Quote:
ABX testing is not about which sounds more accurate or more pleasing.
i never mentioned ABX testing, I said A-B testing." referred to in the most casual, informal sense. Call it "quick comparison" to move the discussion away from the bogus claims of objectivity these practices are said to encompass.
Neither hold much authority in my mind because they are carried out under conditions very different from our natural listening contexts. The mindset and goal structure are different in tests vs. listening situations and each valorizes different aspects of perception. Meaning must always be evaluated
in context. Aesthetic sound perception is about meaning.
None of these clinical listening tests will ever be close to "scientific" procedures, simply because you can never control all of the variables or even know what they are. One people are involved, things get tricky, and one aesthetic perception is involved,
science is out the window
Many differences are mot immediately apparent, they take a while, weeks maybe, to unravel. Natural use in real life will teach us this sort of thing. I suspect that bad tweeters will and have won many a hasty shoot-out thanks to the "excitement" factor of a wafer of titanium resonating at miscellaneous ultrasonic frequencies.
Wow...listen to that "air." WTF is "air?"
Bad tweeter can be such a slippery thing. Could "sound" good or even impressive at first blush, but weeks later you find yourself rubbing your aching jaw, trying to pop your ears like you got off an airplane, and you may tend to be wither bored, troubled , or just walk off rather than listening comfortably for hours on end. That is a bad tweeter, right there.
And this is the kind of phenomeon unlikely to be super-obvious in brief, decontexualized listening tests, which leads me to ask "What good are they then?"
True, many if not most sales transaction auditions take place under hasty A-B conditions, MORE highs and MORE bass usually win, so we get bad tweeters and bad LF, but lots of it.
This goes back to Paul's question of why it is like it is these days. Combination of factors, but one may be that excessive HF sells.