Who's afraid of DBTs

[PeterSt]

The answer isn't to throw it out completely. Merely to spread the word on what good procedure is.

 

Is it possible to rephrase this somewhat ? I am not even sure whether you're really asking something. Sorry.

[Allan F]

Please excuse me if these links have already been posted in this thread:

 

Audio Musings by Sean Olive: A Method For Training Listeners and Selecting Program For Listening Tests

Harman How to Listen: Welcome to How to Listen!

 

[fritzg]

I've never been afraid of the Drive-By Truckers.

[mayhem13]

Ok.......so now we've moved on to throwing around the ' time domain' thing like an alternate universe or fifth dimension and replaced jitter with it as the dark matter that explains everything.

 

So someone wanna explain how to isolate the aspect of time from the frequency of a complex signal such as music? No theories please.

[mmerrill99]

So now all you have to do to convince me is show me how you can know that untrained listeners using DBT to confirm differences is worse than sighted uncontrolled listening.

Just thinking some more about this, I would cite the number of null results from hobbiest run DBTs as evidence of the failure of DBTs to find differences.

 

Indeed, one could also cite the example of Swedish Radio debacle when using 60 60 expert listeners spanning 20,000 evaluations over a period of two years to evaluate & to decide on a codec good enough to replace analogue FM broadcasts in Europe. When they sent a tape of a recording done with the chosen codec to Bart Locanthi, he found in the recording an artefact of the codec (using sighted normal listening).

[trithio]

Ok.......so now we've moved on to throwing around the ' time domain' thing like an alternate universe or fifth dimension and replaced jitter with it as the dark matter that explains everything.

That should not be news for anyone. It's just one of the main staples of subjectivism: throw in all sorts of fifth dimensions and things like quatum mechanics and entanglement and such.

I wonder how can anyone think that they can use a barely explained or unknown thing like that to explain other things. I also wonder when will the paralel universes appear. Like cables who work in three paralel universes. All audible of course

 

So someone wanna explain how to isolate the aspect of time from the frequency of a complex signal such as music? No theories please.

 

You might want to say "no _anecdotes_ please". Gravity is also 'just a theory'

[sandyk]

That should not be news for anyone. It's just one of the main staples of subjectivism: throw in all sorts of fifth dimensions and things like quatum mechanics and entanglement and such.

I wonder how can anyone think that they can use a barely explained or unknown thing like that to explain other things. I also wonder when will the paralel universes appear. Like cables who work in three paralel universes. All audible of course

 

 

 

Why the hell do closed minded sceptics like yourself keep insisting on rubbish such as all fully functional USB cables must sound the same, when a look with a C.R.O at noise levels and bleed through from signal and power wires can be so readily seen with different construction USB cables ? Differential receivers are NOT perfect, and will be affected to some extent by crap from the noisy +5V line being induced into the D+ and D- leads, which are typically side by side with the +5V and 0v return leads as twisted pairs, INSIDE the same shield. With a Desktop PC there is also a potential earth loop when connected to IEC mains earth as in many USB devices the screen and 0v lines are internally connected.

Alex

[Allan F]

Glad to see from the above that you appear to be in fine form, Alex.

[Jabs1542]

Why the hell do closed minded sceptics like yourself keep insisting on rubbish such as all fully functional USB cables must sound the same, when a look with a C.R.O at noise levels and bleed through from signal and power wires can be so readily seen with different construction USB cables ? Differential receivers are NOT perfect, and will be affected to some extent by crap from the noisy +5V line being induced into the D+ and D- leads, which are typically side by side with the +5V and 0v return leads as twisted pairs, INSIDE the same shield. With a Desktop PC there is also a potential earth loop when connected to IEC mains earth as in many USB devices the screen and 0v lines are internally connected.

Alex

 

Welcome back Alex, you have been missed.

[trithio]

Why the hell do closed minded sceptics like yourself keep insisting on rubbish such as all fully functional USB cables must sound the same, when a look with a C.R.O at noise levels and bleed through from signal and power wires can be so readily seen with different construction USB cables ? Differential receivers are NOT perfect, and will be affected to some extent by crap from the noisy +5V line being induced into the D+ and D- leads, which are typically side by side with the +5V and 0v return leads as twisted pairs, INSIDE the same shield. With a Desktop PC there is also a potential earth loop when connected to IEC mains earth as in many USB devices the screen and 0v lines are internally connected.

Alex

 

Are you sure you are talking to me? Cause you are the secong guy with a passion for putting words in my mouth. And the same USB cables for some reason. Looks like a hobby is developing around here

 

Dont remember ever writing much if anything about the usb cable sound. Maybe some 'jokes' about $2K cables. Could be that my memory isnt that good though feel free to refresh it. But anyway, since you did throw the subject at me, we should better talk about my real experience in that area. My usb anecdote indeed says I never heard a difference. Havent done that much testing either cause I dont see why would I hear differences. My Dac does not use the usb power lines and whatever tiny noise is coming over the data wires should be taken care of by the dac's isolation. So that would be it. I chose my components carefully and now I dont even care about those Usb cables. Or about any measurements, relevant or not.

Say or do whatever you wish about the bloody Usb cables, that is not something of interest in my setup. YMMV but that will not affect mine. And neither should usb cables be a subject of much interest in this thread.

Happy now? Guess not. But imagine how happy am I when you attribute funny words to me.

All in good faith. And hopefully good health.

[beanbag]

There is no mention of "picking correctly 60% of the time" anywhere in the paper. The confidence level is above 95% for the results of all tests except one test, IIRC.

 

That would be the very prominent Fig. 4 in the paper. The 95% confidence means that they are 95% sure that 60% is better than 50% random guessing.

 

For 44.1 kHz sampling frequency, it simply doesn't matter what the width of the transition band is because then the filter artifacts can, and often will become audible under normal listening conditions in a decent Hi-Fi setup playing high quality recordings. Participants of these tests were not all golden ear type listeners BTW, so...

 

That's not what I get from the paper at all.

The listeners were trained with a filter of only 10Hz transition band, which makes artifacts that are "clearly and reliably" identified.

Then they went to 459Hz passband and the differences were barely detectable (~10% above random chance)

One would think the detectibility threshold would be even lower with a 1kHz passband, but they never bothered to do that.

 

That said, I am able to reliably and clearly hear differences even when using the far superior filtering of iZotope RX Advanced (latest version) instead of SoX. This is regardless of which filter settings are used. On a playback system that some would describe as Mid-Fi instead of truly High End. Despite the fact I do not have better than average hearing.

 

To you, these observations might be completely worthless, and that's perfectly fine. To me, personally, however, the fact I was able to pass the tests with very little trouble using foobar2000 and ABX Comparator component for foobar2000 is telling me everything I need to know plus more. I actually even have removed the ABX Comparator component from my foobar2000 a long time ago because I am not the type of person who keeps looking for answers to questions that have already been answered correctly. It's because, unlike some other people, I am not afraid to accept the final truth. The final truth being that the audible difference between 44.1 kHz sampling and higher than 44.1 kHz sampling is NOT a product of people's imagination or expectation bias, and that all opposite claims are, typically ironically in fact, subjective accusations made by those who would rather die painfully than admit they were wrong, as was greatly to be expected.

 

Good for you, but maybe you can leave out the commentary on your ideological antagonists?

 

The fact the Meyer & Moran testing method was simply wrong is very extremely easy to demonstrate, so I am not going to dig into that on here, but re ABX testing [AES Convention Paper 9174] states the following:

 

ABX tests have a high sensitivity, that is, the proportion of true-positive results out of total positive results is high. However, ABX tests also have low specificity, meaning that the proportion of true-negative results out of total negative results can be spuriously low. Translating this into outcomes in psychophysical tests, the proportion of the time that a listener scores well on an ABX test by chance is low, but the proportion of the time that a listener can score poorly on a test in spite of being able to discriminate the sounds is high. An ABX test requires that a listener retains all three sounds in working memory, and that they perform a minimum of two pair-wise comparisons (A with X and B with X), after which the correct response must be given; this results in the cognitive load for an ABX test being high.

 

Good thing, then, that the test procedure they used was not ABX, but another blind test variant:

 

"The procedure used was intended to combine high

statistical sensitivity and specificity with ease of use

by listeners"

So you shouldn't have any complaints about that either.

[sandyk]

The final truth being that the audible difference between 44.1 kHz sampling and higher than 44.1 kHz sampling is NOT a product of people's imagination or expectation bias, and that all opposite claims are, typically ironically in fact, subjective accusations made by those who would rather die painfully than admit they were wrong, as was greatly to be expected.

Good for you, but maybe you can leave out the commentary on your ideological antagonists?

 

LOL !

Seems that the Beanbag has a sensitive side after all?

[beanbag]

LOL !

Seems that the Beanbag has a sensitive side after all?

 

Beanbag doesn't make ad hominem attacks and expects similar behavior out of others.

[Daudio]

LOL ! Seems that the Beanbag has a sensitive side after all?

 

Alex, Welcome back, to CA and to this trainwreck of a thread (can't look away from the horror). Seems to be almost a troll convention, bringing them all out to party and let down their hair. You may detect a sensitive side here and there, but I've surely caught a strong whiff of old Prot's ugly sense of humor !

 

Carry on, good sir, and remember not to let them frame the debate

[Sam Lord]

The note made by Meyer and Moran, i.e. "the cognitive load for an ABX test being high...," is a quite old idea that many people including myself made 25 years ago until we were blue in the face. The best tests were and are blind, shuffled, randomly-identified AB tests using a boatload of subjects, hence too expensive. You instruct, "first is 1 [or 2, and listen] and this is 2 [or 1, and listen]. Please score your sheet." The identities are shuffled with each new subject. So the circle goes round and round.

[trithio]

The note made by Meyer and Moran, i.e. "the cognitive load for an ABX test being high...," is a quite old idea that many people including myself made 25 years ago until we were blue in the face. The best tests were and are blind, shuffled, randomly-identified AB tests using a boatload of subjects, hence too expensive. You instruct, "first is 1 [or 2, and listen] and this is 2 [or 1, and listen]. Please score your sheet." The identities are shuffled with each new subject. So the circle goes round and round.

 

The circle goes round and round but in audioland it almost invariably ends up somewhere in the stoneage. Where you have no science, no controlled tests and you have to rely on your ears and some firetime anecdotes only.

Problem is, the predators today are much more sophisticated. Like the marketing animal. Those people use the latest science and most advancesd tests: psychology, sociology, crowd-science. All in there and all in full throttle. And they only have one precise target: your wallet.

On the other side you have the audiophile 'fighting' them with his ears. Cause they astutely convinced him that the very science they use is bull for him. Talk about unfair odds and gullible people.

Many CA members and audiophiles are even very proud of their stoneage principles and of their blind rejection of any useful scientific tool. It could sometimes be fun watching people struggle like that. Simple, small fish in the net. Until it becomes sad.

[sandyk]

The circle goes round and round but in audioland it almost invariably ends up somewhere in the stoneage. Where you have no science, no controlled tests and you have to rely on your ears and some firetime anecdotes only.

Problem is, the predators today are much more sophisticated. Like the marketing animal. Those people use the latest science and most advancesd tests: psychology, sociology, crowd-science. All in there and all in full throttle. And they only have one precise target: your wallet.

On the other side you have the audiophile 'fighting' them with his ears. Cause they astutely convinced him that the very science they use is bull for him. Talk about unfair odds and gullible people.

Many CA members and audiophiles are even very proud of their stoneage principles and of their blind rejection of any useful scientific tool. It could sometimes be fun watching people struggle like that. Simple, small fish in the net. Until it becomes sad.

 

Why the hell did you become a member here, when all you do is attack audiophiles in a forum called Computer Audiophile ?

Despite what you may wish to believe quite a few audiophiles like myself, do come from a technical background. I was a Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 44years service with Australia's Telstra where I received several awards for technical innovations. I have worked alongside Engineers, and they have also worked alongside me on technical improvements designed by me. ..

I was also well aware of the importance of checksums due to my maintenance of Digital Telephone Exchanges and After Hours Control of a district comprising 10 other telephone exchanges.

I also realise the importance of appropriate measurements. You, on the other hand appear to treat measurements and existing theory as the be-all-end-all.

If you wish to remain a member here, I would suggest that you stop treating the majority of members as effing idiots.

[sbgk]

The circle goes round and round but in audioland it almost invariably ends up somewhere in the stoneage. Where you have no science, no controlled tests and you have to rely on your ears and some firetime anecdotes only.

Problem is, the predators today are much more sophisticated. Like the marketing animal. Those people use the latest science and most advancesd tests: psychology, sociology, crowd-science. All in there and all in full throttle. And they only have one precise target: your wallet.

On the other side you have the audiophile 'fighting' them with his ears. Cause they astutely convinced him that the very science they use is bull for him. Talk about unfair odds and gullible people.

Many CA members and audiophiles are even very proud of their stoneage principles and of their blind rejection of any useful scientific tool. It could sometimes be fun watching people struggle like that. Simple, small fish in the net. Until it becomes sad.

 

more communist talk, how dare you spend your money as you want.

If it's so dangerous we need to get the government involved to tell us what is safe to buy.

These companies just can't be allowed to market stuff to people who want to buy it, the people must be protected.

There's wealthy people out there who might buy something because they like the sound without looking at any measurements or doing DBT.

They might even read a review in a hifi magazine, the horror.

It's a disaster zone, send for the UN.

[trithio]

You are both very funny. Have to admit, communists were totally missing from the debate

And if you did not figure out by now, I am on the C side of CA.

To my recollection, nobody proposed to use measurements as be-all-end-all. I for one will be extremely happy if they were at least a start. Like in using them at all instead of spending your energy bashing any form of science and declaring it useless for audio. But then that is just me.

[beanbag]

And if you did not figure out by now, I am on the C side of CA.

 

Yes, you would think that this would be a site in which people learn about how computers can make their audio better, not all the ways that computers can make their audio worse. In that sense, all the other forums besides the general forum have this kind of useful info, e.g. DSP, room correction, music servers, etc.

 

To my recollection, nobody proposed to use measurements as be-all-end-all. I for one will be extremely happy if they were at least a start. Like in using them at all instead of spending your energy bashing any form of science and declaring it useless for audio.

 

Yes, that would be me. I would like measurements to be all and end all so we can stop having this drama about DBT and he said she said.

[PeterSt]

Yes, but didn't I say that ...

no, wait

[sandyk]

Yes, that would be me. I would like measurements to be all and end all so we can stop having this drama about DBT and he said she said.

Of course you would, but even your hero Archimago hasn't even come remotely close to getting that right yet!

[PeterSt]

Of course you would, but even your hero Archimago hasn't even come remotely close to getting that right yet!

 

Oops Alex, now you can expect some. Like "and what tells you that ?!".

Maybe now it doesn't happen because I already said it while I certainly don't need the answer.

:)

[Jud]

I've never been afraid of the Drive-By Truckers.

 

[sbgk]

You are both very funny. Have to admit, communists were totally missing from the debate

And if you did not figure out by now, I am on the C side of CA.

To my recollection, nobody proposed to use measurements as be-all-end-all. I for one will be extremely happy if they were at least a start. Like in using them at all instead of spending your energy bashing any form of science and declaring it useless for audio. But then that is just me.

 

that reminds me of the old C&A knickers joke