pkane2001

That is true of sighted or blind tests -- focusing on something specific, expecting to find a difference, early childhood memories, reading something on the forums, having indigestion or having just finished a cup of coffee can all influence what and how one hears. This is true of objectivists and subjectivists alike; all that's required is for the subject to be human. These mostly subconscious processes can't just be turned off at will and can't be explained simply by rationalizing, as they are very specific to each individual, their thoughts, memories, experiences, and physical state at that moment in time. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Cognitive_Bias_Codex_With_Definitions%2C_an_Extension_of_the_work_of_John_Manoogian_by_Brian_Morrissette.jpg The idea of a randomized blind test is to allow cognitive biases to be statistically eliminated. A blind test isn't necessarily ABX, or require fast switching between devices. One can take hours, days, or even weeks to evaluate each device, if so inclined. As long as the identity of the device is hidden, the biases can't affect the selection in a reliable, statistically significant way.

Your objection seems to be to what others might claim about the survey. Probably best to address those directly, as they come up. Again, it's a survey. It can't "bastardize real science" as it is not a scientific study or experiment. It's a survey. I presume Archi's results will be detailed enough for anyone who wants to do so to reach their own conclusions. Some may conclude that the design was flawed, some may conclude there is no conclusion possible, and some may reach their own conclusion, one way or the other. The benefit of such a survey is that it can be discussed intelligently, with conclusions and merits judged from the data and not from the anticipation of what someone, somewhere might say or claim about it.

Laugh all you want, but Archi is under no obligation to make every one of his blog posts into a scientific study. Your perception of objectivity is a bit skewed.

This assumes there’s a specific hypothesis being tested, but this is not a science experiment. Results and statistics can provide valuable information regardless of the primary goal of the survey and can inform future surveys and experiments.

It's not? ADCs are at the core of nearly all modern test equipment that manufacturers use to create the audio devices you buy. What's more, they are at the base of nearly all the modern recorded music. Archi used a well-known, well-measured, and well-designed pro-level ADC for this survey. I suggest we see the results before judging it. Knowing him, he'll publish all the data and analysis for everyone to evaluate. I, for one, am curious to see it.

It's not a scientific study, so why treat it as such? It's a survey being done for entertainment. And Archi is collecting information about the price of the system being used to evaluate the recordings, so any conclusions that "cheaper systems can't reveal the difference but hugely expensive ones can" might become apparent in the analysis. Or not. And if everyone fails to prefer the sound of the most expensive DAC(s) in the test, then maybe we should repeat it with a six- and even seven-figure ADC to satisfy your concerns.

Hi Tom, DeltaWave is continually worked on and improved, but I've stopped posting here since there's very little interest. This is where DeltaWave was born, but not where it currently lives :) I've no idea what this person is talking about. DeltaWave is capable of aligning two waveforms with an accuracy of a very tiny fraction of a single sample. The less noise and clock drift present in the recorded waveform, the more accurate the alignment. With noise and clock drift, simply a larger size recording is needed to get the same precision.

I would be OK with an optical feed. It might offer a better noise rejection 😉

And I was so looking forward to feeding DSD1048576 directly into my brain!

I was looking for an I2S connection to hook-up streaming services directly into my brain. Bit-perfect playback all the way through would be nice! 😎

I know you do, Josh. And I'm not an expert in many things, although I try to learn as much as I can about things that I think are important. And, of course, I find it fun to figure things out on my own. Always have. Someone telling me how something works never helped me. I have to go through the process of thinking about it, testing different things out, and finding out for myself. Maybe it's a character flaw...

Anything important is worth the time investment :)

A better way to judge the validity of something is not to figure out which expert to trust when they disagree. It is, IMO, to learn enough about the topic to be able to formulate a supportable and coherent opinion of your own. One that may or may not align with the "expert" opinion of others.

And yet it was objective findings and measurements by @Archimago, @GoldenOne, @mansr and others that built a convincing case against MQA. The big stamp of approval for MQA came from audiophile press, and mostly the non-objective-minded audiophiles who "heard" the improvement rather than those who measured it. That is what is damaging, IMHO: a belief in marketing copy without question or critical thinking.

Hi Jud, sure, there were a few studies, as I recall, finding that pitch recall was the only thing affected by this type of masking. The result was only replicated when testing for pitch recognition, and not any other aspects of sound. Which is why I doubt this particular result was directly related to echoic memory, as what you suggest as the "destruction" of previous recording in echoic memory by the next sound event should, in theory, affect all aspects of sound recognition.