[Ragnar-BY]

audiophiles will never try 2 DACs with accurate volume matching

Just as audio "scientists" never seek to listen for extended periods of time and ignore the impact of stress introduced by forced choice conditions in A-B-X testing.

 

[gregorio]

Just as audio "scientists" never seek to listen for extended periods of time and ignore the impact of stress introduced by forced choice conditions in A-B-X testing.

Which “audio scientists”?

For those who are interested in the actual facts of audible differences/degradation with DACs, rather than just making up false statements, I suggest you visit this web page, where you’ll find a very simple, easy test you can do for yourself:

It’s a “loop-back” test and it should be unbelievably easy for all those who think there are obvious differences between most DACs. There are several reasons it should be unbelievably easy: Firstly, it’s a loop-back test, so the difference between the original file/s and the 1st generation file/s is not only all the degradation of the DAC but also the degradation of the ADC (EG. Double the degradation). The first test is a computer card, so you’ve also got all the artefacts of that nasty computer RFI, EMI in the file and lastly, it’s a nearly 20 year old budget sound card that cost $25, so hardly a modern audiophile DAC!

There are also 5, 10 and 20 generation files, so you can hear all those nasty artefacts from an old, cheap sound card effectively multiplied by 5, 10 and 20 times. The second test uses a pro-sumer sound card (4 channel ADC/DAC costing $250) although the loop-backs were only recorded in 16bit rather than 24bit, so the noise floor should be higher/more noticeable.

G

 

[castleofargh]

Just as audio "scientists" never seek to listen for extended periods of time and ignore the impact of stress introduced by forced choice conditions in A-B-X testing.

Nice job quoting me without ”most” in front of the sentence. Makes me look radical.

About testing duration, you can do as you like. It’s just that for JND(just noticeable differences), longer listening sessions tend to show lower discrimination than rapid switching between short sound samples.
If instead of fresh memory of the sounds, you compare a sound to an old memory, it tends to have lower accuracy(research on auditory memory suggests an ideal window under 3 to 5 seconds). The longer you wait, the more likely you are to believe there is a sound difference and the bigger it will seem to get. That’s a feeling we all had I think, but it’s not one that should be relied on to validate actual audible difference because memory is a more likely suspect.

As for stress in blind test, let’s be honest. Nobody is stressed when doing an abx between the sound of a piano and that of a sheep. When you actually are confident that you will pass, there isn’t much of a reason to stress. It’s self doubt and fear of failure that haunts people. Maybe there is a little something about the novelty of the test the first 2 or 3 times. I acknowledge as much. But that goes away and is replaced by boredom real fast IMO.

TBH I believe that most people couldn't care less about the testing method so long as the result agrees with them. I’ve seen it for years with measurements where the guy who’s mad at measurements showing how his beloved product kind of sucks, keeps on trying to criticize and troll measurements and people doing them. Then suddenly, he relies on those same measurement methods when they suggest his other beloved device is good.
And we see it now with blind testing and @GoldenOne. I haven’t seen him get attacked by the usual anti abx guys when he said he got a positive result testing 2 devices. Instead people get real curious about him trying more devices. Why? Did they all take a course on testing methods? No they just are happy to have someone with more than "dude trust me” agreeing with them that some DACs sound different.
To me this shows how little people oppose methods, controls and evidence. They just get pissed when they face cognitive dissonance and lash out at the cause of their uncomfortable feeling.


Anyways, some people wish to find out more about the truth and verify it. Some want to be told that they’re right. Some don’t care and only shop for a DAC because they don’t have one. It’s fine to use different methods when the aim is different.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

It’s a “loop-back” test

I don't use "synthetic" tests. It is enough for me to listen to the album wit one DAC, and then another, and compare my feelings in both cases. Of course, if the DAC is bought in order to listen to music, and not to prove anything on the Internet.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

If instead of fresh memory of the sounds, you compare a sound to an old memory, it tends to have lower accuracy(research on auditory memory suggests an ideal window under 3 to 5 seconds).

3-5 seconds pieces will only confuse listener and make him think everything is the same.

We can compare a lot of things, only from memory. Impressions from two different cities that have been visited, or two different restaurants, or paintings seen. And none of this for some reason requires proof, ABX, or any special conditions. No one has ever tried to convince me that my impressions of the Caribbean and the Baltic seas are wrong, because there was no temperature matching. How so? What is so special about our impressions of the sound of music that in this case we need some especially objective, technically correct comparisons?

 

[Aspirant Audiophile]

Anyways, some people wish to find out more about the truth and verify it. Some want to be told that they’re right. Some don’t care and only shop for a DAC because they don’t have one. It’s fine to use different methods when the aim is different.

Somebody please give this poster a "headphonius supremus" title. And a raise.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

I don't use "synthetic" tests. It is enough for me to listen to the album wit one DAC, and then another, and compare my feelings in both cases. Of course, if the DAC is bought in order to listen to music, and not to prove anything on the Internet.

exactly. but those in this cult have no interest in listening to music, only in preaching to other people what they can and can't hear as far as dacs and amps are concerned, which is of course patently ridiculous.

 

[castleofargh]

3-5 seconds pieces will only confuse listener and make him think everything is the same.

We can compare a lot of things, only from memory. Impressions from two different cities that have been visited, or two different restaurants, or paintings seen. And none of this for some reason requires proof, ABX, or any special conditions. No one has ever tried to convince me that my impressions of the Caribbean and the Baltic seas are wrong, because there was no temperature matching. How so? What is so special about our impressions of the sound of music that in this case we need some especially objective, technically correct comparisons?

It’s easy to argue that our entire experience of reality is fabricated by the brain based on very little information and a lot of preconceptions to give us a convincing experience in "real time". If you have some interest in this, research in the last decade or so has been amazing(so much is still unknown of course).
But instead of losing myself in another passion and generalities, I think the big variable here is that we’re concerned with mostly identical sounds and trying to find the little differences(DACs after all are high precision high fidelity devices, usual more accurate than amps and always more accurate than transducers). That puts us in a particular scenario where there can be some difficulty satisfying the desire or expectation for perceived sound differences. As I mentioned before, when confronted to a difficult question, the brain loves to replace it with an easier one, often without us being aware. And that’s when the reliability of our experience manufactured by the brain becomes not so reliable.

It might seem super far fetched, but we do this all the time, usually with satisfying results. When you get in a room, you don’t look at everything in great details, you use very little data to construct a perception of the room driven by many assumptions about what you expect to find in a room. The eye always has your nose in view but you don’t notice it(well now maybe you do). There is a blind spot in each eye but you aren’t even aware of that when you look around. You don’t see double.The area of your vision that is sharp(full HD!) Is a small patch within your field of view and for you to see any detail somewhere, you must look at it precisely with that area aligned. You don’t really think about any of that and your eyes just jumps around from places to places while gathering information(almost never doing a full "HD” scan. And yet all this time your brain gave you a coherent and believable "view” of the room. It didn’t go black with a buffering message.
All that to say, our brain does a lot behind our back, and our sense of reality is as far as objective as can be. Obviously I’m saying it’s mostly made up, not that there is no order, logic or stability to the fakeness. We’re after all creatures with a mind made almost entirely around experiences and patterns pulled out of those experiences. It serves us well.
But also sometimes, the brain uses one shortcut too many to turn an intense task into a simple one, and it starts making even more stuff up based on a strong desire, some expectations, or another sensory input allowing assumptions about what might be heard(or memory errors). Again, the harder it is to pick up a sound difference, the more likely it is for the brain to go search elsewhere for the answer. I do believe that this is the core aspect of this discussion. Obvious sound differences are obvious. And clear assumptions are helpful. If I’m swimming and see something under water, I probably won’t imagine it was a bunny. I might imagine a shark, but probably not if I’m in a swimming pool 50km from the nearest sea(then again, sharknado). Those extra variables have nothing to do with what I saw under water a moment ago, but they’re assumptions that will guide my wandering mind in a certain direction. That’s just what brains do. Usually it avoids a bunch of nonsensical scenarios. When it works it works great and we don’t even consciously take notice of all those thoughts going on in the background. That’s also why, when the very same tools come up with BS(mostly out of a rule of least effort), we’re usually non the wiser. And small or no differences greatly encourages the brain to look elsewhere for easy assumptions about sound. I wouldn’t even think of bringing all that up when comparing headphones, because the differences are usually massive and obvious.

If you read that far, you’re brave and have already been more punished than you deserved to be.

 

[REXNFX]

What point did he miss and what’s way over his head? You stated:

There’s two huge problems with that assertion:

Firstly, poor recordings are obviously not defined by how much distortion is “baked into them”. Take for example Metal music, which is very reliant on massively distorted electric guitars. Recordings obviously need that distortion “baked into them” otherwise it won’t sound like Metal music, are you saying all Metal music recordings must therefore be, by definition, poor? What about the vast majority of other popular and rock genres which also include electric guitars (and/or other distortion), must they all be necessarily poor recordings too?

Secondly, if the first problem above “missed the point”, for example you didn’t mean deliberately applied and desirable distortion but inadvertent distortion that’s undesirable, how is it possible for a DAC to know the difference, let alone remove it? “Distortion” most commonly refers to harmonic products, how does a DAC know what are harmonic products produced by the sound source itself or harmonic products caused by distortion and therefore what is distortion to start with, let alone what distortion has been deliberately added and what isn’t? If higher end DACs really did filter out the distortion “baked into” recordings, then Metal music recordings wouldn’t even sound like metal music and the vast majority of all pop, rock and other popular genre recordings would sound ridiculous!

G

The distortion I'm referring to is ,as yet, not measurable.

 

[REXNFX]

Nice job quoting me without ”most” in front of the sentence. Makes me look radical.

About testing duration, you can do as you like. It’s just that for JND(just noticeable differences), longer listening sessions tend to show lower discrimination than rapid switching between short sound samples.
If instead of fresh memory of the sounds, you compare a sound to an old memory, it tends to have lower accuracy(research on auditory memory suggests an ideal window under 3 to 5 seconds). The longer you wait, the more likely you are to believe there is a sound difference and the bigger it will seem to get. That’s a feeling we all had I think, but it’s not one that should be relied on to validate actual audible difference because memory is a more likely suspect.

As for stress in blind test, let’s be honest. Nobody is stressed when doing an abx between the sound of a piano and that of a sheep. When you actually are confident that you will pass, there isn’t much of a reason to stress. It’s self doubt and fear of failure that haunts people. Maybe there is a little something about the novelty of the test the first 2 or 3 times. I acknowledge as much. But that goes away and is replaced by boredom real fast IMO.

TBH I believe that most people couldn't care less about the testing method so long as the result agrees with them. I’ve seen it for years with measurements where the guy who’s mad at measurements showing how his beloved product kind of sucks, keeps on trying to criticize and troll measurements and people doing them. Then suddenly, he relies on those same measurement methods when they suggest his other beloved device is good.
And we see it now with blind testing and @GoldenOne. I haven’t seen him get attacked by the usual anti abx guys when he said he got a positive result testing 2 devices. Instead people get real curious about him trying more devices. Why? Did they all take a course on testing methods? No they just are happy to have someone with more than "dude trust me” agreeing with them that some DACs sound different.
To me this shows how little people oppose methods, controls and evidence. They just get pissed when they face cognitive dissonance and lash out at the cause of their uncomfortable feeling.


Anyways, some people wish to find out more about the truth and verify it. Some want to be told that they’re right. Some don’t care and only shop for a DAC because they don’t have one. It’s fine to use different methods when the aim is different.

In my experience, people that use the word 'honest' a lot are actually quite dishonest.

 

[Ragnar-BY]

our brain does a lot behind our back, and our sense of reality is as far as objective as can be

And that’s exactly the reason, why those short A-B-X pieces confuse it and interfere with the perception of the sound of the recording.

You have an excellent description of how we perceive what we see in the new room. Will it work if a person begins to put his head in one, then another, then a third room for a couple of seconds? Will his ability to notice small details improve from this? And if we tell this person in advance that, as a result of repeatedly sticking his head into a different room, he will have to guess what door X corresponds to ... Will this make the task easier or harder?

If we want a person to notice the difference between two rooms that are furnished in a similar way, but differ in details, what is the best way to proceed? Stick his head in the room for a couple of seconds, or let him come in and calmly look around?

Real science says that under the influence of stress, human brain tends to discard everything that it considers to be secondary tasks. And in my opinion, this perfectly explains why the anti-audiophile "science" is so desperately holding on to its short A-B-X. Because these are perfect conditions to make it extremely difficult to hear the difference even where it is.

 

[llysender]

I am curous not sure if this is related but comparing the 2 K9 pro AKM and ESS since fiio said themselves there is very little modified to fit the ESS chips why is there a world of difference with the ESS sounding brighter and flatter and faster/much faster decay.

Also not sure if this fits but why do source power routing change the sound so much if in theory the toroidal transformer should kill off noise.

Lastly if headphones are minimum phase devices why isnt the headphones coupling with the eardrum directly for true 0 latancy transference but rely on an air stack which changes over the course of the day and even the slightlest changes have an impact on perceved sound.

Sorry for adding random questions but I feel that at lest the 1 and 2 are lelated.

 

[jamesjames]

It’s easy to argue that our entire experience of reality is fabricated by the brain based on very little information and a lot of preconceptions to give us a convincing experience in "real time". If you have some interest in this, research in the last decade or so has been amazing(so much is still unknown of course).
But instead of losing myself in another passion and generalities, I think the big variable here is that we’re concerned with mostly identical sounds and trying to find the little differences(DACs after all are high precision high fidelity devices, usual more accurate than amps and always more accurate than transducers). That puts us in a particular scenario where there can be some difficulty satisfying the desire or expectation for perceived sound differences. As I mentioned before, when confronted to a difficult question, the brain loves to replace it with an easier one, often without us being aware. And that’s when the reliability of our experience manufactured by the brain becomes not so reliable.

It might seem super far fetched, but we do this all the time, usually with satisfying results. When you get in a room, you don’t look at everything in great details, you use very little data to construct a perception of the room driven by many assumptions about what you expect to find in a room. The eye always has your nose in view but you don’t notice it(well now maybe you do). There is a blind spot in each eye but you aren’t even aware of that when you look around. You don’t see double.The area of your vision that is sharp(full HD!) Is a small patch within your field of view and for you to see any detail somewhere, you must look at it precisely with that area aligned. You don’t really think about any of that and your eyes just jumps around from places to places while gathering information(almost never doing a full "HD” scan. And yet all this time your brain gave you a coherent and believable "view” of the room. It didn’t go black with a buffering message.
All that to say, our brain does a lot behind our back, and our sense of reality is as far as objective as can be. Obviously I’m saying it’s mostly made up, not that there is no order, logic or stability to the fakeness. We’re after all creatures with a mind made almost entirely around experiences and patterns pulled out of those experiences. It serves us well.
But also sometimes, the brain uses one shortcut too many to turn an intense task into a simple one, and it starts making even more stuff up based on a strong desire, some expectations, or another sensory input allowing assumptions about what might be heard(or memory errors). Again, the harder it is to pick up a sound difference, the more likely it is for the brain to go search elsewhere for the answer. I do believe that this is the core aspect of this discussion. Obvious sound differences are obvious. And clear assumptions are helpful. If I’m swimming and see something under water, I probably won’t imagine it was a bunny. I might imagine a shark, but probably not if I’m in a swimming pool 50km from the nearest sea(then again, sharknado). Those extra variables have nothing to do with what I saw under water a moment ago, but they’re assumptions that will guide my wandering mind in a certain direction. That’s just what brains do. Usually it avoids a bunch of nonsensical scenarios. When it works it works great and we don’t even consciously take notice of all those thoughts going on in the background. That’s also why, when the very same tools come up with BS(mostly out of a rule of least effort), we’re usually non the wiser. And small or no differences greatly encourages the brain to look elsewhere for easy assumptions about sound. I wouldn’t even think of bringing all that up when comparing headphones, because the differences are usually massive and obvious.

If you read that far, you’re brave and have already been more punished than you deserved to be.

This is breathtakingly didactic, condescending and full of unsubstantiated nonsense! I don't know what else to say! It clearly has no place on a website about audio equipment.

 

[gregorio]

I don't use "synthetic" tests.

Good, neither do I but what’s that got to do with the tests I posted? They’re not “synthetic tests”, they’re real world tests of the performance of actual sound cards/interfaces using music.

It is enough for me to listen to the album wit one DAC, and then another, and compare my feelings in both cases.

Our feelings and perceptions change all the time, regardless of “one DAC and then another”. We can listen to a piece of music on one DAC, then exactly the same piece of music on exactly the same DAC/system, with exactly the same settings and it can sound significantly different. For example on the first play-through we can focus on say the electric guitar, on the second play-through to the drumkit and obviously these two play-throughs will sound different. How is that possible, does the DAC/system have some magical telepathic ability to know what we’re concentrating on and change the sound it’s outputting accordingly or is the sound actually the same on both play-throughs and it’s our perception that’s changed? Isn’t the answer to this question obvious/self-evident? As the perception/feel of what we’re hearing can obviously change, even when the actual sound is identical, how can we ascribe such a change/difference to a piece of equipment rather than just a change in perception?

Of course, if the DAC is bought in order to listen to music, and not to prove anything on the Internet.

How does a DAC know the reason why it was bought and change it’s output accordingly?

3-5 seconds pieces will only confuse listener and make him think everything is the same.

Actually the exact opposite is true, as demonstrated by countless formal tests over the course of 70 years or so. Due to the difference between echoic memory and long term memory, the fact it’s easier to maintain a very tight focus over such a short span of time (rather than our perception wandering/changing), just noticeable differences are more easily AND more reliably identified using quick switching between short clips. If it does sound the same it’s either because there are no audible differences or because you don’t know how to critically listen, how to very tightly focus your perception or what to focus it on.

However, your assertion is invalid anyway! There is no requirement to only use 3-5 second clips, you can use an entire album or even the entire Ring Cycle if you want and switching between them can be as fast or slow as you want.

No one has ever tried to convince me that my impressions of the Caribbean and the Baltic seas are wrong, because there was no temperature matching. How so?

Because you are not making claims of differences that in reality are so tiny they are beyond the ability of human senses to detect, you are not doing so on a forum dedicated to the Caribbean and Baltic seas and you are not ascribing those differences to a piece of technology you purchased. Isn’t that obvious?

And that’s exactly the reason, why those short A-B-X pieces confuse it and interfere with the perception of the sound of the recording.

Again, it does the opposite! “Short ABX pieces” provide less time and opportunity for perception/focus to change or be “interfered with”.

Real science says that under the influence of stress, human brain tends to discard everything that it considers to be secondary tasks.

Ideal! If our primary task/concentration is to identify an audible difference, then why would you want a secondary task interfering with that?

And in my opinion, this perfectly explains why the anti-audiophile "science" is so desperately holding on to its short A-B-X.

Firstly, there is no anti-audiophile science, if there were then it wouldn’t be science. Science is anti falsehood/myth/BS, regardless of whether it’s audiophile, medical, aeronautical or astrological.

Secondly, science obviously is NOT “desperately holding on to its short ABX”. If it were, there would be no option to have longer clips. Again, the clips can be as long as desired. We tend to use short clips and quickly switch between them because that is the most effective way for skilled/trained listeners to detect audible differences.

If we want a person to notice the difference between two rooms that are furnished in a similar way, but differ in details, what is the best way to proceed? Stick his head in the room for a couple of seconds, or let him come in and calmly look around?

Assuming vision operates the same as hearing, the best way to proceed would be: Get the person to tightly focus on the specific part of the room where the details differ and ignore everything else, then switch to the other room quickly enough so that information is still within (the highest fidelity) short term visual memory. That’s if we want him to notice the actual difference according to the “Real science”. If we don’t really care whether he notices the difference or erroneously picks something that isn’t actually different then just letting him calmly/causally look around would do the trick!!

G

 

[gregorio]

The distortion I'm referring to is ,as yet, not measurable.

What distortion isn’t measurable?

More importantly though: Digital audio is a measurement, what do you think all those 16 or 24bits per sample represent, if not a measurement (of amplitude over time)? If there were something that isn’t measurable then it would not be recordable and therefore cannot, by definition, be “baked into the recording”!

G