Because EQ causes phase distortions as some parts of the frequency range will pass at a different delay than others. Yes I can clearly tell the difference with eq from software like equalizer apo. Here you can read this, mind you this article is trying to sell an eq software for sound engineers, we cant use this while playing usic files I think.
I will keep it simple, real instruments sound NOTHING like a logarithmic sine wave. So can you "scientifically" say that measuring a sine wave will tell your something about the audio equipment's ability to real music when they are made of countably infinite sine waves? All of us can hear that the sound of instruments is far far more complex than logarithmic sine waves or whatever.
My girlfriend told me at the end of the test that all 13 of my guesses were correct. Yes I could do it without removing headphones but my point is the differences between DACs is large enough that even with reseating headphones and being unaware of each DACs volume level I can differentiate between a chord mojo and a topping L30. Please try to understand that the mojo is loved by hundreds of thousands if not millions of audiophiles and has over a hundred reviews and like 99% of the reviewers claim they can hear a difference, even those reviewers who will not gain anything from pleasing rob watts so there has to be something more in music than frequency response, sine waves etc that we " humans " (not amir) can hear.
Yes you are right, I cant reject the possibility that maybe my girlfriend is just lying, nor can you reject the possibility that many of these measurers have noisy electrical outlets or digital and that could also be a possible reason why they dont hear any difference. About the blind test, I said explicitly i DO NOT know which DAC's volume level is which and yet I can tell with gurantee that the E30 has lower sub bass than mojo, I repeat not lower volume across the whole frequency range, LOWER SUB BASS EXTENSION SPECIFICALLY. maybe it was my girlfriend, I cant reject it but I find it hard to believe dumb luck could help me predict 4 DACs 13 times in a row...like what is the probability in that? Not zero...but I like my chances.REW is fine. When recording out of some transducers and back into some microphones, the limiter is definitely not REW. Depending on what we measure, we also have settings available outside what comes by default on a fresh installation. Usually it means more time, bigger files, more processing. At some point, like with anything else, the benefits just don't seem worth it anymore, and we go back to the faster, easier, and almost identical graphs.
About us not having the tech to record music, I'm sad to learn this and will inform the admins to shut down the forum. What's the point of discussing audio gear when none of them can play the music that nobody was able to record?
A human ear will shake from just about any sound, and the resonance will give stronger stimulation to some area we'll identify as a given frequency. We do not have infinite bandwidth. Also, a lot of noises exists for various reasons (internally), and are mostly handled by the brain with some subjective success, but the accuracy of perception has to take the hit somewhere. We could argue that auditory masking (one loud frequency making us perceive a quieter nearby frequency as even quieter, or maybe we won't perceive it at all, depending on amplitude and proximity), seems like a method to filter out all the shaking that does occur around the precise area related to the input frequency. Outside the resonance area, the vibration still had to make its way there by shaking the areas for higher freqs, and those for lower freqs a little too, until too much energy is lost for it to matter.
Then for infinite sines of music, you need infinite bandwidth for the instruments, for the mic, for the ADC, for the storage format, for the DAC, for the transducers. Good luck.
All that to reach the ear which only has a tiny physical area and clearly limited number of hair cells in general, and even more so by the entrance of the cochlea in charge of 20kHz and above(for sounds that manage to reach this deep in the body at a significant magnitude)
Of course, you need to be young or have lived all your life alone in a cave trying to avoid making any noise not to bother your cats. Otherwise, most or all of those "high frequency" cells, which again vibrate for all frequencies passing the area, and (shake louder) for high freqs resonating with that area, are already broken or stuck when you reach maybe 25, and you're in luck if you still manage to notice 17kHz in a high frequency audio test at 35(one done by an audiologist, not the YouTube stuff with your amp turned to 11).
Obviously we don't have an infinite number of neurons handling those cells, and a neuron only being triggered or not, the actual complexity of the data we send to the brain when listening to sound is most definitely finite.
About DACs and blind testing, I absolutely believe that some of them sound audibly different. Terrible DACs, audiophile DACs from a guy who decided he knew digital audio better than the guys who came up with the math for it to work. Designers who tweaked until it did sound different because they saw that as a marketing bonus. And of course, louder or quieter DACs.
I also believe that the poorer the quality of a listening test, the more likely we are to find that we could hear (or otherwise perceive) a difference. When the tests are seriously setup, we get much closer to random guess results. Maybe many of those tests excluded audiophile stuff with weirdo designs after measuring poor fidelity in some area? Maybe they removed the mistakes of other tests? Probably both.
I still believe that some dudes for some reason have excellent hearing doubled with expert listening skill. In published experiments, we occasionally have one of those that parts from the statistical crowd and still gets results near impossible to explain by luck. Just like how there is that woman who can see more colors (in her case, she has the special eyes for it, mutants=cheating IMO ^_^). I think those people do exist. I also think that they're basically never the overconfident audiophile on a forum who thinks he can hear everything with ease. Confident people are good for some things, checking on their own possible mistakes is rarely one of them.
Last comment. Having people agreeing with us does not make us right (well it does socially and politically, but facts demonstrate something, not the number of people who got convinced). Also being right about the sound differences between some particular devices under some particular conditions does not, I repeat, does not, mean some poorly executed test is a valid one. A blind test without very well-matched levels isn't conclusive about audible difference. How could it be, when loudness is such a likely audible difference itself? Maybe the other differences are indeed obvious, maybe the matching done by ear is close enough sometimes, and maybe the entire test is BS and the results not at all what you think they're demonstrating. For all I know, your GF wanted to make you super happy, so she just said you got it all right. Maybe not, but admit it's still one of many possibilities. Many possibilities you don't seem that eager to consider, now that in your mind you've already got the answer you wanted.
If you really tried a blind test, I congratulate and support you in the effort, it's already more work toward finding the truth than most audiophiles will ever put in their audio lives. But being an expert in half backed tests done with cheap copies of proper equipment, I know first hand how easy it is to get results and how difficult it is to get the right results. It's annoying, but we have to accept that some things need more efforts and controls, while others are just out of our amateur reach.
fyi mojo also has flat frequncy response into amplifiers too.REW is fine. When recording out of some transducers and back into some microphones, the limiter is definitely not REW. Depending on what we measure, we also have settings available outside what comes by default on a fresh installation. Usually it means more time, bigger files, more processing. At some point, like with anything else, the benefits just don't seem worth it anymore, and we go back to the faster, easier, and almost identical graphs.
About us not having the tech to record music, I'm sad to learn this and will inform the admins to shut down the forum. What's the point of discussing audio gear when none of them can play the music that nobody was able to record?
A human ear will shake from just about any sound, and the resonance will give stronger stimulation to some area we'll identify as a given frequency. We do not have infinite bandwidth. Also, a lot of noises exists for various reasons (internally), and are mostly handled by the brain with some subjective success, but the accuracy of perception has to take the hit somewhere. We could argue that auditory masking (one loud frequency making us perceive a quieter nearby frequency as even quieter, or maybe we won't perceive it at all, depending on amplitude and proximity), seems like a method to filter out all the shaking that does occur around the precise area related to the input frequency. Outside the resonance area, the vibration still had to make its way there by shaking the areas for higher freqs, and those for lower freqs a little too, until too much energy is lost for it to matter.
Then for infinite sines of music, you need infinite bandwidth for the instruments, for the mic, for the ADC, for the storage format, for the DAC, for the transducers. Good luck.
All that to reach the ear which only has a tiny physical area and clearly limited number of hair cells in general, and even more so by the entrance of the cochlea in charge of 20kHz and above(for sounds that manage to reach this deep in the body at a significant magnitude)
Of course, you need to be young or have lived all your life alone in a cave trying to avoid making any noise not to bother your cats. Otherwise, most or all of those "high frequency" cells, which again vibrate for all frequencies passing the area, and (shake louder) for high freqs resonating with that area, are already broken or stuck when you reach maybe 25, and you're in luck if you still manage to notice 17kHz in a high frequency audio test at 35(one done by an audiologist, not the YouTube stuff with your amp turned to 11).
Obviously we don't have an infinite number of neurons handling those cells, and a neuron only being triggered or not, the actual complexity of the data we send to the brain when listening to sound is most definitely finite.
About DACs and blind testing, I absolutely believe that some of them sound audibly different. Terrible DACs, audiophile DACs from a guy who decided he knew digital audio better than the guys who came up with the math for it to work. Designers who tweaked until it did sound different because they saw that as a marketing bonus. And of course, louder or quieter DACs.
I also believe that the poorer the quality of a listening test, the more likely we are to find that we could hear (or otherwise perceive) a difference. When the tests are seriously setup, we get much closer to random guess results. Maybe many of those tests excluded audiophile stuff with weirdo designs after measuring poor fidelity in some area? Maybe they removed the mistakes of other tests? Probably both.
I still believe that some dudes for some reason have excellent hearing doubled with expert listening skill. In published experiments, we occasionally have one of those that parts from the statistical crowd and still gets results near impossible to explain by luck. Just like how there is that woman who can see more colors (in her case, she has the special eyes for it, mutants=cheating IMO ^_^). I think those people do exist. I also think that they're basically never the overconfident audiophile on a forum who thinks he can hear everything with ease. Confident people are good for some things, checking on their own possible mistakes is rarely one of them.
Last comment. Having people agreeing with us does not make us right (well it does socially and politically, but facts demonstrate something, not the number of people who got convinced). Also being right about the sound differences between some particular devices under some particular conditions does not, I repeat, does not, mean some poorly executed test is a valid one. A blind test without very well-matched levels isn't conclusive about audible difference. How could it be, when loudness is such a likely audible difference itself? Maybe the other differences are indeed obvious, maybe the matching done by ear is close enough sometimes, and maybe the entire test is BS and the results not at all what you think they're demonstrating. For all I know, your GF wanted to make you super happy, so she just said you got it all right. Maybe not, but admit it's still one of many possibilities. Many possibilities you don't seem that eager to consider, now that in your mind you've already got the answer you wanted.
If you really tried a blind test, I congratulate and support you in the effort, it's already more work toward finding the truth than most audiophiles will ever put in their audio lives. But being an expert in half backed tests done with cheap copies of proper equipment, I know first hand how easy it is to get results and how difficult it is to get the right results. It's annoying, but we have to accept that some things need more efforts and controls, while others are just out of our amateur reach.
I do not know how does the small cochlea have anything to do with rel instruments, do you have any research paper about it ? but even if we cant record precisely the infinite sine waves, there is still varying levels of fidelity shown by different DAC in converting that not so faithful digital recording of limited bandwidth into analogue waves...again I cant prove this and nor can you. But I believe those thousands of people in the youtube comment sections and millions of audiophiles( many cant even hear till 20 khz as you said) more than those measurement chasers who might or might not have measured under ideal conditions...heck I see difference in chord mojo measurements between archimago's music,stereophile and audio science review forum...REW is fine. When recording out of some transducers and back into some microphones, the limiter is definitely not REW. Depending on what we measure, we also have settings available outside what comes by default on a fresh installation. Usually it means more time, bigger files, more processing. At some point, like with anything else, the benefits just don't seem worth it anymore, and we go back to the faster, easier, and almost identical graphs.
About us not having the tech to record music, I'm sad to learn this and will inform the admins to shut down the forum. What's the point of discussing audio gear when none of them can play the music that nobody was able to record?
A human ear will shake from just about any sound, and the resonance will give stronger stimulation to some area we'll identify as a given frequency. We do not have infinite bandwidth. Also, a lot of noises exists for various reasons (internally), and are mostly handled by the brain with some subjective success, but the accuracy of perception has to take the hit somewhere. We could argue that auditory masking (one loud frequency making us perceive a quieter nearby frequency as even quieter, or maybe we won't perceive it at all, depending on amplitude and proximity), seems like a method to filter out all the shaking that does occur around the precise area related to the input frequency. Outside the resonance area, the vibration still had to make its way there by shaking the areas for higher freqs, and those for lower freqs a little too, until too much energy is lost for it to matter.
Then for infinite sines of music, you need infinite bandwidth for the instruments, for the mic, for the ADC, for the storage format, for the DAC, for the transducers. Good luck.
All that to reach the ear which only has a tiny physical area and clearly limited number of hair cells in general, and even more so by the entrance of the cochlea in charge of 20kHz and above(for sounds that manage to reach this deep in the body at a significant magnitude)
Of course, you need to be young or have lived all your life alone in a cave trying to avoid making any noise not to bother your cats. Otherwise, most or all of those "high frequency" cells, which again vibrate for all frequencies passing the area, and (shake louder) for high freqs resonating with that area, are already broken or stuck when you reach maybe 25, and you're in luck if you still manage to notice 17kHz in a high frequency audio test at 35(one done by an audiologist, not the YouTube stuff with your amp turned to 11).
Obviously we don't have an infinite number of neurons handling those cells, and a neuron only being triggered or not, the actual complexity of the data we send to the brain when listening to sound is most definitely finite.
About DACs and blind testing, I absolutely believe that some of them sound audibly different. Terrible DACs, audiophile DACs from a guy who decided he knew digital audio better than the guys who came up with the math for it to work. Designers who tweaked until it did sound different because they saw that as a marketing bonus. And of course, louder or quieter DACs.
I also believe that the poorer the quality of a listening test, the more likely we are to find that we could hear (or otherwise perceive) a difference. When the tests are seriously setup, we get much closer to random guess results. Maybe many of those tests excluded audiophile stuff with weirdo designs after measuring poor fidelity in some area? Maybe they removed the mistakes of other tests? Probably both.
I still believe that some dudes for some reason have excellent hearing doubled with expert listening skill. In published experiments, we occasionally have one of those that parts from the statistical crowd and still gets results near impossible to explain by luck. Just like how there is that woman who can see more colors (in her case, she has the special eyes for it, mutants=cheating IMO ^_^). I think those people do exist. I also think that they're basically never the overconfident audiophile on a forum who thinks he can hear everything with ease. Confident people are good for some things, checking on their own possible mistakes is rarely one of them.
Last comment. Having people agreeing with us does not make us right (well it does socially and politically, but facts demonstrate something, not the number of people who got convinced). Also being right about the sound differences between some particular devices under some particular conditions does not, I repeat, does not, mean some poorly executed test is a valid one. A blind test without very well-matched levels isn't conclusive about audible difference. How could it be, when loudness is such a likely audible difference itself? Maybe the other differences are indeed obvious, maybe the matching done by ear is close enough sometimes, and maybe the entire test is BS and the results not at all what you think they're demonstrating. For all I know, your GF wanted to make you super happy, so she just said you got it all right. Maybe not, but admit it's still one of many possibilities. Many possibilities you don't seem that eager to consider, now that in your mind you've already got the answer you wanted.
If you really tried a blind test, I congratulate and support you in the effort, it's already more work toward finding the truth than most audiophiles will ever put in their audio lives. But being an expert in half backed tests done with cheap copies of proper equipment, I know first hand how easy it is to get results and how difficult it is to get the right results. It's annoying, but we have to accept that some things need more efforts and controls, while others are just out of our amateur reach.
I agree that when we record the sound of real instruments it cant possibly be with 100% fidelity, there has to be some difference for sure. But I also believe that many well measuring DACs do not play that digital recording as faithfully as others and that I and millions of audiophiles can indeed hear teh difference in this case( mojo and e30). I do wish that many members of headfi banded together and also did " proper " blind listening test and if they did it they would also change their beliefs on some of the DACs and amps they subjectively thought to be superior. Alas, currently the whole community is entirely divided between subjectivists and measurement chasers, there has to be some middle ground, someday I hope to have the best of both worlds. It could be the simple reason that some humans indeed have better hearing than others, only blind listening tests with a huge sample size done properly could indicate. Btw I absolutely cant hear the difference between plugging RCA cables ..... and I think you will make a different sound each time you plug it into the same DAC.
Please don't forget that the majority of that sample size of individuals who can hear a difference are doing so in a sighted setting likely with an awareness of what others had already claimed about a piece of gear. A collective consciousness or accord regarding what a piece of gear sounds like will not change its objective performance. Consider the possibility of one's mind being primed to hear what they were told they were supposed to hear.
Yes I was...but majority here means like 99% of all reviewers of chord mojo.... I am also saying that there are differences in measurements between amir, archimago and stereophile. Only amir's measurements showed chord mojo sinad fluctuating. So if you are basing your impressions of mojo and e30 based on " measurements " then its probably even less reliable than my 99% majority.
