the material), listener fatigue is not a valid complaint, as the ABX sessions can easily be broken down and spread out across days, even weeks. In fact, that would also compensate for tons of other hard to control environmental aspects, including the subject's mood, his ear wax or whether he got a good nights' sleep.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2011-02-23 15:10:25

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2011-02-23 12:39:35

Quote from: greynol on 2011-02-23 07:51:27

If someone is going to claim fatigue as a difference, the burden falls on him to demonstrate it.

An AES paper authored by Soren Bech that resulted from research connected with the 1980s Eureka Project demonstrated that listener fatigue in listening tests was an interfering variable. IIRC, his conclusion was that a blind test should be limited to less than one hour, to minimize the effect of the variable. I don't have the reference available right now, but I can post it if requested.

The paper in question appears to be online and freely available:
Soren Bech AES paper URL 

I was referring to this paper, reprinted in the July 1992 issue of the Journal of the AES: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=7040 . This issue is at home, so I will check the reference this evening.

I think it depends on the type of difference. The brain doesn't analyze them all the same way.

As I think I pointed out in another post, frequency response aberrations are analyzed almost immediately by what appears to be highly specialized neural circuitry.

What goes into long-term memory is for most of us an analyzed and simplified version of results.

That was the point I was making to greynol. Consider a formal test to examine the audibility of a small but possibly audible effect, which may not be audible on all kinds of music.

You need a very large number of trials to bring the power of statistical analysis to bear, both on the audibility or lack thereof, and the interdependence between the effect and the music program.

That was the point I was making to greynol. Consider a formal test to examine the audibility of a small but possibly audible effect, which may not be audible on all kinds of music. You need a very large number of trials to bring the power of statistical anlaysis to bear, both on the audibility or lack thereof, and the interdependence between the effect and the music program.

Quote from: Josh358 on 2011-02-22 18:43:31

I think it depends on the type of difference. The brain doesn't analyze them all the same way.

Let's call the above what it is: It is unfounded speculation that there is an elusive kind of distortion that  can be heard in long term tests and can't be heard in short term tests.

That is all it is - unfounded speculation with AFAIK zero reliable real world evidence to back it up.

Quote

As I think I pointed out in another post, frequency response aberrations are analyzed almost immediately by what appears to be highly specialized neural circuitry.

I notice that you are ignoring the fact that counter-evidence already cited was *not* based on frequency response AKA linear distortion, It was based on nonlinear distortion.  Whether you know it or not, there are only two known kinds of distortion in this particular universe which are  linear distortion and nonlinear distortion. Other relevant facts are that both linear and nonlinear distortion change the spectral balance of sounds and  the ear is primarily a spectrum analyzer.

What goes into long-term memory is for most of us an analyzed and simplified version of results.

Quote

Common sense would take the above as a good explanation of why long term listening is so demonstrably insensitive to small differences.

AFAIK the only thing that long term listening is good for is finding those small portions of real-world recordings that reliably elicit the perception of an audible difference. The literature of good listening tests repeatedly shows that once those small segments are found, short-term listening to small snippets is the most effective way to demonstrate the presence of a difference.

but they cannot be tested on this because unsighted listening is fatiguing???

The other thing is that perchance you actually find something that takes say 50 trials per individual to obtain statistical significance, the listeners invariably report that they think that you are investigating something that makes no practical difference even though they obtained positive results. In many cases the listeners have no perception that they obtained statistically significant results. They thought they were just guessing.

Quote from: Stereoeditor on 2011-02-23 16:06:33

That was the point I was making to greynol. Consider a formal test to examine the audibility of a small but possibly audible effect, which may not be audible on all kinds of music. You need a very large number of trials to bring the power of statistical anlaysis to bear, both on the audibility or lack thereof, and the interdependence between the effect and the music program.

How convenient.  People claim to be fatigued by sighted listening to otherwise transparent lossy or CDDA but not by sighted listening to a high resolution counterpart, but they cannot be tested on this because unsighted listening is fatiguing???

I wonder to what extent such differences, which are apparently analyzed by some part of the brain but apparently not  others, affect our experience of listening to music. It's akin to what I was wondering about 320 kbit/s MP-3's. As I said earlier, never having done any formal comparisons, I've never noticed any difference between high bit rate MP-3's and the uncompressed source material. But assuming that my ears aren't broken and I could be trained to identify them, would that training then be the sole determinant of my listening experience, or are the differences that I don't notice consciously influencing and perhaps diminishing my subjective experience, because perceived on a lower level?

As I said in the message of mine that you deleted, I have not said that. Nor does it follow from the message of mine from which you quoted. I was making a general argument concerning the possibility of listener fatigue acting as an interfering variable in formal listening tests and what can be done to prevent that from occurring.