[JRG1990]

Would an upsampling dac have less ringing than a standard dac with a standard filter, since upsampling dac use different filters with a slower roll off.

 

[TheSonicTruth]

I hear lots of ringing on my DACs. Oh wait, it's the phone ringing soundtrack on my sound fx CD, duhh!

 

[Arpiben]

Quite so.....

The "borrowed energy" idea is more way of looking at the situation.

Assuming I have an input signal and an output signal.
And assuming that, when I compare them, their overall average energy measures to be absolutely identical.
(This is what "a totally flat overall frequency response" would demonstrate.)
But, when I look at the output signal with an oscilloscope, I have ringing that wasn't present in the input signal.
The energy that is present in the ringing must have come from somewhere.
If it was added from some outside source then the overall total amount of energy would be higher.
Since the overall amount of energy is NOT higher, the energy in the ringing must have been "borrowed" from some other point in time.
Therefore, even though the time-averaged frequency response is flat.
We would expect to see ripples in the frequency response at various points in time.

Likewise... there is no such thing as a perfect filter.
Assuming that your input content actually CONTAINS nothing above the Nyquist frequency, then all required conditions would be met without filtering, and it would all work out "perfectly".
However, since there is ALWAYS background noise, some of which is above the Nyquist frequency, there is always something that must be filtered out.
However, no filter is or can be "perfectly sharp"; an infinitely sharp filter would have infinitely poor time response; and a filter with infinitely perfect time response cannot be a filter.
In fact, the electronic components from which the filter is built will also contribute some noise and distortion.
Therefore, in practical terms, there can never be "a perfectly band limited signal", and there can never be "a perfect reconstruction filter".
You can get REALLY close... but it can never be perfect.
So we end up right back at "the limits of audibility"... and deciding what's "so far below those limits that it really need not be considered".

The bottom line is that the differences between the outputs of DACs using various filters CAN easily be measured.
For example, take the same model of DAC, and choose two different output filter options.
(Most manufacturers of DAC chips provide graphs which show the transient response of their various filter options.)
In some cases, you will find that the options sound audibly different; and, in most cases, you will find that the output signals are visibly different on an oscilloscope, and will NOT null to zero.
(Most people can only identify differences of several percent visually on an oscilloscope display; but smaller differences can be resolved by other measurements.)
So, we now have measurable differences, and claims of audible differences....
Therefore, the challenge is to correlate them.

Thanks @KeithEmo

1° Energy is a density of power over a bandwidth.
What are you comparing? Analog energy over 22.05 kHz before recording or sampling in ADC, with analog DAC output inside 22.05kHz?
ADC output has already added energy due to aliasing (not perfect band limited) and decimation artefacts etc...
DAC output has bandwidth over a few Ghz
That is the reason I personally don't like so much your view applied in this context.
In principle you do have ripples in the frequency response as a consequence of the window used for LPF interpolation (at least lower than 0.01dB).

2° Perfect filter...Agreed. There are hundreds of methods to reconstruct signals using Fourier or faster decay functions....In real life nobody is waiting infinite time for perfect recovery at boundaries (smile)

3°Difference between output DACs...
I do like impulse response only to characterize the response applied inside DAC.
Manufacturers do not provide the phase or group delay response especially in the transition area.
I do prefer legal input signals such as chirps, bandlimited transients or white noise rather than a pseudo Dirac.
With the data of a digital scope you can retrieve tons of information (spectrum, time frequency-analysis,etc...)

As you rightly said biggest challenge is to correlate all.

N.B. I am not challenging you and do appreciate your posts. Just a different perspective.

 

[castleofargh]

The problem is that we're approaching dangerously close to circular logic here....
You cannot argue that something is "well outside the audible range... because you must not really be hearing it... because it is outside the audible range".

There are audible differences between some filter choices offered on some DACs - even when the overall frequency response measures close enough that we would consider the differences to be negligible.
Either we're wrong about what we consider "inaudible"...
Or we're wrong about what we consider "identical withing negligible amounts of differences"...
Or there's something else going on that we've so far missed entirely...

I would just point out that "being sure there can't possibly be an audible difference" is itself a type of very powerful expectation bias...
Therefore, while I would agree that I would not accept the results of subjective experiences as facts...
Neither will I accept many arguments that claim to know with absolute certainty that those results are impossible...

Likewise, I would EXPECT the amount of ringing present in a tweeter to thoroughly mask the ringing in a DAC.
However, I don't know for sure how well such masking might work.
Perhaps it explains why I hear certain things with electrostatic headphones (which have very little ringing) and not with speakers.
I personally find quantum mechanics to be "intuitively ridiculous" - but, apparently, in reality it is not.

arguments about what probably shouldn't be audible are only relevant because claims of audibility are being made without evidence. so we take the next best thing, which are the few measurements available at the time, and the general consensus about signals of similar magnitudes or frequencies. I have no doubt that people meet circumstances where 2 DACs sound different. just like I have no doubt that some people perceive stuff I won't notice. but when most testimonies come from uncontrolled experiences and cherry picked correlation=causation type of fallacies, can you really blame a guy like me for taking a position where I reject all they say? the circular logic can't be broken only because we wrongly accepted to debate something before reliable evidence was provided for it. at least that's how I feel.

all in all, I find it weird how people can't just accept "I don't know" as a natural and valid position on a topic. was the first TOTL Sabre chip sounding brighter than another brand of chip? well they weren't interchangeable in DACs, AFAIK the power supply design needed to be changed with the chip and it was consuming a lot more than chips from other brands like the Wolfson at the time. so it was and still is hard to test just the DAC chips for any audiophile interested. from that obvious difficulty, the conclusion everybody should have accepted was that we couldn't say for sure because we lacked a proper testing method. and until such method comes forward, we leave it at that.
but no! instead we had social warriors taking sides and claiming that the Sabre is bright/digital sounding/jittery sounding or whatever crap following the same idea. they all were talking about completely different DACs with hundreds of other potential variables they unilaterally decided to ignore. what legitimacy can those positions hope to have? and often when that rumor started, the guys were making claims about the sound of the Sabre chip based on different DAPs into multidriver IEMs... how ignorant and nonsensical was that?
IMO giving weight to such rumors is wrong. it's not open minded, it's the tacit acceptance that it's all right to jump to conclusion and to make empty claims. so you always find me on the other side where people mistake my "failed to disprove the null hypothesis" position, for a claim that everything always sounds the same. so be it. I'd rather be mischaracterized that way than as a supporter of logical fallacy and uncontrolled tests. my real position is of course that I don't have a clue and that people shouldn't claim stuff without proof. a position I have for most questions. ^_^

 

[gregorio]

[1] My original goal was to see if using the iPhone for my source would be a good system, or if I needed to make it larger with having a computer. My conscious expectation was that the sources would sound the same (as they both were using the same USB adapter going to the Benchmark's coaxial port). My focus at that point of time was just listening to the same track of music (there wasn't a preconceived notion or change in stimuli).
[2] there definitely was a difference in tonality between the computer and iPhone going to my DAC.
[3] On further reflection as to why that is: perhaps the source OS is applying a DSP with the USB adapter (as its seen as a soundcard). Maybe it's just a matter of things being more complicated and the DAC not getting an unaltered bit for bit copy of the file.

1. This statement appears to entirely contradict itself! You state your goal was to see if you needed a larger source and that you didn't have any preconceived notions BUT if you didn't have the preconceived notion that a larger source could make a difference then what was the point of your "goal"? Clearly even your conscious expectation wasn't certain the sources would sound the same or you wouldn't have had the goal "to see" if there was a difference and furthermore, you have simply ignored your more subconscious expectations; such as the fact that something which looks significantly different is generally expected to sound at least somewhat different. In other words, you are mis-stating your "expectations", albeit unintentionally and (I believe) without any intention to deliberately deceive.

2. Due to the above point, you cannot make this statement. You cannot be certain there was an actual difference in tonality or if your experience was just due to biases which caused you to perceive a difference. You cannot therefore state there "definitely was a difference in tonality", you can only truthfully state that you definitely perceived a difference. Being as truthful as possible and trying to avoid being a hypocrite, I cannot state that the difference you perceived was "definitely" caused by some sort of cognitive or perception bias on your part, there could have been an actual difference...

3. Personally, my judgement of my conscious expectation of the situation you describe would have been rather more vague, notwithstanding the fact that I subscribe to the general statement that DACs and sources all sound the same. However, I take it for granted that such an assertion is a "general statement" rather than an absolute one, it comes with conditions. There are some obvious (and not so obvious) exceptions/conditions which dictate that such a statement cannot be absolute: Blatantly obviously, a broken/faulty DAC can easily sound entirely different to a perfectly functioning DAC. Still obvious but somewhat less so, a particular DAC could be deliberately designed to sound different. Less obvious still, a particular DAC may have a design flaw and then, there are even less obvious conditions. I've already mentioned impedance, you are now considering the possibility of some DSP being applied and there are other possibilities. For example, a USB signal from a laptop or computer is typically quite noisy/contaminated, for instance USB ports on computers/laptops typically provide power. Of course, a competent DAC designer should be aware of this fact and should design the DAC to function well under this most typical of usage scenarios, by, for example, making sure that USB power supply is isolated from components within the DAC which could be adversely affected by it. Even though it's inexpensive to make a DAC which is well isolated from power and other typical USB "noise", clearly there are a few audiophile/consumer DACs which don't achieve this adequately and are therefore incompetently designed. The situation is somewhat different with your Benchmark DAC: Typically a coax (SP/DIF) connection would be less "noisy" than USB. For starters, the SP/DIF protocol does not include the provision of supplying power and it would therefore be unreasonable to expect Benchmark to design the type of power isolation on it's coax connection which would be incompetent not to design on a USB connection and there are other potential "noise" issues with USB which a competently designed DAC should easily reduce to well below audibility which one wouldn't expect a coax connection to deal with. With a well designed DAC one would not expect coax or USB to sound any different but the scenario you present is a USB signal being supplied to the DAC's coax input. If there is an actual difference, I would be looking closely at the USB/coax converter, particularly at how it isolates the USB power supply from the coax output signal, as this is an obvious potential difference between the USB output of your laptop/computer and the USB output of your phone.

The first thing I'd be doing is comparing loop-back recordings from your DAC to objectively see if there is any potentially audible difference in the first place, to avoid being mistaken when attributing perceived differences and being (inadvertently) dishonest when posting publicly.

There are audible differences between some filter choices offered on some DACs - even when the overall frequency response measures close enough that we would consider the differences to be negligible.
Either we're wrong about what we consider "inaudible"...
Or we're wrong about what we consider "identical withing negligible amounts of differences"...
Or there's something else going on that we've so far missed entirely...

You've missed one: Or, there's something else again going on, which is perfectly well known and demonstrated but obfuscated by some manufacturers in the name of "marketing"!

In practise, it's pretty easy to design a filter which is audibly different: An extremely steep/narrow transition band filter for example or conversely a filter with an extremely wide transition band, not to mention the additional psychological suggestion that switching to different settings/filters on a DAC would be expected to produce at least some audible difference some of the time. Today (and for some years) filter design can get very close to the perfect signal reconstruction envisaged by the pioneers of digital audio theory and the remaining imperfections have been demonstrated time and again to be inaudible. As in my response above though, this is a general rather than absolute statement. It has conditions such as; listening to music rather than (illegal) signals specifically designed to exacerbate/highlight the imperfections and, a filter which is actually designed to be high-fidelity/transparent rather than de-prioritize fidelity in the name of potentially being more subjectively "pleasing/good".

Obviously, manufacturers of dedicated DACs, particularly those aimed at audiophiles/discerning listeners, need to differentiate their products from the massively cheaper DACs found consumer devices, such as smartphones. Reconstruction filters is one area where that's possible, with just a little obfuscation of the fact that even a cheap competently designed filter will be audibly transparent. For example, creating obfuscation by suggesting we may not be quite right about what's "inaudible" or that there's maybe something else (some magic maybe?) that a "higher-end" DAC manufacturer has incorporated which everyone else (including apparently the science community) has "so far missed entirely". It's hard to see how the manufacturers of certain consumer audio components/equipment survive and will continue to survive without obfuscating the facts somewhat (or entirely)!

G

 

[KeithEmo]

I pretty well agree with everything you said......
I do think, however, that it is often a matter of context...
Ad, as you say, many folks seem to be unwilling to just say "I don't know"... and so prefer to substitute absolute certainty where it may not be wholly appropriate.

I sense that a lot of people consider the purpose of this thread to be "Debunking Audio Snake Oil"....
They seem dead set on using this as a venue to debunk all snake oil...
And become very defensive when anyone even suggests the possibility that occasionally there might be something to it.

However, the title is in fact "Testing Audiophile Claims and Myths"....
To me, that suggests NOT dismissing things that can be tested out of hand...
(And not assuming the results of a specific test we aren't performing.)

So, to me, if someone were to claim that their new whiz-bang cable really does sound different...
I find it extremely unlikely that it really does...
And I would cheerfully tell anyone considering buying it "because the sales brochure is convincing" that they should probably save their money...
However, I'm still going to at least try to be open minded that there MIGHT be a slim chance that they've actually got something.
I would prefer to stop at: "Current evidence doesn't support your claim, so I find it rather unlikely."
(To be honest, when it comes to cables, I too tend to be dismissive... but I do believe that DACs are far too complicated to justify doing so.)

I tend to be extremely context driven...
If someone were to tell me they were considering investing in the latest "tabletop cold fusion" scheme, I would absolutely tell them it's probably a scam.
However, I would stop short of saying "it's absolutely impossible".
Because, after all, someday someone MIGHT actually figure out how to do it.
And I would hate to think that we might miss it "because someone was so sure it was impossible that they didn't bother to test it".
I've lived long enough to see quite a few things that were"obviously impossible" turn out to be possible after all.

Being struck by lightning may be extremely unlikely...
But, from what I hear, it happens to people every now and then...
(So, while I can tell someone "not to worry about it", and that it isn't worth buying insurance, I can't promise them it won't happen to them.)

arguments about what probably shouldn't be audible are only relevant because claims of audibility are being made without evidence. so we take the next best thing, which are the few measurements available at the time, and the general consensus about signals of similar magnitudes or frequencies. I have no doubt that people meet circumstances where 2 DACs sound different. just like I have no doubt that some people perceive stuff I won't notice. but when most testimonies come from uncontrolled experiences and cherry picked correlation=causation type of fallacies, can you really blame a guy like me for taking a position where I reject all they say? the circular logic can't be broken only because we wrongly accepted to debate something before reliable evidence was provided for it. at least that's how I feel.

all in all, I find it weird how people can't just accept "I don't know" as a natural and valid position on a topic. was the first TOTL Sabre chip sounding brighter than another brand of chip? well they weren't interchangeable in DACs, AFAIK the power supply design needed to be changed with the chip and it was consuming a lot more than chips from other brands like the Wolfson at the time. so it was and still is hard to test just the DAC chips for any audiophile interested. from that obvious difficulty, the conclusion everybody should have accepted was that we couldn't say for sure because we lacked a proper testing method. and until such method comes forward, we leave it at that.
but no! instead we had social warriors taking sides and claiming that the Sabre is bright/digital sounding/jittery sounding or whatever crap following the same idea. they all were talking about completely different DACs with hundreds of other potential variables they unilaterally decided to ignore. what legitimacy can those positions hope to have? and often when that rumor started, the guys were making claims about the sound of the Sabre chip based on different DAPs into multidriver IEMs... how ignorant and nonsensical was that?
IMO giving weight to such rumors is wrong. it's not open minded, it's the tacit acceptance that it's all right to jump to conclusion and to make empty claims. so you always find me on the other side where people mistake my "failed to disprove the null hypothesis" position, for a claim that everything always sounds the same. so be it. I'd rather be mischaracterized that way than as a supporter of logical fallacy and uncontrolled tests. my real position is of course that I don't have a clue and that people shouldn't claim stuff without proof. a position I have for most questions. ^_^

 

[Joe Bloggs]

I agree with something BigShot alluded to in a slightly later post...

A major part of the problem with discussing this sort of thing is that audiophiles often resort to inaccurate or vague terms to describe what they hear.
As a result, different people may use the same words to describe very different things, and it is often difficult to equate sound with measurements.
Also, much as some people prefer to disagree, exactly how certain measurable differences relate to AUDIBLE differences is still not always clearly defined.

To use the example I put forward as... an example...

To many people I know, Sabre DACs (especially those of the vintage of the 9018 chip), seem audibly to boost high frequencies.
SUBJECTIVELY, compared to DACs of many other brands, it sounds as if the Sabre DACs boost the upper midrange by about 1 dB.
(To offer the converse; if I take a component that uses an AD1955 DAC, and apply a 1 dB boost cenetered around 7 kHz, the result sounds more like an ESS9018 without the boost.)
However, when we measure the ESS9018 DAC, we find that its frequency response is exceptionally flat (like most other good DACs).
Therefore, an actual difference in frequency response DOES NOT account for the difference in sound... because no such measurable difference exists.
(Therefore, the difference in frequency response that people claim to hear does not actually exist.)
However, if we measure the impulse response of the filters used in the Sabre DACs, we find that they ARE in fact measurably quite different.
This would seem to suggest at least the possibility that the differences in filters, which we can measure, may account for the subjective/audible differences.

I would rather think that the reputation of the Sabre DACs would account for the 1dB of subjectively perceived high boost (where 1dB shouldn't be audible anyway)--unless you specified anywhere that the tests are blind?

Let's assume I have a speaker that exhibits ringing......
When I apply a 1 second burst at 1 kHz to this speaker, it continues to produce sound at -30 dB for 20 msec after the applied tone burst ends.
Now consider the THD of that speaker during the time interval from 5 msec to 15 msec AFTER THE APPLIED TONE BURST ENDS.
During that time interval, we have no input signal, but a clearly measurable output signal... so all of that output signal is "distortion".
So, for that time interval, the THD is 100%... but the AVERAGE THD is much lower (and it will be different depending on what arbitrary measurement interval you choose).

That matches no definition of THD I'm aware of... 1. it would be at the same frequency you fed it with, hence not a harmonic 2. it can be accounted for by the linear transfer function of the speaker which does explain ringing without the need for talking about distortion at all.

A similar situation exists with DACs....
The filters in DACs create some amount of ringing before and after transient signals.
Therefore, for some very short period of time, they produce an output signal that is "pure distortion".
The duration of this signal is very short, and most of the energy it contains is at "ultrasonic frequencies", but it also expends energy that is "borrowed" from the audible spectrum.
(When the signal is "spread out in time", much of the extra distortion is inaudible, but it also takes energy away from the "intended signal".)
Many people, including myself, believe that it is this ringing and its variants that accounts for the differences people claim to hear between different DAC filter choices.
And, as far as I know, very little actual controlled research has been done to confirm or deny this hypothesis.

Again, there is no technical sense in which this is distortion--as for controlled research, I believe that controlled studies relating to CD vs high res would fit the bill, since CD reproduction would have included the brickwall ringing while the high res version wouldn't (not to mention including extra ultrasonic info).

 

[castleofargh]

I pretty well agree with everything you said......
I do think, however, that it is often a matter of context...
Ad, as you say, many folks seem to be unwilling to just say "I don't know"... and so prefer to substitute absolute certainty where it may not be wholly appropriate.

I sense that a lot of people consider the purpose of this thread to be "Debunking Audio Snake Oil"....
They seem dead set on using this as a venue to debunk all snake oil...
And become very defensive when anyone even suggests the possibility that occasionally there might be something to it.

However, the title is in fact "Testing Audiophile Claims and Myths"....
To me, that suggests NOT dismissing things that can be tested out of hand...
(And not assuming the results of a specific test we aren't performing.)

So, to me, if someone were to claim that their new whiz-bang cable really does sound different...
I find it extremely unlikely that it really does...
And I would cheerfully tell anyone considering buying it "because the sales brochure is convincing" that they should probably save their money...
However, I'm still going to at least try to be open minded that there MIGHT be a slim chance that they've actually got something.
I would prefer to stop at: "Current evidence doesn't support your claim, so I find it rather unlikely."
(To be honest, when it comes to cables, I too tend to be dismissive... but I do believe that DACs are far too complicated to justify doing so.)

I tend to be extremely context driven...
If someone were to tell me they were considering investing in the latest "tabletop cold fusion" scheme, I would absolutely tell them it's probably a scam.
However, I would stop short of saying "it's absolutely impossible".
Because, after all, someday someone MIGHT actually figure out how to do it.
And I would hate to think that we might miss it "because someone was so sure it was impossible that they didn't bother to test it".
I've lived long enough to see quite a few things that were"obviously impossible" turn out to be possible after all.

Being struck by lightning may be extremely unlikely...
But, from what I hear, it happens to people every now and then...
(So, while I can tell someone "not to worry about it", and that it isn't worth buying insurance, I can't promise them it won't happen to them.)

yup, we're thinking the same way about all inclusive claims. they shouldn't exist so long as some exceptions are to be found to disprove them. the rational is very clear.
when I bring that up from time to time, @bigshot (tell me if I'm putting words I shouldn't into your mouth, and I'll edit my post) justifies dismissing the unlikely possibilities as being part of dysfunctional situations, so the claim implies an operational standard without mentioning it. or he makes universal claims just as a mean to push newbies toward thinking something simple that will be true most of the time. he's beyond true or false and just thinking about pushing as many people as possible in the right general direction.

so when bigshot or someone else does it, I tend to be like

in short, when I think about conditional truth VS a universal claim correct most of the time, I will always favor a clean conditional truth.
but when I'm thinking of marketing VS a universal claim correct most of the time... I can't help but root for for the lesser evil.
what is our main role here? I honestly don't know and don't expect everybody to agree anyway.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
with that said, as we're in the "testing stuff" topic, everybody please remember that a specific test you will conduct on your own will be as conditional as it gets and usually cannot lead on its own toward a universal conclusion. also when you guys do experiment and decide to share your results, remember that we need the conditions for the test as much as the results. the real value of an experiment is the possibility for others to try and replicate it to support or disprove the results(repeatability). so when you encountered difficulties, mention it. when you made a mistake and realized it, mention it. when you got a special way to set up or measure something, do mention it with your results. it will all help understand your situation and perhaps why you get the results you get. also it might save other people a lot of time when they decide to try the same test.
so try to avoid dropping some result or some random conclusion and then just fly away when asked for details. if we look like we're the Spanish Inquisition and you weren't expecting it, could be that we're trying to understand the test and the cause for the results, possibly to try it ourselves if it seems correct/relevant/feasible. and of course sometimes we're going to ask just waiting to find what you did wrong because your results are nonsense. crap happens.

 

[TheSonicTruth]

I would rather think that the reputation of the Sabre DACs would account for the 1dB of subjectively perceived high boost (where 1dB shouldn't be audible anyway)--unless you specified anywhere that the tests are blind?



That matches no definition of THD I'm aware of... 1. it would be at the same frequency you fed it with, hence not a harmonic 2. it can be accounted for by the linear transfer function of the speaker which does explain ringing without the need for talking about distortion at all.



Again, there is no technical sense in which this is distortion--as for controlled research, I believe that controlled studies relating to CD vs high res would fit the bill, since CD reproduction would have included the brickwall ringing while the high res version wouldn't (not to mention including extra ultrasonic info).

Can brick-wall limiting in CD mastering cause audible ringing during playback?

 

[Zapp_Fan]

Can brick-wall limiting in CD mastering cause audible ringing during playback?

Generally ringing is caused by frequency filtering (when talking about signals) or physical resonances / motion (when talking about transducers) so a basic single band limiter won't cause ringing because it only operates in the time domain. A limiter basically just turns the volume knob up and down automatically. This doesn't cause ringing as far as I know.

If it's a multi-band limiter then you would expect some slight amount of ringing as an artifact of the filtering stage. This is because the signal is split into X bands and then each band is limited separately, then re-combined. Since there are digital filters involved you're going to get ringing.

So the short answer is "no", the long answer is "actually, sometimes yes, but not because of the limiting itself." Multi-band limiters are actually used somewhat commonly because they allow you to squeeze even more loudness from the sound, if you're doing that kind of mix.

You also said "audible" in your question, and so then I would guess that the answer ultimately would be "no" because a good multiband limiter will be oversampling and using relatively mild filters to avoid phase / ringing type crap.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Can brick-wall limiting in CD mastering cause audible ringing during playback?

It can cause ringing if the source material had that much energy out to 21kHz and beyond that needed to be cut out. Audible or not is a loaded question.

It can also not cause ringing by using such a gentle filter that avoids ringing and causes audible rolloff from say 15kHz on up in one fell stroke, or by not using a filter at all which would be audibly stupid.

 

[castleofargh]

to be clear, people before were talking about ringing due to the band limiting filter around 20khz, while @TheSonicTruth is asking about a limiter tool in mastering to reduce the amplitude of signals above a given value.

 

[bigshot]

@bigshot (tell me if I'm putting words I shouldn't into your mouth, and I'll edit my post) justifies dismissing the unlikely possibilities as being part of dysfunctional situations, so the claim implies an operational standard without mentioning it. or he makes universal claims just as a mean to push newbies toward thinking something simple that will be true most of the time. he's beyond true or false and just thinking about pushing as many people as possible in the right general direction.

That is basically it. My thinking is that in home audio there is already WAY too much theoretical BS that doesn't add up to anything audible. When I read about jitter hoodoo and digital stair step shrillness and frequency response up where bats can't even hear and dynamic range that would require putting your stereo system at the bottom of Carlsbad Caverns to hear, I just shake my head and dismiss it with the wave of a hand. I wasted weeks of research on all that baloney in the past, and I'm not going to entertain those ideas any more until I can hear it with my own ears. The purpose of thinking logically and scientifically is to help people make their home audio systems sound better, not to give them a lesson in quantum physics. Audibility is paramount. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, I say "Who cares?"

I know enough about how human hearing works to have good ballpark concepts about where the thresholds lie. If the specs show that something should be clearly inaudible, I assume it is inaudible until someone proves to me that it can be heard. If a hundred carefully conducted listening tests say one cable sounds just like any other and no studies show they sound different, I don't care how many people claim to hear a difference. People can claim whatever they want. But I'm not going to pay them any mind if the established knowledge says their claims are probably baseless. I don't see any purpose in thinking up excuses to justify their claims before I know they have done their homework and proved it. Talking purely in theory is just mental gymnastics. The idea is to solve problems, not think up theoretical problems that don't even need to be solved. Prove it and I'll be your biggest fan, because you're handing me something I can use. Until then, I operate on what is already established.

Also, I don't care about subconscious craziness because there's no way that buying a different piece of audio equipment is going to fix that!

When it comes to your home audio system, theoretical science only muddies the water and doesn't make your music sound any better. Practical applied science does.

 

[Phronesis]

Also, I don't care about subconscious craziness because there's no way that buying a different piece of audio equipment is going to fix that!

The cognition that results in your "hearing" mostly occurs at a subconscious level. If people, not microphones, are doing the "hearing," you need to account for what's happening in the brain to make the perception of hearing possible. It's not about "thresholds," it's about how the ear and brain turn a complex physical sound into a perception of sound, and how that perception may vary with differences in that complex sound.

 

[tmars78]

I haven't posted in here in quite awhile, but are people really spending money on something that cleans your ethernet? Will this give super duper fast internet too? This is seriously head scratching stupidity.

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2018/10/10/wavelength-ethernet-spacelator-rmaf-2018/amp/