Themis;373406 Wrote: > My opinion is that if a group (or several groups) can't find the > difference, the following thing happens : > > Hypothesis 1: The difference is audible > The difference must affect at least an equal statistical percentage of > any possible audio sound, as the one we need to make the ABX test > "valid". I let you calculate how much this must be to make the test > valid. ;) > In other words, we actually don't measure the confidence of the > "difference is audible", we measure the above percentage, if and only > if this percentage is greater than the confidence level. > > Hypothesis 2: The difference is not audible > In this case the ABX test measures nothing at all.
It sounds like you don't understand the procedure very well. I don't know what you mean by "any possible audio sound". The test involves some set of tracks or segments of tracks; those are the only ones under test. Generally one wants to choose tracks on which the listener claims to hear the difference most easily and clearly. If the listener can identify the difference every time, an ABX test will -immediately- determine that (the chance of obtaining 10/10 correct by guessing is roughly 1/1000, 20/20 is 1/1000,000). Very often audiophiles claim differences are "night and day" etc.; such claims are trivial to verify or dispose of with such a test. In fact, due to the nature of probabilities even a very marginal ability to hear a difference (e.g. getting it right only 60% of the time on average, 10% more often than random guessing) can be easily detected with this kind of trial. Blind tests test precisely what one wants to know - when are differences large enough to be audible. They are used in all branches of science, and specifically in psychoacoustics and hearing research. There is no other useful methodology. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=56425 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
