ricardo said:
JohnRoberts said:
To execute a DBLT requires a lot of effort from participants and reviewers.
This is perhaps the biggest understatement that I've heard JR make
Do Golden Pinnae think its easy. It's NOT. It's also VERY expensive to do properly. MUCH more expensive than going out and buying the latest AP. Many the time I've had to discard a lot of expensive results cos I realised part of the procedure is flawed.
Yup, as i also shared, I got burned by a hap hazard listening test called by the owner of the company while I was out of town, so I could not manage at least most of the variables. Even a poorly executed test tells us something but perhaps more about expectation bias than reality.
Then it takes two math majors to tell if the results are statistically "significant" or just noise.
If this is the case, then the differences are probably not worth bothering with.
In fact the number of null or statistically insignificant results from tests between premium gear would discourage people from participating. Sometimes people get discouraged by the results if they find out the picked the wrong winner. I recall a DBLT with some studio professionals from the bay area, who dropped out of the test after they learned they had preferred the AMR (Peavey) studio monitors over well known brands.
Speakers do generally sound more different that other parts of the signal chain, right behind that are microphones, so both are good candidates for DBLT.
But if you do make the effort, you may be lucky to find true golden pinnae among the wannabe Golden Pinnae. Than if you are even luckier, you might be surprised at the facility of your true golden pinnae to hear stuff.
We had one self proclaimed golden ear inside Peavey who was an EE, so I had several spirited discussions with him about his opinions and the science behind his thesis. You would think being a golden ear inside a value product company would be a living hell, but most of the time the difference between good sound and bad is not throwing money at products, but smart engineering. One time when his golden ear preference did cost money (using a better film capacitor inside a passive crossover) I approved the engineering change order, because his boss would not approve any cost increase (company politics). I think we increased the BOM cost on that speaker by something like $0.15, well worth it IMO. I worked with this same engineer on several projects and he never disappointed me, and offered intelligent choices regarding cost/benefit for performance (yes in speakers it can cost more money for more performance.)
What
DBLTs tell you is what is worth working on and what is for da Marketing VP I have this, perhaps naive, belief that good sound helps sell stuff. I've done a bit to prove this
While perhaps jaded, my experience in hifi market seemed to disprove this. I made a phono preamp that IMO was as good as could be done, and an order of magnitude better than the rest of the medium. Magazine reviewers that listened to my preamp were in fact hearing their cartridge, and loudspeakers. So results were as you would imagine mixed. Since my price was low, expectations were also low. Only after I had already decided to exit that business did one of my units fall into the hands of serious reviewer with a good reference system and he liked it, but too little too late.
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A DBLT is a measurement. It should be repeatable. Your listening panel is a measuring instrument. You need to know its accuracy and also calibrate it from time to time.
This is what requires so much effort and use of statistics. In my personal experience I can measure stuff that I can not hear, and can not hear anything that I can not measure, so I prefer to use a good test bench, and listen just as a back up to confirm I did not over look something.
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My original statement about DBLTs (which JR picked me up on) was simply to say that there were enough differences between the original and modified DMP3 in my MicBuilders Files that my DBLT panel would probably pick up reliably ... apart from the better noise. In fact enough differences to explain any Golden Pinnae comments.
In any DBLT, you ask 2 questions
1) Is there a reliable difference?
2) Only if the answer to the first is yes do you ask the 2nd "Which is 'better'?"
This sounding different, IMO drives a number of recent "fashions" in preamps. One major console maker uses soft limiting so their otherwise linear preamps will sound different when over driven. Another intentional deviation is to play with input termination impedance to also make some microphones sound different. First you must sound different before you can argue that you sound better.
You have to discount all the wannable Golden Pinnae who give unreliable/inconsistent results from 1)
You'll note many of the formal DBLTs never ask 2). But its the answers to this question that I'm interested in. I'm not really interested in the null results. I want to know the stuff which gives better sound. This is invariably NOT what the Golden Pinnae claim.
I expect null results from linear paths. But I can appreciate some valid listening to microphone designs.
For da wannabe Golden Pinnae, you just say in a VERY LOUD VOICE, "MY STUFF IS HAND CARVED FROM SOLID UNOBTAINIUM BY VIRGINS".
And BTW, those who do loadsa DBLTs know how easy it is to cheat
But they are so expensive to do that I would never waste time & money that way.
I am a strong proponent of null testing to parse out subtle audible differences between linear paths. Far less subjective than ears and meat computers post processing. I have studied psycho-acoustics over the years because human audition is squishy, but electronic circuits are not.
JR
