@contrapuntal wrote:
@sandclip wrote:
IMO it is more accurate to say: “No ABX = potential for bias.”
Even ABX cannot eliminate all biases. If, for example, the subject believes very strongly that he is not going to hear any differences, he may not be trying his best to hear differences.
/Here we go: The relevant issue in this thread is whether RB has better audio fidelity/quality than OF, or not. Now it is getting highjacked into a side contention about bias, etc. In any case: ABX itself is frequently questioned by evaluators as a source of inaccurate results. For example, people who would like to believe that $10,000 speaker cables improve sound quality will claim that the ABX connections themselves “color” or otherwise affect the result, therefore the ABX result showing no difference with $10,000 cables is “invalid”./
Bias, in non-blind subjective comparison, is dependent upon evaluator.
All subjective comparisons are biased. That is why they are called subjective. All evaluators doing subjective comparisons are biased. That is why, when evaluating the sound quality of audio devices and technologies such as amplifiers, CD players, wires, lossy encoders, etc., ABX has proven itself to be vastly superior to biased evaluations.
Some evaluators are able to guard against bias better than others; my experience is that I fall into the former category of evaluator, for several reasons, but others have no way of verifying whether I am more, or less, biased.
Some evaluators might be able to guard against bias better than others. No evaluator, however, is able to guard against bias completely. You claim “for several reasons.” Which reasons?
/Getting off topic with the “which reasons”? It is irrelevant to the subject./
There is a way of verifying whether you are more or less biased. And that is to observe how you do in an ABX test. Many individuals have claimed to be able to hear a difference. Many of these same individuals have, after an ABX test, shown that they were not able to hear a difference.
/That would be a way to verify to OTHERS whether I am more or less biased.
If an individual had no way of discerning better-sounding audio output without doing an ABX test, the entire field of hi-fi would never have started. There have been many many people over many years who select better-sounding results as part of their work in the field, without any ABX test whatsover.
Really, it mainly boils down to “honesty” and seeking the truth in reality experienced, as an inherent discipline (or not). Many people have difficulty separating their wishes (or ulterior motives) from the truth, so much bias comes from this. Sometimes it comes from wanting to feel better about their selection (e.g. $10,000 speaker cables, RB, etc.), sometimes it comes from dull senses, and sometimes it comes from wanting to fool other people (e.g. wanting to sell those $10,000 speaker cables).
In any case, that is the reason that additional user opinion and especially augmenting data are useful.
User opinion can sometimes be helpful. Very often, however, user opinion is worthless. Let us look at one extreme example. Let us say some users of extremely expensive loudspeaker wires–$30 000 US or more—all swear that using such wires improves sound quality.
For Rockbox or SanDisk, the augmenting data I would look at would be things like frequency response, signal-to-noise ratio, channel separation, total harmonic distortion, dynamic range, intermodulation distortion, etc; do these things show that the sound quality is worse? Or do these things show that, while they could be better, there is no decrease in sound quality.
And we are gathering both, in this thread, supporting the observation that RB firmware produces lower-fidelity audio output compared to original SanDisk firmware in the Clip+.
So far I have yet to see any objective data presented in this thread.
/Depends on what you mean by “data”. Do we need a test report from a certified accrediated third-party lab using NIST-traceable equipment, costing thousands of dollars? Or can we consider information such as posted by mroberts200? We have no way of verifying the veracity of information posted here; pretty much anything you see posted here could be fabricated. But I consider it in combination with my own hearing, and other posted subjective opinion, and so far they mostly agree.
Whatever. Hey, if someone prefers RB, that’s great. As for me, I hear a difference - RB is inferior sound quality - so I will stick with OF./
