"Rob" wrote in message

John Phillips wrote:
In article , Richard Wall wrote:

snip


BTW a set of ABX tests and results (including positive and negative)
are to be found at http://www.pcavtech.com/abx/abx_data.htm (down the
page, including a capacitor test).

That's quite interesting - some results I'd expect (speakers, tape
decks, encode-decode, cables) but some are pretty wild - a 450w ss amp
and a 50w valve amp sound the same for example.

I ws there when it happened. It's a matter of picking the amps and the
speakers. The key to the test was picking amps and speakers that resulted in
relatively flat frequency response. This can take a little planning if one
of the amps is tubed.

I've had a quick look at a journal database and I can't see much on
DBT as a valid scientific method

Rob, your research is too superficial. The validity of DBT is not going to
be proven every new day, given that it is so widely generally accepted. You
won't find too many new papers about litmus paper, either. Do you even know
what litmus paper is?

(I don't know about the journals on
the abx page - they don't look to be the peer reviewed kind).

They are a mix, and its a testamony to your superficiality that you can't
figure out which is which.

Its
theoretical basis seems psychological. Is there any methodological
and empirical analysis of this process?

Of course Rob, and you have a lot of it before you. However, there is no
Cliff's Notes or Classics Comics version. I think that pretty much leaves
you out in the cold.

I've always thought it's not what people think, but why they think it,
is the most interesting thing.

I'm still looking for evidence that you know how to think, given the mess
you've dropped on this forum.

I'm not (quite!) enough of a pedant to
ponder on 'the same' results, but some qualitative analysis of
'different' would be interesting - does anyone know of DBTs that
includes this (not just audio)?

Check the medical literature.

Linked to this is another thing I don't understand - do people know
what's going on in these experiments ('this is an abx test of cables'
for example).

Yes, as a rule. Not telling them doesn't seem to help the sensitivity of the
experiment.