[maddib]

I have really scoured through tons of datasheets, website whitepapers and various other scientific papers on Microsd manufacturing, technology and implementations of the various manufacturers.

There's also other brands that produces Industrial Microsd that I have considered like Apacer, Greenliant, Flexxon.

The choice for Swissbit came down to it's website which has very detailed information about their quality controls and testing:
https://www.swissbit.com/en/blog/post/the-secret-of-swissbit-product-quality-part-i/
https://www.swissbit.com/en/blog/post/the-secret-of-swissbit-product-quality-part-ii/

This is the price difference:

In USD$
Sandisk Industrial IX QD342 256GB 3D TLC(?) $262.78
Apacer CV110-MSD 256GB 3D TLC $219.92
Sandisk Edge 256GB 3D TLC(?) $210.07 (out of stock, 20 weeks wait)
Swissbit S-55u 256GB (Industrial) 3D TLC: $151.15
Micron I300 256GB QLC $113.01
GreenLiant 256GB QLC $85.29

So you can see, the Swissbit is actually the lowest costing 3D TLC on the mouser site.
I would likely try out the Micron I300 in the future.

Just to share my insight into the Industrial Microsd cards after doing so much research into them:

These Industrial cards are used in the medical, military and financial sectors, so they must be able to store and retrieve data with extreme reliability and as well as able to operate in the harshest condition like in desert or inside automotive vehicle engine bay area or inside a search and rescue drone flying in the winter.

Conformal Coating which resist corrosion and humidity (though some consumer professional cards have them too)
Wider working temperatures (right down to -40 degrees Celsius)
EMI and Vibration tested
Better data protection against sudden Power failure
More powerful Error Correction Engine, normal consumer grade cards usually uses BCH error correction, more advanced industrial cards uses LDPC (like Micron)
Better Wear Leveling implementation which means the card can last longer for intensive writes
Software Health Monitoring Tool (some brands)
More thicker Gold coating for pinouts, exceeding the standard SDA spec of 10,000 insertions. Some cards like Swissbit is spec to 20,000 Insertions.

So how does all these affect the sound quality of the walkman? To be honest, I don't know exactly. Your guess is as good as mine.

Hhmm... to be honest... just to make your testing real-world compatible, thus making them reasonable...
If you really want to know if all these equipments really make a difference in audio reception the listener must not know which equipment he/she is listening to (blind test). And you have to repeat these tests. Try it

 

[Whitigir]

Hhmm... to be honest... just to make your testing real-world compatible, thus making them reasonable...
If you really want to know if all these equipments really make a difference in audio reception the listener must not know which equipment he/she is listening to (blind test). And you have to repeat these tests. Try it

Blind test as the name suggested …. Is blind, period.

Allow me to ask, do you know how the brain work ? Human perceptions ? And how the brain is making senses of the world around it ? Especially with only 5% differences between objects ?

If you want to know how good Blind test is working. I have an instant for you to try out.

1/ Find a paper with “spot the differences” pictures.

2/ Do not identify the differences yet

3/ cut them out carefully at the frame and ask a relative to conduct the test

4/ the test rule is : Close your eyes, and the relative hold up one picture at his own choices. You then open your eyes and tell him if that picture is the A, or the B

And if you want to relate this to audio which is frequencies and time domain. I will give you this instances of 10Hz, which means it will be changes 10 times a second…. Well, I will give you an even better chances. You only have 1 second Interval to identify that picture before closing your eye again and the relative hold up another

Try it, and tell me more about your so called “Blind test AB” experiences. You will be surprised by the result

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

@Whitigir
Here's some of the more interesting documents I have found on Microsd:

https://documents.westerndigital.co...r/white-paper-sandisk-flash101-management.pdf

https://www.sdcard.org/cms/wp-conte...bal-Workshop-USA-Presentation_October2021.pdf

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Hhmm... to be honest... just to make your testing real-world compatible, thus making them reasonable...
If you really want to know if all these equipments really make a difference in audio reception the listener must not know which equipment he/she is listening to (blind test). And you have to repeat these tests. Try it

Do you mean that even for comparing the sound differences between the two 1ZM2 and 1AM2 at the Sony Store, one has to blindfold him/herself and get the staff/a friend to switch the walkman around? So as to make the auditon reasonable?

Same for testing out IER-M9 vs IER-M7, does one really have to blind fold oneself and get another person to switch the IEM for "reasonable" comparsion?

 

[maddib]

Do you mean that even for comparing the sound differences between the two 1ZM2 and 1AM2 at the Sony Store, one has to blindfold him/herself and get the staff/a friend to switch the walkman around?

Same for testing out IER-M9 vs IER-M7, does one really have to blind fold oneself and get another person to switch the IEM for comparsion?

 

[maddib]

Blind and double blind tests (second is international gold standard in science) are meant for not so obvious or uncertain effects, esp. in the human biological system, which need a proof for existence or non-existence. When it comes to sensing differences for a certain quality of sense the importance/necessity of such tests is growing the smaller the differences are. It's a very good method to eliminate unwanted side-effects known to influence the human brain's and body's behavior.
You already know the real effects of changing certain aspects (e.g. sd cards, cables) within an audio signal chain are more than... controversial . And such tests are a very good method to even test yourself .
But, I won't interrupt you here any more.

 

[Ryokan]

Blind test as the name suggested …. Is blind, period.

Allow me to ask, do you know how the brain work ? Human perceptions ? And how the brain is making senses of the world around it ? Especially with only 5% differences between objects ?

If you want to know how good Blind test is working. I have an instant for you to try out.

1/ Find a paper with “spot the differences” pictures.

2/ Do not identify the differences yet

3/ cut them out carefully at the frame and ask a relative to conduct the test

4/ the test rule is : Close your eyes, and the relative hold up one picture at his own choices. You then open your eyes and tell him if that picture is the A, or the B

And if you want to relate this to audio which is frequencies and time domain. I will give you this instances of 10Hz, which means it will be changes 10 times a second…. Well, I will give you an even better chances. You only have 1 second Interval to identify that picture before closing your eye again and the relative hold up another

Try it, and tell me more about your so called “Blind test AB” experiences. You will be surprised by the result

Can you compare a visionary test to hearing differences? Your eyes need to scan over the picture which takes several seconds while with listening you're getting the 'picture' (sound) all in one go.

 

[maddib]

Blind test as the name suggested …. Is blind, period.

Allow me to ask, do you know how the brain work ? Human perceptions ? And how the brain is making senses of the world around it ? Especially with only 5% differences between objects ?

If you want to know how good Blind test is working. I have an instant for you to try out.

1/ Find a paper with “spot the differences” pictures.

2/ Do not identify the differences yet

3/ cut them out carefully at the frame and ask a relative to conduct the test

4/ the test rule is : Close your eyes, and the relative hold up one picture at his own choices. You then open your eyes and tell him if that picture is the A, or the B

And if you want to relate this to audio which is frequencies and time domain. I will give you this instances of 10Hz, which means it will be changes 10 times a second…. Well, I will give you an even better chances. You only have 1 second Interval to identify that picture before closing your eye again and the relative hold up another

Try it, and tell me more about your so called “Blind test AB” experiences. You will be surprised by the result

'Blind' for such tests means 'not knowing' . Your image test is great. But it's different. Translated from our audio sense tests it would rather be as follows.

- you get two images, one after the other
- you have 10 seconds to look at each of them, separately
- you must decide on whether the two images are different, yes or no
- these tests are repeated with a random degree of difference in the images (from obvious to beyond sense of vision), as well as with completely identical images
- repeat the tests with different images

- blind = you don't know if there are any difference in the images at all. The assistant does.
- double blind = you and the assistant don't know if there are any differences in the images at all

 

[Whitigir]

Can you compare a visionary test to hearing differences? Your eyes need to scan over the picture which takes several seconds while with listening you're getting the 'picture' (sound) all in one go.

Regardless, human perceptions and brain activities are similar. Under a disoriented instance or just woke up from unconsciousness, the brain needs time to organize. It does so by different references (by other perceptions, all the 5 senses) for it own coherences and so on. In blind test of listening from A to B, there is no point of references. That is what I meant.

Picture differences are the same thing. Without the timing and trained experiences, you have no references. When you have no references, your brain will not be organized enough to differentiate 5% differences between complex objects. Be it, visual, hearings, or sensations. Sometimes your brain would even confuse between Hot/Cold by touch without “references” or blind test.

Then tell me again, how much do you know about human perceptions and how the brain work ? Because I am very sure that whoever understands just a little bit of it, would agree that blind testing in a way that the audiophile graphabator and measurabators suggested are non senses

This is a topic for another kind of science. I am just saying that it would be nice for people to take this hobby as what it is, listening and hearings. If you don’t hear the differences, then good for you, you saved your wallet. But if other people can, by whatever references together with their wallet, then it is their rights (we are all unique from one another). If they shared their impressions, please welcome it. Because after all, this hobby is subjective. If you don’t believe him, then go experience it yourself and see if you can or not tell the differences. There is no point in saying that “blind test” or “measurements”, because neither of them are perfect, and so are we, and everything in this universe

 

[Ryokan]

Regardless, human perceptions and brain activities are similar. Under a disoriented instance or just woke up from unconsciousness, the brain needs time to organize. It does so by different references for it own coherences and so on. In blind test of listening from A to B, there is no point of references. That is what I meant.

Picture differences are the same thing. Without the timing and trained experiences, you have no references. When you have no references, your brain will not be organized enough to differentiate 5% differences between complex objects. Be it, visual, hearings, or sensations. Sometimes your brain would even confuse between Hot/Cold by touch without “references” or blind test.

Then tell me again, how much do you know about human perceptions and how the brain work ? Because I am very sure that whoever understands just a little bit of it, would agree that blind testing in a way that the audiophile graphabator and measurabators suggested are non senses

All that aside, if someone placed 2 different headphones over your ears, without you seeing them, couldn't you say after several mintues of listening (to the same song) 'I prefer the second headphone to the first' or vice versa?

 

[Sonywalkmanuser]

Blind and double blind tests (second is international gold standard in science) are meant for not so obvious or uncertain effects, esp. in the human biological system, which need a proof for existence or non-existence. When it comes to sensing differences for a certain quality of sense the importance/necessity of such tests is growing the smaller the differences are. It's a very good method to eliminate unwanted side-effects known to influence the human brain's and body's behavior.
You already know the real effects of changing certain aspects (e.g. sd cards, cables) within an audio signal chain are more than... controversial . And such tests are a very good method to even test yourself .
But, I won't interrupt you here any more.

I see your point of having a blind test but that is if I wanted to prove that there is zero influences or bias during my tests. Which I don’t see a need to prove because:

This whole headfi site is full of people giving their subjective opinions on all sorts of equipments from tube rolling to cables to iem tips without needing to do blind folding tests.

I don’t see the reason why there needs to be blind test just because the equipment in question involves something which may deem controversial. After all I am just sharing my personal observations on an online discussion forum and not publishing for a scientific journal for peer review or something. My words and opinions are just one random anonymous guy’s ramblings, one can always choose to reject my mad opinions for all I care or don’t care.

I work on the basis that If the equipment sounds good to me, then that equipment has value and I will share recommendations to friends and others. Same applies if I find something that sounds bad to me, I will also share my non-recommendations to them.

 

[Whitigir]

All that aside, if someone placed 2 different headphones over your ears, without you seeing them, couldn't you say after several mintues of listening (to the same song) 'I prefer the second headphone to the first' or vice versa?

It depends on the differences. I mentioned previously, without any good references, your brain can not depict 5% between objects

You do know that the same headphones with the same drivers do have upto 10% tolerances from quality controls ? Even from left to right drivers

Anyways, let’s stop this flawed objectives matters, and get back to subjective hobby. I thank you @Sonywalkmanuser for sharing the impressions and the finding of the differences between MicroSD cardS with us. At least it can be some references and helpful to some other people.

On a side note, how does people keep finding good deal on 1Z and 1A M2 ? Even from within Japan, I can not find any good pricing or even in stock LOL

 

[maddib]

Regardless, human perceptions and brain activities are similar. Under a disoriented instance or just woke up from unconsciousness, the brain needs time to organize. It does so by different references (by other perceptions, all the 5 senses) for it own coherences and so on. In blind test of listening from A to B, there is no point of references. That is what I meant.

Picture differences are the same thing. Without the timing and trained experiences, you have no references. When you have no references, your brain will not be organized enough to differentiate 5% differences between complex objects. Be it, visual, hearings, or sensations. Sometimes your brain would even confuse between Hot/Cold by touch without “references” or blind test.

Then tell me again, how much do you know about human perceptions and how the brain work ? Because I am very sure that whoever understands just a little bit of it, would agree that blind testing in a way that the audiophile graphabator and measurabators suggested are non senses

Perceptual senses are influenced by many factors, stimuli from inside the bio system and from outside. Influenced not only by stimuli meant for the particular sense.
What does it mean? Any perceptual experience is influenced by stimuli coming from inside the bio system and from outside, with different quality and quantity. Some of these stimuli are controllable, some not.
More concrete. Testing the audio quality difference of two different equipments should be rendered carefully esp. when it's about very marginal or even uncertain differences. If you know which equipment you listen to each time, and you know their prices, their haptics, their color, their weight etc. And this will arouse a number of processes in your brain as for e.g. desire, aversion, cold, warmth... in an uncontrollable and often subtle manner. And this WILL finally influence your hearing experience. Because in the brain there is a myriad of connections.
The consequences are clear. What do I know about the brain/senses...? Enough, cognitive science at university .
But, I will leave this OT discussion

 

[maddib]

All that aside, if someone placed 2 different headphones over your ears, without you seeing them, couldn't you say after several mintues of listening (to the same song) 'I prefer the second headphone to the first' or vice versa?

Sure you could. Why not?

 

[psikey]

Sure you could. Why not?

If it makes them happy leave them to it. I agree with you, blind testing is only way.

The one factor most certainly different between us is our ears.