Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

[33na3rd]

When it comes to fancy fuses I tend to go with the late Roger Modjeski.

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=105425.0

I used to buy tubes from Roger back in the day. I wish that I had tried one of his amps back then.

 

[tin-ear]

When I graduated from using PINE (Pine Is Not Elm) to Eudora as my email client, my first sig was "No longer PINEing for the fjords".

Nobody ever got it. I don't know if that's the sign of a good joke, or just that my target audience was so miniscule I never reached it.
.

I'm reading Sapiens, A brief History of Mankind Yuval Noah Harari (2015).
On page 24: "It is relatively easy to agree that only Homo Sapiens can speak about things that don't really exist, and believe 6 impossible things before breakfast."
I wonder what percent of his readers got that he was paraphrasing some [edit: "someone"] else also from the same nation at the joke about the fjords?

 

[OldRoadToad]

I'm reading Sapiens, A brief History of Mankind Yuval Noah Harari (2015).
On page 24: "It is relatively easy to agree that only Homo Sapiens can speak about things that don't really exist, and believe 6 impossible things before breakfast."
I wonder what percent of his readers got that he was paraphrasing some else also from the same nation at the joke about the fjords?

Off the top o' my toadish noggin..."Alice In Wonderland"? And yes. It was actually a "Cheshire Toad".

ORT

 

[Ripper2860]

While I appreciate @Paladin79's desire to subjectively test 3 fuses, I'll just send a box of fuses to Amir at ASR and we'll see where they end up on the SINAID chart.




After that, I propose a test to see if a car runs faster with the high-end automobile fuses.


.

 

[Paladin79]

When it comes to fancy fuses I tend to go with the late Roger Modjeski.

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=105425.0

It may well be that my testing will reveal such results, I am trying to keep my views out of this. I just happen to have a setup in place that should lend itself well to such testing.

So far I have 12 folks who would agree to help with some testing but we will only use four. I talked to many from my local group last night and the consensus is that using 20-25 criteria like we used in other tests does not make a lot of sense so we will narrow that down to ten. Such things as tubes can show a great deal of difference on a four or five point scale but I seriously doubt fuses will do the same so we will use ten criteria on a ten point scale. That should be enough to replicate the areas where @golfbravobravo heard differences.

We hope to squeeze the testing into a five or six hour window and I believe that can be done. One person will be behind the scenes changing fuses and only he will know the pattern of fuse placement and that will be revealed after all testing is done. We hope to limit the tests to four rounds with the results going into four spread sheets with four sections each. March 19th is the tentative date and I hope to know for sure later today. That is two days after St. Patrick's day so those involved should be well rested and over some of the effects of that day.

 

[wout31]

After that, I propose a test to see if a car runs faster with the high-end automobile fuses.

Sure it does.
Start the test uphill - replace the fuses - now go downhill. It's the same road. Notice the big difference.

 

[Paladin79]

While I appreciate @Paladin79's desire to subjectively test 3 fuses, I'll just send a box of fuses to Amir at ASR and we'll see where they end up on the SINAID chart.




After that, I propose a test to see if a car runs faster with the high-end automobile fuses.


.

We could certainly argue what is subjective and what is not but one gentleman I work with defended his dissertation quite well when he explained how he would go about measuring attitude or cooperation. I consider that far more subjective. To this day he maintains that anything is measurable.

This is not an easy test and the results may be all over the map, but what if many of the opinions align? How subjective is it then? I like to use larger numbers of people as test subjects but there is only so much time I can devote to this. You know the amp type I will be using and should know if it might be capable of covering the audio spectrum with some very revealing tubes. @FLTWS knows both the amp and the headphones very well. The test subjects range in age from 24-30, I doubt I could hear what they do on the high end.

 

[DougD]

It may well be that my testing will reveal such results, I am trying to keep my views out of this. I just happen to have a setup in place that should lend itself well to such testing.

So far I have 12 folks who would agree to help with some testing but we will only use four. I talked to many from my local group last night and the consensus is that using 20-25 criteria like we used in other tests does not make a lot of sense so we will narrow that down to ten. Such things as tubes can show a great deal of difference on a four or five point scale but I seriously doubt fuses will do the same so we will use ten criteria on a ten point scale. That should be enough to replicate the areas where @golfbravobravo heard differences.

We hope to squeeze the testing into a five or six hour window and I believe that can be done. One person will be behind the scenes changing fuses and only he will know the pattern of fuse placement and that will be revealed after all testing is done. We hope to limit the tests to four rounds with the results going into four spread sheets with four sections each. March 19th is the tentative date and I hope to know for sure later today. That is two days after St. Patrick's day so those involved should be well rested and over some of the effects of that day.

There's a lot of casual use of the term "objective" in this hobby, but there's very little that matches this level of rigor and good design. (Known to the public, anyway.)

Kudos to all of you for investing the time & effort to make it possible.

Looking forward to seeing the results.

 

[Paladin79]

There's a lot of casual use of the term "objective" in this hobby, but there's very little that matches this level of rigor and good design. (Known to the public, anyway.)

Kudos to all of you for investing the time & effort to make it possible.

Looking forward to seeing the results.

There are a few possible outcomes but what if say three of four people pinpointed when the expensive fuses were in the circuit? A sample pattern could be something like this, the 1 representing the expensive fuse.

1000
0010
1101
0001

We generally average the scores so in the first two rows if I got:

93 75 79 73
73 73 92 75

and it continued that way, I would suspect the expensive fuses were altering the sound for the better.

If it was

75 74 76 77 on all tests, I would say no difference could be discerned.

It is very likely the numbers could be all over the place and not match up to when the expensive fuses were in circuit. If one amp sounded better, I would suspect it would constantly measure higher regardless of the fuse type used.

Unless my math is wrong, each person testing would be listing 160 scores and we can look at those scores by person as well. Maybe only one person in four can hear a difference and score accordingly when either fuse is in place.

I believe we will use the following criteria and we have some excellent music examples that were specifically recorded to show them off.

Bass Midrange Treble and the upper range of each...(6 criteria)
Brilliance
Timbre
Detail
Clarity

Hopefully those will cover the differences @golfbravobravo described. ie Deeper, tighter bass, textured mids, and crystalline highs without any edginess. Everything just sounds more "right".

 

[FLTWS]

...... @FLTWS knows both the amp and the headphones very well. The test subjects range in age from 24-30, I doubt I could hear what they do on the high end.

Neither could I, unless they've been siting front row for Rock and Rap concerts for a few years without ear protection. Then it "might" require an audiology test.

 

[Paladin79]

Neither could I, unless they've been siting front row for Rock and Rap concerts for a few years without ear protection. Then it "might" require an audiology test.

I am attempting to slip one ringer into the group, a young woman who can consistently hear differences in specific types of wire. IMHO, if she cannot hear it, it is not there.

 

[DougD]

There are a few possible outcomes but what if say three of four people pinpointed when the expensive fuses were in the circuit? A sample pattern could be something like this, the 1 representing the expensive fuse.

< snip snip >>

It is very likely the numbers could be all over the place and not match up to when the expensive fuses were in circuit. If one amp sounded better, I would suspect it would constantly measure higher regardless of the fuse type used.

The thing is, @golfbravobravo has some very good equipment and he seems serious about the differences. I would be curious if he still heard the same differences when he cleaned his fuse sockets and his old fuses of course. We will be cleaning everything so that will not be a factor.

Unless my math is wrong, each person testing would be listing 160 scores and we can look at those scores by person as well. Maybe only one person in four can hear a difference and score accordingly when either fuse is in place.

You have a consulting statistician involved, si? You might want to consider doing a general poll of your Investigative Consortium's members to set the Bayesian prior as "we believe X% of people [like us] would be able to detect a sound quality *improvement* due to an audiophile fuse being put into the circuit." (I am not a statistician, so that's as far as I'm going on design.)

My reservation here, if that's even the right word, is that even if trained listeners with young hearing can detect any differences, I'm not sure that result generalizes to old me with my hearing.

But I am really interested in what this testing finds, Or doesn't. A likely result is "insufficient weight of evidence to resolve the question."

 

[Ableza]

If your ears tell you that some tweak makes a difference in your system then it does - for you. Just beware of anyone who makes some universal pronouncements about the impact of any tweak as they are not likely to be correct. Trust your own ears.

 

[Paladin79]

You have a consulting statistician involved, si? You might want to consider doing a general poll of your Investigative Consortium's members to set the Bayesian prior as "we believe X% of people [like us] would be able to detect a sound quality *improvement* due to an audiophile fuse being put into the circuit." (I am not a statistician, so that's as far as I'm going on design.)

My reservation here, if that's even the right word, is that even if trained listeners with young hearing can detect any differences, I'm not sure that result generalizes to old me with my hearing.

But I am really interested in what this testing finds, Or doesn't. A likely result is "insufficient weight of evidence to resolve the question."

We absolutely have a statistician involved. We also have one of her mentors who started at Oxford and got his PHD in mathematics here. Both are working behind the scenes. I want this to be fun and can only spend so much time on this. I was hoping to delegate and plan the after-party myself.

I would think the gentleman who raised the question is past the age of 50, so maybe there is hope for a few others lol. I doubt if I could hear the difference and make no such claims.

 

[FLTWS]

Fuses, smuses. The future is in battery powered stuff.

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-mercedes/3021121