FORGETTING the Digital to Analog conversion part, what is BEST Digital source?

[sandyk]

9 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

other people??

 

 Many other people are unlikely to accept these results unless they hear them for themselves.

 Even then, In some cases ,they will later manage to convince themselves that they were mistaken because the results do not tie in with currently accepted science. In one such case, an E.E friend thought he heard differences just like the others present reported, then changed his mind the next day. It took a later demonstration at his own house using his speakers and amplifier to finally convince him that what he heard originally was correct.

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 

 That's fine when it's just you and a couple of friends, but other people will never accept those results as definitive .

Neither will they accept results of numerous repeats unless they were done by their own peers, in the case of E.E.s  ,

and even then some are likely to find problems with the methodology if the results don't go the way they believe that they should have  !

 

True, but I do this for myself and not for others. If anyone is interested, I'll share my findings, but these obviously don't reach the status of proof positive (or negative ). I'm not an EE, but I do have formal training in electronics, computer, and chip design. When I find something that doesn't agree with my understanding of how things work, I get excited, not upset. It's an opportunity to learn something new. I see too many here that just want to prove their viewpoint at all costs. I'm much more interested in a deeper understanding.

 

[marce]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 That's fine when it's just you and a couple of friends, but other people will never accept those results as definitive .

Neither will they accept results of numerous repeats unless they were done by their own peers, in the case of E.E.s  ,

and even then some are likely to find problems with the methodology if the results don't go the way they believe that they should have  !

Er not me.... Pkane2001 actually...

[beerandmusic]

32 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

True, but I do this for myself and not for others. If anyone is interested, I'll share my findings, but these obviously don't reach the status of proof positive (or negative ). I'm not an EE, but I do have formal training in electronics, computer, and chip design. When I find something that doesn't agree with my understanding of how things work, I get excited, not upset. It's an opportunity to learn something new. I see too many here that just want to prove their viewpoint at all costs. I'm much more interested in a deeper understanding.

 

I would be interested in your findings.

[fas42]

10 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

 

Let's assume that i believe both sides...that some people may believe they hear differences but don't actually, plus I believe that some people hear things others don't.   But what i find most interesting about this topic, is that the "very experienced and skilled testers" report extreme stress in their efforts.  I also believe that some people would be more stressed and some less stressed, but the fact that it takes such dedication, suggests to me, that we are "very close" to a "plateau of sorts", and even if someone could identify differences, some may not be able to say which they prefer, and those that can say which they prefer, will be in debate with others who will prefer differently.   Added to that, one may suggest they prefer "vocals" on A but instruments on B, or they prefer one genre on A but a different genre on B....All of this confirms my overall belief that you may be able to pay big bucks for slight differences, but it would most likely be subjective in DBT results.

 

If you have to "squeeze your brain" to hear differences than you're listening for the wrong audible markers - it's trivially easy to test whether a system is essentially in a "good space": put on a complex , "testing" recording, turn the volume right up, and turn to the person next to you and start having an earnest conversation about something unrelated to the music. If you have to go and turn the volume down, then  you've got your answer ...

 

Everything on top of that capability is better icing, and is of less importance ... most setups fail this test, badly, and variations to how they fail are not very interesting ...

[fas42]

Those who have evolved their hearing so it's listening to sounds, rather than music, have got the right approach in one sense - it allows one to clearly hear distortions, which is the only point to doing such - provided one learns what the 'sound' of them are! Rating distortion A, against distortion B, is a dead end game - I wouldn't waste my time.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

other people??

Hell is other people.

[sandyk]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

Hell is other people.

Perhaps I will meet you both there one day ?

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Perhaps I will meet you both there one day?

How do you know we're not already there?

[sandyk]

The 3 of us ?

It may help to explain a few things !

[Ralf11]

5 hours ago, mansr said:

Hell is other people.

 

he's gone

[marce]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

Those who have evolved their hearing so it's listening to sounds, rather than music, have got the right approach in one sense - it allows one to clearly hear distortions, which is the only point to doing such - provided one learns what the 'sound' of them are! Rating distortion A, against distortion B, is a dead end game - I wouldn't waste my time.

I'd rather listen to music rather than sounds, that the whole point of having any system in my book...

[asdf1000]

On 18/01/2018 at 10:37 AM, barrows said:

Anyone who has compared the sound quality of the microRendu to the (rare) 1.4 version has heard this difference as well, it is well documented.

 

Hi barrows. What did you mean by "rare" here. The v1.4 upgrade is still available, no?

[adamdea]

12 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

True, but I do this for myself and not for others. If anyone is interested, I'll share my findings, but these obviously don't reach the status of proof positive (or negative ). I'm not an EE, but I do have formal training in electronics, computer, and chip design. When I find something that doesn't agree with my understanding of how things work, I get excited, not upset. It's an opportunity to learn something new. I see too many here that just want to prove their viewpoint at all costs. I'm much more interested in a deeper understanding.

 

That's a marvellous world view. However, I can't help noticing that many people with a very sound grasp of electronics nevertheless have a lack of interest in the science involved in hearing, which is of course perceptual science/psychoacoustics/the psychology of hearing. If every time they hear something which your doesn't agree with their understanding of "how things work" , they assume that the answer lies in electronics then they are just going to go round in circles. 

Of course if they have found this thing using structured tests, so be it. But if they have found it by sighted listening tests then the answer will almost certainly lie in perceptual science. We need to let go of the idea that what we hear is purely the result of a sound pressure wave input. The very slightest acquaintance with perceptual science should get rid of this.

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, adamdea said:

However, I can't help noticing that many people with a very sound grasp of electronics nevertheless have a lack of interest in the science involved in hearing, which is of course perceptual science/psychoacoustics/the psychology of hearing. If every time they hear something which your doesn't agree with their understanding of "how things work" , they assume that the answer lies in electronics then they are just going to go round in circles. 

Of course. Here's something I said a bit earlier in this thread when talking about blind tests:

 

23 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

I know for a fact that the brain can make up things in sensory perception that are not there. If you take that for a fact, it's then a very logical, even if an inconvenient, conclusion that you might want to do a bit more to differentiate between illusion and fact. You don't have to be a scientist or an engineer to think this way, you just need to be curious.

 

[adamdea]

21 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Of course. Here's something I said a bit earlier in this thread when talking about blind tests:

 

 

It seems we are in agreement. I suppose the point I was making is that one very rarely encounters events which cannot be explained by our current understanding of how things work.  As you pointed out ealier most results of sighted listening experience are explicable without recourse to any hypothesis about the DUT 

[Fokus]

2 hours ago, adamdea said:

The very slightest acquaintance with perceptual science should get rid of this.

 

This is the first time in my 27 years on audio newsgroups that I can reply to a posting with nothing more than ... my signature.

 

[adamdea]

1 hour ago, Fokus said:

 

This is the first time in my 27 years on audio newsgroups that I can reply to a posting with nothing more than ... my signature.

 

Happy New Year, Mr O: always a pleasure. I seem to remember that there is a technical distinction in perceptual science between illusion and hallucination- is it down to whether it is a result of a properly working system or not?.
Incidentally, your signature for some reason makes me think of Munch's Scream

[Speedskater]

22 hours ago, barrows said:

Who exactly would that be?  I am really not aware of anyone who has a vested interest in not paying attention to measurements?  Every manaufacturer I am aware of owns precision measurement equipment (like expensive APs) and measures their gear very carefully.

And how many times have we read that the writer can hear things that can't be measured.  Are you sure that all manufactures have good test equipment?  I have been reading Stereophile magazine since issue #1 and they have reviewed hundreds components that had technical issues.

[barrows]

14 minutes ago, Speedskater said:

And how many times have we read that the writer can hear things that can't be measured.  Are you sure that all manufactures have good test equipment?  I have been reading Stereophile magazine since issue #1 and they have reviewed hundreds components that had technical issues.

You did not answer my question?  Who has this "vested interest" in avoiding measurements?  I just do not buy your supposition.  All manufacturers "I am aware of".  There may be some small manufacturers who do not.  But I know that folks like PS Audio, Ayre, PASS LABS, Mola Mola/Hypex, etc. etc. have AP(s) and other high precision test gear, and use it all the time in development of products, even we at our tiny company (Sonore) have it.

You suggest that companies are just putting out gear with no idea how well it is engineered, this is just not the case in my experience working in the industry.

[Speedskater]

20 minutes ago, barrows said:

You did not answer my question?

Will I guess, I'm not going to be able to answer your question.  If you can't see by yourself all the poor engineering in audiophile components, then I can't help you.

[barrows]

4 minutes ago, Speedskater said:

Will I guess, I'm not going to be able to answer your question.  If you can't see by yourself all the poor engineering in audiophile components, then I can't help you.

Perhaps you could share an example of this poor engineering?

Take for example Ayre products.  These are exceptional audio performers by anyone's standards, but, Ayre chooses not to use global negative feedback in their circuits.  Because they make the subjective choice to not use GNF, their products exhibit slightly higher distortion and lower damping factor (in amplifiers), the distortion levels are still low enough to be below what is considered to be audible.  They have these somewhat higher distortion measurements ON PURPOSE because it is their feeling that GNF sounds worse.  This is not poor engineering, in fact it is superb engineering as they have been able to produce innovative solid state circuits without resorting to GNF, which still have low distortion.  The engineers at Ayre are highly capable, and could produce much lower distortion components by adding some GNF, but they choose not to specifically to produce a sound they feel is more accurate.

[Speedskater]

28 minutes ago, barrows said:

Perhaps you could share an example of this poor engineering?

Take for example Ayre products

Let's be generous and say that their products have euphonic coloration's.

(not everyone is that generious)

[barrows]

27 minutes ago, Speedskater said:

Let's be generous and say that their products have euphonic coloration's.

(not everyone is that generious)

The distortion levels of Ayre products are below that which are accepted to be audible, so I do not think there are "euphonic colorations", the distortion would have to be much higher to be heard.  After all, all loudspeakers have distortion levels at ten times this amount.

[Albrecht]

22 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 Many other people are unlikely to accept these results unless they hear them for themselves.

 Even then, In some cases ,they will later manage to convince themselves that they were mistaken because the results do not tie in with currently accepted science. In one such case, an E.E friend thought he heard differences just like the others present reported, then changed his mind the next day. It took a later demonstration at his own house using his speakers and amplifier to finally convince him that what he heard originally was correct.

You may not quite be saying this: but this is where being an electrical engineer (can possibly) prevent one from engaging in good scientific investigation. Technical specs of a given, isolated component, will never tell one how a whole system sounds, in a particular room, with a particular recording. There are simply too many variables that affect what one ultimately hears to be able to predict an amalgamation.