ripping the subjectivist way...?

[sandyk]

Alex,

I have listened to both the dBpoweramp and EAC rips. I don’t hear the differences you guys heard. To me with this one song they are very close with slight tonalities differences. I think it would take a lot more music to decide this. Also it may depend on your playback software as one may mesh better than the other.

lee

 

In theory, there should be no tonality differences. Don't forget too, that this was several years ago, and there have been several revisions of each program since then.

 

Regards

Alex

[Don Hills]

Don

So measurements are now capable of telling us what our ears can, or can not hear ? They should only be used as a very rough guide, nothing more.

 

Did I say otherwise?

[elcorso]

I don't deny that people are perceiving differences. My point is that in many cases the claimed reason for the differences doesn't mesh with the current level of knowledge about the possibility of those reasons causing the differences. The classic example is the quality of the rip (drive, PSU, software etc) causing bit identical files to sound different. At the current level of knowledge, it's an extraordinary claim. To validate (or disprove) it, we need to come up with a measurement that not only shows if there is a difference between the sounds, but shows that it is at a level high enough to be possibly audible to some people.[/.]

 

Honestly I don't have anything to proof, but to myself.

 

If somebody want to try, you are in your own.

 

I own a lot of test instruments that I use only to repair my own gear. I don't believe this "precise" instruments are capable (or precise) enough as our human brain and their incredible matching & perceiving senses.

 

My wife minor studies in brain research (neuroscience) are just in their very initial stages. And you know why? Because instruments inability to measure with extreme precision the "dark side of the human mind".

 

Roch

[Paul R]

Did I say otherwise?

 

No, but I will. Measurments are precise and tell us a whole lot about the physical side of things. I have no problem at all in saying that two bit identical files played through the exact same playback chain in the exact same environment will sound identical. There is no possibility of one zero bit being more of a zero than another.

 

Now, I do not dispute that people are hearing a difference, but it ain't the power supply when ripping the CD.

 

At least, not after the file has been copied at least one time

 

If that means. I have ears of stone - so be it.

[sandyk]

Now, I do not dispute that people are hearing a difference, but it ain't the power supply when ripping the CD.

 

Did you need to post in this thread again just to repeat that ? Several threads in HFC say otherwise, as the only differences between the supplied files in those instances were in the PSU area to the same internal writer. Are you also disputing Lee's reported results ?

[Paul R]

Yep. I am not disputing what you or Lee or anyone else is hearing. I do dispute your reasoning for why you are hearing those differences.

 

Do you need to constantly purport that not only have you found a new effect, but an impossible reason for it?

 

As I said, once copied or transmitted, I can not hear the difference. And when I asked you to test that, you told me you would not be able to hear differences either - with that test.

 

Paul

 

 

 

Did I say otherwise?

 

Did you need to post in this thread again just to repeat that ? Several threads in HFC say otherwise, as the only differences between the supplied files in those instances were in the PSU area to the same internal writer. Are you also disputing Lee's reported results ?

[sandyk]

Do you need to constantly purport that not only have you found a new effect, but an impossible reason for it?

Why shouldn't I respond to a thread titled "Ripping the Subjectivist Way "? It's not as if I started the thread.There is always the Ignore facility.

Sceptics like yourself were not asked for their opinions in this particular thread. Why is the reason impossible ? Isn't it possible that there could be different levels of ground plane noise etc. for example, with variations in power supply type and quality?

Most people also insist that system noise can't be saved along with the binary data on a HDD either, but John Swenson who has worked at a HDD manufacturing facility has said that it is, although he has doubts that the level is sufficient to affect anything.

 

As I said, once copied or transmitted, I can not hear the difference. And when I asked you to test that, you told me you would not be able to hear differences either - with that test.

 

I said that the differences were much harder to generate with this recent I7 W8/64 PC, and that I was not willing to pull the PC apart to remove the C-L-C filter etc just to answer your questions. Is that so unreasonable ?

[coxhaus]

Yep. I am not disputing what you or Lee or anyone else is hearing. I do dispute your reasoning for why you are hearing those differences.

 

Do you need to constantly purport that not only have you found a new effect, but an impossible reason for it?

 

As I said, once copied or transmitted, I can not hear the difference. And when I asked you to test that, you told me you would not be able to hear differences either - with that test.

 

Paul

 

Hey Paul,

 

I can loan you 2 SATA cables which I think are a lot different in sound if you want to play with them. I can loan you an Asus and a 6 inch SATA cable. I will be in Austin on Tuesday or you can come out and listen for yourself. Probably better to hear it in your own system.

 

lee

[Paul R]

Did I say otherwise?

 

Why shouldn't I respond to a thread titled "Ripping the Subjectivist Way "? It's not as if I started the thread.There is always the Ignore facility.

Sceptics like yourself were not asked for their opinions in this particular thread. Why is the reason impossible ? Isn't it possible that there could be different levels of ground plane noise etc. for example, with variations in power supply type and quality?

 

That will survive being copied over a network or to a different media? No. Not to thebest of my knowledge and experience.

 

Most people also insist that system noise can't be saved along with the binary data on a HDD either, but John Swenson who has worked at a HDD manufacturing facility has said that it is, although he has doubts that the level is sufficient to affect anything.

[/Quote]

 

I think what John said and what you heard are two different things. And even at that, it is not possible to "embed" that into the digital data (without changing the data) and have it propagate in any copies.

 

I said that the differences were much harder to generate with this recent I7 W8/64 PC, and that I was not willing to pull the PC apart to remove the C-L-C filter etc just to answer your questions. Is that so unreasonable ?

 

I did not ask you to pull your machine apart in the least. I asked you to do something that would provide hard evidence that the differences you hear could be propagated in a digital copy. We have done this same process numerous times here with negative results. On Windows and MacOS. Which by your logic says even an off the shelf Mac Mini is too good to show up or preserve your differences.

 

So no, I do not think this ill tempered campaign you are waging is justified. I would very much rather duplicate your results than not, but I will not accept your reasons that anytime the differences cannot be heard it is somehow or another the tester's fault.

 

As I said, I believe you are onto something, but the reason you have concocted for what you hear is specious and as unlikely to be the reason as it is for gravity to reverse and everyone fall up into the sky. It is possible, but not at all likely.

 

 

When the diva's vacuum cleaner broke, she refused to use a broom because it just wouldn't be Hoover.

[Paul R]

Did I say otherwise?

 

Hey Paul,

 

I can loan you 2 SATA cables which I think are a lot different in sound if you want to play with them. I can loan you an Asus and a 6 inch SATA cable. I will be in Austin on Tuesday or you can come out and listen for yourself. Probably better to hear it in your own system.

 

lee

 

He Lee- I really want to come out and here your system. I have been experimenting lately with diskless workstations as music servers, so SATA cables are not high on my list, but I fully believe they can easily make a difference.

[Don Hills]

... I own a lot of test instruments that I use only to repair my own gear. I don't believe this "precise" instruments are capable (or precise) enough as our human brain and their incredible matching & perceiving senses. ...

 

Current test instruments are accurate enough to measure deviations from "perfect" (noise, frequency / phase response, jitter and other distortions) that are well below the minimum detectable audible levels determined by even the most optimistic tests. What we lack is the knowledge of how these "below threshold" deviations may combine to make them detectable. So we have to measure the deviations when there is an audible difference (for example, Alex's two rips made with poor and good drives), and then measure when no difference is heard, and finally examine the differences between the sets of measurements. When we can identify the characteristics of the differences, we can examine the possible causes and work on correcting them. For example, if an audible difference turns out to be due to a combination of a particular jitter pattern and phase response, each at sub-audible levels, we can focus our efforts on finding and fixing the causes of the jitter and phase anomalies.

[sandyk]

So no, I do not think this ill tempered campaign you are waging is justified. I would very much rather duplicate your results than not, but I will not accept your reasons that anytime the differences cannot be heard it is somehow or another the tester's fault.

Paul

While I appreciate your previous assistance in this area, I have no intention in going back over this ground every time someone else demands that I once again provide proof because they are unable to duplicate my results through their own system.

Perhaps Lee may be able to demonstrate to you the differences he heard from the test tracks that I uploaded specially for him after he replied in a previous post in this thread that he would like to hear one of my rips. These tracks will also be made available to any other member, who hasn't an axe to grind, to see if they are also able to hear the clear differences reported by Lee.

I also detailed earlier in this thread, that the bulk of the HFC listening reports in this area were only with variations in the power supply to the internal LG BR writer and no other changes. My main interest at this point in time is showing that it is possible to get a markedly improved sounding rip from a well recorded and mastered CD by the use of markedly improved power supplies and minimising the effects of RF/EMI and vibration. At age 75 I simply no longer have the drive needed to keep revisiting this area all the time. If people choose to not believe what I have reported, despite confirmation by many others, including quite a few C.A. members, then it is their loss, not mine. I have also indicated my willingness to have accredited staff members from Sydney Uni present at any of our regular Sydney listening sessions at various locations ,if some C.A. member wants to organise it.

 

Which by your logic says even an off the shelf Mac Mini is too good to show up or preserve your differences.

 

That is the exact opposite to what I believe, and the results of the many experiments in this area posted by Alex C. in various threads with long names, show that an off the shelf Mac Mini is capable of being vastly improved in this area.

Again, I would remind that this thread was not started by the OP to be a discussion thread. He asked for suggestions that I have provided, and it is up to him to decide whether any of them were worthwhile or not.

[sandyk]

Current test instruments are accurate enough to measure deviations from "perfect" (noise, frequency / phase response, jitter and other distortions) that are well below the minimum detectable audible levels determined by even the most optimistic tests. What we lack is the knowledge of how these "below threshold" deviations may combine to make them detectable. So we have to measure the deviations when there is an audible difference (for example, Alex's two rips made with poor and good drives), and then measure when no difference is heard, and finally examine the differences between the sets of measurements. When we can identify the characteristics of the differences, we can examine the possible causes and work on correcting them. For example, if an audible difference turns out to be due to a combination of a particular jitter pattern and phase response, each at sub-audible levels, we can focus our efforts on finding and fixing the causes of the jitter and phase anomalies.

Don

I have no problems with that well thought out response .

Recent confirmed reports by a couple of Sydney EEs suggest that RF/EMI may be involved here, as simply unplugging the lead to my Optus Broadband Modem resulted in a further small improvement.

Regards

Alex

[Don Hills]

Alex,

To summarise:

(Please note, the files are assumed to at all times be bit identical, I believe this has always been the case when you've tested.)

 

1. You rip the same CD twice, once with a "poor" setup and once with a "good" setup.

Result: Two files (presumably .WAV format) on a hard drive.

 

2. You play back the two files.

Result: You hear a difference.

 

3. You copy the two files to other media (CD-R, or USB memory stick).

You send the media to other people.

You (and other people) play the files.

Result: You (and some of the other people) hear a difference.

(Question: Did you also send the original hard drive to anyone to listen?)

 

4. You transfer the files via various methods involving intermediate copies and format changes (ZIP, FLAC, Internet file transfer).

Result: The differences become harder to detect.

 

Is this all correct? Have I missed anything? This isn't a trick question, it's just that you're sick of repeating it all and there are people following the threads that may not have been around at the beginning.

[sandyk]

(Question: Did you also send the original hard drive to anyone to listen?)

Don

No I haven't sent the original HDD away, as that would mean buying a new one to replace it. I have however also sent a couple of Corsair Voyagers over recent years with the comparison files on them to European members of another forum to be passed around. Many of those members also had the benefit of a similar JLH PSU to that I am using with the Corsair Voyagers, as a result of a well received DIY project that I posted in another forum. After a while they appear to fail to get passed on to the next recipient.

The rest of what you are saying is basically correct. I will need to look closer at your post after I eventually manage to get breakfast and pop some pills. I need a shot of caffeine right now, it's now after 10Am! (I was up at 7.15AM .)

 

Regards

Alex

 

 

P.S.

There have now been > 800 JLH PSU Add-on PCBs been made available worldwide.

[Paul R]

Alex- I will remind you that you are the one making a pissing contest out of this. You declare anything hat supports your theory as fact and dismiss out of hand everything else as false or some kind of attack.

 

I am getting tired of seeing the same thing time after time and the fact is, you have never listened to any of the gear here and have no idea what it is or is not capable of. You may not realize it, but a little bit of that attitude you keep putting out, even to your friends, gets to be powerfully insulting.

 

Enough said. I am out of the conversation with you. It is a damn shame all your hard work is in danger of being pushed to the side and forgotten because you insist on being an obstinate old jackass.

 

 

 

 

 

Did I say otherwise?

 

Paul

While I appreciate your previous assistance in this area, I have no intention in going back over this ground every time someone else demands that I once again provide proof because they are unable to duplicate my results through their own system.

Perhaps Lee may be able to demonstrate to you the differences he heard from the test tracks that I uploaded specially for him after he replied in a previous post in this thread that he would like to hear one of my rips. These tracks will also be made available to any other member, who hasn't an axe to grind, to see if they are also able to hear the clear differences reported by Lee.

I also detailed earlier in this thread, that the bulk of the HFC listening reports in this area were only with variations in the power supply to the internal LG BR writer and no other changes. My main interest at this point in time is showing that it is possible to get a markedly improved sounding rip from a well recorded and mastered CD by the use of markedly improved power supplies and minimising the effects of RF/EMI and vibration. At age 75 I simply no longer have the drive needed to keep revisiting this area all the time. If people choose to not believe what I have reported, despite confirmation by many others, including quite a few C.A. members, then it is their loss, not mine. I have also indicated my willingness to have accredited staff members from Sydney Uni present at any of our regular Sydney listening sessions at various locations ,if some C.A. member wants to organise it.

 

 

 

That is the exact opposite to what I believe, and the results of the many experiments in this area posted by Alex C. in various threads with long names, show that an off the shelf Mac Mini is capable of being vastly improved in this area.

Again, I would remind that this thread was not started by the OP to be a discussion thread. He asked for suggestions that I have provided, and it is up to him to decide whether any of them were worthwhile or not.

[sandyk]

Paul

Why don't you just take Lee up on his offer and see if you are able to hear the differences that he reported ?

Even if you are unable to hear them, perhaps Lee will be able to demonstrate to you that he can.

He can also demonstrate those SATÂ cable differences to you too.

 

Alex

[Paul R]

Did I say otherwise?

 

Paul

Why don't you just take Lee up on his offer and see if you are able to hear the differences that he reported ?

Even if you are unable to hear them, perhaps Lee will be able to demonstrate to you that he can.

He can also demonstrate those SATÂ cable differences to you too.

 

Alex

 

What we have here is a total failure to communicate.

 

I have no doubt both Lee and yourself can hear differences. Nothing to do with what I asked.

 

What you have not done is clearly and unmistakably tell me the difference between the files.

[sandyk]

What we have here is a total failure to communicate.

 

There is no communication problem as to what you want from me. First I want acknowledgement from you as to whether you are able to hear the differences between the files from Lee's system or not. If you post that you are able to hear the differences as reported by Lee, perhaps we can then take the subject off line to appease those who keep complaining about the endless repetition ? If you are still unable to hear the differences that Lee hears , then I will not be engaging in any further tests or discussions with you in this area. It would simply be quite unproductive .

[Paul R]

Did I say otherwise?

 

There is no communication problem as to what you want from me. First I want acknowledgement from you as to whether you are able to hear the differences between the files from Lee's system or not. If you post that you are able to hear the differences as reported by Lee, perhaps we can then take the subject off line to appease those who keep complaining about the endless repetition ? If you are still unable to hear the differences that Lee hears , then I will not be engaging in any further tests or discussions with you in this area. It would simply be quite unproductive .

 

There is a great failure to communicate here. And I do not take demands that I rig any any testing to have a guaranteed success. Even you have said you are not able to hear differences under any kind of controlled conditions. (See your previous comments in this thread.)

 

Nor do I buy off on your theory that my gear is not sensitive enough to hear your differences. Even running CPlay to a Wavelength DAC and headphones That is your opinion but only your opinion and I judge that to be far from the truth.

 

As I said, my opinion is clear, bit for bit identical data will sound the same if played from the same media on the same playback chain. The last files I listened to from you did sound different- but they were not bit for bit identical with RIPs from the CD and so were useless for comparison purposes or to verify. I have said many times I believe you, but I am not gullible and I do not have time to waste.

 

But you are right, at this point, I won't be doing any more testing or trying to help you along any more. I am absolutely not interested, given your insensate demands.

 

Would you please refrain from commenting to my posts everywhere else on the system? I clearly understand your point now and do not need constant reminding.

 

Good luck in your audio quest- I wish you much success.

 

Paul

[sandyk]

Would you please refrain from commenting to my posts everywhere else on the system?

 

That is an unreasonable request to ask of any member.

 

Why don't you simply visit Lee as you have planned ? If you were able to hear the differences via Lee's system, I would have been more than happy to perform other tests that you asked of me, within reason, but not posted on the forum unless we came to some kind of consensus.

 

All rips that I have provided for comparison purposes have identical checksums at the time of uploading them. If those that you listened to sounded different ,but no longer had identical check sums, then you should have let me know, and I would have uploaded a fresh copy.

[wgscott]

What we have here is a total failure to communicate..

 

 

[sandyk]

[Deaf Cat]

Wow lots gone on since I last had a read :-o last two videos :-)

 

 

Any way, almost got round to ripping, think I have settled upon a plan:

 

Going to try the windows 8 machine (as suggested) but with fidelizer, and some iso feet, (check it has twin run sata cables) and compare to the xp safe mode iso feet rips, I'm expecting it to be rather difficult to tell any difference, from what has been mentioned. Will see if I can find the same cd drive. If I hear no difference it will be pleasing as I can then use the win8 machine, that will be a lot easier than rigging up the XP machine to a win8 network. (going from XP to win8 was a noticeable improvement in playback, so my! (possibly daft) logic says ripping may be good too ;-)

 

Been looking into flac compression levels, and learnt that 0 compression is not exactly 0 compression, so plan to trial the dbpower amp wav flac wrapper, (after first few comparisons XP/win8) something I came across in the Linn forum someone posted I found rather interesting:

 

I found this comment on the Linn Forum from one of its engineers which you may be interested in

 

We have done extensive measurements on power supply disturbance recently, and have compared results for both FLAC and WAV streaming. Our findings are as follows :

 

1. If we measure the power rail that feeds the main processor in the DS we can clearly see identifiable disturbance patterns due to audio decoding and network activity. These patterns do look different for WAV and FLAC - WAV shows more clearly defined peaks due to regular network activity and processing, while FLAC shows more broadband disturbance due to increased (but more random) processor activity.

 

2. If we measure the power rails that feed the audio clock and the DAC we see no evidence of any processor related disturbances. There is no measurable difference (down to a noise floor measured in micro-volts) between FLAC and WAV in any of the audio power rails.

 

3. Highly accurate measurements of clock jitter and audio distortion/noise also show no difference between WAV and FLAC.

 

As it seems less activity, by my pc, seems to help towards more enjoyable playback, dbpower amp seems a reasonable thing to trial :-) making the processor have a more even working life, rather than a more erratic flac decoading life..

I shall have a listen and see ;-)

 

Many thanks for all the comments, especially all the tips on what I can try.

Cheers for now

Mark

[sandyk]

Mark

If you have a decent headphone amplifier and pair of headphones, the differences may be easier to pick.

Why not save your very best recordings as both .wav and .flac rips ?

Thanks for posting the comments from the Linn Forum. As I mentioned previously I noted an improvement with the lead to the modem unplugged.

Regards

Alex