Can you hear the difference between DAC's?

[Ghoostknight]

Question Video :



Answer Video:



Without telling the number here, after you done the test yourself and saw the results, you can check the comments for my comment, im @dornauge95 and pretty much guessed spot on, not sure what i should take from this as its yet another test i did that confirms myself but statisticly is completely irrelevant, lol

i listened to a room correct studio monitor setup + black lion audio interface (with good AC filtering) and i listened to the wav file multiple times like said in the comment, so no shady phone speaker or similar going on and imo its big part of why it was audible to me

 

[bigshot]

I don’t spend my time watching YouTube videos. It’s usually not a productive use of my time. I can read and get better information.

 

[dunring]

I get audio equipment in every day and a chance to line up some stuff and compare. Many do sound the same, but not all of them. Try an A70Pro amp, and then I lined up the D70 Pro Octo, Sabre, an E70 9028Pro, and the Gustard X30 I had in at the time. There's a noticeable difference in a volume matched test.

 

[bigshot]

What kind of difference? Have you measured it to find out? Ideally they should all be transparent and sound the same. If one doesn’t, it’s colored and has poorer fidelity. Colored amps should be avoided. So which one isn’t performing to spec? I can’t tell by the way you phrased it.

 

[colonelkernel8]

I get audio equipment in every day and a chance to line up some stuff and compare. Many do sound the same, but not all of them. Try an A70Pro amp, and then I lined up the D70 Pro Octo, Sabre, an E70 9028Pro, and the Gustard X30 I had in at the time. There's a noticeable difference in a volume matched test.

No there wasn't. I'm sorry, but if you knew what you were listening to, that biased your mind to believe it's "different" sounding, when it's actually identical to the microvolt.

 

[Ghoostknight]

No there wasn't. I'm sorry, but if you knew what you were listening to, that biased your mind to believe it's "different" sounding, when it's actually identical to the microvolt.

i mean my right prediction is the best example why i think its bull.... surely just a coincidence like always

 

[BS5711]

I can only talk for myself Ghoost but with all the other stuff that you have talked about in the science forums and all the crystal banging and water sounds that you talk about elsewhere nobody cares if you passed one DAC test or not.

It was a one time choice and for all we know you might have just pulled a number out of thin air. You stated yourself that you felt it was between 4 and 6 and you actually used the word "guess" so I think it is apparent that you could not tell with any sort of certainty despite all the "tweaks" you talk about your audio gear having.

As you stated yourself the one off guess is statistically meaningless and may very well have been down to blind luck, no value in a scientific sense at all and yet here you are with your "proof" once again. The purpose of tests like that are the outcome from large numbers participating to give some meaning, the result was that people could not tell the difference, your single data point means nothing.

If or when you stop talking about crystals and stuff like songs with silver in the name sound like silver frequencies people might actually take you seriously. In the meantime you are a version of the girl that cried wolf, you talk nonsense 9 times and the assumption is the 10th time is nonsense also.

Sorry that will come across rude but it is the truth, something usually skirted around these days to avoid upsetting someone.

 

[sygnus21]

More "my opinions are facts" videos. Didn't watch, waste of time.

 

[bigshot]

He isn’t qualified to do a controlled listening test and he doesn’t care to try to learn. Dismissed.

 

[Ghoostknight]

It was a one time choice and for all we know you might have just pulled a number out of thin air. You stated yourself that you felt it was between 4 and 6 and you actually used the word "guess" so I think it is apparent that you could not tell with any sort of certainty despite all the "tweaks" you talk about your audio gear having.

the thing is, such a test is stupid in the first place not only have you to hear the difference but also count the right number of switches, which were really badly placed towards the end so you could easly miss 1 or 2 switches, atleast this is what happened me being somewhat unsure between 4 and 6 (i said 6 in end because the mojarity of later listens showed 6)

its really no wonder the results were all over the place, specially with an "ordinary youtube audience" (which leads to things like noone listening to .wav) sorry to say


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really to be sure i would need to repeat this test and show that its verifiable, till then i rather take it as win because i was even right in the video of the "shouty" guy but i missunderstood the objective at the time, so i "guessed wrong" but heared the right (same kind) of difference

 

[bigshot]

So if you were able to beat the test, it wouldn’t be because you heard a difference.

 

[BS5711]

the thing is, such a test is stupid in the first place not only have you to hear the difference but also count the right number of switches, which were really badly placed towards the end so you could easly miss 1 or 2 switches, atleast this is what happened me being somewhat unsure between 4 and 6 (i said 6 in end because the mojarity of later listens showed 6)

its really no wonder the results were all over the place, specially with an "ordinary youtube audience" (which leads to things like noone listening to .wav) sorry to say


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really to be sure i would need to repeat this test and show that its verifiable, till then i rather take it as win because i was even right in the video of the "shouty" guy but i missunderstood the objective at the time, so i "guessed wrong" but heared the right (same kind) of difference

Why do it and tell others about it if it is a stupid test ?

In general principle it is a reasonable test if undertaken by enough people using something better than a phone to listen on.

You Tube audio video viewers still have functioning ears and brains and enough of them create a meaningful sample despite that you apparently want to elevate "audiophiles" to some higher plane.

How many average people will believe whatever their perception tells them if science can demonstrate that is not reliable ? I don't mean just tell them but to show them tests they can do for themselves to demonstrate such? Not many and yet rafts of audiophiles do that every day here and argue that they can trust their ears until the cows come home despite that it is very easy to demonstrate to oneself that we should not rely only on our normal listening situation audio perception to determine what is real with equipment.

It beggars belief that guys like you will dig deep to understand something but cannot take the time to do genuine well controlled testing to see if a perceived sound change is even real. If they bother and inevitably fail they then look for reasons why the testing is flawed (Passion for Sound is a great example of that) or look for reasons to believe that science doesn't actually understand enough about how we hear. It does and it knows that perception is very often dreadfully wrong but "audiophiles" can't cope with that because it unravels everything they thought they knew.

 

[gregorio]

the thing is, such a test is stupid in the first place not only have you to hear the difference but also count the right number of switches,

The right way to do the test would be an ABX but of course he wouldn’t get many/any responses from a YouTube audience if he’d required that. So, the number of switches is one way or the other way would be one switch and to ask where it occurred. Neither are ideal but still a reasonable indicator.

which were really badly placed towards the end so you could easly miss 1 or 2 switches, atleast this is what happened me being somewhat unsure between 4 and 6 …

How are they “really badly placed”, can you hear the sound quality difference between several seconds of one cut compared to the next or not? You seem to mean they were “badly placed” in the sense that you couldn’t even guess?

Incidentally, I’d have guessed 4-6 as well, even without listening to it! Enough to provide a decent number of opportunities to compare, not too many to make the editing awkward and sections too short. If the example track were a minute or so longer, I’d have guessed 5-7.

Let’s take a hypothetical, let’s say your answer was not a guess, let’s say you really could identify a difference, with the required statistical probability, verifiably and repeatably. That would still NOT demonstrate that you can hear a difference between the DACs, it would only demonstrate that you could hear a difference between the DAC + ADC. The test was the signal (music) looped back, out through the cheap DAC and back in (to the digital domain) through the same cheap unit’s ADC. Effectively doubling (approximately) the artefacts of the DAC alone.

G