On Wed, 2013-04-03 at 04:00 +1300, Chris Bannister wrote: > On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 02:35:29PM +0200, Peder Hedlund wrote: > > I saw a test where a bunch of professional musicians and engineers > > listened to a guitar player playing an old $5000 Les Paul and a $500 > > copy and were asked to tell which was the expensive one. About half > > of them failed, including the guitar player in the group. > > The same was true for a Stradivarius and a cheap beginners violin, > > though IIRC the violin player was correct. > > Isn't there a thing called hearing fatigue? Where you may not be able > to acurately tell the difference in a blind test, (hell, even bad gear > can sound better to certain people playing certain music.) but where, > after a longish period of time, the listener may tire and get fatigued > with the cheaper stuff? (e.g. beginners violin) compared to a lot longer > listening period on say, a Stradivarius? Habit, physical and psychical circumstances, e.g. getting stressed by some kind of sound, IOW fatigue too, are important factors. The price of a Stradivarius is that bad, that nobody should play one, but that's another issue. IMO 3000,- EUR for an electric guitar are ok, I just can't spend that much money, but IMO those 3000,- guitars usually are better than 500,- EUR guitars. How do they make statistics? I would make an ABX test like that: Compare ABX with ABX box 1 and compare ABX with box 2. Is there a difference between X and A and B for one of those boxes. I wouldn't ask for the sound quality and I wouldn't ask if they should notice a difference, what does sound better. I bet doing the test like that, people would hear a cowbell in A of box 1, when there is no cowbell, IOW some people wouldn't listen and compare the quality, they would "search" for something, some people perhaps would notice an extra bar in B of box 2 or hear subliminal messages. The so called blind and double blind tests are already manipulated by the question. So if people think most of us won't hear a difference, we just guess that we hear the difference, than the question of the test would manipulate us too. Tests are good to get a rough impression, but they likely say less about real usage and it's similar for statistics. They are helpful, but you must be able to understand that a test is a test and that a statistic is a statistic. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
