@takla wrote:
I repeated the point about perception of sound quality for a couple of reasons:
1: terms like ‘thin and scratchy’ are entirely subjective and impossible to quantify and may mean different things to different people. If different people have a different idea about what it means then maybe they will think they are dealing with the same issue when actually they each have in mind something else. If a problem can’t be reliably identified and quantified how to tell if it is fixed?
2: The only sure way to demonstrate that there is a problem of this nature is to abx/blind test it, because the placebo effect is surprisingly powerful and none of us is immune. Some people feel very doubtful about this, some people get upset and feel that they simply cannot be affected and that to suggest otherwise is a personal insult. However placebo effect is well known, factual and measurable and used in all kinds of tests and trials from pharmaceuticals down to humble audio device and codec reviews. I have to say I felt slightly wounded on discovering that most of the time I can’t hear the difference between a LAME V4 MP3 and flac, but there it is, a simple test shows my ears are not as golden as my ego, and that ears and mind in combination do not make for an objective tool.
Thank you, Takla. A few links for those individuals who still think they are immune from the placebo effect:
http://home.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_plac.htm,
http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf,
http://www.nousaine.com/pdfs/Wired%20Wisdom.pdf,
More information on ABXing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test,
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABX.
ABX is a type of double-blind test.
http://gizmodo.com/315250/pear-cable-chickens-out-of-1000000-challenge-we-search-for-answers.
Why anti-ABX?