Advice (as in blunt truths) for confused (ex?)-"audiophile" - Page 7

How about plain old marketing going with statistics (after lies and damn lies failed)? The referenced paper actually is fairly interesting, and does go into some minutiae of, "distinguishable."

USG: *yawn* poor digital sources do fine jobs. Have you ever actually tried them for the purpose of differentiating codecs? His portable there is a hell of a lot better than the setup I started using to begin positively ABXing my own MP3s (Shuttle AK35GT2 onboard, no added amp, Koss KSC50...and I hardly have perfect hearing). Most of the differences are not dependent on what superior DACs, amps, or drivers can bring to the table, but on what's going on between the ears of the listener. While some playback chain quality minimum may be necessary, it's not too high.

P.S. Now I've got what little I remember of that song stuck in my head. Aaaahhh!

What is your rationale for dismissing AES findings? They're the largest repository of blind testing, and I don't see anything in their papers (at least from the ones I have read) that would raise a red flag.

Hello Cerbie

I'm sorry, did I read it wrong? I thought Wavo was comparing what he heard on his portable to what he heard on his main CD rig.....

USG

Thanks to this thread, you don't actually know from experience, you only know from things you've read. I say that people such as yourself and Bullseye are fair game if you spout supposed truth that doesn't come from your own experience. It would be equally crazy if you were to tell me all about Japan from reading about it online, having never been here.

1. Science is not necessarily right. It is also subject to continued revision. I've seen a great many people here both link to improper research and make inaccurate generalised conclusions from the results of tests.
2. To save money, don't spend it. Unfortunately, most people are not in control of themselves that they go and do things based on irrational and contradictory reasoning, because they are full of contradiction.
3. This shows your subjectivity. Have you noticed?
4. That may be how it influences you, but not me. I believe the issue has to do with people, and nothing but superficially to do with hi-fi gear. See point 2.

That depends on whether you set out with a particular goal or not. Equally, all these writings about DBT, science and tests are exactly the same thing, a "placebo cause[d] by your subjective bias."

I second this. The supposed "objectivists" can't see their own subjectivity.

....under particular circumstances. It just says that for a person playing music using that phone that was compressed or uncompressed the quality made no difference. It doesn't require a study to tell you that, say, an iPod with ibuds will give you the same result, because ibuds are too crap for you to be able to tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed files.

Oh dear again.

There's no implicitly anything, that's your subjectivity again. They were testing the results with a single phone, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, my argument is, to you and Bullseye, find out for yourself instead of searching the internet looking for evidence to validate your beliefs. Buy some far better gear, second-hand, so you can sell it if you don't like the difference or lack of difference it makes for you.

USG -- just an anecdote that happened in real time as I was posting. I agree it is not a rigorous test. But it is an example of "hell, it sounds better to me". I will test again with my server vs my good CDP.

Everyone -- I would agree that most of the time no one can tell 320 mps from redbook, hence the conclusions on HydrogenAudio. That does not mean that certain types of audio escape being mangled, as some posters have pointed out.

O. Rex -- I would assume my hearing is worse than most fishermen. Never meant to claim otherwise.

jcx -- I believe Prince could stress any codec ... at moments his "vocals" are way more than vocals, if you know what I mean.

jcx again -- I for sure agree with all your criticisms of my experiment ... except it was not an experiment, just an anecdote in real-time. Of course I did not properly control for volume level, long-term memory illusion, etc. Wasn't trying to. But at that moment I longed for the real red book version, hating the mp3. That emotion is as real as what happens when a woman (or man, whatever) takes you breath away with their physical beauty. Do we ask for double-blind beauty contests?

royalcrown -- I think we are discussing what I don't like about most AES studies in another thread, so we'll keep it there. In one word, I don't like the pooling.

Perfect. x2 to the max. You said in a few words what took me too many to say.

Auditioning gear from dealers works too, then give them a chance to match the internet price. Accept demo and open box items if offered. This worked for me -- since starting to put together a new system in Jan 2008, I proceeded 25% this way, 50% "buy used after hearing at a meet", 25% "used without an audition (to sell if I don't like)".

Your point that someone convincing themselves they won't hear a difference because they read studies on the internet is -- in its own right --an example of a possible placebo effect (and certainly subjective) is just brilliant. Brilliant. I am deeply impressed. Find me at CanJam 2010 (Chicago is close to Japan, yes?) and I will buy you a beer, hell, a steak. (I note our join dates are the same but your post total is three times mine!).

Hiya Wavy

Interesting. My experience is almost the opposite. More than a few times I expected to hear something better or at least different and didn't. The first was the USB cable we talked about. I was using an old 1.0 with a ferrite because it was handy when I wanted to check out the Stello's USB implementation. When I switched to a new, shorter, shielded 2.0 I fully expected to hear better or at least the same. To my surprise it sounded worse than the old cable.

The second time was when I A-B'd SiBurning's Benchmark against my Stello at the last meet. I had always felt the Stello was a dark DAC and what I really wanted was a brighter DAC like the Benchmark. It was a total surprise to find out that neither SiBurning or I could tell them apart.

The third time was when I was sure I could tell the difference between an 8610 op amp and a 637/627 op amp in my M^3. I was so sure I could tell them apart, I sent WAVs of the differences to amb, who inverted, subtracted and showed me there was in fact, no audible difference between the two.

The forth time was when I auditioned the Neko DAC. I formed an impression of it's sound signature over a two week period, relative to the Stello which I was very familiar with. I even went so far as to classify the Stello's sound signature as having a smile EQ and the Neko's a frown with a pronounced mid. When I volume balanced and compared them head to head, there was no smile and there was no frown... they sounded exactly the same. I posted about that in my "Conundrum" thread.

Now I have a North Star and have been listening to it for a few weeks. I'm getting ready to do a head to head, but I don't know what to expect any more since I can clearly identify its sound signature when I listen to it separately but like with the last head to head, these differences might very well disappear when I A-B them volume balanced. (FWIW, the differences also dissappear if I record a WAV of the "most obvious differences" and compare the WAVs.)

And to compound the situation, when I went back to listening separately, all the above differences I previously had identified returned, even though I knew they weren't there.

So something is going on here, but I don't know what it is.... (so now I'm Mr. Jones? LOL)

And now that I'm thinking about it, I remember sitting right next to you when you were sure you had identified a JND on the $1000 coaxial cable to brought to the last NY meet, only to discover that you were actually not listening to that cable.

USG

Very Good Rexy........

USG

I'm pretty skeptical myself (everyone should be), and believe cables and anything related to power (conditioning, cables, etc) to all be snake oil. However, amps clearly do improve the sound. I still have yet to determine if my external DAC (the pico) is any better than my old internal DAC (x-fi soundcard), but both are much better than my onboard, motherboard DAC. My woo 3+ is great, I consider it worth the $500 I've spent on it, and whatever I spent on tubes. I don't think spending any more money on a more expensive amp would be worth it, and I probably doubt I would be able to tell a difference. Basically, I'm settled with everything I have, except for headphones and tubes. Its fun to try different tubes and cans to listen for how the sound changes.

OK............. I am a long-time listener, first-time caller to this thread. I am totally new to hi-fi (knew nothing about it until May of this year) but here is my impression, for what it's worth:

I have never in my life seen a business where there is so much subjectivity and so little rationality.

So many people on this forum seem to run from rationality. They claim "I don't listen to music in ABX format" or "I hear a difference with my golden ears." Their claims basically amount to "science means nothing to me." Yes, the same science that gives us semiconductors, spacecraft, organ transplants, clones, etc, that science means NOTHING when it comes to audio reproduction. A single designer with the mythical golden ear can make a device that thousands of engineers with their supercomputers can't possibly produce. Get real!

Doesn't anyone into high-end audio have a background in engineering, mathematics, or anything where you would have taken a high-school science class? The scientific method works. ABX testing works. That is why we have cars to drive and computers to type on and the internet to argue over. These things are all the result of the scientific method being applied many times, over and over again.

A few carefully designed studies could settle the disputes once and for all about fancy cables, amps sounding the same, etc. Why these studies have never been done (except for a few brave magazine editors and small-scale basement tests) I don't know. I am not an electrical engineering expert and I don't claim to know the "truth" about any component in audio, so I am not arguing a specific pro/con position here. What I am arguing is that these things can and should be tested!

If we can put a man on the moon (in 1969!) and build things atom-by-atom we can certainly answer these basic questions about sound reproduction. The truth is out there, so why don't audiophiles want to find it? Small men always say that the answer can never be known, but real men go out into the world and find it.

This seems to be what many people think, but science doesn't derive knowledge that simply. If it did, then we'd have discovered everything by now, and there'd be no more need of science.

Quite true, but these are really simple questions we are asking. For example, the question of "does this Nordost cable produce an audible improvement in sound over a baseline cable?" is pretty easy to answer using today's equipment. So why are audiophiles still reading a page-long review on a cable (most often written by someone who knows nothing about electrical engineering) when a yes/no answer can be easily obtained?

--edit-- I try not to have an agenda. If there is proof that super expensive cables produce audible differences, then I will accept that.

tvrboy, I have known highly educated people who believed in cables and the moon hoax. When in comes to pure belief, us bone heads simply do not comprehend. I have come to accept that it is simply impossible to understand for people like me (and possibly you). The human brain appears to have a hard-wired capability to believe the unbelievable. Accept it.

The human brain also appears to have a hard-wired capability to be judgmental, and to assume that everyone who doesn't agree with a certain point of view is an idiot.