Audio Blind Testing

[adamdea]

4 minutes ago, marce said:

My box lets me have Patricia Barber and her piano in the room...

I have a message from Ms Barber- buy a new box or I'm going back to my room.

[sandyk]

14 minutes ago, marce said:

We have an agreement from years ago that we will not discuss this subject

Marc

 All of our discussions in DIY Audio years ago were before Martin became involved., so no DBTs back then.

You may remember though that I did send Netlist (Hugo) a comparison CD though, and that I did have some support from Erin in Melbourne.

 

Alex

[esldude]

1 hour ago, adamdea said:

The problem with all of this is simply that it does not answer the question hobbyists ask. That question is roughly

-please recommend me a box (transport/dac/amp/whatever) which costs about $x (varies) which will give me what I want, namely the ability to listen to kind of blue/patricia barber/whatever again and get the spooky sense that I am hearing new things. 

If the answer is,

the limits of transparency have been reached with transports/dacs/amps/whatever -you are basically hearing what you can from this recording and the variations in your listening experience are largely down to other inputs.

then that is just not the answer required. Try again. 

...and of course believing (that a different box can make Patircia Barber sound like she is in the room) might just mean that it does (I bought a new box and it sounded as though Patricia Barber was in the room). 

So which argument wins?

Whether you think it has been achieved or not, do believe in principle that there are limits to transparency to be achieved?

[STC]

7 minutes ago, esldude said:

Whether you think it has been achieved or not, do believe in principle that there are limits to transparency to be achieved?

 

Good point. How do you know when tranparency is achieved?

[pkane2001]

6 minutes ago, esldude said:

Whether you think it has been achieved or not, do believe in principle that there are limits to transparency to be achieved?

 

There are no such limits. Every change counts and you must replace every part in a vendor's implementation of a component to achieve the greatest possible transparency. Replace all wires, fuses, power cords, capacitors and resistors, transformers, etc., just to be sure.

[STC]

Why stop there? We can also get better ears. 

 

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/11/this-hearing-aid-might-actually-be-better-than-a-human-ear/

[mav52]

16 minutes ago, STC said:

Why stop there? We can also get better ears. 

 

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/11/this-hearing-aid-might-actually-be-better-than-a-human-ear/

 

Yes but a hearing aid can influence the sound you hear, not only to receive and project louder but can also be made to provide coloration of the sound.  My wife wears a hearing aid, she tried many until she found one that she liked what she heard.   Damn things are expensive and not covered by insurance which I think is a whole matter itself.. .

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, STC said:

Why stop there? We can also get better ears. 

 

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/11/this-hearing-aid-might-actually-be-better-than-a-human-ear/

 

Why  bother when my golden ears are already so much better than any technology (as I heard so many times here, on CA)? 

 

Hearing aids are primarily designed to improve speech recognition, and so focus on a very specific part of audio spectrum. They are mostly unsuitable for music listening, at least IME with my 88-year old father. An EQ capability in a hearing aid might help in that respect.

[mav52]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Why  bother when my golden ears are already so much better than any technology (as I heard so many times here, on CA)? 

 

Hearing aids are primarily designed to improve speech recognition, and so focus on a very specific part of audio spectrum. They are mostly unsuitable for music listening, at least IME with my 88-year old father. An EQ capability in a hearing aid might help in that respect.

 

But I'm just glad there is a device that allows people with poor hearing to be able to listen to music they play and music they can hear.

[davide256]

43 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Good point. How do you know when tranparency is achieved?

When you hear more detail/tone color structure than could be heard before. Of course most of us weren't in the room for a recording, so we don't know what the actual limits were... all we can do is keep trying to improve with A/B comparisons using familiar music to test tweaks and new gear. It's actually very important to listen to good gear you can't afford, that will help you to remember what is possible when choosing within your price range. Our memory "notes" are  a key part of being a competent audiophile

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, mav52 said:

 

But I'm just glad there is a device that allows people with poor hearing to be able to listen to music they play and music they can hear.

Completely agree, although a nice DSP/convolution engine that works with REW, built-in to a hearing aid would be a nice addition  Maybe a real HQPlayer embedded edition?

 

[Sonicularity]

50 minutes ago, davide256 said:

When you hear more detail/tone color structure than could be heard before. Of course most of us weren't in the room for a recording, so we don't know what the actual limits were... all we can do is keep trying to improve with A/B comparisons using familiar music to test tweaks and new gear. It's actually very important to listen to good gear you can't afford, that will help you to remember what is possible when choosing within your price range. Our memory "notes" are  a key part of being a competent audiophile

 

Ignoring the issue with regards to the limitations of the microphones and the equipment used to record the sounds, it appears that you are essentially outlining a plan where people should make sighted A/B comparisons based on price, information from advertisements, and anecdotal reviews heavily influenced by bias?

 

Why not just sort the list of products by price and choose the most expensive product that someone can afford?  

[adamdea]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

Whether you think it has been achieved or not, do believe in principle that there are limits to transparency to be achieved?

I'm not 100% sure what the limits to transparency are (ie what specification is required to achieve it), but I think it's more than possible to have a device such that it is impossible to detect whether it is in circuit or not. And I think that there are a great many devices which could not reliably be told apart.

 

[Sonicularity]

I think a better way to think about transparency is using a scale of quality from 0 to infinity, where a human's perception of audio transparency can fall no higher than 80 on this hypothetical meter, and we are discussing equipment that measures between 100 and 1000 on the scale. 

 

You can't get more invisible with regards to a human's visual perception.  We can't see mid infrared (MIR) with our eyes, it is invisible to us.  Far infrared (FIR) is even lower in frequency, and we can't see that either.  From a visual perspective, MIR and FIR are the same and offer no identifiable difference  between each other as far a being more transparent to us.

[adamdea]

Incidentally in the last days of analog, when digital delay lines were introduced, they were reckoned to be transparent. This has been comprehensively refuted in the fantasy domain of course; but not elsewhere AFAIK.  

[davide256]

2 hours ago, Sonicularity said:

 

Ignoring the issue with regards to the limitations of the microphones and the equipment used to record the sounds, it appears that you are essentially outlining a plan where people should make sighted A/B comparisons based on price, information from advertisements, and anecdotal reviews heavily influenced by bias?

 

Why not just sort the list of products by price and choose the most expensive product that someone can afford?  

If one is visually influenced then one is either a novice or judgement challenged. All visuals mean to me is (a) will it fit in my space (b) is it so ugly I can't stand to be in the room with it.

It seems you believe ego purchasing logic = audiophile purchasing logic .

[Sonicularity]

29 minutes ago, davide256 said:

If one is visually influenced then one is either a novice or judgement challenged. All visuals mean to me is (a) will it fit in my space (b) is it so ugly I can't stand to be in the room with it.

It seems you believe ego purchasing logic = audiophile purchasing logic .

 

Visually influenced to me means that the listener is making no attempt to isolate their hearing and are forming an assessment about audible differences that are wholly unreliable.

[adamdea]

30 minutes ago, davide256 said:

If one is visually influenced then one is either a novice or judgement challenged. All visuals mean to me is (a) will it fit in my space (b) is it so ugly I can't stand to be in the room with it.

It seems you believe ego purchasing logic = audiophile purchasing logic .

If one is visually influenced then one has a normally functioning perceptual system. That's the problem. You don't just hear with your ears. You have an integrated sensory system. What you see will affect where you hear a sound coming from. It can also affect what you hear. 

Red trains sound louder than blue or green trains. Really.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/16e3/c5e58a9e86a2308ea549e14c81b6d14c178a.pdf

[esldude]

5 hours ago, davide256 said:

When you hear more detail/tone color structure than could be heard before. Of course most of us weren't in the room for a recording, so we don't know what the actual limits were... all we can do is keep trying to improve with A/B comparisons using familiar music to test tweaks and new gear. It's actually very important to listen to good gear you can't afford, that will help you to remember what is possible when choosing within your price range. Our memory "notes" are  a key part of being a competent audiophile

If you hear more detail/tone color you know whatever you heard before was different, that doesn't mean now you have transparency.  Even if you assume the more detail/tone color is more transparent you would not be able to conclude when full transparency was reached.  You might conclude something was more transparent than previously. 

 

I'll also note it is very simple to process sound to give more detail and tonal color.  Doing so is a step away from transparency.  Yet there are other situations where improving the gear gave that result and was a step toward transparency.  I think I understand where you are coming from as it is more or less how I approached things at one time. 

[Ralf11]

6 hours ago, STC said:

 

Good point. How do you know when transparency is achieved?

 

 

the veil is lifted!

 

or boosted

 

whatever

[esldude]

6 hours ago, STC said:

 

Good point. How do you know when transparency is achieved?

Well for some pieces of gear when you can insert or remove it from the chain of reproduction and hear no change.  For others it would be a comparison where you listen to different gear level matched side by side and see if you hear a difference.  This is better done without knowing which is which imo.  A blind test of people with good hearing is another way.  Though actually not much useful to audiophiles in practice.  Designing gear beyond limits laid out by more rigorous academic hearing research is another approach.  If you get gear that works accurately in a measured sense down to the limits of physics.

 

Of course these typically don't convince audiophiles.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, esldude said:

Well for some pieces of gear when you can insert or remove it from the chain of reproduction and hear no change.

Like USB de-evilizers?

[esldude]

Just now, mansr said:

Like USB de-evilizers?

Yes though there are exceptions.  

[esldude]

12 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

the veil is lifted!

 

or boosted

 

whatever

Yeah.  Lifted veils.  Layers removed. 

 

Brings up a point worth making.  The analogy of the transparent system is like looking thru a glass.  If the glass is dirty or tinted, or shaped to create optical distortions  then getting cleaner flatter glass lets you have that transparent view.  One should remember however even if the glass is clean changing the lighting of what is on the other side of the glass can look cleaner, clearer etc when that glass is no better than before.  Or even worse if the scene beyond the glass is too bright, a tinting might make the viewed scene clearer than if the glass were clear.  

[Ralf11]

also glass is now being nano-coated