And let's distinguish between hearing and listening.  My hearing is shot due to age.  I am embarrassed to say that I can't even hear 12 Khz well.

I don't recall the ages of the listeners in the BS test being listed and I don't believe their hearing was tested.

I guess others (perhaps c|net, Wired, New Scientist, etc.) will report on the Meridian paper's significance (if it has any significance at all, that is).  Anyone seen any reports?

Quote from: bandpass on 2014-11-20 07:51:27

I guess others (perhaps c|net, Wired, New Scientist, etc.) will report on the Meridian paper's significance (if it has any significance at all, that is).  Anyone seen any reports?

I don't think so.  None of their reporters will be in a position to understand this research/paper.  This is news for professionals in the industry.  Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-19 18:54:40

No, I started up pretty "deaf."  I remember being shocked that I could not hear much difference between 128 kbps MP3 and the source.  That bothered me .  So I started on a path to become a trained listener and after literally hundreds of hours of testing, and tons of education learning about psychoacoustics and algorithms in audio processing, all of a sudden found myself in a super unique situation of outperforming everyone else around me in such tests.  I have never liked the phrase but everyone would call me the "golden ear."

The experience taught me to use my ears as an instrument and separate it from enjoyment of music.  Today I can't let go of that skill.  It seems to be with me forever.  For that reason US DBS broadcasting (eg. XM) bothers me to no end.  I love the content but can't listen to it.

And let's distinguish between hearing and listening.  My hearing is shot due to age.  I am embarrassed to say that I can't even hear 12 Khz well.  The reason I do well still I think is that I focus on what I think technically matter and combine that with my training to look for small differences.  I suspect people with my training but intact frequency response will be able to do a lot better.  I actually ran into one such person at Microsoft who was working with a partner of ours.  He was hearing high frequency distortions I could not.  We hired him immediately .  And I moved off from doing a lot of the listening tests myself.

Let me confess.  I had no idea I could do this after so many years after retirement.  I just ran the tests because people like Arny kept egging me on so I gave it a try.

Having read the Stuart paper and prior citations, I am starting to think this may be due to time domain impact.  It certainly is not frequency domain since I can't hear the ultrasonics. Just as pre-echo is a very audible time domain artifact (although created in frequency domain), maybe these filters act the same way.

After reading this I get an even stronger sense that you must have been cheating in a lot of the logs you posted, or you have some seriously anomalous hearing (regarding detecting lossy compression).

Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

That said, I might write an article for it .

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 16:12:40

Quote from: bandpass on 2014-11-20 07:51:27

I guess others (perhaps c|net, Wired, New Scientist, etc.) will report on the Meridian paper's significance (if it has any significance at all, that is).  Anyone seen any reports?

I don't think so.  None of their reporters will be in a position to understand this research/paper.  This is news for professionals in the industry.  Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

I that that the above statements show a backwards idea of what constitutes good writing.  If the Meridian paper wasn't trying to pander so hard to the golden ears, obfuscate so much questionable science, and sneak so many self-serving commercial messages between its lines, it might have been a lot easier to understand.

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 16:12:40

Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

And you base this on what? Two people losing the actual topic and paper contents out of sight in heated back and forths?

Btw, you still haven't explained why 21+ kHz filter ringing is of concern for your ears. (Not that I believe that your ABX logs are not based on chance or cheating...).

That seems to be the only argument you have left.

And regarding the paper: there are still unknowns, such as the switching software, so that we cannot draw any reliable conclusions from it.
Stuff like this really should be immediately attempted to be reproduced by some unaffiliated group...

I don't think so.  None of their reporters will be in a position to understand this research/paper.  This is news for professionals in the industry.  Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 16:12:40

I don't think so.  None of their reporters will be in a position to understand this research/paper.  This is news for professionals in the industry.  Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

Please  .
It's fodder for the Hi Rez $cam peddlers and the $cam addicts, the only ones buying "Hi-Rez".

If I may, I like you to step back and think about what you have said/are doing.  Our shtick in these discussions has always been a challenge for the other camp to run an ABX test to prove their subjective impressions of audio.

Not one but many.  Not the first version but the follow ups.  Not just on AVS but also here and on WBF Forum.  What’s has been the response?  What you say: either I have some hearing disease I am too dumb to understand, or fabricated test results.

Imagine what impression this leaves in the minds of anyone who googles about this research and lands on this thread and your post.  The inescapable conclusion would be to never run an ABX/blind test.  Nothing good comes out of it.  If they run it and get negative outcome, it would be bad for their position.  Even worse is actually running them and getting a positive result!  Hell will break loose. The goal post suddenly moves from audio to their own personal integrity.

If our real intentions are to encourage others to believe and run such tests, we have failed and failed badly in that mission.  I mean if the “inventor of ABX” test, our beloved Arny, goes and declare his test of high resolution audio “invalid,” clearly no one is qualified to create a valid one.  At least not one that has any chance of creating a positive outcome.

Now, let’s dig into your theory.  How many such tests have you run?  Can you pass any of them?  I even allow you to cheat and pass them.  Just looking to see any, any indication that believing in blind tests is actually real.  So far I have only seen Arny run one test and he said he cheated.  When I asked him to re-run it with the latest ABX test with hash signatures, he refuses.  Steven (Krab) has not posted any.  AJ has not posted any.  Mzil has done a couple but he insists to have found a cheat and not really heard a proper difference.  I haven’t seen any from our moderator or others arguing with me.

Never mind that we are discussing a published double blind study that was peer reviewed test that found similar outcome.  What do you think?  They are also fabricating the results or have weird hearing?

It can't be that your knowledge of what is or is not audible is incomplete?  You have mastered all there is to know?  Maybe you link us to what professional or academic research has led you to that position.

My wish for you is to put aside your doubts and run the tests.  See if you can focus and find some difference.  You may, just may, develop critical listening abilities.  And start believing in reality of some people being able to way outperform other listeners.  And what they do, is no cheating, or miracle of hearing but like a sport, is due to training.

That is if you care to learn about these experiments.

What you say: either I have some hearing disease I am too dumb to understand, or fabricated test results.
Imagine what impression this leaves in the minds of anyone who googles about this research and lands on this thread and your post.

How many such tests have you run?  Can you pass any of them?  I even allow you to cheat and pass them.  Just looking to see any, any indication that believing in blind tests is actually real.  So far I have only seen Arny run one test and he said he cheated.  When I asked him to re-run it with the latest ABX test with hash signatures, he refuses.  Steven (Krab) has not posted any.

AJ has not posted any.

Stuff like this really should be immediately attempted to be reproduced by some unaffiliated group...

Quote

Btw, you still haven't explained why 21+ kHz filter ringing is of concern for your ears. (Not that I believe that your ABX logs are not based on chance or cheating...).

As I mentioned, you are confused about that.  I will explain later.

You mean other than a boatload of positive ABX test results?  You mean other than a peer reviewed double blind listening test that is published by AES with authors that are true experts in the industry?  None of that counts but the rhetoric on this forum by constantly declaring the game over in your favor?

Quote

And regarding the paper: there are still unknowns, such as the switching software, so that we cannot draw any reliable conclusions from it.
Stuff like this really should be immediately attempted to be reproduced by some unaffiliated group...

Unfortunately I don't recall any of you immediately or at any time trying to repeat Meyer and Moran tests.  But now we get religion.  Why?  Because we don't like or understand the outcome.  That aside, here is you saying you don't know the full story still after so many pages.  So why object to me stating the same?

The evidence is nothing like we have faced before.  No subjectivist claiming one cable to sound better than other.  No.  The evidence is the bible we believe: passing double blind ABX tests.  We could now turn around say such tests are no good but only makes us look worse.  Much worse.

2014 will go down as the end of an era whether you like it or not.  The era of believing hobbyist tests just because it got published in the Journal.  The era of believing stuff you read online as gospel.  Era of people claiming to be objectivists yet be the most afraid to run double blind ABX tests.  Era of people thinking by reading stuff online they all of a sudden are audio experts.  Era of people using their lay understanding of audio science and confusing it with the real thing.

I am here for you AJ.

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 18:25:36

2014 will go down as the end of an era whether you like it or not.  The era of believing hobbyist tests just because it got published in the Journal.  The era of believing stuff you read online as gospel.  Era of people claiming to be objectivists yet be the most afraid to run double blind ABX tests.  Era of people thinking by reading stuff online they all of a sudden are audio experts.  Era of people using their lay understanding of audio science and confusing it with the real thing.

So they've legalized it in WA too. I had no idea, haven't really been keeping track. It failed an amendment down here.

I guess others (perhaps c|net, Wired, New Scientist, etc.) will report on the Meridian paper's significance (if it has any significance at all, that is).  Anyone seen any reports?

Quote from: ajinfla on 2014-11-20 18:07:44

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 16:12:40

I don't think so.  None of their reporters will be in a position to understand this research/paper.  This is news for professionals in the industry.  Even in forums like this people are struggling to come to terms with it.

Please  .
It's fodder for the Hi Rez $cam peddlers and the $cam addicts, the only ones buying "Hi-Rez".

Nah.  They don't care about our tests AJ.  It would be like asking an atheist to swear on a bible god doesn't exist.

No, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that in some of these tests, the more incredible ones, you either
- didn't genuinely hear a difference (this includes purely guessing right a couple of times, hearing differences that are due to some incompetent person being unable to filter/resample files properly, abusing some artifacts in your soft- and hardware configuration ...) or
- you have anomalous hearing that can somehow magically hear 21 kHz ringing despite a roll-off above 12 kHz or
- you think you genuinely hear a difference, but which is actually an artifact of one of the problems mentioned above
- you actually hear a difference, throwing over quite a bit of what we know about psychoacoustics, physics, hearing ...

Have you ever considered the possibility, that people don't post their negative ABX results? For each successful ABX log posted at a public test there are probably tens to hundreds of failed logs that people do not submit.

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 17:18:05

What you say: either I have some hearing disease I am too dumb to understand, or fabricated test results.
Imagine what impression this leaves in the minds of anyone who googles about this research and lands on this thread and your post.

Amir, please don't blame xnor, I made him aware of this thread, so he knows your methods and will expect you to Red Herring the argument into how many tests he/someone else did....

ABX is just one method that has its flaws.

We want to see reliable, valid, objective, reproducible ... evidence for any claim.

Neither of these are given by posting ABX logs, so there is some faith involved in trusting the person and logs.

So what happens is not only skepticism against the original claim, but also the claim that the ABX log is genuine if the result is surprising.

(Who cares if someone fudged at 128 kbit mp3 ABX log, right? We know that at this bitrate transparency is not given.)

Now what if we have many people trying to reproduce the result but failing, and a few that also claim to have heard differences?

These people are either:
- cheating as well
- hearing some artifact of their system that is not related to the actual comparison
- have some anomalous hearing (e.g. psychoacoustic models of lossy encoders expect normal hearing)
...
- have better hearing than everyone else (which you boldly admitted to do not) and genuinely hear a difference

Did I miss something important?

The paper describes people with better hearing and I guess better hardware (we will never know what system you use to ABX since you don't answer the question posted pages back) and I see this as a separate thing vs. your claims.

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-20 17:36:36

Quote

And regarding the paper: there are still unknowns, such as the switching software, so that we cannot draw any reliable conclusions from it.
Stuff like this really should be immediately attempted to be reproduced by some unaffiliated group...

Unfortunately I don't recall any of you immediately or at any time trying to repeat Meyer and Moran tests.  But now we get religion.  Why?  Because we don't like or understand the outcome.  That aside, here is you saying you don't know the full story still after so many pages.  So why object to me stating the same?

Seriously, if I didn't have a headache from your previous posts already, I would bash my head against the wall instead of just facepalming.
Do I really need to give you an introductory course about null and alternative hypotheses, when to reject the null hypothesis, that we never accept it ...? You can't say "Meyer and Moran, therefore no audible difference", so why do you post such a rubbish reply?

It also seems like you are assuming that I'm in one of those two strictly divided camps that you have in your head. Unless you stop that stereotypical thinking I think I've had enough for a while.

I'd be curious, Amir, in understanding just what training you undertook while at Microsoft? Myself, I'd prefer to work under the assumption that You didn't cheat. One thing I find just a bit peculiar is that your success at using ABX is at odds with what Stuart et al said regarding that approach, being that it was more difficult. Thoughts?

You are showing extreme angst and frustration over these findings, both mine and that of stuart.  You are being accusatory and emotional.  And resentful.  These are characteristics I see in my stereotype of the people you talk about.  In contrast, I don't see that in David. Yes he is disagreeing with me but he is demonstrating calm, knowledge and measured interactions.  So please don't put this at my feet.  Think before you let your emotions write the words if you want to see a different impression of you.  And remember, you are posting under an alias.  So you can't have any expectation of me knowing who you are.

BTW, I would be perfectly fine with you stopping this interaction.  I still owe you that technical answer but otherwise, I am getting tired of dealing with another person's emotional outbursts.