Sanity Check

[plissken]

Just now, Ralf11 said:

 

 

What stress?

 

How much stress was there?

 

how do you know there was any stress??  Did you assay stress hormones in the subjects?

 

I put out a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Totally nulls the stress. 

[Samuel T Cogley]

14 minutes ago, new_media said:

Ha! I was guessing gullible audiophile syndrome.

 

I readily concede, I buy too much gear.  For me, it's not gullibility so much as wanting to audition new DACs.  I generally consider it a win if I don't buy the latest shiny object I have my eye on.

[GUTB]

17 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

Sure do. I start by dismissing what ever you think is a good idea. 

 

Of course I don’t have anything to do with better audio or your interest in it.

 

If you’re interested in better audio why did you deny better audio exists?

[Fluffytime]

Here's what I'd like to know:

 

The people who claim that audio blind tests can't work because of the "stress factor" are usually the exact same people who claim to be 100% confident in their listening skills/hearing/lack of bias/whatever.

 

But if they truly have such absolute confidence in themselves, why on earth would participating in a blind test induce crippling levels of stress?

 

Seems a bit weird.

[Ralf11]

9 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Of course I don’t have anything to do with better audio or your interest in it.

 

If you’re interested in better audio why did you deny better audio exists?

 

 

what about that stress?

[Ron Scubadiver]

36 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

That depends upon your definition of "significantly different". One person might say that the difference between two components might be night and day with one being audio nirvana while the other is pure excrement. Another listener might find those same differences inconsequential.

That, an important insight.  However, often folks around here use descriptions which seem exaggerated.  Things like the sound was "congested" or the sound stage "collapsed".  The only time I hear big changes is when I switch from one recording which doesn't sound so great, to one which is great. 

[GUTB]

I’ve owned and auditioned in-home 7 stereo amps, and around 10 headphone amps. They all sounded different. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. Of those, three were class D, three were A/B, and one was A (DHT). The class Ds all sucked in terms of soundstage, but differed greatly in other ways — for example, the Crown XLS (Drivecore 2) is very unresolving while the D-Sonic (Pascal) is the most resolving amp I’ve had in my system. 

 

There is no possibility that I could not tell the difference between my Linnenberg Allegros and the Teac AI-301 (ICEPower). In amp terms they are like day and night. With a good track selection I would find it hard to believe anyone could fail a blind test between them, let alone prefer the Teac.

[Spacehound]

5 hours ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

http://matrixhifi.com/ENG_contenedor_ppec.htm

 

Next time you have a GAS attack, go to the above link for a sanity check.  It's a blind test where one side was a cheap class AB amp, $5 interconnects and a consumer disk player.   The other side was some expensive audiophile gear.  There was no statistically significant preference for either setup.  They don't mention this, but the level controls on the A500 are known to measure terribly, and they had to be used because there was no line stage in use.

 

I read so much BS related to this hobby.  The two most inflammatory subjects these days are wires/cables/interconnects and MQA.  Who do you believe?  Your money might be better spent taking your honey out to dinner.

 

 

As we are striving for 'perfection':

 

The more money you spend the more all equipment should sound the same.

[semente]

2 hours ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

I must be toxic, because the only time I ever heard a significant difference was when an aging unit which was undoubtedly in need of major work was replaced with something new.  As for the stress argument, it is the one raised the most often by those opposed to blind testing. I have never seen so much as a quantum of proof that is going on.

 

It's possible to screw up a blind test with bad source material.  

 

I am a firm believer the differences in speakers overwhelm the differences in everything else put together in a digital playback chain.  Life is different in vinyl land.  Bad recordings sound bad no matter what and probably sound better on $5 earbuds while riding mass transit.

 

Vinyl cartridges are transducers, just like speakers, and affect the reproduction just as much.

[Samuel T Cogley]

35 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Of course I don’t have anything to do with better audio or your interest in it.

 

If you’re interested in better audio why did you deny better audio exists?

 

With due respect, I think the issue is the lens of covetousness that you use to determine desirability of gear that might be the issue.

 

In other words, if someone doesn't drink the, "sure, I'd love to have a dCS stack" kool-aid, they're not what you would call an audiophile.

[Ralf11]

covetousness causes stress

[GUTB]

7 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

covetousness causes stress

 

Which reminds me I need to get around setting up the Apple TV for critical listening.

[Ralf11]

I'm looking forward to hearing your results.

 

If you do hear much of a difference, then some blinded tests would be useful.

 

And, I am not kidding when I say stress can be measured - there are several techniques (one is new as of today), tho I don't think any audiophile would do the tests.  

 

You could have just said "it's possible there is some stress in blinded listening tests" or "any critical listening might cause stress"

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

covetousness causes stress

I'm picturing a mandatory warning label with a grisly image of a stressed-out audiophile on high-end equipment.

[Ron Scubadiver]

1 hour ago, Spacehound said:

As we are striving for 'perfection':

 

The more money you spend the more all equipment should sound the same.

That assumes everyone is working towards the exact same thing, which I sincerely doubt.

[Ron Scubadiver]

1 hour ago, semente said:

 

Vinyl cartridges are transducers, just like speakers, and affect the reproduction just as much.

True, and I did cover that possibility in passing.  There are lots of issues with vinyl.  

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

That assumes everyone is working towards the exact same thing, which I sincerely doubt.

Most people say their goal is accurate reproduction.

[Abtr]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

covetousness causes stress

I just made a covetous grab for a new Behringer A500 amp at €195. No stress at all.. 

[plissken]

24 minutes ago, mansr said:

Most people say their goal is accurate reproduction.

Not sure where people miss the Fidelity part of hi-fi. 

[GUTB]

This should be obvious but modern hi-fi doesn’t actually have much to do with high fidelity. First of all, speakers are totally incapable of it...well, recording equipment is also incapable of it. What we’re doing is chasing a form of sonic art. A Norman Rockwell painting doesn’t look like anything like real life. But you can appreciate the mastery of the art and derive pleasure from it.

 

[Ralf11]

I am chasing euphonic accuracy 

[mourip]

34 minutes ago, plissken said:

Not sure where people miss the Fidelity part of hi-fi. 

 

I am curious what you have in mind by fidelity.

 

Faithful to the original performance? Faithful to the recording? Sounds good/real/convincing?

 

How would one know? Seems pretty subjective even if you had been sitting at the original performance.

[Spacehound]

1 hour ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

That assumes everyone is working towards the exact same thing, which I sincerely doubt.

There is only one perfection. It has nothing to do with our personal preferences or the manufacturers emphasis of some aspects more than the others, which are  merely his  preferences.

 

High fidelity means 'accuracy' by definition. And as we don't have the artists performing live  in our room the recording is our only  'reference' source.

 

Personally I go for a measured flat frequency response  and a measured constant phase shift (there will always be  a phase shift but if it is as constant as possible  throughout the frequency range what it actually is won't matter). For example, always set the DAC to 'linear phase' - anything else will mess up the source's intended stereo imaging..

 

That will then mean we are as close as currently possible to  not 'interfering' with the source even though we don't know what the source is supposed to sound like. Also we are not imposing our system's 'character' on every recording because as far  as possible our system won't have a 'character'.

 

Then, if I don't like what I am hearing I just buy (or stream)  a different recording or mastering of the same music. 

 

Having done all that you are then free to change things as much as you want but you at least have a reference 'as accurate as possible'  point you can easily return to. Personally having purchased the most accurate (by measurement) stuff that I can find I leave it as is because within my price range I know it is 'high fidelity' which is presumably what we are paying for. You tend to end up with a dCS DAC and the latest Quad Electrostatics  

[plissken]

9 minutes ago, mourip said:

 

I am curious what you have in mind by fidelity.

 

Faithful to the original performance? Faithful to the recording? Sounds good/real/convincing?

 

How would one know? Seems pretty subjective even if you had been sitting at the original performance.

 

That the signal that is encoded on the source is messed with in the least damaging way possible. 

 

So I would like a chain that I can go from source to the output of the amp, at the very least, capture that and compare back to the source with as little deviation as possible. 

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, plissken said:

That the signal that is encoded on the source is messed with in the least damaging way possible. 

 

So I would like a chain that I can go from source to the output of the amp, at the very least, capture that and compare back to the source with as little deviation as possible. 

An ideal record/playback chain would allow placing a microphone in front of the speaker and looping a signal through it arbitrarily many times without degradation. If we remove the transducers, we can achieve audible transparency for a dozen or more iterations at a modest cost. The main remaining problem is the speaker.