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Ah...the unproven long term listening excuse

When did that become a proven requirement to differentiate human hearing? Someone just made that excuse up and this rhetoric keeps getting repeated by those who fail blind tests.

It seems many confuse (A) listening for personal preferences testing with that of (B) listening to detect an audible difference between components. For type A, long term is a reasonable requirement. But for type B testing, where is the evidence that long term is required? If anything the evidence shows just the opposite – short term is the most reliable method.

1 – There is overwhelming evidence that long term human memory for sound characteristics is extremely poor (compared to vision or smell). For example if you go to a party and meet 10 people, you’re not going to identify their voices the next week. But you’ll probably easily identify all 10 photos. So if sound memory is unreliable and poor, what exactly are audiophiles comparing to for several months?

2 – Go to Cables or Tweaks (or even Stereophile) and read how often testimonials are given from immediate comparisons when “sighted” (“The improvement was immediately obvious…”, “The silver cable was clearly too bright…”). But why does short-term discriminatory ability suddenly vanish when blind?


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