Han, these kind of focused listening tests have been done to death for many years and no matter what conclusion they reach (and they all reach different ones) they’re not the right approach. That is, the fundamental survey method is flawed.
I’ve seen many of these over the years, all reaching different conclusions. I know it seems intuitive to get a room full of people and do A/B listening tests, or A/B/C listening tests, depending on how many formats you want to compare.
Again, I maintain that while some believe we can solve the issue once and for all by setting up laboratory environments to conduct experiments, this is simply not the case. When we do this we are ignoring the real-world evidence all around us... people in their day-to-day environments we’ve been able to observe for decades. Not only do individuals come right out and report that they hear differences in their natural listening environments, but in addition the world has changed its listening habits due to the technology. We can observe changes in how certain types of music is received, which correlates to technology changes. Not all genres suffer equally. For some music the recording format doesn’t matter as much and some not at all, but that’s because the music isn’t worth recording in the first place.
On the other hand many genres have mutated based solely on the impact the recording format has had on the sound. This cannot be observed in a laboratory, but rather with scientific disciplines that study human behavior by observing societies over time. Much of this belongs in the realm of anthropology and the behavioral sciences. Fields of study dealing with sensory perception and psychoacoustics are also essential.
I know your motives are good, but Han, no one is going to present yet another listening test and put this issue to rest and you shouldn’t settle for that. It’s all been tried many times. What needs to happen is for people to take a step back and examine the issue from new angles that may be largely unfamiliar to them. Just when you think it’s time to give up on this whole phenomenon, it’s really time to come to the realization that the methodology people have been relying on is inadequate. We haven’t even begun to think circumspectly about all the aspects involved. On the contrary, most people are stuck in a rut, presenting the same flawed arguments over and over.
You may be done and that could be for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is being tired of the discussion or just being tired with other priorities that take all your time.
As for me I’ve just begun because my predictions over the years of the demise of high fidelity music recording/reproduction have come true. How do we stop the bleeding in the music industry? That is the question that should matter to everyone now. We’re not even comparing analog to high resolution digital anymore because the masses have chosen lossy compressed formats… because music doesn’t mater like it once did. I saw that coming as the hi-fi bar was lowered time and again, year after year. It was inevitable, and now here we are, just where I said we’d be. The public did not go from CD to better formats like DVD audio or SACD (Super Audio CD). They went to a typical listening environment that consists of iPods, ear buds or crappy computer speakers and mp3 with music butchered and compressed to hell with about 6 dB of dynamic range if you’re lucky. The slippery slope has only gotten slippery and we’re only falling faster… just as I said would happen as early as 1999.
Analog has only become more important in the last ten years. The differences between our former concepts of high fidelity music and the newer inferior concepts have only become greater.
