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Someone say something about DACs that is so interesting


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See I in time did care. If one wished to get that result again, knowing why or how or what gives that result is not going to be magic, but knowledge. Many, myself included, assume that kind of result indicates better performance. And that lacking that result indicates something not done well. While in fact, tasteful colorations give that result and actual fidelity fails to do so. Doesn't mean you don't want the goosebumps, only that once you know this you don't follow fidelity in search of what it can never give.

This is an interesting viewpoint but I'm not sure I understand it.

 

What I believe you are saying is that goosebumps from playback are the result of colorations, not fidelity.

 

Can I ask if you ever get goosebumps when listening to live music - presumably not induced by violations?

 

Are you also saying that fidelity fails to give goosebumps & therefore you are maintaining that high fidelity playback can never deliver this?.

 

If you have experienced goosebumps from listening to live music can you then tell us what is missing from your "actual fidelity" that "can never give" these goosebumps?

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This is an interesting viewpoint but I'm not sure I understand it.

 

What I believe you are saying is that goosebumps from playback are the result of colorations, not fidelity.

 

Tasteful colorations can increase the chance of goosebumps upon playback. That isn't the only way and it doesn't mean goosebumps only come from coloration or that you can't get them with fidelity.

 

Can I ask if you ever get goosebumps when listening to live music - presumably not induced by violations?

 

Yes of course I have.

 

Are you also saying that fidelity fails to give goosebumps & therefore you are maintaining that high fidelity playback can never deliver this?.

 

No not that high fidelity can never deliver goosebumps. Sometimes limitations of stereo playback can reduce the chances for goosebumps in some types of recordings. The right kind of coloration can seem to fill in the gaps and increase the chances of that kind of gut felt response. That can make you think you have experienced better fidelity. The same infidelity with other music however might interfere with your enjoyment of it.

 

If you have experienced goosebumps from listening to live music can you then tell us what is missing from your "actual fidelity" that "can never give" these goosebumps?

 

Well now you are putting words into my mouth. I didn't say actual fidelity can never give goosebumps. I also have nothing against using coloration. My opinion is to get the best, most transparent, highest fidelity playback possible. Then color to taste. With the DSP resources available that is something I wish more software took advantage of doing. If you pick colored components you are locked into that one coloration.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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You're message now seems to me different to your previous post - I read this "you don't follow fidelity in search of what it can never give" - s this is a direct quote, I don't think I am putting words in your mouth but however can you tell us, as a man of knowledge & measurements, what are the missing ingredients in fidelity playback that coloration fills in? How are the goosebumps achieved with coloration?

 

What freqs & amplitude do we need our colorations to be or is there something more than just these two factors needed?

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You're message now seems to me different to your previous post - I read this "you don't follow fidelity in search of what it can never give" - s this is a direct quote, I don't think I am putting words in your mouth but however can you tell us, as a man of knowledge & measurements, what are the missing ingredients in fidelity playback that coloration fills in? How are the goosebumps achieved with coloration?

 

What freqs & amplitude do we need our colorations to be or is there something more than just these two factors needed?

 

The quote is accurate though out of context. If you have found coloration that sounds of higher fidelity you don't then move toward fidelity expecting additional improvements. It won't give you what you are looking to find.

 

That part isn't as well defined because that is also party preference. What gives me goosebumps may differ from what does it for you. And it varies by type of music listened to. Fidelity has a yardstick that is the same for all.

 

There are some aspects that seem to work for most people. Distortion of low order that goes from inaudible to barely audible levels in concert with the signal level. The sort of level and frequency dependent perturbations you see with transformer coupled devices. Just for some examples.

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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Why would there be? It's the end result that matters, not how you got there.

And if the end results tend to show that simple circuits give better SQ?

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I agree with you. Armchair engineers often think otherwise.

Do you call qualified Engineers 'armchair engineers'?

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DIY: SET Tube Amp | Low-Noise Linear Regulated Power Supply | USB, Power, Speaker Cables | Speaker Stands | Acoustic Panels

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The Industry Voice section is among my favorites (along with Lovely Recordings). The Juergen Reis piece is worth a read as it addresses some of the thoughts shared here.

Yes, it's wonderful, loved the Andreas Koch one as well and if I remember correctly there was a combination one where several Industry experts answered the same questions - that was great too. The series provide deep and insightful looks at how some of the best in the industry create their gear.

 

I've probably read the Swenson one 5 times or more, Thorsten's and Ted Smith's a few times as well. I'll read them all one day. Thanks for pointing out Reis.

Dedicated Line DSD/DXD | Audirvana+ | iFi iDSD Nano | SET Tube Amp | Totem Mites

Surround: VLC | M-Audio FastTrack Pro | Mac Opt | Panasonic SA-HE100 | Logitech Z623

DIY: SET Tube Amp | Low-Noise Linear Regulated Power Supply | USB, Power, Speaker Cables | Speaker Stands | Acoustic Panels

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And if the end results tend to show that simple circuits give better SQ?

 

There's no such proof. There are simple and complex devices that both give good sound.

Why make a specific technology in a design some kind of litmus test for whether the component sounds good? Listen and decide.

 

As far as "qualified engineers" - also not so relevant. Do all "qualified engineers" agree on all designs or what designs sound best? Or even on what sound they are trying to get? I think not.

 

Everyone can come up with one or more "qualified engineers" to support his/her point of view.

Main listening (small home office):

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Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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You are twisting yourself in a logical mobios strip.

 

The alternative & simple explanation is that the better the fidelity, the better the listener connects with the emotion of the playback music, the better she understands the intent of the players & their interplay for all music, not just filling in the shortcomings of stereo playback for some recordings.

 

Goosebumps occurs when such aspects of the playback allow the listener deeper insight & they resonate emotionally with the music.

Higher levels of true fidelity result in the above & not colorations, as you maintain.

 

This is the simple explanation.

 

The scenario you paint has to be complex & inconsistent simply because you are limited by your incomplete measurements.

 

Letting go of those incomplete measurements as the (limiting) absolutes that you maintain them to be would allow you to resolve your logical problems. The post quoted below is all just tautological nonsense IMO

 

An example of the sort of incomplete thinking & logic is your contention that transformers improve sound simply because they can ntroduce some low level distortions. Are you really content to so limit your analysis & provide such a lopsided example?

 

The quote is accurate though out of context. If you have found coloration that sounds of higher fidelity you don't then move toward fidelity expecting additional improvements. It won't give you what you are looking to find.

 

That part isn't as well defined because that is also party preference. What gives me goosebumps may differ from what does it for you. And it varies by type of music listened to. Fidelity has a yardstick that is the same for all.

 

There are some aspects that seem to work for most people. Distortion of low order that goes from inaudible to barely audible levels in concert with the signal level. The sort of level and frequency dependent perturbations you see with transformer coupled devices. Just for some examples.

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Related, but not exactly the same. I have a friend who is a top amateur in singing, he's been in various choirs and performed many times in public to large audiences (not solo) but has a day job. So, just to say, he is a musician, not an audiophile. He has come over and listened many times, and once I insisted he bring some of his music and/or we found some on Tidal. He had one track he said he's been listening to since the 70s, and has heard it several times live at different venues. When it was over he was dumbstruck and said "Wow, that was better than live!!"

 

And I was taken aback. I was always instructed that we are trying to recreate live. I thought - no - not better than live, equal to live!! And I protested, no, it can't be better than live, it must be equal to live, that is what you mean, but he insisted it was better than live.

 

Now in the one case I can understand this sentiment. If a rock and roll band is miked after the guitar amps and speakers and what ever, basically the music is already put through a pre and an amp and speaker so it is not a pure signal. In this case, we can perhaps beat live. (And that track was a 70's rock and roll, maybe slightly more on the bluesy side, not a choir or anything.).

 

And that begs the question, if a choir or classical music with no amplification, then can we beat live? Is there something that can be done somehow that makes it more engaging? I don't know.

 

I just know that the audiophile-Internet told me that my goal was "music to be as close to live as is possible" and so I've ran with that without questioning it. And then he made that comment and sent me into a philosophical tizzy.

 

Edit: Oh - and I do believe the group that says if you like Rock and Roll then the 'best you can do' is something like a Klipsch La Scala II/Klipschorn or maybe high-end professional JBL or something like that with 2k watt Crown amps or similar behind them because that will simulate the live concert experience better than our fancy-schmancy stuff. It will have the same deficiencies and strengths of the live concert. Maybe stack 2 of them :). I've always wanted a 2nd system like that just for fun to blast some Led Zepplin and others.

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@lightminer I feel there are a couple of elements to be considered in this. First & foremost, it's not about sounding live, it's about sounding realistic. The difference being that our auditory perception is continually involved in evaluating the sense of what we are hearing. What does 'sense' mean? It means that auditory perception has in-built references/models/strategies built up over our lifetime of how the world sounds - what a bell sounds like, what combination of sound elements are found together, how a sound attacks, decays, sustains & releases i.e the fingerprints for the auditory world. Lots about this has still to be worked out/understood but our auditory perception does it's job even if we don't understand it's full workings.

 

We are continually making auditory 'sense' of the world - it's immaterial whether it's sounds from nature or our playback system that we are evaluating , we still judge it's realism.

 

The second aspect is that close micing is often used for recordings which means that what is being captured is a very different soundscape from what we would be listening to normally in a live setting sitting in the audience - we seldom if ever have one ear in the body of the piano & another ear hovering over the percussion section.

 

With a good replay system & this style of recording, it can sound super-realistic - "better than live"? Perhaps this explains what your friend meant?

 

It also is cogent to what esldude & I are debating - your friend & you (& all of us) continually evaluate & make judgements about what we are hearing based on our auditory perception - we make sense of the auditory world through this perception & rely on the information from this & other senses to interact with the world

 

I'm struck by how the interactions between esldude & me distil the underlying premises of the two different approaches that are seen on every audio forum.

 

We both use observation as the underlying basis from which our analysis is derived - I observe & trust my auditory perception as the basis from which analysis begins & he observes & trusts measurements as the basis from which his analysis begins. Where the fissures show is that he distrusts the veracity & completeness of auditory perception & I distrust the veracity & completeness of the measurements usually presented :)

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he distrusts the veracity & completeness of auditory perception & I distrust the veracity & completeness of the measurements usually presented

 

Put that way, I would say something interesting here, which is that 'you' are 'you', the thing that experiences life is in your head, 'you' are not the measurements, so even if flawed, one should perhaps lean towards 'the self'. Otherwise 'you' are giving up enjoyment and taking the measuring device and maximizing your life for its enjoyment. And it isn't really enjoying anything in the end.

 

Not aimed directly at anyone on this thread (really), but I think an important comment.

 

There are many things in biology, physics, where we are just beginning to understand what to measure. They only just figured out genomics recently, and the gut microbiome as well. Those together can create drug dosage and which drug to take - very soon the concept of 'the recommendation for this illness is to take 10 mg of this every day' will be a thing of the past. It is all personalized medicine from here. That is all very recent. Science is evolutionary. A funny error someone made in 2nd grade I never forgot, someone was dong a report on Benjamin Franklin and said 'He invented lightning'. No, 'he discovered lightning'. Things exist whether we know about them or not.

 

That said, I absolutely do believe in measurement. But I know too much about science to think we have the whole picture at any particular year in history.

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Yes, that's the point - the ultimate judge is our auditory perception which means that we accommodate to it's flaws in our perceiving of the auditory world. This is generally reliable, otherwise we would be seeing this unreliability in our dealing with the everyday world. Auditory perception gives us very good mata analysis & characterisation of the audio stream along with a fair amount of specific analysis of it.

 

The trap in all of this is the mistake that our perceptions are an accurate portrayal of reality i.e what we recreate in our heads through analysis is actually 'what's out there'. We recreate a meatphor of reality that allows us to function as biological entities in the physical world - our senses have been honed to provide what's needed by our organisms - they haven't been honed to be accurate.

Yes, measurements are very useful & can be trustworthy & precise when used correctly but knowing the limitations of the measurements & the possibilities of what isn't being measured. In other words measurements can give us more detail on specific aspects of audio but not enough to tell us how something will sound

 

he distrusts the veracity & completeness of auditory perception & I distrust the veracity & completeness of the measurements usually presented

 

Put that way, I would say something interesting here, which is that 'you' are 'you', the thing that experiences life is in your head, 'you' are not the measurements, so even if flawed, one should perhaps lean towards 'the self'.

 

There are many things in biology, physics, where we are just beginning to understand what to measure. They only just figured out genomics recently, and the gut microbiome as well. Those together can create drug dosage and which drug to take - very soon the concept of 'the recommendation is to take 10 mg of this every day' will be a thing of the past. It is all personalized medicine from here. That is all very recent. Science is evolutionary. A funny error someone made in 2nd grade I never forgot, someone was dong a report on Benjamin Franklin and said 'He invented lightning'. No, he discovered lightning. Things exist whether we know about them or not.

 

That said, I absolutely do believe in measurement. But I know too much about science to think we have the whole picture at any particular year in history.

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You are twisting yourself in a logical mobios strip.

 

The alternative & simple explanation is that the better the fidelity, the better the listener connects with the emotion of the playback music, the better she understands the intent of the players & their interplay for all music, not just filling in the shortcomings of stereo playback for some recordings.

 

Goosebumps occurs when such aspects of the playback allow the listener deeper insight & they resonate emotionally with the music.

Higher levels of true fidelity result in the above & not colorations, as you maintain.

 

This is the simple explanation.

 

The scenario you paint has to be complex & inconsistent simply because you are limited by your incomplete measurements.

 

Letting go of those incomplete measurements as the (limiting) absolutes that you maintain them to be would allow you to resolve your logical problems. The post quoted below is all just tautological nonsense IMO

 

An example of the sort of incomplete thinking & logic is your contention that transformers improve sound simply because they can ntroduce some low level distortions. Are you really content to so limit your analysis & provide such a lopsided example?

Sorry the simple explanation is incorrect and misleading. You have given a good example of how that kind of thinking will lead to erroneous conclusions from using subjective listening impressions to judge fidelity.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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Of course I agree with much of what lightminer and mmerrill99 are saying, not least because it's what I was saying about 20 posts back ;-)

 

I've run into the "better than live" phenomenon many times. Always thought it funny as the number of live performances that give me goosebumps is actually relatively small. Live music often comes with too many distractions, whether of other patrons, bad chair, bad lunch, etc. to be a consistent standard to strive for. There may be an objectively great performance/sound captured by some spiritual microphone, but I doubt it's universally realized subjectively. I've had far more spine tingling moments with recordings than live, although the live ones have far more impact on the memory, for various not exclusively musical reasons. Apposite to remember Glenn Gould's decision to give up live performing?

Mac Mini (+Tidal +Roon) -> WiFi -> Lyngdorf TDAI1120 ->JM Reynaud Lucia (Tellurium Q Black v2)

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Sorry the simple explanation is incorrect and misleading. You have given a good example of how that kind of thinking will lead to erroneous conclusions from using subjective listening impressions to judge fidelity.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

 

You judge fidelity according to a set of measurements, right? Unless you *know* that your measurements measure everything relevant you don't know whether you have fidelity or not. You simply have a repeatable standard. That standard might be acceptable to *you* but unless everyone agrees with you it ain't the last word in fidelity.

Mac Mini (+Tidal +Roon) -> WiFi -> Lyngdorf TDAI1120 ->JM Reynaud Lucia (Tellurium Q Black v2)

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Sorry the simple explanation is incorrect and misleading. You have given a good example of how that kind of thinking will lead to erroneous conclusions from using subjective listening impressions to judge fidelity.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Computer Audiophile mobile app

And not one whit of logic or evidence to support your curt statement. Any reader can see who has the threadbare argument here.

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Since the THD measurements is really low for the most of modern DACs, the tiny differences are difficult to tell when doing ABX tests. Manufacturers utilize jitter and distortion to create tone favors.

I thought we had progressed beyond THD as a measure/predictor of how something will sound? ABX tests as a measure of how something will sound to us over the longer term is also dubious - listener fatigue or lack of engagement with audio playback is often the issue uncovered in longer term listening to audio equipment. Can you or anyone point to ABX tests which uncovered this in their results?

 

Your final statement is plucked out of the air without a shred of evidence or logic to support it

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