Recent content by Zapp_Fan
  1. Zapp_Fan

    Objectivists board room

    @joebloggs ... philosophically I disagree with having any kind of dynamics processing on your playback setup. But I admire your tenacity in building such a monstrosity anyway. :) Is this for a surround system?
  2. Zapp_Fan

    Objectivists board room

    Sounds like maybe Foobar tried to force windows to switch to a low/unusual samplerate (say 8khz or something) and into mono in a way that W10 didn't like. If there was any other audio device that was also trying to maintain an incompatible sample rate, or stereo output, I could imagine that...
  3. Zapp_Fan

    AIWA - a brand reborn?

    Thanks. We really think that it would backfire if we try to hide anything. This thread is a good example. @Nirmalr7 was able to find court documents that seem dramatic or at least interesting upon a cursory reading. Another TM holder is accusing us of all sorts of things. If we had been...
  4. Zapp_Fan

    AIWA - a brand reborn?

    Hi, sorry, I have been very lax about staying on top of head-fi posts lately and I apologize for that. I can't comment in too much detail obviously, as the case is ongoing, but the trademark filings we made were in no way fraudulent - if they were, they would have been overturned years ago...
  5. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    Just want to chime in that expectation bias has a very, very serious effect on what you hear. When it comes to your ears... "trust but verify". More than once I've spent time turning knobs on VST plugins (say an EQ or a 'vintage tape sound' type plugin) and found that the change in sound was...
  6. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    Good lord, I had been staying away from this thread because I have work to do... but I couldn't let that slide. This is ridiculous trolling, you can't be serious. Um, but as someone who makes their living from spending on consumer audio... um... please do keep going with this and spending...
  7. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    Agree about the "musical genius" thing, even if I don't always love what he does with his talent, it's undeniable. I had the same feeling where I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the music at first, but he's a phenomenon either way. I'll give Djesse a few more listens... :)
  8. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    This is a little late but the LAME development community used to conduct a buttload of ABX tests, just about every time they released a new encoder preset I believe it was subjected to ABX testing of fair rigor. So if you want to see how this can be done over time, that would be a good example...
  9. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    Two other reasons: Lots of energy in subsonic frequencies being present in the mix throws off compressors / limiters in that they will change output based on inaudible stuff. It can also cause clipping in a digital file by increasing the total signal amplitude without increasing the audible...
  10. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    This might be an issue of semantics around the word 'tone'. In my mind, a "tone" needs to be perceived as a unitary and continuous sound. I would say that 15hz is clearly "slower" than 20hz but not necessarily "higher" because I personally don't get a pitch out of 15hz. But YMMV of course...
  11. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    Technically, yes, in theory all transients include energy down to DC, although again it depends to what extent the attack of the drum hit resembles a "true" impulse. And, it won't be very easy to detect since it's transient in nature, so I think the difference would be feeling that the bass...
  12. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    This is not quite right. All transients (drum hits in particular) contain all frequencies from DC to infinity, to the extent that they resemble a true zero-duration/Dirac impulse. So the less highpass filtering (or... any filtering at all) you have, the better transients will be, generally...
  13. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    If I jack up the output of my headphone amp, a lot of IEMs can create some perceptible effect at 15hz. To me it basically sounds like a rapid flapping / whooshing noise. I think it's actually just periodic pressurization of my ear canal and not what might be (if any such sound can be)...
  14. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    I know exactly what you mean, but I think 99% of this effect has got to be due to things other than ultrasonics. For one thing, the sound from a live band is coming from several sources around the stage and the directionality is totally different than loudspeakers. This alone - even if SPL...
  15. Zapp_Fan

    Testing audiophile claims and myths

    As far as people listening at levels well above reference... I can confirm that it is disturbingly common. We sell some headphones that (I estimate) are capable of over 100dB SPL at the ear opening... and we have a handful of people complaining they don't go loud enough. We sell a portable...
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