[taffy2207]

The foobar ABX plugin is awesome. It’s been a while since I got everything set up but IIRC there’s a great CODEC pack you can grab off of the foobar site too. It comes with Opus, which is not that widely supported, but I think it is the best out there unless something better has come along since then. I found setting up foobar and then the codec pack and then the abx plugin a little tricky but it’s fun and I found it amazing how it all works.

Yeah, looks like I already have that pack. It may have came with the skin I installed or I may have installed it previously. It was news to me that I had it

 

[gregorio]

It always seems to go the same way bar a chosen few :-

Very true, except for those who refuse to take the test in the first place!

I've been doing informal blind or double blind tests on others for 25 years or so; professional classical musician friends of mine, some audiophiles, a lot of students, a few sound engineers and some friends who like listening to music recordings but know almost nothing about it beyond what they do and don't like. In some ways, musicians can be somewhat similar to audiophiles, they often have an over-inflated opinion of their hearing/listening abilities. That opinion is entirely justified in the sense that they have highly trained listening but it's been trained to identify musical composition and performance characteristics, however, many of the sound characteristics an engineer can manipulate (and therefore has to be able to aurally identify) musicians are as unaware of as any average member of the public, a fact which is very difficult for some of them to accept. Incidentally, I say this because I went through it myself; I was a classically trained and then professional orchestral musician and I assumed my training/experience would give an advantage over many of the sound engineers I worked with. In some respects it did but I was shocked to discover there was a whole other side to listening skills, a side in which I was effectively a complete beginner. Quite a difficult pill to swallow after more than a decade of serious study/training and then professional accomplishment.

Many (though certainly not all) of the tests I've run were specifically designed to test expectation biases, rather than eliminate them. In these tests, audiophiles consistently performed the worst, significantly worse than friends who knew nothing and therefore didn't really have expectations. As I say, these tests were all informal, for my personal benefit and the potential benefit of those taking them, the results were not recorded and specifically NOT intended for anyone else to see, in fact that assurance was a condition of many of those I tested. So I don't have and can't provide any supporting evidence and therefore it's level of reliability (or lack of it) is entirely up to the reader. Furthermore, I've tested many hundreds of students but only two or three dozen musicians, probably 15-20 serious audiophiles, a similar number of friends/acquaintances who are effectively just members of the general public and maybe a dozen sound engineers. So not a reliable sample size, except maybe for the sound engineering students. However, I've seen no reliable evidence which contradicts my findings/experience but quite a few studies/tests, a few of which were published papers, which supports them.

G

 

[Elecroestatico]

OH my all the big LOLs im having with many of these last posts. First of all let me tell you all to take big shot tests with a grain of salt as he has stated in the past that he is unable to hear a difference between a 40 buck walmart dac VS a $1400.00 oppo dac. And this is only to summarize all the useless debate I have had with these lovely members of our community thread.

Now to close the last debates posts the answer is: EEVRYTHHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE. even wav vs flac makes a difference and Im feeling to lazy to explain why, just do your research and learn how things work. Andd just to give you a clue 90 ppercent of the time wav sounds better that flac.
And ultra big LOL to those who think that resampling doesnt make a difference in sound either, there are in fact many different mathematical methods of resampling . Now the biggest LOL award this time goes to the flac VS 256kbps they sound the same...HAHAHA lol if people cant even tell the difference in dacs no wonder why they cant hear the difference of an mp3 from a cd quality track

 

[StandsOnFeet]

EEVRYTHHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE

My God, man. How can you stand it?

 

[Elecroestatico]

I should point out that decoding the lossy file into a WAV file doesn't entail any processing except for the decoder itself.
There's no problem there, because it includes both the encode and decode process in what happens to the file, which is exactly what we want to do.
(And, of course, converting the result to ALAC or FLAC should make no difference whatsoever.)
However, strictly speaking, normalizing the volume is a sort of processing; the bits are altered, and it can result in various rounding errors, depending on whether the level ends up being raised or lowered.
(However, in all fairness, the sorts of errors this might cause would be likely to make the difference more audible rather than less so.)

And I think when he attaches all the other lower bitrate pieces of music into the main flac file he uses for his tests, thats when the software also makes a conversion to create that flac file.

 

[Elecroestatico]

My God, man. How can you stand it?

Well is not hard, in fact it has never bother me, its just knowing that thats the way it is in audio

 

[Zapp_Fan]

EEVRYTHHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE. even wav vs flac makes a difference and Im feeling to lazy to explain why, just do your research and learn how things work. Andd just to give you a clue 90 ppercent of the time wav sounds better that flac.

Good lord, I had been staying away from this thread because I have work to do... but I couldn't let that slide. This is ridiculous trolling, you can't be serious.

Um, but as someone who makes their living from spending on consumer audio... um... please do keep going with this and spending more money on "upgrading" from the same exact thing, to the same exact thing, but with a different file extension. That attitude is how folks like me get rich once we get old, cynical, lose our scruples and start selling snake oil instead of stuff that actually works. So, thank you for your service.

 

[bigshot]

OH my all the big LOLs im having with many of these last posts. First of all let me tell you all to take big shot tests with a grain of salt as he has stated in the past that he is unable to hear a difference between a 40 buck walmart dac VS a $1400.00 oppo dac.

I'll tell you the difference between me and you... I've done these tests and I know what the results are. You haven't done any tests and you only think you know. That is a significant difference between us there.

Here comes another one!

 

[Phronesis]

OH my all the big LOLs im having with many of these last posts. First of all let me tell you all to take big shot tests with a grain of salt as he has stated in the past that he is unable to hear a difference between a 40 buck walmart dac VS a $1400.00 oppo dac. And this is only to summarize all the useless debate I have had with these lovely members of our community thread.

Now to close the last debates posts the answer is: EEVRYTHHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE. even wav vs flac makes a difference and Im feeling to lazy to explain why, just do your research and learn how things work. Andd just to give you a clue 90 ppercent of the time wav sounds better that flac.
And ultra big LOL to those who think that resampling doesnt make a difference in sound either, there are in fact many different mathematical methods of resampling . Now the biggest LOL award this time goes to the flac VS 256kbps they sound the same...HAHAHA lol if people cant even tell the difference in dacs no wonder why they cant hear the difference of an mp3 from a cd quality track

I don't know if there's a flaw with bigshot's test. Maybe. But what is your assertion that "everything makes a difference" based on? If it's based on your perceiving differences between everything, your perception may be more biased by expectations than you realize. Please present your case ...

 

[castleofargh]

OH my all the big LOLs im having with many of these last posts. First of all let me tell you all to take big shot tests with a grain of salt as he has stated in the past that he is unable to hear a difference between a 40 buck walmart dac VS a $1400.00 oppo dac. And this is only to summarize all the useless debate I have had with these lovely members of our community thread.

Now to close the last debates posts the answer is: EEVRYTHHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE. even wav vs flac makes a difference and Im feeling to lazy to explain why, just do your research and learn how things work. Andd just to give you a clue 90 ppercent of the time wav sounds better that flac.
And ultra big LOL to those who think that resampling doesnt make a difference in sound either, there are in fact many different mathematical methods of resampling . Now the biggest LOL award this time goes to the flac VS 256kbps they sound the same...HAHAHA lol if people cant even tell the difference in dacs no wonder why they cant hear the difference of an mp3 from a cd quality track

is Michael Lavorgna your spirit animal? you clearly share that amazing ability to turn over a pebble on the street and find that it noticeably and durably improved your music at home.
since bravado and saying LOL a lot seem to be the entirety of your argumentation(like last time), I believe we can all move on and assume it's ignorance making a lot of noise about nothing. but feel free to change my mind anytime with a semblance of rational argument that doesn't mistake objective change with audible ones, or your opinions with facts. even better, if you don't like bigshot's test, propose a better testing method, and show how you or other people pass it. be it your ignorance, or the legitimacy of your claims, some proper controlled tests should help removing doubts.

 

[colonelkernel8]

OH my all the big LOLs im having with many of these last posts. First of all let me tell you all to take big shot tests with a grain of salt as he has stated in the past that he is unable to hear a difference between a 40 buck walmart dac VS a $1400.00 oppo dac. And this is only to summarize all the useless debate I have had with these lovely members of our community thread.

Now to close the last debates posts the answer is: EEVRYTHHING MAKES A DIFFERENCE. even wav vs flac makes a difference and Im feeling to lazy to explain why, just do your research and learn how things work. Andd just to give you a clue 90 ppercent of the time wav sounds better that flac.
And ultra big LOL to those who think that resampling doesnt make a difference in sound either, there are in fact many different mathematical methods of resampling . Now the biggest LOL award this time goes to the flac VS 256kbps they sound the same...HAHAHA lol if people cant even tell the difference in dacs no wonder why they cant hear the difference of an mp3 from a cd quality track

The gratuitous usage of “LOL” and “hahaha” leads me to believe you have confidence issues. I hope this post made you feel better.

 

[Elecroestatico]

Good lord, I had been staying away from this thread because I have work to do... but I couldn't let that slide. This is ridiculous trolling, you can't be serious.

Um, but as someone who makes their living from spending on consumer audio... um... please do keep going with this and spending more money on "upgrading" from the same exact thing, to the same exact thing, but with a different file extension. That attitude is how folks like me get rich once we get old, cynical, lose our scruples and start selling snake oil instead of stuff that actually works. So, thank you for your service.

aiwa selling snake oil? I didn't know but thanks for the heads up Anyways how can I spend more money if audacity for example gets me flac and wav files for free? no trolling here my friend

 

[Elecroestatico]

I'll tell you the difference between me and you... I've done these tests and I know what the results are. You haven't done any tests and you only think you know. That is a significant difference between us there.

Here comes another one!

all of my dacs sound different, also all of my daps and even my cell phones sound different, so how can I follow a test you are doing if you cant even tell the sounding difference between different devices.... so silly all those who talk about your tests like you are giving something to the community. Really if mp3 sounds the same than flac to you then keep it to yourself but dont come here to confuse people with silly tests. Just taking a quick look at your test somebody else mention a flaw and I mentioned another possible flaw too. Resampling also makes a difference, just try the different resample components that are available for foobar. Some dacs do internal upsampling regardless of the sample rate that you feed them and thats to improve the sound. etc many things I can explain but I always educate you and all i get is more attacks

 

[Elecroestatico]

The gratuitous usage of “LOL” and “hahaha” leads me to believe you have confidence issues. I hope this post made you feel better.

and your nine inch nails logo leads me to believe that the only kind of music you like is metal

 

[Elecroestatico]

is Michael Lavorgna your spirit animal? you clearly share that amazing ability to turn over a pebble on the street and find that it noticeably and durably improved your music at home.
since bravado and saying LOL a lot seem to be the entirety of your argumentation(like last time), I believe we can all move on and assume it's ignorance making a lot of noise about nothing. but feel free to change my mind anytime with a semblance of rational argument that doesn't mistake objective change with audible ones, or your opinions with facts. even better, if you don't like bigshot's test, propose a better testing method, and show how you or other people pass it. be it your ignorance, or the legitimacy of your claims, some proper controlled tests should help removing doubts.

what pebble are you talking about? I never said any of the points being made here are improving my music at home noticeably and durably. I simply stated that the things you all were talking aboiut such as resampling and storage format will make a difference, thats it, dont get exited. I also im not obligated to come up with a new test just because i dont like bigshot one, however as I always give helpful posts (unlike many others) I have stated a possible flaw of his test and that was just taking a quick look at the test, not to mention what keithemo said about the normalizing process altering the bits, thats also true and now that im thinking about it exporting to flac offers a few extra settings such as method and levels of compression so not a flaw but can interfere in a test depending what player software and decoder is being used. So saving his "test" in a wav file would be better. OK enough with the education, you guys never say thank you