Headphones

[G.Irish]

The test does not try to show which sounds "better," it is to show if there is any perceivable difference. If a person can tell the difference between two sources 7 out of 7 times, there is less than a 1 percent chance that they are guessing correctly. Even though the sample was lacking the almost 50% split between correct and incorrect guesses shows there was no apparent difference.

The car example is not valid at all, and the results are statistically valid. A valid analogy would be to ask 10 average people to get behind the wheel of a BMW 330i and an M3, alternating between the two for 7 trials with a blindfold on, and ask them which car they were driving each time. That's all I'm trying to say, there is no perceivable difference, thus 10 cent a foot wire is as good as $100 a foot wire.

Many times, these special "oxygen free" copper wires, cryo frozen wires, etc, have more resistance than a regular piece of 14ga wire and alter high end frequencies in a weird way.

Still wrong. Care to compute the confidence interval for that 7 person blind test they did? Were the candidates selected randomly? How many randomly selected participants would you need for your test for a statistical significant sample? What about some possible sources of response bias? Not trying to be an ass but good statistics are not that simple.

I could survey 7 people sitting around me right now and ask them if they've graduated college and all of them will say yes. Does that mean 100% of Americans go to college? No, it just means I'm at work surrounded by a bunch of people with degrees. So with my incredible unscientific sample of 7 people I've managed to come up with a totally wrong conclusion.

The car example was meant to illustrate that the question you ask, how you ask it, and how you expose the subjects to the test condition could give you totally erroneous results.

I'm not saying that in the end that your assertion is wrong, I'm just saying that the blind test you posted the link to is of little value in proving your point.