TNT,
This topic was a short lived one but sums up all the truth about speakers.
Difference b/w speakers do exist.
Differences b/w well made speakers are often subtle and not gross (Alan's description with the phrase "comparably good" is succinct).
Determining preferences must be done blind.
Price does not equate to better sound.
However from some of the earlier notes, conclusions must be carefully considered.
In reply to:
In such cases, the rankings we gave would seldom differ by more than a fraction--something like 7.9 out of 10 vs. 8.0 out of 10. This was statistically insignificant after many rounds of listening. Often the rankings would shift a bit if we moved into a different seat in the room
Statistically insignificant within a pool of people? Or insignificant from multiple trials with the same individual?
In this case, if an individual continually ranks speaker A over speaker B even if by fractions of whatever scoring mode was used (note the relative judgement scoring in Dr. Toole's paper on pg11 linked by JohnK), then that person has still found a speaker they prefer over another. As such, would it matter then if that speaker cost $1000 more?
Those who seek audio nirvana would say no. Those who are budget conscious or simply don't care as much would say yes. Ultimately in a pool of human subjects you still have subjectivity thus making a statistical analysis very scattered in its response. The sample numbers would have to be quite high to have reasonable power to determine strong certainties. There are also statistical means by which one can sort together groups of like individuals. It would be interesting to poke through some of this old data and revisit ideas that may not have been reviewed.
