FFBookman
500+ Head-Fier
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- Jan 8, 2015
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So use music you are familiar with, on whichever equipment you like. No one's forcing you to use random music you've never heard before for a listening test.
Try using dBpoweramp to convert some files. (Since you hate ABX, don't worry about that for now.) Then you can open the original and converted file in a player like foobar2000 and switch between them at any part of the song you want. Do that simple AB comparison and let me know whether you still perceive a difference.
I have a blind test available to me with my own materials on my own rig, built right into my DAP. it's called the 'revealer' and it was provided as a firmware from pono.
I don't bother posting "results" since A- they really don't prove anything I don't already know, and B- you wouldn't trust me/them if they did.
I can close my eyes, run my fingers in a circle, and the ponoplayer will select 1 of 4-5 versions of the same exact 24bit source file encoded to various qualities, some lossless, some lossy.
have you seen this? let me grab a screenshot from someone else:
You have to set it up in the desktop client by feeding it 24bit files, then it will churn out 3-4 versions below what you give it, depending on where you start. Then you sync and the player has those songs set up in a separate area to play around with. you can close your eyes and blind test away.
The playback mechanism stays in the same location when you select a different rez and almost gets to gapless switching, but not quite. I don't know what kind of volume matching they might have done, if any, but I know they used open source downsampling, dithering, and lossy compression techniques that are not deliberately old or flawed. I have read and posted with enough people inside that project to believe they aren't trying some VW crap on the files.
Screenshot shows, from bottom to top: 192k MP3 - 256k AAC - 16/44 PCM Lossless - 24/96 PCM lossless - 24/192 PCM lossless. (I don't think it can include DSD, although the player can play them natively.)
I have 5-6 songs in there. It's so obvious to me within seconds, almost every time, that I sit here using the internet to try and understand why people claim to not hear it.
Granted I can't call exactly which one I'm on every time, but I immediately sense whether I am in the big room or the small room.
Soon as there is a cymbal crash or hi hat roll or super complicated texture like layers of guitar distortion, then you know where you are. Bass guitar is a real good tell. If you hear it as a low stringed instrument with string sounds you are in hi-res. The mix and the timbre of the instruments, things like the solidness of the kick drum in that bass line, is another tell. Multi-part voice harmonies -- if you hear all the voices come in and layer, not gel into one glob, it's lossless. If you hear breath and lip smacks, it's hi-res.
I hear digital artifacts and narrow room in the red.
I hear wide open spaces and accurate instrument blends in the green and yellow.
Blue usually confuses me b/c it's so good and so bad, depending on which direction you are coming from! After lossy, CD sounds amazing. After hi-res, CD sounds flat and lifeless.