Jonathan Blow's presentation

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 9 May 2017 at 08:12:20 UTC, Ethan Watson wrote:
> That's the point of the blind test. It isn't trivially obvious 
> to the casual observer. You might think it is, but you're not a 
> casual observer.

Well the point of a blind test is more to establish validity for 
something having a different effect, but not for establishing 
that it isn't different. i.e. false vs unknown, so in the latter 
case it would be inconclusive.

These 2 statements are very different:

1. we have not been able to establish that there was any 
perceived difference
2. we have established that there was no perceived difference

How would they research this? By asking if one is better than the 
other? Well, that is highly subjective. Because better has to do 
with expectations. Anyway, cognitive analysis of difference is 
rather at a high level and for many something sounds the same if 
they interpret the signal the same way. Whereas immersion is much 
more subtle and depends on your state of mind also, not only what 
you perceive. So not easy to measure! Our perceptual machine is 
not a fixed machine, our expectations and mood feeds back into 
the system.

Some things like phasing/smearing in high frequency content and 
imaging does affect the experience, although the effect is very 
subtle and you need good head sets and having heard the original 
many times to pinpoint where the differences are at higher 
bitrates. (at 300kbit/s it probably isn't all that easy).