Can anyone recall some blind or double-blind audio or speaker tests?

[Pogre]

All you have to do to spend $70,000 on cables is to call one of the fancy shmancy cable companies and tell them you have $70,000 to spend and they will hook you up with no questions asked.

I was at a high end audio shop in Scottsdale and the fine fellow there told me the rule of thumb they use for cables is it should be "no more" than 10% of the overall system cost. If a guy blows $500,000 on a system, they're going to make sure the cables are about $50,000 just for good measure.

Cables...........don't get me started..........

This stuff is prevalent though. I just wrote a nice email to a friend of mine who is considering both a power conditioner and high end cables. He just dropped $25K on an amp so he's susceptible to this kind of stuff.

Talk him down Buck!

I can't lie, if I were goofy rich I'd prolly have me a 30k McIntosh amp with pretty blue glowing dials. That or manufacturer from that tier. Goofy rich is my qualifier for that. I'd have to have more money than brains.

 

[charmerci]

I'm due out for a trip to Phoenix. May be that I can do the 2 hour each way. Let me know.

What type of interconnects should I pack?

Yes, Pogre I'm willing to do the test. But apparently, Randi is not offering this challenge -

http://gizmodo.com/307473/pear-cable-ceo-calls-james-randis-1-million-offer-a-hoax

As I wrote to jinjuku - I can't seem to change my location on the side - I've gone through all the settings. I live in Moab Utah.

 

[Bucknekked]

@jinjuku
As I wrote to jinjuku - I can't seem to change my location on the side - I've gone through all the settings. I live in Moab Utah.

I do not know how to set my geographic location.
If anyone knows, like @jinjuku , I would love to set a location. I dont see any options for it.

 

[Bucknekked]

Talk him down Buck!

I can't lie, if I were goofy rich I'd prolly have me a 30k McIntosh amp with pretty blue glowing dials. That or manufacturer from that tier. Goofy rich is my qualifier for that. I'd have to have more money than brains.

I can say this about my friend, he has that rare combination of both money and brains. He just retired from the same company I still work for. He was top notch in the brains dept. And he is probably loaded because he invested most of his working life rather than spending foolishly. He earned it and kept it.

 

[jinjuku]

Try clicking your nickname top right of the page. Click on Personal Details. It will let me but that may be a permissions issue since I'm in the moderators user group here.

 

[charmerci]

Try clicking your nickname top right of the page. Click on Personal Details. It will let me but that may be a permissions issue since I'm in the moderators user group here.

Yup, first thing I tried - just checked again. Can't.

 

[charmerci]

Here's another shortcoming about double-blind tests. They are TOO SHORT.

This does not invalidate whether people can or cannot hear differences within a two minute span.

Can anyone here - I assume you are all into how equipment sounds and care* - say that they've hooked up a nice system and after two minutes determine that you like it and never had a system that started to grate on you? It sounds great but then after time you hear things that started to bother you?

You have to come here and say that your initial impressions on systems are absolutely valid and stay the same no matter how long you listen.

*When I worked in a Flagstaff hotel, in the maintenance workroom, the guys there would blast their awful giant Bosewave to distortion levels that I couldn't tolerate for more than a minute. They loved it and could listen to it for time periods that would have made me go crazy. Go figure.

 

[Pogre]

I would think if cables made that much of a difference wouldn't it be obvious? How much time does one need to hear it? If it's so subtle that you need hours or days to determine it, then it seems pretty silly to spend big dollars on interconnects.

 

[lovinthehd]

Short listening periods are not a requirement of a dbt.

 

[TheWarrior]

Here's another shortcoming about double-blind tests. They are TOO SHORT.

This does not invalidate whether people can or cannot hear differences within a two minute span.

Can anyone here - I assume you are all into how equipment sounds and care* - say that they've hooked up a nice system and after two minutes determine that you like it and never had a system that started to grate on you? It sounds great but then after time you hear things that started to bother you?

You have to come here and say that your initial impressions on systems are absolutely valid and stay the same no matter how long you listen.

*When I worked in a Flagstaff hotel, in the maintenance workroom, the guys there would blast their awful giant Bosewave to distortion levels that I couldn't tolerate for more than a minute. They loved it and could listen to it for time periods that would have made me go crazy. Go figure.

Huh? Who's limiting the time of any listening test?

 

[charmerci]

Show me any double blind test without time restrictions. Harmon lets people listen for hours comparing speakers? What IC double-blind test lets people compare them for hours? SHOW ME!

And of course, no one here is admitting that they have or have not noticed differences in their system over some time.

 

[Pogre]

Show me any double blind test without time restrictions. Harmon lets people listen for hours comparing speakers? What IC double-blind test lets people compare them for hours? SHOW ME!

Who need hours to determine if one sounds better than the other? You talk like it's very obvious and you could spot it immediately. Like I said before, if you need a lot of time to determine a difference then there must not be much of one, if any.

 

[Hetfield]

Just a quick question in the middle of this crazy discussion. When is the last time anyone heard a truly bad speaker? I mean one that actually sounded terrible? Most of these speakers these are good in their own way.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

[lovinthehd]

As long as the controls are in place use as long a listening session as you like. Set up your own dbt accordingly.

 

[Pogre]

As long as the controls are in place use as long a listening session as you like. Set up your own dbt accordingly.

Right? There's no "rule" on how long you can listen.

 

[charmerci]

As long as the controls are in place use as long a listening session as you like. Set up your own dbt accordingly.

Sounds good! As soon as I complete my multi-month, scientifically-controlled, double-blind tests, you guys will be the first to know before I publish!

Happy listening until then!

 

[Bucknekked]

Try clicking your nickname top right of the page. Click on Personal Details. It will let me but that may be a permissions issue since I'm in the moderators user group here.

jinjuku
Same here. can't find anything in the personal details referring to geo or location. it must be a permissions thing, or, some special cupcake given to members for exemplary service. It would be nice to have it.

 

[Bucknekked]

Just a quick question in the middle of this crazy discussion. When is the last time anyone heard a truly bad speaker? I mean one that actually sounded terrible? Most of these speakers these are good in their own way.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

Hetfield
This is from an audio review of Zu speakers published by a reviewer that gets some love here on the AH forum. He's not a "audio cork sniffer" as someone recently penned the phrase. If you take a few minutes to read this section of his review, I think these speakers qualify as "truly bad speakers".
FROM A REVIEW OF THE zu speakers.
http://noaudiophile.com/Zu/

First impressions are bright, stupid bright, staring at a welding torch, Burn your ear drum with sparklers bright. I've listen to plenty of shitty speakers, but these are the only ones that I actually feel like I'm damaging my hearing by just listening at 70db on the couch.

Somewhere behind that blinding sound is the hint of good bass, but its effects seem to vary with volume as it becomes choked on higher output, it also seems to have a hole in its output, I think I might be able to get that back messing with placement, but it's unknown until I pull out the measuring gear.

I'm not hearing any obvious smearing of details, but a rising response which is definitely happening will sometimes mask the inabilities of the driver.

This is a fucking joke. I have heard big box speakers sound multitudes of times better than this and play much louder and clearer as well. This can't be a matter of taste, the wife said after just 15 seconds of listening "these are awful" and she usually has nothing to say about my speakers. This is instinct level bad, no training required. If you have ears and have ever heard music before you will have a natural inherent distain for the way these sound.

These have the resonant frequency of nails on a chalk board

If you have ever heard a speaker out of its enclosure driver laying on a table, that is the sound I'm hearing. It sounds like a phase problem, scrambling my ears. I imagine the military could mount these speakers to the front of assault vehicles and use the a some type of sonic weapon to scare off civilians.

My kid tells me he loves the looks of them, and everything about them. Also confesses that all speakers sound the same to him. I've never been more disappointed.

That good bass thing is happening again, but really it's lacking so much that it's hard to tell.

It sounds like when you go to a concert and it's the day after and your ears all fucked and ringing the next morning because you were a dumb ass and didn't wear ear plugs. That's the sound.

I'm not listening to this s-h-i-t anymore, it's horrible.

 

[Bucknekked]

Sounds good! As soon as I complete my multi-month, scientifically-controlled, double-blind tests, you guys will be the first to know before I publish!

Happy listening until then!

charmerci
If you are serious about conducting a dbt (and its impossible to discern that from just reading posts) I would publish your methodology first before investing in the actual test. There are members here who have participated in and understand the requirements for a dbt. For an individual to setup a truly dbt would be expensive, time consuming, and a genuine waste of time if they don't really conduct a dbt but some flawed version of a test. A flawed test methodology would just get you grief instead of a positive feedback.

There's good reason for not a lot of dbt's results floating around. They are hard to do and expensive. As well, for a genuine test, one does not know the result and conclusion before you begin. That alone stops most businesses from putting their products in a dbt. One can not both conduct and evaluate the results in a dbt. Separation of conducting the tests and evaluating the results is part of the gig.

If you're just enjoying the forum and writing posts for the fun of it (most of us do that every day it seems) then that's a horse of a different color. Enjoy ! Keep those cards n letters coming. Be well.

 

[shadyJ]

For blind testing, long-listening sessions are not required, for the most part. Aural memory degrades after just a few seconds, so what has to be done is fast switching between speakers, or recordings, or whatever sound you are comparing. If you aren't immediately switching between speakers, you can not properly compare them.