[jnjn]

Quote:

This.

Magick Man
 
I have continued to review the course of our dialogue.  I am not happy with what I said as the discourse ramped up.
 
You have my sincere apologies..You were quite reserved in your responses.
 
jnjn

 

[Samehada]

somtimes i just feel like the whole audio business is a scam ,
 
I have 2 different aftermarket cables for my LCD2 , i got them for free from my brother as he went for a balanced setup with his LCD3
... i cant hear a difference (same goes for my miracles)
 
I have/heard like 4 different DACs: HM602 , Yunlong D100 , V-DAC II  , Benchmark DAC 1
... all fed the same amps (o2 , LD I+ , Wa2 ) and i couldn't hear a difference
 
i basicly stopped buying gear and just get new phones once in a blue moon.
 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

i basicly stopped buying gear and just get new phones once in a blue moon.

 
Transducers are usually the most important part of the chain because they tend to vary more than the rest of the gear.

 

[Tilpo]

somtimes i just feel like the whole audio business is a scam ,

I have 2 different aftermarket cables for my LCD2 , i got them for free from my brother as he went for a balanced setup with his LCD3
... i cant hear a difference (same goes for my miracles)

I have/heard like 4 different DACs: HM602 , Yunlong D100 , V-DAC II  , Benchmark DAC 1
... all fed the same amps (o2 , LD I+ , Wa2 ) and i couldn't hear a difference

i basicly stopped buying gear and just get new phones once in a blue moon.

You, good sir, are the image of the ideal head-fier in my honest opinion.

 

[TheGrumpyOldMan]

Quote:

You, good sir, are the image of the ideal head-fier in my honest opinion.

Amen to that. Less worrying about components and more enjoying the music!

 

[germanium]

Quote:

 
Transducers are usually the most important part of the chain because they tend to vary more than the rest of the gear.

Tranducers even though far from perfect can also reveal shortcomings in the electronics & source material. They are basically garbage in garbage out. It is amazing what excellent electronics can do even with relativly inexpensive speakers which is why other than lack of money I buy inexpensive stuff but stuff with a lot of potential & modify the electronics to bring the best out of it. My speakers are bi-amped. I could hear a lot of potential with them that was unrealized when I bought them & right away I knew most of what I needed to do to get them to perform up to snuff. I could tell by the sound they were producing stock what was wrong with the electronics in them. Now combined with my souncard mods they sound absolutely amazing to all that hear them.
 
Don't be fooled by the notion that inexpensive speakers are in any way the cause of all bad sound. They are not always the issue in fact I have found the opposite more often is true that the electronics are holding back the system as a whole. Often it is the electronics that need attention more than the speakers but not always.

 

[drez]

Quote:

You, good sir, are the image of the ideal head-fier in my honest opinion.

 
Get a room lol

 

[bigshot]

Don't be fooled by the notion that inexpensive speakers are in any way the cause of all bad sound. They are not always the issue in fact I have found the opposite more often is true that the electronics are holding back the system as a whole.

The biggest offender when it comes to lousy sound with cheap speakers is the speakers. There's no question about that. Those tiny satellite systems with dinky mains and a honkin' subwoofer put out sound with huge firebreak bands of nothing in the crossover between the mains and the sub. Almost every cheap set of speakers I've heard have holes in the upper low range. Old style cabinet speakers can be gotten second hand for not too much more, and they sound a million times better.

I've had expensive CD players and cheap ones. They all sounded exactly the same, and the expensive one was more funky and picky about playing certain disks after a few years than my $45 Coby. With amps, I've found the main consideration is power. After that, features. Sound doesn't matter.

I have a kick ass system that can roar and purr as the music calls for it. The great sound it produces is 100% a result of having great speakers.

Well playing great recordings has a lot to do with it too.

 

[anetode]

You clearly do not know me. You've a learning curve ahead, and it may be rather steep. Ask questions if you do not understand, as you've been shooting first, yet asking no questions.

A scientific standard is one that is invariant of the conditions.

A DBT using interconnects requires the changing of the wires via some method. If one uses simple swaps, then one is subject to the resistance of the contact connections and the loop area of the wires..NEITHER are controlled.

Two interconnects between two chassis form a ground loop which allows the currents to take the path of lowest impedance. There is NO control, period.

And both loop area and contact resistance are significant in terms of the current path that the source's signal will take getting back. And that's only for class 2 devices. It gets worse with safety bonded units. Going differential removes a very significant amount, but even there inductive coupling is ignored.

Now, consider the use of an ABX box. How does that control the path of the return current?

Quite honestly, everything I've seen to date has been done with virtually NO control over current path.

cheers, jnjn

If you were to control for those variables in constructing a DBT, how would you go about it? Maybe incorporate the switchbox at the transducer.

What's the total distortion and timing error that these variables may introduce? Are we talking less than a tenth of a db and less than a microsecond? Earlier on you discussed evidence of fine human discernment of interaural differences but admitted that there was no evidence that this had a specific effect on audibility.

When people find differences and ask for answers, they get the standard "it's in your head", or wire is wire, or miles and miles, or links to silly things by pseudoexperts proclaiming mythbuster quips..

Now you're ignoring a whole different field of testing. Faux AB tests have been conducted without any actual change beside presentation and the style of instruction. I'm not speaking strictly of DBT cable tests, but of the verified body of knowledge on the power of suggestion. So on the one hand we have evidence that the human mind is very picky about how it might interpret the exact same stimulus based on a variety of "mindsets" (beliefs, priming, physiological states like fatigue). On the other hand we have DBT tests (which you appear to discount outright) that fail to show positive results past well-established thresholds.

Maybe the subject of drugs would be a little more radical. Half the world say don't try em, you can see the pitfalls others have experienced and even if you try them once it could lead into trouble. There were a group of teens recently who wreaked a car the very first night when trying drugs. With a persons choice of cables, it is as easy as going to a fellow Head-Fi'ers house or to a meet and experiencing for yourself. The really dumb thing is to take others options with-out a couple of tests.

Having been to at least one concert in my life I can attest to the fact that drugs are some of the most commonly used audio tweaks and their effects are greater than those of any cable. Unfortunately I am having trouble finding any published DBT results and will have to ask the government for a grant to fund supplies for my own study.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

The biggest offender when it comes to lousy sound with cheap speakers is the speakers. There's no question about that. Those tiny satellite systems with dinky mains and a honkin' subwoofer put out sound with huge firebreak bands of nothing in the crossover between the mains and the sub. Almost every cheap set of speakers I've heard have holes in the upper low range. Old style cabinet speakers can be gotten second hand for not too much more, and they sound a million times better.
I've had expensive CD players and cheap ones. They all sounded exactly the same, and the expensive one was more funky and picky about playing certain disks after a few years than my $45 Coby. With amps, I've found the main consideration is power. After that, features. Sound doesn't matter.
I have a kick ass system that can roar and purr as the music calls for it. The great sound it produces is 100% a result of having great speakers.
Well playing great recordings has a lot to do with it too.

Note that I carefully avoided the word cheap wich has the implication of poor quality where as inexpensive does not have that implication. Reasonably low price is not nessearily sign of poor quality & as such can be a revelation when hooked to high quality amps & yes they can & do sound different even if they have the same specs. It is true that as move up though the midfi amps they for the most part sound the same but get to the high end & companies spend lots of time & money voicing thier amps to sound a certain way & most companies in the high end have whats called a house sound & it becomes very obvious what that house sound is when you listen to thier various amps on the same speakers as a different highend companies amp. Yes I have heard those differences So please don't tell me or others that they don't exist because they do & they are intended to exist by the manufacturer. They conduct extended listening sessions with trained listeners to arrive at that sound. It is called voicing the amp stage of developement. during this voicing they make changes to the design till it achieves the sound they want & the funny thing is you could never tell by the specs what they did to change  the sound.
 
Again if all amps & sources sound the same I would have no reason to mod the amps & sources that I have done as there would be no benefit to doing so but the fact is there is a benefit so I will continue to do so just as many others do on this forum.

 

[bigshot]

High end equipment is the most likely to be deliberately colored. I've heard those too. The first thing I'd do if I was saddled with an amp with a non standard response would be to EQ the "house sound" right out of it. That stuff is overpriced junk designed to appeal to rich people who just want to buy whatever's most expensive. Sucker bait.

Hooking up reasonably inexpensive speakers to a high end colored amp is an extremely inefficient way to improve sound quality. Take the extra money you were going to invest in the fancy amp and get an average receiver and use the rest to keep your options open for better speakers. You'll get much more bang for your buck. That's the truth.

 

[bigshot]

Little dinky silver half dollar sized speakers don't sound as good as an 8 inch bookshelf speaker. And the 8 inch won't sound as good as a 10 inch 3 way cabinet speaker. And a ten inch cabinet speaker won't sound as good as 12 inch studio monitors. You pay your money and you get better sound.

High end speakers that are flat as pancakes or look like flying saucers are the bunk too. They have to sacrifice and pour uneccessay money into the parts to get those weird cabinet shapes. Box speakers give the best sound for the least money. If you can get away with a really good two speaker setup, go for it. Subs help with larger rooms, but they introduce problems of their own.

Good studio monitors in an acoustically complementary normal sized living room will sound fantastic. The amp doesn't matter as long as it can push them.

 

[Magick Man]

I've had expensive CD players and cheap ones. They all sounded exactly the same, and the expensive one was more funky and picky about playing certain disks after a few years than my $45 Coby. With amps, I've found the main consideration is power. After that, features. Sound doesn't matter.
I have a kick ass system that can roar and purr as the music calls for it. The great sound it produces is 100% a result of having great speakers.
Well playing great recordings has a lot to do with it too.

Agreed, for the most part. I tend to buy solid, well built transports, but I've yet to hear any difference in sound. Amps, especially tube amps, can and do sound different, but the change is minor compared to changing speakers and headphones

 

[germanium]

It's kind of funny that even magazines that follow the objectivist ideology once in a great while find amps that for no explanable reason sound better than other amps that spec the same or even better & even they get all gaga over them. It is actually quite rare that they do but it does happen. What seperates at least some high end amps from the rest of the pack is not nessessarily coloration but the ability to dig deeper into the soundfield & bring ou details that other amps obscure without otherwise scewing the sound in one direction or anouther. Amps that have passed that muster that even the objectionist view magazines have gushed over have been the Threshold, Mark levinson & Halcro designed amps. Each has raised the bar to some new level of performance. The best amps that I ever heard that are commercially available have been the Mark Leveinson amps but to my ears only the monoblock ones ($30,000 a pair). They seemed to offer a resolution that others didn't offer. I have not heard the Halcro or the Threshold amps in order to comment on them but the Halcro designs offer the best specs of any design available to date They have distortion specs that are so low that they cannot even be measured by even the most modern test equipment!! What I read they offer resolution that is positively devine that even the magazines that adhere to the all amps sound the same mentality suddenly find one that stands head & shoulders above the rest in terms of resolution and not sounding in any way colored in doing so.

 

[Tilpo]

It's kind of funny that even magazines that follow the objectivist ideology once in a great while find amps that for no explanable reason sound better than other amps that spec the same or even better & even they get all gaga over them. It is actually quite rare that they do but it does happen. What seperates at least some high end amps from the rest of the pack is not nessessarily coloration but the ability to dig deeper into the soundfield & bring ou details that other amps obscure without otherwise scewing the sound in one direction or anouther. Amps that have passed that muster that even the objectionist view magazines have gushed over have been the Threshold, Mark levinson & Halcro designed amps. Each has raised the bar to some new level of performance. The best amps that I ever heard that are commercially available have been the Mark Leveinson amps but to my ears only the monoblock ones ($30,000 a pair). They seemed to offer a resolution that others didn't offer. I have not heard the Halcro or the Threshold amps in order to comment on them but the Halcro designs offer the best specs of any design available to date They have distortion specs that are so low that they cannot even be measured by even the most modern test equipment!! What I read they offer resolution that is positively devine that even the magazines that adhere to the all amps sound the same mentality suddenly find one that stands head & shoulders above the rest in terms of resolution and not sounding in any way colored in doing so.

I don't really see how amps would be able to increase resolution.
Resolution is mainly defined by the frequency selectivity of the basilar membrane, and the intensity selectivity of the auditory system. The resolution in terms of frequency and intensity is far greater in almost all amps, so how could an amp increase resolution?

I would argue that it is more likely that perceived increases in resolution are caused by psychological factors which in turn may be a result of e.g. increased treble response. But then it'd be easier to do it with an EQ than with an amp.

I'm not attacking your statement, I'm simply wondering what physical factor might lead to an increase in perceived detail.