Manufacturers of hifi audio equipment tend to avoid rigourous subjective testing, and not without reason: it would likely fail to justify the exorbitant costs seen in this market. The excuse often touted is that the consumer and his golden ears should be the only judge weighing on the matter. In other words, if it sounds good to you, then it is in fact good.

Not surprisingly, there’s a host of cognitive biases rendering this approach next to useless, not the least of which being confirmation bias. We tend to be biased towards already held preferences, thereby confirming those preferences. This can be witnessed in particular for already purchased equipment.

Fortunately, some are fighting the good fight, much as they might be maligned by the hifi audio faithful. A very interesting study [pdf] on Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio recordings was published last year in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. In short, it concludes that higher-than-CD resolution audio provides no perceptible quality improvement.

All of this to say that serious subjective testing is crucial to understanding the quality of perceptual phenomenon. At GIPS we depend on double-blind subjective testing to provide us with this understanding when possible, and for just the opposite reason as hifi manufacturers: we are confident our products can provide superior quality.

The point? Be wary of a company dealing in perceptual quality unwilling to test their products in a meaningful way.

Tags: Hifi audio, Subjective testing

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