Serious ABX tests: Sony Discman vs High-end sources - Page 5

Personally not being an American I consider that things have to be older than 25 years to be outside the range of being modern. Also distinguishing between 16 bit and 14 bit is rather harder than you may think, but the early players had some shared circuitry that led to slight phase differences, it is most likely this and not the difference between 16/14 bits that was audible. If you consider 99.9% of all commercial CDs they are not going to have a dynamic range of anywhere over 70db , well within the capability of 14 bits.

The inability to distinguish jitter until it reaches 100s of ns is quite telling it means that the effective resolution is dropped under 16 bits possibly even below 15 bits.

Yes I laugh at dorks who haven't heard better but argue they KNOW better.

Of course i've owned lesser gears and almost invariably the more costly ones do yield sonic at ear presentation gains in line with cost/benefit which i'm willing to pay for. Ultimately we are talking about "systems" which deliver musical reproduction to an individual who must posess listening abilities and apreciation for music or else it is simply a matter of maths and lowest cost sounds better.

What is this "juice" you question the boosteroo having or not? Is that,"juice" the important quantity to measure, and does quality of this "juice" matter?

As it happens at least two posts here are from people who have heard more expensive kit and found it to sound indistinguishable from cheaper kit on several occaisions. That these persons do not find a difference does not mean they have no musical appreciation or listening skills.

Personally having been a keen music listener for over 30 years I dont feel that I have no musical appreciation, I have a moderate (600) collection of Classical CDs and a smaller collection (~100) popular music CDs, nor do I feel that my listening skills are particularly bad.

More to the point, the literature going back to the 1980s is replete with examples of tests where very expensive kit is found to be indistinguishable from much cheaper kit, it isnt always true by any means, but it is true quite often and often with highly skilled listeners, musical pofessionals and technical experts, are they all deaf musical illiterates as well ?

In this context blind testing is a perfectly rational approach, the intention being to remove extraneous psychological variables and the forms of self-deception that we as humans are all prone to so that real differences can be separated from imagined ones.

For many years I was also convinced that there were always big differences in kit, of course I grew up with vinyl and it was probably more fundamentally true with TTs, year after year I would try different pieces or tweaks or accessories and I always assumed that if I could just get something a bit more expensive that I would have far greater mucical enjoyment. In a sense this did happen, in 1984 I bought a CD player and it really did increase my musical enjoyment. However since then I have never been able to replicate that kind of quantum leap and lately my own AB comparisons have repeatedly shown that for me these big differences are impossible to replicate. Consequently I now have a cheap CD unit a decent amp (M^3) and some decent mid-range headphones (HD580/K501) and have never been happier. It really is all about the music after all.

^ I question your ability to hear differences, perhaps deminished with age. Just because you type you and some others agree what you do not hear has nothing to do with the fact your hearing is to be questioned listening to cheap kit, as you so choose....

Well that was.... predictable. Tell me, do you think you can tell the difference between MP3 and Wav files and if so at what level of quality can you tell the difference ?

Are you brave enough to take on a controlled challenge of your hearing abilities ?

EDIT: I choose to listen to cheap kit, this is a choice based on also having listened to much more expensive kit and not having found a difference, it is not based on not being able to afford more expensive kit, I have spent several thousands in the last three years experimenting with different setups.

^ you can argue the lowest cheap kit or lowest form of format which makes no difference til you're blue in the face for all i care. As well as cut and paste all day long for the maths as evidence of what you do not hear, for all I care. Just don't think for a minute you can tell me what I don't hear and expect it to go unchallenged . I still question you and your geeky ilks approach to what sounds good, as well as your ability to hear properly !

LOL

Without getting into the abx pit I think one can say
that the findings mostly point to the fact that
mechanical transducers are where we need to
spend our cash as that is where the differences
are made.

Funny that so many of those who post outrageous statements about differences between equipment being negligible happen to be newbies to the audio world.

THEY can't hear the difference, hence nobody can hear the difference.

Which, of course is simply nonsense.

If it takes years of training/experience to learn to golf at the highest level, or years of training/experience to learn to be an excellent chef, why shouldn't it take years to learn to listen properly?

Well, in my experience it does. If you know anything about psychoaccoustics, you realize it takes time to train ones ears to differentiate between sounds.

The problem is that most folks have a certain basic ability to hear.

Where they go wrong is assuming their listening ability is the equal of any other person. Using a little common sense one must realize this assumption is simply silly.

Let him fall in love with the music. He'll soon get upgrade-itis. LOL And if he can't fall in love with the music, get the h*ll off of this board.

BTW, if you do love music, sorry about your wallet.

Hit a nerve did I ?

Well, you can easily prove yourself to have decent hearing by taking a very simple challenge, I can create some files of varying quality and you can see whether you really can tell the difference when you dont know which is which.

If you are unable to do so then surely one would be justified in questioning your hearing ability and thus your argument would lack some credence, no. Surely with such good hearing as yours and the ability to pick out the differences between players that measure almost identically then the difference betwen massively compressed MP3 and WAV would be blindingly obvious, no.

Well, so much for "meaningful, intelligent participation."

I am not, I have been into Music and HiFi since the 1970s.

Actually if you know anything about Psychology you know how easy it is to fool yourself, did I mention I have two degrees in psychology ? Incidentally psychcoacoustics is very useful as it allows us to pretty reliably know what people can and cannot hear based on empirical testing, hence how compressed music works. You may be interested to know that the trained ears you speak of are often unable to detect a 16K brickwall filter let alone a 18K or 20K one, cannot ever detect jitter below 100s of nanoseconds and frequently cannot tell the difference between 10K CD players and 200 Euro DVD players, how can this be with such trained ears ?

Well, I love music and when I don the headphones on saturday and sunday morning they stay on for generally 5 - 8 hours, excepting comfort breaks. Strangely I dont get any nagging feeling that I need to spend any more on my silver disc spinners. My happiness with my listening rig is profound.

You can question my ability to hear, if it supports your arguement as to what you do not hear. Typical backwards logic of this entire thread.

But go ahead, continue your monologue amongst sock puppets for all I know....

Agreed, even a simple swap of some supplied with Sony speakers on an old mini system for a pair of modest JBL E20s made a very noticeable difference to me...

Actually you were the one making the big claims claims for your ability to hear differences and your listening abilities, which you are clearly convinced of.

You also discounted the experiences of others who didnt perceive a difference as showing their lack of hearing abilities, listening abilities and or musical appreciation.


I was merely suggesting that since you are so convinced of your abilities you could if you wished prove to yourself that you really can hear differences. I issued this challenge only after you were pointlessly rude about my hearing and my approach to music and hifi in general. When you cant engage in a reasoned and generally good natured debate with reason, you get personal.