Re: [ARSCLIST] Blind testing

[Bob Olhsson <olh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>...when I 
>am uncertain about something, I love to blind-test things (sometimes you 
>need a friend's help) and see if *I* can tell the difference. 

Overcoming bias is one of every recording engineer's biggest challenges and hopefully most of us involved in audio mastering make blind, level-matched comparisons all the time. My personal philosophy has been to make certain I'm never trying to "fix" something that isn't broken. I need to assume that I'm not necessarily going to be listening for the same things the mixer and artist were considering. My job is to catch any obvious problems they missed without at the same time altering their concept of what their mixes ought to sound like.

Blind testing is a very useful tool but we always need to keep in mind the sobering fact that every single audio recording device since Edison's phonograph has passed numerous blind live vs. recorded sound tests with flying colors! What the developers of lossy audio coding determined was that "self training" is virtually never enough to yield reliable results.

-- 
Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
615.385.8051    http://www.hyperback.com