The reason for most of skepticism of audiophiles is that they can spend unreal amounts of money on equipment, yet never even verify themselves if the investment is worth it? Without an ABX test you cannot.
The amount spent should not impact the impartiality of the observer if objectivity is the goal...
With regards testing, many of the desired results require lab equipment. It's unreasonable to expect the majority of interested parties to have access to such kit. Which leaves general testing. And the thing is, it's not always easy to ABX in any useful way, which is perhaps why people don't do it as much as they should. Memory is a terrible thing to rely on when testing, and tests usually involve playing tracks, pausing, connecting new bits of kit, playing the same track and then trying to make judgements. Almost a pointless exercise, IMO, because your (lack of) memory, even over these short terms causes problems.
When I test I try to set up parallel systems so that I can instantly switch between components being tested LIVE meaning that any differences are immediately obvious and don't rely on memory at all. I also never use full tracks; you simply cannot remember things you heard a minute ago in these situations. I use short samples, at most a few seconds long, containing single components of music that allow me to test specific aspects of replay. I then repeat these samples over and over and over until I'm utterly focussed on what I'm hearing and ONLY THEN do I switch to the parallel system - memory is not required - any differences are immediately apparent. And the results from samples tend to then scale up - that is, the best sounding samples lead to the best sounding music.
Clearly my sympathies lay with the audiophiles. My goal is the absolute best music reproduction I can create within my budget. Ideally that system is created using objectively tested kit, but where testing is unavailable I am open minded enough to listen to both sides of the commentary without automatically dismissing either and confident enough in my ability to listen objectively that, where possible, I then test things myself using my method above. If some bit of kit sounds better to me, even if objective data backing up my observations is unavailable, I will adopt it; it would seem silly not to...
Yes, of course, there is much nonsense out there; subjectivity often trumps objectivity. But to automatically dismiss audiophile commentary seems rather short sighted.
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Topic: Bitperfect / identical sound streams can sound different (Read 32014 times)