What does ABX really prove? Options

[audioslut512]

I recently did some ABX tests of music encoded in FLAC levels 0-8.

To my surprise I could tell the difference more often than not.

Yet I couldn't help but wonder, what does this really prove?

It seems that if an audible difference exists between two tracks, that difference wouldn't necessarily indicate anything as to which track is of higher quality, but rather, that those two tracks are merely different from one another...

Am I missing the point in all of this?

[saratoga]

I still don't really understand what you did. Could you just post the logs?

[audioslut512]

I still don't really understand what you did. Could you just post the logs?

I would if I had them. All I did was ABX Radiohead's Kid A, encoded in FLAC level 4 and level 8, both directly from the CD. I matched the correct tracks to one another 9 of the 10 times I ran it. That's all. Maybe I screwed something up while encoding them that caused one to sound different from the other. Ultimately I had no idea which one was which, I just managed to notice the differences and match the tracks accordingly. Hence my post...

[robert]

All I did was ABX Radiohead's Kid A, encoded in FLAC level 4 and level 8, both directly from the CD.

Do I get you right, you ripped it twice from the CD? And what does the difference you hear sound like? Some popping noise, some click?

[audioslut512]

All I did was ABX Radiohead's Kid A, encoded in FLAC level 4 and level 8, both directly from the CD.

Do I get you right, you ripped it twice from the CD? And what does the difference you hear sound like? Some popping noise, some click?

It was actually quite interesting...

When I listened to substantial chunks of each track I couldn't tell the difference at all.

I then came up with a little method, of switching between A,X,Y,B, in rapid succession, with about 1-2 seconds in between each switch.

I then noticed that if when I did this, cycling through the four buttons clockwise for example, I would hear shifts in the overall sound (im not sure how to desribe those shifts, I just referred to them in my mind as up and down).

So in doing so, if I heard upshift, downshift, upshift, downshift, I would then answer accordingly, and got it right 9 out of 10 times.

Like I said before though, I was never challenging ABX, and admitted that I might have screwed up the encoding processes of the tracks, and maybe that was what caused me to be able to discern the difference.

The tracks were both ripped from the same CD however, and both were ripped under the same conditions (i.e, no other programs running at the time).

I suppose I could and do it again to see if its repeatable, and to maybe stop so many people from bashing me, but my post was never about the ABX test I did on those tracks to begin with, it was about a question that those tests led me to...