[Airwin]

Hello,
 
if we speak about sound quality of transistor amps, and differences between them, there's often a subjective tendence to push the better built / more expensive amp vs. the cheaper one, no matter if there's a real differ in sound or not.
 
We made doubleblind testings between Hifi amps a few years ago, and .... the sound of a 3k Accuphase seems to be equal to the 300 $ sandbox next to it. (good and easy to drive speakers in the setup)
 
Hmm ... what I wan't to tell is: For  sure, sound is not everything, and a well made piece of hardware is always tempting and mostly worth the costs.
But has anybody ever made a doubleblind test between a cheap import and a brand name with better 'everything' (DAC/Amp/Bat etc.)
 
Curious if you can hear the differ between a Topping and a Nufore, etc. (When you don't know what's playing at the moment you listen.)
 
Anyone tried such a experiment in this forum?
 
 
Airwin

 

[NZtechfreak]

Would love to, did a two-sided single blind volume matched test iPhone 4 Vs Galaxy Note 2 a couple of weekends ago. Was fascinating. We both came to it with a very strong assumption that the iPhone would sound better, however we both picked the Note 2 slightly more often as out preferred playback device.
 
Pretty hard to get things together for something like that though, especially between full time medicine, family, and running and producing content for a blog.
 
Will try and arrange that for the RSA Intruder, HeadAmp Pico, and Leckterton UHA-6S.MKII at some point, since I will own all three of them (maybe even throw my E7 into the mix).

 

[Airwin]

Quote:

Will try and arrange that for the RSA Intruder, HeadAmp Pico, and Leckterton UHA-6S.MKII at some point, since I will own all three of them (maybe even throw my E7 into the mix).

 
... this sounds real tempting! Especially if the 'valuable, but not this perfect sounding'  E7 is in the game vs. state of the art heroes (sound only).

 

[stv014]

I recommend checking the Sound Science forum, and especially this thread. Blind tests are a common topic of discussion there. You can also find threads where audio files - e.g. lossy compression vs. the lossless original, sound recorded from various devices, etc. - are (or were) available for download and comparison with ABX software, such as the foobar2000 ABX comparator plugin, and people posted the results of their tests.

 

[Airwin]

Thanks for the links, that's a lot to go through
 
Maybe I do some testings on my own, just have to make a little switchbox for 3.5 mm ...