Just read this article about amplifiers:
I’ve thought this to be the case for years. Finally, an audio engineer with a lot of street credibility has had a similar experience.
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The key variable there is the pressure a person might be under, and perhaps the recording familiarity. I tend to think if you have all the time in the world, it’s a matter of constantly testing and retesting to see if your results are indicative of anything or if they are part of the noise/randomness.
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Probably get down voted for this, but given his experience I have to wonder how much actual difference there is, versus perceived differences if you can not differentiate in a double blind listening test. Certainly, listening fatigue is a real thing that an individual will notice when used over time, and this is important to me. Makes me wonder just how much woo woo there is in audiophile marketing.
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Performance anxiety is real and invalidates DBT for audio. Unless you are VERY prepared to conduct DBT, like Harman Intl in Northridge CA, it is destined to fail. Longer listening allows the brain to subconsciously to compute the differences that are subtle. This goes for any component, but wires are the subtlest of all.
Amplifiers are next, yet can make all the difference with speakers and headphones.
…hifitommy
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Yep. Totally agree. For speakers, have definitely notice differences with electronics driving speakers. Went through a number of setups before settling on a pair of Devialet amps configured in mono. Have no had any desire to upgrade from those.
Had the same experience with headphone electronics. Currently have the Topping D900/A900 for headphones, and feel no need to upgrade.
It’s always interesting to see a professional perspective align with real-world listening experiences. Sometimes the long-term interaction with equipment reveals nuances that a quick blind test might miss, especially regarding how we adapt to a specific sound signature over time.
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Uuhhh, I would say it’s especially regarding how we DON’T ever fully adapt to a reproduction chain’s sound signature over multiple but limited (usually sub-12?) hours of a listening session, which is the amount that seems necessary sometimes to notice the subtler differences in emphasis between this chain and some other one we’ve had recent experiences with. This NON-adaptation is probably the basis for Toole’s observation that mastering engineers were always wrong to claim they could reliably produce a well balanced master on whatever their favorite monitor speakers were because “they became familiar” with them over time and they could somehow naturally compensate for any FR defects and still produce ‘flat’ masters - proven wrong in practice as album tonalities evolved over time in lockstep with trends in studio monitor design. (Couldn’t find Toole’s statement in any actual papers btw, I just heard it from Griesinger in one of his lectures on YT.)
The reason we can’t spot these subtle differences in classic ABX tests that use a few seconds of material that we have to listen to repeatedly, switching back and forth, I submit is because that’s nowhere near enough material to properly cover the whole frequency spectrum, whereas hours spent listening to a diversity of music come much closer to full coverage. Over the course of the first few hours, before we get to the point of full adaptation to the chain’s FR (where it would become our brain’s ‘new normal’ or ‘new flat’), we can notice those minor differences corresponding to different reconstruction filters or different DAC technologies, that aren’t large enough to instantly hear in just any old 5-second piece of material put through an ABX process, but are still very real and audible-enough when you give them a proper chance to come out.
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