Why Do People Come To Computer Audiophile To Display Their Contempt For Audiophiles?

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53 minutes ago, esldude said:

Well the available evidence of masking, frequency sensitivity, and direct jitter all would lead to the idea such very close in jitter is not audible.

perhaps you are overlooking something  

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15 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. I speak to a lot of people, but my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff

Everyone is free to use their own method of deciding what they are interested in. Mine is as posted, in the context of a whole bunch of other threads and posts e.g. The "1/f" thread I started, so don't want to repeat here. Dennis honestly asked and I answered.

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51 minutes ago, esldude said:

So what have you read that was convincing?

Not just one article but from from https://www.by-rutgers.nl/PDFiles/Audio Jitter.pdf

 

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With AD- as well as with DA-conversion a

clock oscillator 'of good quality' should be

used. But what is good quality in this case?

Well, the clock jitter should be < 0.5 ps. But

this is not all. Recently phase noise close

to the carrier (‘close in noise’) below about

100 Hz turned out to be the most miserable!

It blurs the stereo image: the voices

and instruments become wider and the

sound stage becomes less deep. The

phase noise of the clock should not exceed

-130 dBc@10Hz!

 

http://www-tcad.stanford.edu/tcad/pubs/device/SPIE04_navid.pdf is a more general discussion and there are many many many others

 

Don't want to get too off topic, but this does go to the question regarding how we come to opinions and what "evidence" we each use to make our own decisions. The above quote demonstrates an individual with considerable experience who describes his own sensory perceptions.

 

The "1/f" thread was intended as a place to discuss 1/f noise (including close in phase noise) specifically.

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Just now, Superdad said:

 

But Jonathan, such is expressly dismissed!  

 

Seriously though.  This is the crux of the "battle."

 

I think so, which is why I'm discussing this here. We need to be honest with ourselves about how we each make decisions. I've thought "wouldn't it be cool if I could make a DAC with an automatic phase error measurement system that could tell us when different tweaks had different effects" but y'now at the end of the day I don't think very many people would actually buy it, and likely not enough to go to the effort of commercializing --I don't underestimate that work  

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2 hours ago, Jud said:

Yup, shielding and balanced operation, isolation transformers, etc., should certainly help with many aspects of noise.  How many of you folks have measured noise in your systems with and without these components, then conducted thorough, reliable blind tests to make sure any measured differences were audible?

  there are two forms of noise in this  complex situation - real and imaginary -- voltage & phase  

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41 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

So then you accept the sensory perceptions of millions of bracelet wearers too I hope

 

people get all sorts of sensory experiences with jewelry -- I accept that ?

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18 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

I see you are trying to back up your claims.  Nice... 

Just thought we should rope the Yggdrasil into this thread ...

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1 minute ago, wgscott said:

 

There is always the question of whether they actually believe, or are just cynical power-hungry opportunists.

How else would you get on the National Academy?  

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34 minutes ago, lucretius said:

COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.

 

Maybe God, at the time of creation, had full knowledge that imperfections in the USB protocol would create future debates about digital cables?

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1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

that is why there are things like statistical analysis, randomized designs, and blind testing

 

Thing is, many people might be entirely uninterested in using science to advise their purchases. What would be the point of the effort, not like it's going to get anyone tenure  

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9 hours ago, Jud said:

Lots of talk of science, but really what we all are going for is to understand, and in a couple of cases design and build, things a little better.

There are two bottom lines in Science: designing & building things better is one of them.

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11 hours ago, Superdad said:

My ears are just fine.  Can tell the difference between an average clock and a low phase-noise one, a good or great power supply, and different film types in a capacitor--among a few hundred other things that are claimed to be irrelevant or inaudible.

You clearly have experience that goes back decades. You've brought a number of products to market. I am sure the manufacturers who use your caps in their crossovers appreciate their ability to rely on a consistent product with a consistent sound -- their own distributors & customers wouldn't appreciate if speaker sound differed from month to month as different random brands of caps were used.

 

We have every reason to believe that the Regen regenerates the USB signal, and that the power supplies are very well designed choke input filtered & supercap based. The prices are very reasonable -- Id never be able to bring a product to market at your prices -- and your customers are very very happy.

 

Even if some if the claims or purported mechanisms of action are not supported by measurements, none are outside known laws of physics!

 

What is all this grief?

 

in contrast there are many other vendors whose claims are outside of  known science -- that's where vitriol would be more appropriately directed. 

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2 hours ago, Jud said:

People tend to pick something they feel comfortable with (“How much could a wire matter?”) and argue incessantly about that, leaving the really important, difficult, technical stuff well alone.

maybe it's strong desire to customize & get last little bit of "edge"

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55 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

The fact that BE, Amir, John Atkinson all measured a product from them that made things worse but people were still crowing about its performance.

 

Whose role is it to parrot their arguments? They are entirely capable of making any arguments they wish to make for themselves. You started a long painful thread about this, surely you've said everything you possibly could. But don't parrot other peoples arguments. If you have more to say then say them based on your own measurements ... oh and I've already said in the "other" thread that I don't agree with those measurements. Do you agree with the specific measurements I've proposed? If not why? Justify yourself. If you can't then don't criticize.

 

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The fact Alex said he would sit for a bias controlled evaluation any time and then tucked tail and bravely ran away.

 

The fact that UpTone has never produced a single measurement of the affected output of a DAC to show an improvement.

 

So? That's "industry standard". You or I might want, in a more perfect world, for the entire industry to publish more measurements but Alex is not out of line. I'd be very happy if all DACs produced a high quality linewidth measurements (end to end phase error) ... but they aren't routinely done. Don't fault @Superdad for that ... that said more measurements are entirely appropriate.

 

 

 

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13 hours ago, Superdad said:

Can tell the difference between an average clock and a low phase-noise one

I would like your description, as detailed as possible, of what the audible difference between an average qnd low phase-noise clock is?

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1 minute ago, AJ Soundfield said:

I'd be sorely disappointed if it didn't involve veils and PRAT

Stay out in left field so you try to catch any balls hit out there.

 

There are those of us who would like to know, given the mathematical effect of phase error on DAC signal output -- the linewidth describes the close-in phase error (not all of "jitter") and we know that the big difference between "average" and "low phase error" clocks is primarily in the close-in error. The mathematical effect is very clear (feel free to run a simulation if you question), so the real question is: what is the audible effect and at what level are the effects audible?

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13 minutes ago, plissken said:

You may have missed the WireWorld and Nordost Ethernet threads.

 

Hey man, I don't just automatically disagree with everything you say  

Main point is that the three people you referenced didn't do any measurements that either directly or indirectly measure phase error (the other half of the complex issue) ... and that the measurements are standard wide spectrum FFT...

 

but yes you could investigate "topics" like "liquid cables" and quantum effects in power cables and a number of other things that I'm sure we would totally agree on... I don't see UpTone being the issue here, a number of people who have done measurements (e.g. @Wavelength) have pointed out imperfections in signal transmission. Ethernet by and large is much much better (and Belden does real measurements).

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9 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

And how do you propose to establish this audibility correlation? Using what method?

Or is that presumed done and we are about to hear all about it?

 

I'm not "in the industry" but if I were to bring a product to market it would most likely be a device that could automate useful measurements beyond the typical FFT spectrum analyzer.

 

I don't claim to have the audibility correlation. If people could agree on what measurements are relevant (I have my ideas) then an audibility correlation could be worked on. What I can tell you is exactly what the electrical difference between a "100 femtosecond" and "10 picosecond" difference in "jitter"/phase error look like. Is this important?

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43 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

So on what basis are these products sold?

How was it first decided to design, engineer and manufacture in lower "phase noise" a priori?

 

Low phase error clocks are important for radio communications, radar, GPS etc, and most of the real literature comes from those fields. 

 

Best I can tell as the point in which digital audio came into being and with the introduction of the CD player, there was a desire to "mod" the CD player to upgrade clocks. This is also about the time the advantages of upsampling became apparent.

43 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

 

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What I can tell you is exactly what the electrical difference between a "100 femtosecond" and "10 picosecond" difference in "jitter"/phase error look like.

A measure showing this at the DAC output would be terrific, TIA

More to come but @PeterSt has done some  work and has published measurement from the NOS1a. You'd think MSB which sells rather expensive clock upgrades might have something to justify eg $35k

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2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

what is 'close-in' phase error?

 

Take a pure sine wave and compare to the sine wave in an electrical circuit. The deviation in voltage is called voltage error. The deviation in phase is called phase error. In a complex Fourier transform the voltage error refers to variation in the real coefficient and phase to the imaginary coefficient. This voltage and phase error is also called "noise".

 

If you look at both the voltage and phase errors as a function of time, there is typically a baseline error as well as a 1/f component (there are actually several components). This 1/f noise is basic to physics. What this means is that the amount of noise increases as the frequency decreases. This is a fundamental property of electrical circuits and other physical systems.

 

What this means is that the amount of phase error increases as the frequency of the phase error approaches the center frequency of the sine wave. The phase error is largest for small offset frequencies -- this phase error "close" to the center frequency is called "close in" phase error.

 

This is important because the magnitude of this phase error is the largest for clock oscillators. That's where the money is.

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3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Thx - I added a little Google Fu on fundamental vs ubiquitous and it seems to result from Brownian motion

 

Thermal noise is generally white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson–Nyquist_noise. There is also "shot" noise. and flicker (1/f) noise. I think flicker has been correlated to "fractional" Brownian so its a bit complicated.

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5 hours ago, plissken said:

I'm not singling him out. They are all guilty when they don't back claims.

 

You can't claim an un-measurable change. Whether the incremented tape be of instrumentation or of properly bias controlled audience evaluation.

 

Yes. I agree. Some things are difficult to measure though. People show the easy stuff despite the fact it may not be appropriate. I feel that I'm sounding like a broken record, but I am harping on phase error measurements because they are sorely lacking despite all the discussion of "jitter" ... than and they are the other half of the Fourier transform that everyone seems to conveniently forget about ... I harp on close-in phase error because with reasonable clocks the far-out phase error is so low as to be much more likely to be inaudible. So it turns out that the noise that is the most difficult to measure is also the noise that has the highest amplitude... per physics.

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@Ralf11 -- here's another few for you regarding the physics of 1/f noise:

http://www.umsl.edu/~handelp/

 http://physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/statistics/handel_pra_22_745_80.pdf

http://www.foresight.org/Conference/MNT8/Papers/Handel/

https://phys.org/news/2016-04-ligo-background-noise-due-gravity.html

http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave_spectrum.html

http://tgdtheory.fi/public_html/articles/qfluctgeomnoise.pdf

 

its really really wild stuff !

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15 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

The gist is that controlled (Blind) testing is the de facto scientific valid standard for all audio, not just electro-acoustic widget audiophoolery

I don't think it goes far enough ... the "Tommy" test is definitive.

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29 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Wrong. They are all valid audio tests. All highlight why sighted, uncontrolled "listening" create purely biased, invalid results for audio.

 

"valid" and "invalid" have a specific meaning in science. since not all the links describe scientific experiments, you are using the term valid in a subjective fashion. that's ok but "blinding" does not in and of itself make something scientific nor a test scientifically valid. moreover a test could be blinded and "subjective" as in a listening test. "objective" generally means measured by machine or interpretable equally by multiple independent observers. 

 

i'd say your interpretation of the links you provide is subjective