Gentlemen,
I received the "all big" clock unit from John yesterday (Saturday) about 3pm, charged it for a couple of hours and after the kids went to bed I tested it against mine (one big clock 48khz and one small clock 44.1khz), just by myself for about 4 hours. Today, my friend Michael came by and we tested them again for about 2 hours.
WARNING: BOTH UNITS ARE THE jkeny MODDED VERSION and the gear I used is listed in my sig line.
Setup:
- 2 computers about the same age and hardware specs, running foobar with KS. Windows XP.
- 2 identical 75 ohm 6 foot BNC cables from Radio Shack.
- 2 identical 6 foot usb cables
- no attenuators were used, no other foobar plugins, no equalizers etc etc
- both units were plugged into input 3 and 4 of my DAC, both BNC inputs
- a Harmony 880 remote was used to switch back and forth between inputs
- volume on the preamp was set once and then left alone at the same setting for both sessions, yesterday and today.
- cables were connected by a third party. We did not know which was which until we finished.
- we listened to one track at a time. Pushed the "Play" button at the same time on both keyboards, both foobars were set to "repeat track". This gave us time to switch back and forth until ready to move to the next song.
- Michael knows nothing about hiFace and has not seen this thread/forum. He does have a nice system at home and loves 2 channel audio.
- We used 16/44, 24/88 and 24/96 recordings from both HDTracks, Chesky and 2L, together with some of the best sounding rips in my collection. All FLAC.
- at the end of the test we played a bit with the upsampler (sox) in foobar, but this did not influence our decision about the outcome of the results.
Some of you probably know that regal labeled my system as inadequate for this test. Let me assure you that while not on par with George Lucas' gear, it is very detailed, you can hear the singer's subtle and light breaths, lips separating, fingers lightly touching the piano keys and sliding up and down guitar cords, on Melody Gardot's "Baby I'm A Fool" (My One And Only Thrill) a slight non musical noise towards the end of the song was present, probably made by someone knocking something over in the studio... My room is also treated, there are 12 4'x2'x2" absorption panels, 4 4' bass traps and 11 poly diffusers. The room is 16' x 19' x10' tall, about 3000 cubic feet.
RESULTS:
During my session alone last night I tried really hard to hear a difference. Really hard. But could not. Only that at times I found myself forgetting to switch between inputs, that's how good both units sounded. This is consistent with my first blind test, where the foobar sox upsampler was used and I always liked the original version of a song not knowing that the small clock handled the 44.1khz.
Today, Michael's impression was that input 3 had slightly crisper highs than input 4 on
certain songs only, but he thinks he liked the input 4 overall a bit better, especially with George Michael's "Patience" (Patience). Since we were able to switch really fast back and forth between inputs, he did say that he would not be able to tell the difference had the switching took longer, like 10 seconds or more. His closing statement: "if I were to walk home with either unit I would not care which one." (Input 3 was the one big one small clock and Input 4 was the all big clock unit).
If anyone has any questions about the test or songs used please ask. I took a few pictures of the messy room..
Please understand that the purpose of this test was not to convince anybody of anything. It was for my peace of mind in light of all the controversy surrounding this little gadget, as like everybody else I only want what is best for my system.
I decided to keep the unit.
Now bring on the heat...
