How do I compare transient speeds of two receivers?

[gregorio]

Trying to review an audio component by writing about it is a little like a wine taster trying to describe taste, they too have their own “flowery prose” to try and convey an opinion that appears totally foreign to those who may only occasionally enjoy a wine with a meal,

While that analogy can be valid in some respects, there’s 4 serious problems:
1. Like with audiophiles, wine tasters, even as a consensus group, sometimes/often get it badly wrong. Blind testing has revealed huge discrepancies with their sighted impressions.
2. We’re not only dealing with the equivalent of those who “occasionally enjoy a wine with a meal”. Some of us have more education, knowledge and experience than the reviewers and some of us are actual engineers who know how recordings are created.
3. Wine tasting is by definition, directly and ONLY concerned with the perception of human senses. Audiophilia on the other hand is only indirectly concerned with human senses and perception, it’s directly concerned with the performance of electronic and electro-mechanical devices.
4. Most importantly though, there’s a massive difference between audiophiles and wine connoisseurs/consumers, which invalidates the analogy: Audiophilia is all about reproduction, reproducing a purchased recording/audio signal. Wine tasting on the other hand is just tasting/drinking a purchased wine, there’s no reproduction involved whatsoever and therefore no reference point. …

Surely “clean and balanced” is an opinion that can deviate from listener to listener if there’s no reference point to the original source …

Unfortunately, that’s pure nonsense! Your assertion depends on the condition of there being no reference point but the “original source” (the recording) IS the reference point. So obviously, your condition can never be met when reproducing a recording!

Furthermore, unlike wine tasting, “clean and balanced” has nothing to do with human senses or perception, there is no human sense or perception of digital data or of an analogous electrical current. “Clean and balanced” are scientifically/mathematically defined and have been for a century or more, so we don’t actually need any other reference point.

So without supplying a scope trace image how do we convey any perceived difference in transient response in a review or forum post ?

That was exactly my original point! What perceived difference are they trying to convey? If it’s an actual/real difference then we can supply some measurement, a scope trace or the results of a null test for example, we can convey that difference using established/standardised audio terminology and then use whatever flowery language to describe our personal perception/response to that audio phenomena. However, if it isn’t real then it’s just flowery audiophile nonsense.

Ah, all good components are equally transparent ?

How is that relevant if all the components together are transparent?

G

 

[The Jester]

I have no idea what is being discussed in this thread any more. "Garble garble not one of us!" Stick a fork in it.



I have no disagreement with that, except for the use of the word "sincerely". I don't see any sincerity here. Sincerity doesn't dodge honest questions, it doesn't strut and march around and throw out deflections in all directions. I think you are correct in saying he doesn't understand how extensive an influence bias can be, but he has absolutely no interest in understanding any better. I wouldn't call that sincere.

I also agree that it could be due to an old receiver with caps that have gone South. But I wouldn't entertain that possibility until I knew what sort of controls were put on the listening comparison. My guess is that there were absolutely no controls. That's why he keeps dodging my simple questions. There may not even be two receivers. He may have just made the whole thing up to "entertain" us. It wouldn't be the first time a troll did that.

There's a pattern that happens over and over. Someone comes here and puts on a big show about how "science doesn't know everything" and how ignorant an abusive people in this forum are. They eventually get hoist in their own illogical petard, throw out a bunch of incoherent paragraphs of insults, and then they slink off with their tail between their legs. Later, they decide they are too big to put up with not getting the respect they so clearly deserve, and they come back and play through the whole routine again ...and get the same results again. Rinse and repeat.. Other people have more patience than I do to play their game. But it always ends up back in the same place. This is about butt hurt, not sound

I could give you current photos of both amps but your attitude and child like insults would just say I’d copied them from the web, so why bother,
Amps is correct, they are both Power Amps, and yes I still have one RB980 as I used it and the traded one to bi amp the original speakers,

 

[bigshot]

Whatever. I’ve moved beyond that. You wouldn’t answer my questions and I’m not interested in the routine you’re playing out, so we are at a deadlock. Have a great day!

 

[gregorio]

apologies op, but ‘sound science’ threads are so needlessly hostile

They’re not needlessly hostile, they’re justifiably hostile! How “hostile” is it to post lies, misinformation and try to pervert the science in an actual science based forum? Hardly surprising or unjustified if the responses to such hostility are also hostile!

funny thing with knowledge; a mind open to learning generally gains more of it (knowledge)

But you haven’t posted any knowledge, only rhetoric and nonsense claims. Where’s the objective evidence of your claimed transient butchery? As it would be easy enough to get, there’s only one conclusion for why you refuse.

Incidentally, I’m perfectly open to learning knowledge. The apparent difference between us is that I don’t consider marketing BS, biased observations and nonsense claims that contradict demonstrated/proven science to be “knowledge”. Again, as you brought it up, are you really aligning yourself and other audiophiles with flat earthers?

i find it amusing that most of the sciency techs I know wouldnt be caught dead near the zealots that patrol these posts.

True. Understandably, you won’t find many scientists, “sciency techs” or engineers in the flat earth society, anti-vax or other forums frequented by ignorant zealots hostile to science. Not sure why you find that amusing though?

Look at some limited measurements that are surprisingly similar,
“Can’t possibly be any audible difference”
Any when you listen, there isn’t ?

Exactly, that’s why we have controlled testing, specifically designed to avoid/eliminate such biases!

G

 

[The Jester]

Photo of the speaker described, only one pair in existence ..
Take it easy…

 

[bigshot]

Shoot a photo of it with your big toe right next to it.

 

[The Jester]

Shoot a photo of it with your big toe right next to it.

Would a middle finger suffice ?

 

[The Jester]

With its magnetic grille on,
And your post on top …

 

[Redcarmoose]

Probably this here is the best answer. Using a microphone and CSD plot would effectively show you a small amount of information about your receivers transient response. It’s also interesting that there is a direct correlation between imaging and transient response! But I figure two receivers, would then show difference even though they were using the same speakers for the test?
https://audiojudgement.com/cumulative-spectral-decay-csd-plot


Also for headphones, slightly more generalized.

https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/tutorials/how-to-interpret-graphs/csdwaterfall-spectrum/

 

[gregorio]

Probably this here is the best answer. Using a microwave and CSD plot would effectively show you a small amount of information about your receivers transient response.

A null test is far cheaper, quicker and gives you all the “information” on the transient response of your DAC, amp or both together!

G

 

[bigshot]

I want to see your big toe, not your speaker.

 

[Redcarmoose]

A null test is far cheaper, quicker and gives you all the “information” on the transient response of your DAC, amp or both together!

G

Thank-you!

 

[The Jester]

I want to see your big toe, not your speaker.

Twit !

A bare naked big toe ?
You dirty, dirty boy !

 

[Steve999]

I say, you drop both receivers at the same time from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pizza (in Chicago I think, right next to the Louvre and the Space Needle) and the one that hits the ground first had the fastest transient speed.

 

[whitedragem]

Well given there seems to be a split between people who assume they know more (and gatekeep audio science pages, getting caught up in arguments not with the OP (and get confused about basic things like ’who is who’), and given I have been relegated to not contributing (’slew rate’, ‘slew rate’, ’slew rate’!), I feel there isn’t much point ‘holding back’ soo much (I get bored of Bigshot going out of their way to be so rude, whilst playing a victim when being called out for ‘sniping from the trees’ so constantly..)

I gather many sound sciencers love believing that super cheap kit is ‘all that’.
Good for them!
(enjoy the music, is after all, what this is all about…)

Equipment is made to ‘tiers’, and the equipment expects to find certain common properties in the tier of kit it is associated with.

Putting a great DAC OR a great transport into a chain might not do much, but ‘both together’ and things might actually ‘take off’.
When designing ‘budget’ parts, the engineers have to make them tolerate all sorts of’ leeway’, it literally makes them unqualified to do ‘high end’ audio quality (that other users experience)
This isn’t placebo, this is basic math and engineering…
A DAC made for streaming from a great transport doesn’t need to smear it all together.. in the way that the entry level parts often ‘just do’.

This is easy to read about by techs and engineers who actively do this stuff in pursuit of excellence (vs the majority who do so in pursuit of ‘profit’).
Making ‘high end’ is a small market, and doesn’t benefit from spec sheet warring..

Every time I ‘downgraded’ my amplifiers in the eighties and nineties, each time buying one with ‘less output power’, and the metrics on the spec sheet crucial to ‘good sound’ becoming ‘by the spec sheet’ worse, the sound was made so much perceivably BETTER.

I suppose we could say I have been conditioned, through experience, to look for ‘less than ‘top tier’ spec sheet numbers’ (to feel that I am getting ‘the best’ possible sound quality).

Bigshot, who ‘doesn’t know me from Adam’ has been told by me, a few times, regarding my tertiary Psychology education (five years spread over the late nineties and early 2000s) and whilst I have a shelf full of ‘more recent texts’, it is true that I do not read them daily… (I might have some blind spots).
To say that ‘ in the early nineties’ I was doing discrimination experiments and ‘testing on subjects’ regarding a plethora of Psychology theories.. is fair. I haven’t forgotten the very conclusions I pushed for in my submissions ‘back in the day’. Actually tech and psychology are my backgrounds.

Crazy thing about being a PC tech, you quickly realise that people have ‘areas of specialisation’.. that people good with hardware might not know a lot about software.
That is my experience of majority of audio engineers I know as well (and I have met many cause they are generally ‘great people’ to hang with). . Typically a technology ’counsellor’ can help them navigate the world of marketing nonsense and ‘real world requirement’.

Having 20bit pro DACs made by Yamaha in the early nineties (using technology that was the precursor to DSD methodology), it is amazing how parts built to be ‘beyond reference’ hold up decades later, whilst the parts that benchmark well today, and sell in the ‘budget sector’, many users will be keen to move on from as soon as ‘the next great thing’ comes along.

I actually advocate away from ‘price bias’ (perception bias) and am the person who operates the switch in many ‘blind’ testing setups..
I actually take the ‘science of sound’ really seriously.
I have owned more sound card technology than most on the planet, and really enjoyed ways, back in the late eighties/early nineties of doing things on PC that was generally the domain of an Atari ST/Macintosh, and sometimes Amiga domain… (like running dual sound cards in a PC in order to run more ‘tracking channels (digital sample channels)’). Understanding hardware and software made it easy to turn on a PC and have it playback 16bit mono/8 bit stereo wave files at the DOS level, whilst the GUI (windows 3) would load up.
Most people couldn’t believe this sort of stuff.. (at sixteen I started my first tech business (even had five phone lines into the house and a BBS for serving driver files and ‘support); I moved out of technology fields by the mid nineties to focus on psychology and eventually, medicine..

I gather I am not playing by ‘the rules’ of the sound science section if I only post anecdotal discoveries or don’t provide (when demanded by people who are not the OP) for proof of things that will allow them to sell their agenda.

I am not sure why people need to reclaim this thread to be dismissive of a contribution by another.. I feel that having more information at hand must certainly be better than being left in the dark about information that might prove illuminating.

Whether people think that amplifiers, as just one example, can be built 100s of times cheaper than ‘great amps’ and actually sound the same, is a crazy notion to me (there is my setup to an ‘observation bias’ right there, no doubt, for the many who want to inform me ‘I am doing it wrong’, but having done this dance enough times on internet threads (I sysop‘d bulletin boards before the internet existed), there isn’t much point in having two sides of an argument (that doesn’t actually exist) keep trying to say the other is wrong.

I do not believe science is wrong.
I feel that science IS constantly evolving, and this is based on looking to the past to gain insight to ’the future’.
Do I think that science, as applied to the audio market is about achieving audio excellence? No, not for the majority of the companies selling into a highly competitive entry level tier, where some patents and ‘branded chips’ nets massively increased sales…
This to me is the irony of being in a thread with people saying that high end marketers are selling snake oil. (has it happened, sure, but it would be delusional to think that the entry level price point is without the same ‘motivations’.
Sure, selling audio equipment is a competitive field (as are most things that can be sold for profit), and much of the subjective experiences we get from equipment cannot be easily qualified and hence the OPs question regarding ‘language’ used…

For every one saying I am dismissive of their posts (I am not, I read/understand, and agree with them; but I do not have to state the same things (enough people already doing that)- I feel that attempting to grow the discussion is worthwhile).

I gather that the majority, some of which may have even toyed with the occasional ‘nice piece of kit’ (but seldom in unison with a full rig of matching equipment designed with the same tolerances throughout) will keep defending that budget equipment, that ‘measures well’ is ‘all we need’ and anything more is a ripoff.
That is ONE perspective.
It is held by a consensus and that works for them.

There isn’t really a need to go sideways/crossfire with other contributors who do not share your ‘faith in a belief’, who are not writing FOR YOU, but for a person with an enquiry.

If every time we had an enquiry we had access to a reasonable gamut of information, we might learn more, or learn things ‘uncommon’ (doesn’t make them ‘not so’).
Being tolerant of others beliefs is fundamental to a society where people can get along.
So denigrating random internet strangers in an attempt to have them come around to ‘a viewpoint’ might not always be a necessary step.

I could do the basic troll stuff and use the basic troll statements (like “I used to think that way too, until…..” as if that makes me more knowledgable..) but I do not feel it is worthwhile.. to the OP, to the community spirit, or to my own emotional growth/wellbeing.

I have experienced, time and again, that what we mostly say of others might be true of ourselves.
Regarding Bigshot implying (always ‘sniping from the trees’) that I use alt accounts, that makes me laugh.. (but I enjoy PMs from new accounts that have ‘no posts’ and lots of likes, that seem designed to just waste time.. again.. publicly seeing words to that effect in the main thread,.. I’d say what we accuse of others, may be true of ourself?)

I seriously question how great anyone is at ‘information gathering’ when they cannot process basic information either contained in a simple paragraph of text or even so much as ‘who is the poster’ and ‘what is the theme’ being discusses. Soapbox agendas isn’t why I came here. (I’m not talking crap about Microsoft, nor denouncing MQA).
I fully was attempting to grow a discussion to include things others may have missed.

And I have no interest in providing evidence of ‘tolerances’ in different tiers of kit, and their design intents..
but for those who casually want to experience such things.. many users say that when they switch to using the (iFi) GTO filter they hear clicks and pops (generally I’d call that a trait of excessive jitter), those clicks and pops are audible, easily, when using a low quality transport (such as an android phone), and magically disappear when using a decent transport.
By the nature of what the GTO filter does, this makes sense to me.. the musicality it brings to me, over other filter methods (and even DSD conversion techniques) is worthwhile.. but it doesn’t seem to play well in the budget tier with which it is mostly sold.
Perhaps the tolerances could be tailored, better, to the tier of kit it is likely to be paired with, but then most of its magic would be lost to people like myself who love getting ‘higher tier’ sound quality in budget price point parts.

Of course this is based on perceptual bias that ‘a certain type of sound’ is a ‘high quality‘ affair..
Conductor friends and long time audiofools often lament to me ‘how can anyone understand what is live music’ if they haven’t sat in concert halls and know what it sounds like.
These same people will rate DAC&transport quality as to ‘what row in the venue’ we are sitting in… (not flowery language such as ‘fast’ etc)