RRod
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Aug 25, 2014
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in wine tasting a certified Sommelier actually has to pass blind tests - no pass = no certification
When I saw that movie (Somm), that was the actually impressive part.
in wine tasting a certified Sommelier actually has to pass blind tests - no pass = no certification
In the two cases you mentioned it all comes down to a matter of taste, There is no absolute in Paintings or Wine, there are very many different styles or vintages that can be appreciated for themselves.
In audio we have a goal, an absolute, the recreation of the sound of real instruments. Its called High Fidelity for a reason and taste should not be considered when judging.
Of course it's your money and if you like pounding bass or screaming highly detailed and etched treble, that's cool too. Just don't set it as the goalpost of achievement. To get High Fidelity we have to try and remove taste and bring scientific procedures to bear on the judging.
All nice and well. But what does science tell us? Measure the audio. Fine. Look at THD and flat FR. Check. Yet as Jason Stoddard tactfully puts it, this is little more than dickwaving.
For a crash course on how many headline specs advertised by manufacturers are irrelevant to actual audio fidelity, and how specs cannot be the ultimate judge of audio quality see this RMAF presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6YN-mshmY
Science tells us to observe and then verify with experimentation. It's that last step that seems to be so hard for people to accept.
I'm all for experimental verification done right.
I'm all for experimental verification done right.
All nice and well. But what does science tell us? Measure the audio. Fine. Look at THD and flat FR. Check. Yet as Jason Stoddard tactfully puts it, this is little more than dickwaving.
For a crash course on how many headline specs advertised by manufacturers are irrelevant to actual audio fidelity, and how specs cannot be the ultimate judge of audio quality see this RMAF presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6YN-mshmY
All nice and well. But what does science tell us? Measure the audio. Fine. Look at THD and flat FR. Check. Yet as Jason Stoddard tactfully puts it, this is little more than dickwaving.
For a crash course on how many headline specs advertised by manufacturers are irrelevant to actual audio fidelity, and how specs cannot be the ultimate judge of audio quality see this RMAF presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6YN-mshmY
the general opinion against short blind tests is that they stress people, that some stuff like fatigue aren't noticeable on short tests, and that it tends to lead to more null than other tests.
all seemingly valid points. but just seemingly:
-a blind test put stress on people so they don't hear what they would normally hear:
well that is true, and like anything else, stress will go down the more tests you do. first time I was on the driver's sit, I took the car into a wall right next to where I started(well I was around 12). I just pushed on the gas like my dad told, and panicked. but now time has passed I've done it soooo many times, and I don't piss myself anytime I drive a car. let's be reasonable here, I can accept people who would rather not know than bother. but those who do want to know, they just have to train a little and stop looking for false excuses.
I've done so many abx that now passing a blind test is like doing laundry. most certainly not fun, but nervous is not what I would call myself when I do it. bored might fit better.
-short stuff aren't good to test everything:
again it's true. so why not test what can with rapid switching, and then test the rest differently with longer periods of time? the answer is "because it's demanding", and usually needs someone doing the switching for us. but technically, there is really nothing stopping anybody, certainly not the blind test advocates.
have both DACs turned ON for a few days, and someone coming once or twice a day to change the output on foobar and make sure to match the loudness somewhere else if needed. there you go. don't go near the DACs(hide them), don't cheat looking at foobar settings and only use one resolution in case sample rate changing noises occurs on one DAC. and you have your test. not impossible.
-blind tests lead to more null:
in practice we could say it like that. but it leads to more null than what? ^_^ the biased sighted evaluation? lol that's not even a test at all. the only ting being tested is if we are a little biased or very much biased. the gear we test doesn't not matter one bit.
people letting time pass to get a full idea of the gear? sure they find more differences, they would find more differences if the device hadn't change. there are endless experiments to do to demonstrate that for a fact.
that's because memories aren't accurate long enough to test audio in a very precise way. and when we're talking about something that failed to be noticed in a blind rapid switching test(the most effective audible method to test differences known to this day), we're obviously talking very very small differences.
listen to music for a few weeks on a DAC, science says that we have high accuracy for the last 3 to 10seconds. of course we remember a lot of the rest, but we remember it with errors. the more we will recall a particular detail, the more it will get the flanderization treatment by our brain. because it's our brain best known trick to remember important stuff. make them important!
so obviously we find less differences in short blind tests, because we don't give enough time to the brain to store the memory for good adding it's special sauce to it. we're asking to remember something still very fresh from 0.1second ago.
so yes, blind test leads to more null, simply because things really are less different than we imagine.
like most people here, I'm ok with any reasonable audibility testing method to replace blind testing. it's just that I'm still waiting for any alternative that isn't ludicrous. like "sit in a chair and just listen". that's fine to listen to music, but as a an effective testing method....
on many tests, there is a clear audibility threshold. when you can change bit depth, sample rate, loudness imbalance... there is a consistent area were things go from "I can't pass a test", to "I can pass a test". I'm tempted to think that it demonstrates the test works just fine.
my opinion is that people who think they heard a difference but fail a blind test for those differences, either imagined it, or used a wrong way to "evaluate" the differences in the first place. I am yet to be put in presence of someone that wasn't clearly fitting into one of those 2 profiles. all the others passed a blind test for the thing they claimed they heard.
can you hear 96kps mp3 vs flac, sure I can most of the time.
can you notice the noise floor on the sony A15? yes I can as long as I have my sensitive IEMs and I'm not in the subway.
all those claims of audibility have one thing in common, I can pass a blind test. that's what justifies me into making a claim. the darn test!
to me, the rest are excuses born from failure to admit to being wrong. they're not claims of audibility, they're claims of self righteousness as they have absolutely nothing to show.
if I believed in magic, I would cast creepy spells onto all people making empty claims. empty claim is the lie of the ignorant. I hate it.
it seems clear the desired implication is that 44k isn't enough and that this anecdote is intended to lead you to that conclusion
I have spent a whole lot of time trying to blind A/B identify closely volume matched Bifrost Multibit & my ODAC (many hours per day for days) with my HD800. I couldn't ever get better than random. It could also mean I just have really bad ears. Either way it put an end to my DAC upgrade craving.
Quick, back-and-forth switching works when testing for differences between 96kbps mp3 and a lossless version, but not between a 320kbps mp3 and a lossless version? Is that what I am supposed to believe? If identifying difference is too tiring and difficult, at what point do we concede that any differences are not significant enough to be concerned about?
If a test is flawed for failing to take into account an important factor, it is flawed. Period. Such issues can invalidate decades of scientific research, which is fine as this means scientific progress. I am not saying that it is the case here, but it could be. If audio scientists are hell bent to prove that there is "no difference" (which, for the record, they can't), and previous testing yielding a null result failed to take into account ALL potential confounding factors (including newly raised questions, that weren't originally considered), then the burden is on them to redo the work to retrieve yet again a null result when controlling for ALL factors.
And how can a test concede that a difference is "not significant enough to be concerned about" for a given individual? Always remember that tests and scientists tend to be concerned with averages.
Now take a deep breath and consider two similar instances:
- hi-end paintings. For a regular Joe the difference between a Rembrandt and a Van Gogh is not existent. They can look at one, look at the other, and concede they don't care. An art "subjectivist" (i.e. an acclaimed art critic) would BEG TO DISAGREE. Surely, it may take hours and weeks to appreciate a painting, and decide what in particular you like about it, and how particularly it is different from the other painting. It doesn't mean there is no difference. It simply means that it takes time, will, training, attention to appreciate artistic rendering, of which musical reproduction is. In this sense, 10 sec ABX testing are laughable --- may as well use 0.5 sec and be done with it, and prove whichever null you're seeking. Imagine if you did ABX testing on Rembrandt paintings using a 1% sample area of the paintings... And do consider that art critics are being paid handsomely and admired for being able to notice what others can't, instead of being rudely dismissed as ignorant art fools.
- hi-end wines. For regular Joe the difference between two fine wines going in the thousands would be impossible to assess. Both wines would be very good. Yet for a wine "subjectivist" (i.e. a wine taster with a rarefied pallet), the difference between two wines could be LIGHT AND DAY. One would be undrinkable, and make you physically cringe. The other would be heaven on earth. For that person. The difference is. Huge. It doesn't matter if others can't sense it, or if scientists can't prove it in a blind test. There, too, those with a fine taste are appreciated instead of being ridiculed.
So what is it in audio that generates such boatloads of scorn and angst? Subtle differences can be difficult to detect, and not by everyone, but just because it's subtle it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that it's emphatically prescribed as "doesn't matter" or "not huge". With humans, something that might be altogether irrelevant for average Joe might be a handicapping or life-or-death factor for a given individual. (I speak from non-audio experience.)
All nice and well. But what does science tell us? Measure the audio. Fine. Look at THD and flat FR. Check. Yet as Jason Stoddard tactfully puts it, this is little more than dickwaving.
For a crash course on how many headline specs advertised by manufacturers are irrelevant to actual audio fidelity, and how specs cannot be the ultimate judge of audio quality see this RMAF presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6YN-mshmY
Hello Head-Fi-rs,
I'm new but have been reading the Head-Fi forums for some time now.
Since a year I have moved from transistor to tube amplifier's first balanced EL34 then single ended KT88 but listening on it there was some digitized sound and overly sharp S tones that was bothering me that I did not notice before on the Classe transistor amp and came to the conclusion it must be the DAC which was a Musical Fidelity m1dac.
Before just buying a new DAC I did some research on the basics of conversion and came to the conclusion that binary-weighted or R-2R are actually a true way of decoding digits instead the alghortimic delta-sigma type and bought a PCM56 based R-2R dac which does not oversample or utilize a digital filter and it has a tube output stage.
With this DAC in place I now have not a single transistor in the audiopath from the output of the PCM56 chip.
Sounds very natural but not its not a magic device of course, the problem is that since about '85 recording studios began implementing more digital equipment and also sigma-delta/delta-sigma converters.
This also means that your current vinyl production is probably not true analog anymore.
Right now I enjoy listening to older Decca recordings from the Analogue Years box these old tape recordings where digitized around 1982 and are "captured" with R-2R AD converters.
Instruments sound more real and not harsh compared to similar music from the digital Deutsche Grammophon recordings which are good recordings.
Luckily labels like Tacet are into recording amazing sound without the use of sigma-delta, their "tube only" recordings sound beautiful.
To me delta-sigma is only an era in time just like late 90's 2000's where people started to move to digital cameras using not so great image sensors, low resolution, artificial color saturation, but it was the best we could make at the time, just like delta-sigma is now.