OK, I tried hydrogen audio. It didn't go too well.

[Jud]

I think if I had said something like "I use Audirvana Plus, because it sounds much better than iTunes," that would have been a reasonable point to ask for some objective evidence. But notice that never happened, with me or with them. I never made any such assertion (knowing the probable outcome), and they never asked. Being a moderately successful scientist by any reasonable standard, I don't really feel I need to prove anything to some anonymous goof-balls on the internet who, having recently discovered what a hammer can do, look everywhere to find some nails.

 

They aren't scientists.

 

They are anonymous keyboard bullies who slavishly ape what they wrongly perceive to be the aims and methodology of the natural sciences. It actually reminds me more of how things are done in the so-called social sciences (behavioral psychology and so on).

 

My sin was simply that I did not allow them to bully me. The "moderator" guy (and it almost certainly was a guy) clearly interpreted this as a "lack of respect". It takes a twisted perspective to see it that way, but clearly their self-imposed idiot-logical confines and bizarre rules and rigidity prevent them from seeing it any other way. The behavior is much more reminiscent of a religious cult. I spend almost all my time with scientists. My wife is one. Most of my friends are. None behave this way. Not one.

 

As for double-blind tests, they are resorted to when nothing better is available. They are quite helpful in determining things like the efficacy of drugs. I think it would be wrong to dismiss the utility of such a thing out of hand. But in many fields of science, there is no need for such a primitive approach. All good experiments are designed to test hypotheses. Double-blind tests are useful for testing a null hypothesis. But they can't take you much further.

 

Like all processes that become rituals, the one over at HA has its more or less amusing quirks. There was a mention of Vox on OS X that got no rises out of anyone. Nor, I would guess, would a reference to HQPlayer on Linux. But a pay-for player on a pay-for OS! Beyond the pale! (The whole "pay-for" thing is also part of the ritual, since the notion of "free software" is supposed to be free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-beer.)

 

The pack mentality and overweening moderation accomplish their purpose, and in the thread you briefly participated in, perhaps some folks got to read about players they hadn't run into before (though deity forbid they be exposed to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of pay-for music players). But I think their conversations tend to be less interesting and informative than those here, for all our faults.

[Jud]

Personally, I'd like to see some independent statistics that show at least via a simple T-test that "almost always" translates into something more objective than feel-good, self-congratulatory gooey molasses.

 

Feel-good? Hydrogen Audio?

[Jud]

It is an extraordinary claim. It requires at least some convincing, objective evidence, or should be disregarded as subjective expectation bias, which it probably is, i.e., total BS that just makes the poster feel good about himself.

 

To expand on my rather terse last comment: It seems to me Hydrogen Audio commenters have a tendency to regard *negative* ("Apple's DRM sucks") or *null* hypotheses ("high dollar music players offer nothing unavailable with free players") as requiring no proof, though IIRC Apple doesn't DRM music any longer, and you pointed out several things the paid players did that were unavailable with free-as-in-beer iTunes. Anything they can do to negatively jump on and shout down people making even trivially provable factual claims apparently passes for the highest form of "objectivity." I.e., saying stuff to make those with positive claims feel bad makes them feel good. (Wow, I think I've managed to confuse even myself by this point....)

[Jud]

Personally, I'd like to see some independent statistics that show at least via a simple T-test....

 

Oh by the way: One-tailed or two? ;-)

[Jud]

They tolerate me far more here, even though "ideologically" I have more in common with what Hydrogen Audio claims to be.

 

So why is that?

 

Maybe because Computer Audiophile doesn't "claim to be" much of anything - especially authoritative. It's just a place where folks can enjoy chatting with each other, even if the chat can sometimes get pretty spirited.

 

I've found places that put the emphasis on fun are much better atmospheres for learning (yes, even "objective facts") than places that put the emphasis on the One True Method of Knowledge (Which Is What We Damn Well Say It Is, Punk).

[Jud]

Sorry for being a tad descriptive here, but I'd prefer to bob for apples in a truck stop toilet than hang out at Hydrogen Audio. I'm sorry you had to find out the hard way, Scott.

 

My sincerest apologies to truck stops everywhere.

 

But who's Scott?

 

(Those are initials followed by the last name.)

 

 

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[Jud]

My first thought was, "Huh?"

So I reviewed the thread. My second thought was, "Huh?"

rgtb (a newbie) was impolite and was rightly called on it by mudlord.

I've certainly seen worse here. I don't know what the HA moderator said in their original message, but I suspect there's a little more to the story than you showed.

I agree they tend to the hard-core objectivist over there, but a forum where it is mooted that copying a WAV file from one media to another changes its sound isn't the world's most balanced place either.

 

Don, I'm a little surprised you didn't catch what occurred.

 

Bill Scott, no raving subjectivist he, responded to a poll on HA asking what players people used. He was immediately jumped on by other members for using one of those players everyone knows is "voodoo." Some of this jumping-on remains in the thread.

 

Bill then responded (from his posts here at CA it is safe to assume he did not claim Audirvana sounded like flights of angels compared to all other players); whereupon a moderator told him we only hold with scientifically demonstrated claims here; whereupon Bill said, well, being a scientist I know something about that (this correspondence is reproduced at the beginning of this thread); whereupon Bill was banned. Edit: As is common practice at many forums, statements by the banned individual were later removed from the thread.

 

Thus: It is fine at HA to make *criticisms* of feelthy voodoo subjectivist software and hardware; but it is not fine to make factual statements in response to such criticism. This is "objectivism" as ideology, not objectivity as a practice.

 

 

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[Jud]

To ask for 'objective' support in the form of results from double blind listening tests seems pretty sensible to me, certainly for extraordinary claims like bit-identical files sounding different from each other.

 

One problem is that HA is fairly religious about A/B/X testing (and rarely "double blind" - I've seen people using that phrase who evidently don't know what it means), to the exclusion of other objective testing protocols that are perfectly acceptable in both the "hard" and "soft" sciences. There's no scientific reason to limit what one considers evidence exclusively to two testing protocols (single or double blind A/B/X).

 

(This is totally leaving aside what Miska mentioned with regard to subjective experience making him curious about whether there might be something objective behind it. I see nothing wrong with that. Nor do I see any scientific reason to think that what we know now about audio reproduction and human hearing is all we will know, forever and ever amen, but now we're getting even further afield.)

 

Personally, I know from experience that I can't trust my hearing in a sighted setting when I have knowledge about what I'm listening to and/or what I should be hearing. I'd be more than a little surprised if that wasn't true for others as well.

 

Absolutely, I think we've all got to allow that our senses are fallible. That shouldn't absolutely foreclose our inquiring into what we believe we are hearing and why, it's just that we've always got to be ready for the possibility that "I was fooled" or "I imagined it" may be the correct answer.

[Jud]

Well said.

 

Eagerly awaiting the list of non-defective DACs.

[Jud]

Feel free to suggest one. I didn't even suggest or imply that I'd provide a list.

 

Hi Don. I have no quibbles at all with the way you want to categorize DACs. It's not the same way I'd do it, but surely there's room for more than one way to do this in the world. Besides, we've chatted about this before in other threads, I have a good idea about at least one DAC you're thinking of, and it's a very well built DAC.

 

But notice it wasn't your comment I responded to, it was jriver's. It's *his* idea of what a non-defective DAC would be that I'm interested in. In particular, if he'd be willing to play along sufficiently to answer what is an admittedly loaded question (or two of them, actually):

 

- Do you (jriver) know of any non-defective DACs less expensive than the new Berkeley Reference?

 

- If so, do you then consider the Reference a rip-off?

[Jud]

Unless we are talking about the level of math required to write filters or have a real understanding of them, I don't see math as having a lot to do with being able to contribute to conversations about digital audio.

 

 

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[Jud]

Geez, I've been away for a couple of months and I had forgotten how rude and disrespectful some people on this forum are to each other.

 

Yes, welcome back.

 

 

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[Jud]

Having known Bill since he was a grad student and being very familiar with his research since then, I can attest that what he has achieved is well earned.

 

 

Also in a fit of insomnia ( an all too often affliction for me ) I looked at Hydrogen Audio and thought that most of the posts that I read ( admittedly a small sampling ) were rational, well-reasoned, and not stated in the foaming-at-the-mouth style that I was expecting based on the opinions about that forum that are oft-stated here. I plan to go back again to learn what I can, even when I disagree.

 

I agree about civility, and particularly about taking advantage of all opportunities to learn. I do think the civility is sometimes attained at the price of an orthodoxy that would not fit me well.

 

 

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[Jud]

what I'm a little surprised about is that there seems to be so very little discussion about room acoustics on this forum which seems comparably a much more important influence than different cabling for instance. Why is that? Do all of you already have perfectly treated listening rooms so that it makes sense to concentrate purely on (even minuscule aspects of) your gear?

 

There have actually been quite a few such discussions, many in the Speakers and Headphones area of the forum. And there is also a lot of discussion of software DSP. For room setup, you might try looking back through bdiament and mayhem13's comments, and some of Barry Diament's posts on his own blog. There's also Jim Smith's book, which has been widely praised here.

 

 

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[Jud]

If you kids don't stop fighting, I'm going to stop this car right now...

 

That was before cars with DVD players. Now it's "Hey, it's the Grand Canyon out the window!"

[Jud]

Perhaps this says more than you intended.

 

My favorite along these lines came from Frank Zappa. After Peter Frampton issued an album whose single was the sappy "I'm In You" (lyric: I'm in you; you're in me...), Zappa called a halt to the nonsense by putting out a single entitled "I Have Been In You."

[Jud]

Oh no, please...

 

No need for this. Dennis and Bill have certainly assisted me in the process of formulating my ideas about audio, providing lots of helpful (and occasionally provocative, but who among us hasn't?) comments.

[Jud]

And ... less hate to opponents

 

Indeed. In the context of audio, it is good to think of others not as "opponents" at all, but simply as people with different ideas. Consideration of different ideas can be helpful.

[Jud]

I'm Bill (William, the w in wgscott). Dennis is esldude. We are part of the local right-wing objectivist lunatic tin-eared propeller-hat flat-earth fringe.

 

I prefer to think of you as Capitalist Running Dogs. :-)

[Jud]

Bits are bits and you can't hear (nor sample) between the bits and if it bothers you that much then just get a Schiit Wryd or ipurifier for $99 and be done with it. Now can we get back to discussing how computers can make audio better instead of worse?

 

BTW, I am an expert in these matters.

 

If you do say so (some might say anoint) yourself!

[Jud]

(You might still want one to determine whether the measured differences are indeed audible.)

 

My unironic comment is that I would love to see some work on how effective DBTs are at probing sensory limits. (Thinking along the lines of Oohashi's subjects not being able to hear ultrasonics consciously, but EEG results being different in the presence of ultrasonics.)

[Jud]

Bits are bits and you can't hear (nor sample) between the bits....

 

Huh, strange, here I thought the conversion from digital to analog was precisely the process of allowing us to "hear...between the bits."

[Jud]

Information by Jud about EEG and ultrasound correlation is interesting. May be it give new look to sound perception and audio equipment development.

 

Interesting, yes, but not yet confirmed. Followup experiments by others were not able to confirm some of Oohashi's conclusions. (I am not certain these followups duplicated some of what Oohashi did exactly - so far as I'm able to determine from quick read-throughs, the followups asked whether people could hear differences, while Oohashi asked which musical passages the subjects enjoyed more. I also don't know whether EEGs were performed in the followups.)

[Jud]

Would you find a DBT more compelling than EEG results?

 

I think a possible parallel in medicine is studies that rely on self-reporting are usually not considered as reliable as those that include physiological measurements.

 

What I'd like to see, and think would be powerful, would be the *correlations*, or lack of same, between DBTs and brain scans. Regarding brain scans, the more specific and discriminating the type of scan the better, due to the degree of specialization of sensory neurons. I would love to see attempts to find correspondences with self-reported ability to hear differences, as well as self-reported greater enjoyment of one musical sample versus another.

 

Not directly related, but some transient pulse trains with fMRi result.

 

http://www.google.com/url?url=http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url%3Furl%3Dhttp://www.researchgate.net/publication/13685844_Measurements_of_the_temporal_fMRI_response_of_the_human_auditory_cortex_to_trains_of_tones/file/79e4150cb39d654e85.pdf%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26scisig%3DAAGBfm3CEyZ0Df7aRIbqgSeGbeP72ViTlA%26oi%3Dscholarr&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&sa=X&ei=MOScVICkIoKvggT7oYPQDA&ved=0CB4QgAMoADAA&usg=AFQjCNGcg49NfJo72IuTvJ60QfZ585r8sg&cad=rja

 

My idea is the reverse of course. If they get fMRi or EEG results mapped out quite well, I want to see how the results differ when someone listens to a sighted change. Say being monitored while listening to CD, then being told (and seeing) they next listen to DSD or 384/24. Then compare that to being told we are going back to CD (while actually playing Hires). In other words the effect of sighted information on aural perception.

 

Yes, absolutely. I wonder along these lines if there might be work on what happens in the visual cortex when people are shown optical illusions, then are shown it *is* an illusion, then are shown the illusion again. Something like a "before and after" reaction to this video:

 

[Jud]

Dunno about your DAC, but mine has a comparator at the input stage that turns 1.1's and 0.9's back into 1's. Thus making it a DAC and not a DA3C (Digital and analog to analog converter). But if you have a problem, then get the Schiit wyrd.

 

Ah yes, forgot, you have one of those good DACs that is absolutely immune to any audible effects of jitter, electrical noise, etc. Just happy little 1s and 0s marching along and being converted....