[Jimis 3 16]

Your opinion is incorrect.

Whatever....

 

[bigshot]

If you don't want to learn, that is fine. I won't waste time trying to share information with you any more. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

 

[Jimis 3 16]

If you don't want to learn, that is fine. I won't waste time trying to share information with you any more. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

When It comes to audio, I always rely half on information and half on what I hear. There is no point telling me again and again that there is no audible difference when I can hear It with my own ears! To the other person, I just told him to listen and tell me, I don't force him in any way to tell there is a difference, I want raw results.

 

[bigshot]

You might want to change the title of the thread to "anyone who knows half the information", rather than "anyone actually knowledgeable", because you have someone here who is knowledgeable and you are arguing with him based on your anecdotal beliefs that are not based on information.

What you can actually hear is important. But human perception can be fooled. I could go into detail on how that happens, but quite frankly you aren't filling me with confidence that it will get through to you. Perceptual error is why you do controlled listening tests. They take a little work to set up, but at least you know for sure then. You don't have to rely on anecdotal belief.

 

[dazzerfong]

In my opinion yes, I'm interested to hear your results If you try It, to me there is a slight but noticable difference, on a test maybe I won't find 100% all the times of DSD and PCM but also maybe I will, I didn't try blind test. I suggest trying yourself and tell me after. Type of headphones and amp/dac you use plays an important role on this test...

Lol.

Different != better. You literally cannot restore detail, you can only abstract. Sure, you can use DSP to 'fake' back the details but it'll never actually be what was lost.

 

[sander99]

If you're interested to make more comparisons, use this to convert your PCM music to DSD

Do you think that if you convert PCM to DSD that the resulting DSD file sounds better than the original PCM file?
Actually it would be possible if you use a player that handles DSD better than PCM. But then there is no reason not to convert your DSD files to PCM, then equalize in the digital domain, and then convert the result back to DSD.

Or maybe you meant it the other way: convert a DSD file to PCM and then compare those?
This could lead to false results if you again use a player that handles DSD better than PCM.

In fact the test that would be ideal in your case is this:
Convert one of your favorite best sounding DSD files (say file A) to PCM (say file B), and convert file B back to DSD (say file C).
Now compare file A and file C in a blind test.
This way the test can not be spoiled by equipment that handles DSD better than PCM.
(Only thing that still could go wrong is that the original DSD file A contains inaudible ultrasonic content leading to audible intermodulation distortion in your equipment. If you go to PCM 44.1/16 you will loose the ultrasonic content and then both file B and C will not give that distortion. If you really want that distortion: simpy go to PCM 192/24 instead of 44.1/16.)

A non blind test is useless because hearing perception is done mostly by the brain and is influenced by many things, what you think, what you know, what you expect, what you see, how you feel, etc. etc. this happens to everyone, including me and you. It can even make you hear night and day differences when there is no audible difference!
PCM 44.1/16 is audible transparent. This is not some opinion but scientific fact. Measurements, mathematics (the sampling theorem, that is a mathematically proven theorem, not just some made up theory), countless properly controlled listening tests, they all point to the same conclusion.
(It is now too late, but until a few years back you could have won US $1,000,000 from the James Randi institute if you could prove that you could hear the difference between high resolution audio - or DSD also counted I think - and 44.1/16 PCM in a proper controlled test. Of course nobody won the price, because it is impossible!)
This may be a shock to someone who until now got all his information from marketing stories, audio magazines, subjective sighted reviews, people parrotting after each other, all unaware of and ignoring the existence of expectation bias etc. It is indeed shocking how widespread many audiophile myths are!

Finally: an analog equalizer will certainly cause more noise and distortion, probably even audible, than a conversion to PCM would.

 

[VNandor]

In fact the test that would be ideal in your case is this:
Convert one of your favorite best sounding DSD files (say file A) to PCM (say file B), and convert file B back to DSD (say file C).
Now compare file A and file C in a blind test.
This way the test can not be spoiled by equipment that handles DSD better than PCM.

This an amazing way to make sure to not gain any knowledge of which playback format is higher (or the same) fidelity. Someone could come up with yet an other absolutely stupid digital format, something so bad that can't possibly be properly decoded. A test like this wouldn't reveal how bad that format is if the file can be converted to pcm and back without a meaningful loss.

If someone is testing "playback" formats and not "containers" I think whether the format can be properly decoded and played shouldn't be eliminated from the test. If somehow DSD could be handled better in a way it's audible there's no way that's a fake result. A fake result would be hiding away this with the conversions and concluding that they are practically the same for playing back music.

 

[sander99]

This an amazing way to make sure to not gain any knowledge of which playback format is higher (or the same) fidelity. Someone could come up with yet an other absolutely stupid digital format, something so bad that can't possibly be properly decoded. A test like this wouldn't reveal how bad that format is if the file can be converted to pcm and back without a meaningful loss.

If someone is testing "playback" formats and not "containers" I think whether the format can be properly decoded and played shouldn't be eliminated from the test.

The goal of my proposed test was not to gain any knowledge about DSD, but to demonstrate that converting to PCM and back to DSD does not degrade the sound!
And hence that converting DSD to PCM does not degrade the sound. And hence that @Jimis4klar doesn't need to worry about this.

 

[KeithPhantom]

Did you ever try to make DSD and PCM sound test?? Type of headphones and amp/dac you use play an important role on this..

Another guy that thinks he can detect stuff more than 100 dB down the fundamental. If you knew something about the science behind digital encoding methods, you would know that this is stupid to say, and this is considering that frequency masking does not exist.

 

[bigshot]

The goal of my proposed test was not to gain any knowledge about DSD, but to demonstrate that converting to PCM and back to DSD does not degrade the sound! And hence that converting DSD to PCM does not degrade the sound. And hence that @Jimis4klar doesn't need to worry about this.

I tend to think his request for tests was purely rhetorical. He doesn't really want to know how it actually works. He just wants us to validate his incorrect guess.

He doesn't know anything about how digital audio works. He doesn't want to know. He just wants us to admire the "discernment" of his "golden ears".