Blind listening tests make subjective sound judgments objective and repeatable

Evidence

Some audio journalists are hostile to the very notion that audio is amenable to scientific investigation—asserting that only subjective opinion, preferably theirs, matters. There is nothing wrong with subjective opinions. As will be seen, it is these that have allowed for deliberate and productive research into what matters in sound reproduction. However, the opinions must be collected under circumstances in which the ever-observant human brain is deprived of information that could bias the opinion about the sound. The tests must be blind—the listeners must not know prices, brands, sizes and so forth. Ideally they should be double-blind, so the experimenter cannot bias the results. There should also be comparison sounds from competing products readily available, because humans are notoriously forgetful when it comes to recalling the details of sound quality. When this is done the subjective data begins to resemble technical measurements, in that they become impressively repeatable and, more importantly, generalizable to a large population. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 87

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s work on Deep Listening and the relationship between subjective perception and measurable phenomena. — connects to: Audible resonances drove low sound-quality ratings in early blind tests; Highly trained listeners can repeat subjective judgments with remarkable consistency; Speaker cables and devices show near-zero audible differences in blind tests (+18 more)

Related

• Subjective tests have no right answers because each listener’s perception is unique (similarity 0.93)
• Psychoacoustic knowledge rests entirely on subjective listening tests, not direct measurement (similarity 0.92)
• Highly trained listeners can repeat subjective judgments with remarkable consistency (similarity 0.91)
• Subjective audio opinions can behave like facts when gathered under controlled conditions (similarity 0.90)
• Speaker cables and devices show near-zero audible differences in blind tests (similarity 0.88)
• Pilot tests and controlled constants eliminate confounding in listening experiments (similarity 0.88)
• Audible resonances drove low sound-quality ratings in early blind tests (similarity 0.88)
• Randomizing identifiers, positions, and music prevents experimenter bias in listening tests (similarity 0.88)
• Blind tests collapse personal preference into shared judgments (similarity 0.88)
• Headphone blind tests cannot use automated shuffling, so tactile cues leak into results. (similarity 0.88)
• Blind listener tests reliably favor the most neutral loudspeakers (similarity 0.87)
• Subjective listening tests require repetition and randomization to be statistically valid (similarity 0.87)
• Subjective experience dictates which measurements matter in audio research (similarity 0.87)
• High-end audio forfeited credibility by refusing blind testing (similarity 0.87)
• Blind-tested listeners with normal hearing produce reliable, measurement-grade subjective ratings (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Objective sound quality models have limited domains of validity and cannot replace subjective testing #qualifies (0.85) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2337
• Sound quality is fundamentally subjective and requires perceptual testing to characterize #corroborates (0.85)
• Simple forced-choice listening tests order noise samples by annoyance #exemplifies (0.80)