[nick_charles]

Quote:

I love a good skeptic and feel the sound science section is where the rubber meets the road. Love it. but I disagree that short term bursts/ comparisons showup all variance in sound. Sometimes it takes listening over time with many recordings, but I hope stv is not discouraged. Maybe throw those who are subjectivists a bone and give a test of a nuforce dac and nwavguy. that one should at least show some difference, god that nuforce sounded like garbage to my ears.

 
 
This assertion has been tested and it turns out that the few attempts to critically test this assertion show (so far) that short-term blind testing is in fact more sensitive than live with it long term testing. Tom Nousaine did this with a CD-R that may or may not have 4% distortion added to it, The long term listeners failed to detect the noise/no noise setting of the CD above a chance level , the short term blind listeners detected it much better...12/16 - with shorter segment length the detection rate rose to 16/16

 

[skamp]

I did participate in the "6 DACs" thread and posted my Foobar ABX results between the C and G sample, in which I could hear a difference between the two

If by "results" you mean "ABX score" or "ABX logs", no you didn't.

 

[thelostMIDrange]

but that's just one variable, distortion, and in my world, there are many much more important variables that may or may not prove hearable in the same short testing environment. i stick to my experience

 

[miceblue]

I love a good skeptic and feel the sound science section is where the rubber meets the road. Love it. but I disagree that short term bursts/ comparisons showup all variance in sound. Sometimes it takes listening over time with many recordings, but I hope stv is not discouraged. Maybe throw those who are subjectivists a bone and give a test of a nuforce dac and nwavguy. that one should at least show some difference, god that nuforce sounded like garbage to my ears.

This assertion has been tested and it turns out that the few attempts to critically test this assertion show (so far) that short-term blind testing is in fact more sensitive than live with it long term testing. Tom Nousaine did this with a CD-R that may or may not have 4% distortion added to it, The long term listeners failed to detect the noise/no noise setting of the CD above a chance level , the short term blind listeners detected it much better...12/16 - with shorter segment length the detection rate rose to 16/16

Is this a reason why ABX tests seem to get harder sometimes? I've definitely experienced this between some ABX tests in Foobar.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

but that's just one variable, distortion, and in my world, there are many much more important variables that may or may not prove hearable in the same short testing environment. i stick to my experience

 
What other variables are you suggesting ?

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Is this a reason why ABX tests seem to get harder sometimes? I've definitely experienced this between some ABX tests in Foobar.

 
Fatigue ? 

 

[miceblue]

Is this a reason why ABX tests seem to get harder sometimes? I've definitely experienced this between some ABX tests in Foobar.

Fatigue ? 

There's that too.

 

[miceblue]

Quote:

Quote:

Sorry, I'm fairly new to this whole sound science stuff but I did participate in the "6 DACs" thread and posted my Foobar ABX results between the C and G sample, in which I could hear a difference between the two. From your tests here, are you implying that there should be no audible differences between DACs?

 
I am not implying anything; I did not even compare them extensively myself, so I make no claim whether they all should sound the same or not (although I think at least one is likely transparent).

 
foo_abx 1.3.4 report
foobar2000 v1.1.18
2013/02/09 21:45:54
 
File A: C:\Users\Michael\Desktop\A.flac
File B: C:\Users\Michael\Desktop\H.flac
 
21:45:54 : Test started.
21:46:30 : 00/01  100.0%
21:47:01 : 01/02  75.0%
21:47:12 : 02/03  50.0%
21:47:28 : 03/04  31.3%
21:47:37 : 03/05  50.0%
21:47:50 : 04/06  34.4%
21:48:01 : 05/07  22.7%
21:48:07 : 06/08  14.5%
21:48:17 : 07/09  9.0%
21:48:34 : 07/10  17.2%
21:48:44 : 08/11  11.3%
21:48:59 : 09/12  7.3%
21:49:23 : 09/13  13.3%
21:49:36 : 10/14  9.0%
21:49:46 : 11/15  5.9%
21:49:56 : 12/16  3.8%
21:50:19 : 13/17  2.5%
21:50:32 : 14/18  1.5%
21:50:53 : 15/19  1.0%
21:51:08 : 16/20  0.6%
21:51:23 : 17/21  0.4%
21:51:25 : Test finished.
 
 ---------- 
Total: 17/21 (0.4%)
 
H actually had a deeper-sounding, but not as defined bass sound at the very beginning of the file with my K 701, so it was kind of easy for me to pick out the differences at that point in the song.

 

[stv014]

That is one positive result for Realtek ALC269 (18 Ω output impedance) driving DT770 Pro 250 Ω.

Can you also successfully ABX D.flac vs. A.flac, or D.flac vs. H.flac ? The laptop audio output has inverted phase, however, if you can only hear A or D vs. H, then it is obviously not the audible issue, but rather the output impedance interaction. Which is somewhat surprising, if even a slightly less than 0.1 dB bass boost resulting from high output impedance can be audible. Although at the beginning of the file, there are some very low frequency sounds, and a different phase response on those might cause different artifacts when switching into the files. Can you also hear a difference at any other parts ?

 

[miceblue]

Quote:

That is one positive result for Realtek ALC269 (18 Ω output impedance) driving DT770 Pro 250 Ω.

Can you also successfully ABX D.flac vs. A.flac, or D.flac vs. H.flac ? The laptop audio output has inverted phase, however, if you can only hear A or D vs. H, then it is obviously not the audible issue, but rather the output impedance interaction. Which is somewhat surprising, if even a slightly less than 0.1 dB bass boost resulting from high output impedance can be audible. Although at the beginning of the file, there are some very low frequency sounds, and a different phase response on those might cause different artifacts when switching into the files. Can you also hear a difference at any other parts ?

Sample A seems to have a larger soundstage for the track at 1:17 compared to H, or has more air between instruments. H has "more bass" from what I hear too, so maybe that accounts for the difference in soundstage.
I'll try A versus D or H later when I get the chance.

 

[stv014]

It is impressive to be able to hear such a small difference. How about the other files ? For example, C.flac also has the same headphone load, but the output impedance is only about half as high, so the difference is harder to hear. Nevertheless, the TPA6120 gets a lot of criticism for its allegedly bad sound quality, even with high impedance headphones, so it would be interesting to see if someone finds any audible flaws. The sound recorded from the speaker amplifier is also not quite "perfect" in terms of measured performance, maybe it does sound different. It would be surprising if anyone could tell the Xonar D1 line output (E.flac) apart from A.flac, though, that does measure fairly well.

 

[ozarkcdn]

No one else tried ABX'ing yet?  Look forward to checking out your handy work later 

 

[Artcheezzz]

Wow, nice and hard job done here. Thanks.
Will do some test with HD650 (treble) and AH-D600 (bass). 
Learning to be an audiophile, that`s will be a nice training.

 

[Artcheezzz]

I give up. I`m sorry guys - u are sick Pro, but sick. 
Was trying to not lie to myself, don`t look any graph`s  and cant tell any difference. Would like to say MAYBE C, some smaller of sound amplitude, and nothing else.
P.S. do not buy new denon`s.

 

[stv014]

Difference file for C.flac (stx_dt770):
 
C_diff.flac
 
The gain is 200. It reveals some low frequency distortion and IMD, which may be caused by the output impedance.