Do you see the same color? Why?

They sound the same but why we hear difference???

Do you think if you would demonstrate having confirmation bias (a well known human behaviour in Psychology Studies) when you participate an objective experiment?

I am pretty sure you do. Why? I will explain later.

Let's have a quick look of the definition what's confirmation bias before we proceed further:

The definition of Confirmation bias (from Wiki) is:

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is insuperable for most people, but they can manage it, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills.

Cool, let's do a simple experiment if you don't mind to see if you have confirmation bias.

Let's look at the picture below:

Question 1: Do you see the same color circled by the red circle and the blue circle ?

Answer A: No, I see different color
Answer B: Yes, they are the same color

Question 2: If we check using a spectrophotometric meter, would the meter show objectively that they are the same color? (Feel free to do whatever objective experiement with the above picture by capturing certain parts of the picture to check or whatever methods you like)

Answer A: Objectively, they are different.
Answer B: Objectively, they are the same.

Note: Please do feel free to correct your answer to question 1 after you are done with question 2.

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If your answer to question 1 is A, congratulations, you don't have any confirmation bias in this experiment. You just report what you see

If your answer to question 1 is B, you just demonstrated that you have confirmation bias. Why?
It is because you want to give a right answer to the question, you knew that the two color should be the same.

Let's look at the definition again:

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values

Your mind tell you to pick Answer B (which is not in-line with what you see via your visual perception) because your confirmation bias kicked in. You have an intention to give a "right" answer as you knew the answer should be B.

Look at the question again: "Question 1: Do you see the same color circled by the red circle and the blue circle ?"
There is no right or wrong answer to such question. Correct?

Our knowledge or our education teach us to provide right answer <=== this is the value in your confirmation bias.
The picking of answer B clearly shows the tendency to support/confirm the above value. It is against the color you see <== this is the bias

Our prior knowledge is one of the major root causes of confirmation bias.
The more educated you are, the easiler you would fall into the confirmation bias loophole.

As I stated earlier before, pretty much only new born babies would have virtually no confirmation bias as they are blank slate (unless you think they have prior knowledge from their "before life").

If you think "there is noise" or "no proper control" affecting the resulting so that it caused people to see different color, please feel free to "add the proper control" or "a method to remove the noise"

Remember, every single pixel in the picture is part of the orignal signal.

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You may ask why I made such post?

My intention is simple. Do my best to correct the misuse of the term "confirmation bias". I see many misuse in an audio science based discussion forum. 

I believe all the people there would like to provide 100% precise and accurate information as it is labelled with "science". Am I correct? 

Hmm... I am not sure. Do they have any hidden agenda by distributing biased information? Hmm... I am not sure too. 

The only think I can be 100% sure is that they demonstrate very serious confirmation bias (and they refused to acknowledged it).

If you want to say people should give a "right" answer instead of what they see. It is indeed a "confirmation bias" is in play here with the value of "giving out right answer".

I bet this may be one the reasons why we have two groups of people arguing like "you should not hear the difference as they are measured audibly transparent" and "you should hear the difference as I really do hear it" for decades.

Looks like some readers may be confused about my argument. To make it clear, it is:

I see they are different even if they should be the same. What if they are indeed slightly different? How can you guarantee that your 'audibly transparent(?)' DACs (as measured) would not reconstruct audio signal outputs that is slighlty different???

By the way, they are the same color if you want to know the "right" answer.

===== update 24 April 2024 ====

Here, we can see they are different even indeed they should be the same...

What if the colors are indeed not the same (just different slightly) and the measurement device's precision cannot tell the difference? Under this situation, would it be meaured the same but also look different? Hmmm....

One more thing, if the measurements we do are not comprehensive enough to cover all the different attributes of the differences? 

====== Follow up ======

One of the follow up reply from a member on that forum said: 

"An objective experiment wouldn't even give me the chance to demonstrate confirmation bias, or any other kind of bias.

If it did, then it would cease to be objective."

My reply was (but it was deleted and the thread was closed for any more reply):

"Could confirmation bias be the subject of an objective experiment?"

 In Psychology, there are tons of objective experiments on confirmation bias if you care to check.

===== updated on 25 April 2024 ===

A very good comment I got from a user on the Head-Fi.org

I recap it here as below:

Not trying to argue, just politely putting forward a counterpoint.

Doesn’t audibly transparent mean that the analog output is absolute faithful to the digital input ?

If two different DACs do that with different internal components, the analog signal from both audibly transparent DACs will be identical and therefore the sound out of the connected amplifier will be identical, isn’t that literally the meaning of audibly transparent.

Not being funny but it sounds like you are arguing essentially with the statement “two devices that sound the same will sound the same.”

Extending that further, if two amplifiers are also audibly transparent won’t they sound they, by definition of audibly transparent, also sound the same ? So any combination of audibly transparent DAC and amplifier will sound the same.

I saw your visual comparisons. Isn’t that actually shooting down your own argument? You are literally showing how our senses can be fooled by other stimuli. In your examples it is vision that is fooled, in audio it is hearing that can be easily fooled or isn’t reliable. Our auditory system is an awful long way from infallible and isn’t a great judge if other stimuli are also introduced, that is just how we as humans function.

Here is my reply:

1. Doesn’t audibly transparent mean that the analog output is absolute faithful to the digital input ? 

It's a great question. To be honest, I don't know what it means exactly as there is no well defined definition. Actually, it is also one of the characteristics of pseudo-science, i.e. 

 Uses techno-babble: Words that sound scientific but are used incorrectly or don’t make sense (source: 11 Characteristics of Pseudoscience (thinkingispower.com) 

I couldn't find any defintion of the term "audibly transparent". The closest one I could find is a term that sounds similar, i.e. Sound Transparency 

What is sound transparency?

When discussing transparent sound, less is truly more. Every audiophile’s 
ultimate goal is to hear music as it was intended to be heard. Sound 
transparency is when your home audio gear does not significantly 
alter the sound in any way. This means that your system is providing a
listening experience that clearly reflects what the artists, recording 
engineers, and mastering studios want you to hear.

The above defintion of "sound transparency" is close to your understanding of the term "audibly transparet" as described in your question.

However, your definition is not the same as ASR's defintion. I am not sure if the term "audibly transparent" was indeed coined by ASR...

Based on my understanding, ASR's defintion of "audibly transparent" is that if you are put under a "well controlled" objective, level-matched, double-blind, ABX testing environment, you cannot hear any difference if I change any equipment on the signal path.

In their mind, DACs fall in that equipment category. i.e. If two DACs are having good measurements (e.g. SINAD is better than certain dB, etc...), you won't tell if I change the DAC as they should sound the same to you. 

In other words, they mean a DAC would sound the same no matter it costs you $100 or 10k as long as they are "measured as audibly transparent as defined above"

2. If two different DACs do that with different internal components, the analog signal from both audibly transparent DACs will be identical and therefore the sound out of the connected amplifier will be identical, isn’t that literally the meaning of audibly transparent. 

With the definition of "audibly transparent" stated as above, my view is that 

"If two different DACs do that with different internal components, the analog signal from both audibly transparent (as defined above) DACs will NOT be identical"

i.e. With same input but different processing, I would expect different output. Does it make sense to you?

3. Not being funny but it sounds like you are arguing essentially with the statement “two devices that sound the same will sound the same.” 

No, I think you take "perfectly re-construction of the original analogy signal" as the definition for "audibly transparent" as a based for your statement. 

If that is the case, I 100% agreed with you.

However, it is NOT their defintion. For me, my view is that "two devices that sound (i.e. reconstruct music) differently will sound (as you hear) differently" <=== Isn't it logical? Why bother to argue ...

But, people in ASR have a different view point. In their mind "audio signal reconstructed by two different but audibly trasnparent DACs (based on their definition) should sound (as you hear) the same to you". They further comment that "if you really hear any difference, it must be your brain is fooling you or you use a poorly designed filter for your DAC" <=== this sounds like an unfalsible claim, another major characteristics of Pseudoscience.

4. Extending that further, if two amplifiers are also audibly transparent won’t they sound they, by definition of audibly transparent, also sound the same ? So any combination of audibly transparent DAC and amplifier will sound the same. 

You are 100% correct but you have a dfferent defintion of "audibly transparent" than the one used by the people in ASR. 

Even with their defintion, based on their measurements alone, could it be enough to tell if two DACs are "audibly transparent"? 

i.e. Is good measurements values == "audibly transparent"? 

For me, my answer would be no. 

Actually they mis-used a well known term (Confirmation bias) in Psychology to support a lot of their pseudo science claims. I think a lot of people is already fooled by this mis-usage. 

Feel free to check if you know the term well here ==> Confirmation bias. Do you have it? (no-pseudo-science.blogspot.com)

5. I saw your visual comparisons. Isn’t that actually shooting down your own argument? You are literally showing how our senses can be fooled by other stimuli. In your examples it is vision that is fooled, in audio it is hearing that can be easily fooled or isn’t reliable. Our auditory system is an awful long way from infallible and isn’t a great judge if other stimuli are also introduced, that is just how we as humans function. 

Yes and no.. I wanted to show that our hearing can be easily fooled too. 

BUT my main point is "For a simple reporting-type question like 'do you see the same color?', do I have to say 'I don't see any difference' in order to conform with their group beliefs". 

I believe that if you report what you experience (i.e. see), you would probably say "No, I see they are different". What if someone keep telling you that "you see the same color"? 

My other arguement is that "I see they are different even if they should be the same. What if they are indeed slightly different? How can you guarantee that your 'audibly transparent(?)' DACs would not reconstruct audio signal outputs that is slighlty different???

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p.s.: If the two colors are indeed different, it would bring us to another topic about "measurements vs completeness". Let's talk about it later.