How do you assess the individuals in the first place?
In brief, set up a listening session. Play some music and explain what to listen for about Hi-Fi in general. Then in stages improve the system and see who can follow the improvements made.
Instead of being so patronising, would you care to offer your explanation as to why you could not prove that the ABX comparator is affecting the signal chain?
Because you can't take it in and out of the system instantly which is one of the fundamental conditions of the Double blind A/B/X test. The only way to switch it in and out instantly is to have yet another A/B/X switch in circuit.
I am not the one here with the firm position, as I am perfectly happy to change my case were some sound evidence presented to prove the idea that these cables can make a difference. This evidence has so far been completely elusive for the past ~40 years. Despite this absence of evidence, many people - yourself included - seem to want to ignore the evidence in front of them and draw a different conclusion and keep repeating the same arguments without anything to back them up. That I think is completely misleading to anyone who is new to hi-fi/AV and leads to people wasting money that could be better spent elsewhere in a system
The so called evidence is flawed.
I have been in the "I hear no difference" camp. When my Hi-Fi was **** I could have used pretty much anything from mains flex to straightened out wire coathangers and quite happily agreed that cables were all hogwash. That was my experience.
I got my first Hi-Fi from a really good dealer who understood what was important in music reproduction. This was the early-80's when Hi-Fi was really in its boom time. New brands such as Creek, A&R Cambridge (now ARCAM), Pink Triangle, Systemdek, Rega, Musical Fidelity, Mission etc were joining the established names of Linn, Naim, Dual, Heybrook, AR, Sugden, Ariston, Kef, B&W and bringing fresh thinking and new products to market. It was a very exciting time. The 70's idea of standing in front of a wall of electronics and speakers on a noisy shop floor and listening through a huge comparator were banished in favour of the individual dem room where you listened to just the gear you were interested in. This model of demonstrating is still the standard approach today. Good Hi-Fi dealers were music enthusiasts first and foremost. I loved the first system I owned. The dealer did a great job of putting together a basic vinyl system that did all the basics of rhythm and timing right.
Later I moved to a different part of the country. My priorities changed and when I came back to Hi-Fi the dealers local to me at that time weren't in the same class. Several unsatisfactory upgrades followed. Magazines said this or that was good and the dealers were happy to take my money; but I always felt frustrated that the sound wasn't right. All the Hi-Fi clichés could be ticked off, but music lost something compared to my original system. The performances were just dull, like the musicians were going through the numbers rather than actually enjoying playing as a group. Then I got a job where I could travel the whole country and listen to Hi-Fi systems at dealers all over the UK. This would be in the late 90's. Things had changed a lot. The specialist boutique dealers had given way to the multiples. It became more about the packaging of deals and single make systems. On the whole dealers seemed quite happy to sell boxes out of the door rather than Hi-Fis. A lot of what I heard from dealers in Brighton to Aberdeen, and Norwich to North Wales were just unbearable. Playing with cables at this point was fruitless. The systems didn't have the insight and resolution to let the performance through, so any benefits of cables were buried behind the mangling of the music. It took me a long time to get back to the roots of what good Hi-Fi is about and find a dealer who was passionate about music.
I finally found a few like-minded dealers dotted across the country. Some were too hi-end for me. Their entry-level systems would be as much as a new car. Others were just too far away. But my current dealer is on the Manchester/Stockport border which is less than a 45 minute drive for me.
I started listening to gear there and they suggested cables as a more cost effective upgrade (yes, cheaper!!) than buying the next higher priced amp or CD player or speakers. Naturally I was sceptical. I'd never heard cables make a real worthwhile difference before and I was pretty sure it would be the same now. Well it wasn't. There was no over-enthusiastic toe-tapping and no waxing lyrical about the benefits of one cable over another. This was simply presented as an alternative to compare against a better box of electronics or speakers: A different way to get to the same point.... better music reproduction. And no, it wasn't bland tested A/B/X and all that bollix, I was often left to listen alone and make up my own mind. Sometimes the cable won. and sometimes it didn't. Buy I can say hand-on-heart that I invariably heard a change in the sound.
So, from being like you, a sceptic, my experiences have shown me that very few dealers really get it right any more, and that is perhaps partly why so many doubt the effect that cables can have. But if one can find a good old-school Hi-Fi dealer then that might also change for you too.
You plucked 30% out of the air, which doesn't really mean anything on its own.
No. I plucked 30% from the data presented. Group size = 100%. Of which 70% preferred CD. Leaving 30% preferring 128kbps MP3. That maths isn't difficult.
We know that some people are going to be poorer listeners than others, but that doesn't mean that if you're conducting any kind of a serious trial you can analyse the data and draw the appropriate conclusions.
That sentence makes no sense.
The test objectives were clear. The results were equally clear. My conclusions agree exactly with the studies findings:
1) Trained listeners were able to differentiate most strongly between the best and worse performing speakers - Fact.
2) Two subsets of untrained listeners actually preferred the worst performing speakers to the next better model up in the test - Fact
How does that not support what I wrote?: "Randomly selected observers produce some wild results, and that those who know what they're listening for are better able to tell the difference when they hear it."
