DreamDropDistancia t1_j9x3pwc wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:37 AM

Reply to comment by ultra_prescriptivist in Having a hard time differentiating between Spotify and tidal hi-fi by Not-Icarus

Again, it's a niche within a niche. It's not going to happen / even large studies get it wrong, so what chance do individuals have at providing evidence any kind of evidence you would accept? What would that even look like?

In the end, "better than nothing" is how we end up having to live our lives, and, simultaneously, the foundation for many of the most widespread cases of misinformation in all of scientific history.

We can't know until we know. Until we do, I'm not so willing to say I'm convinced, and saying I'm not convinced doesn't change anything/affect my life, so it's fine, in my book.

ultra_prescriptivist t1_j9x51nh wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:49 AM

> so what chance do individuals have at providing evidence any kind of evidence you would accept? What would that even look like?

As I have often pointed out, proving it is actually fairly easy and pain-free. People who are willing to give up maybe ten minutes of their time and a little effort can use free software tools such as Foobar2000's excellent ABX comparator plugin (installation and usage instructions here) to conduct their own test using their own lossless source files on own their own setup.

The log that results from the test can be saved as .txt and can be verified using Foobar's ABX signature checker to confirm that the results are legitimate. It's not perfect, but it goes a long way to showing that people can actually hear what they claim to hear.

Plus, even more importantly that the result itself, the process of blind testing actually shows to people how small the difference actually is when they don't know which is which and how little it generally matters in the grand scheme of things.