Blue or red pill?

[pkane2001]

39 minutes ago, mansr said:

He's not making this up. While 9/10 in one trial wouldn't impress a statistician, it's enough to make me intrigued. We recorded a bunch files, both music and test signals, and I'll be analysing those. There has to be an explanation.

 

Mans, I'd start by looking at timing of samples and sample values being sent with the two different SFS settings in XXHighEnd. To me, this is one place where audible differences can be generated by altering the timing due to different buffering/chunking algorithm. Hopefully you've captured enough data to be able to investigate this.

 

Mani -- you've done well and shown at least in one test the ability to distinguish between the two settings in XXHighEnd.

 

I assume the two of you didn't try any other player software to eliminate the possible effects of the buffering algorithm? That's a bit of a black box, as far as I can tell, as the source code showing what it does at different SFS settings is not publicly available.

 

[manisandher]

2 minutes ago, esldude said:

And not being a user of your software XX Highend what is different about SFS .1 vs 200 in terms of what is happening to the playback. 

 

Hmmm. One for @PeterSt I think.

 

All I know is that the two settings give bit-identical replay... but sound different.

 

Mani.

[manisandher]

3 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

I assume the two of you didn't try any other player software to eliminate the possible effects of the buffering algorithm? That's a bit of a black box, as far as I can tell, as the source code showing what it does at different SFS settings is not publicly available.

 

No we didn't. I think we were both a bit 'done in' by the end of the 3rd test. I know I certainly was.

 

Mani.

[semente]

1 minute ago, manisandher said:

 

Hmmm. One for @PeterSt I think.

 

All I know is that the two settings give bit-identical replay... but sound different.

 

Mani.

 

What do you mean by bit-identical replay?

[pkane2001]

5 minutes ago, esldude said:

And not being a user of your software XX Highend what is different about SFS .1 vs 200 in terms of what is happening to the playback. 

 

That is my question, as well. Here's what Peter posted previously in answering this. It does point to that it has to do with buffering/chunking of data, but I have a bit of a hard time understanding the exact behavior wrt to timing.

 

 

[manisandher]

4 minutes ago, semente said:

 

What do you mean by bit-identical replay?

 

Changing the 'SFS' parameter in XXHighEnd, as we did, does not alter the bits arriving at the DAC (to be confirmed by @mansr). And yet the differences are audible at the analogue output of the DAC (which I hope I've convinced most people of).

 

Mani.

[esldude]

12 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

Yes, exactly.

 

Mani.

Okay, so yes throw out the first two runs. 

 

9 of 10 nearly 10 of 10 is very, very interesting.  

[esldude]

@manisandher

Just a suggestion.  Maybe start a fresh thread about results of the red pill blue pill test.  Copy over the few responses to the results so far. Perhaps Chris could do that for you. 

[semente]

3 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

Changing the 'SFS' parameter in XXHighEnd, as we did, does not alter the bits arriving at the DAC (to be confirmed by @mansr). And yet the differences are audible at the analogue output of the DAC (which I hope I've convinced most people of).

 

Mani.

 

Ok, that makes sense.

And was Mans able to capture the digital stream?

[manisandher]

1 minute ago, semente said:

And was Mans able to capture the digital stream?

 

Absolutely - he has the digital stream captured in real time during the A/B/X. He's probably analysing it right now :-)

 

Mani.

[Ralf11]

28 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

You could have gotten... 100/100 and still there will be a bunch who will call the result statistically invalid or the test flawed. 

 

No statistician would, or could do so.

 

Let's keep this thread non-comical please.

[Ralf11]

10 minutes ago, esldude said:

Okay, so yes throw out the first two runs. 

 

9 of 10 nearly 10 of 10 is very, very interesting.  

 

it is 

 

and the 95% Conf. level is simply one that has been used for a long time as it balances Type I and Type II errors well.

 

in some things you would never settle for that level - say a drug trial where the consequences vs. contra-indications are highly skewed

[manisandher]

11 minutes ago, esldude said:

@manisandher

Just a suggestion.  Maybe start a fresh thread about results of the red pill blue pill test.  Copy over the few responses to the results so far. Perhaps Chris could do that for you. 

 

I'd prefer to leave this thread as it is for now. It started with an invitation to @mansr, and ended with him being "intrigued". Job done, I'd say.

 

If it makes sense for Mans to start a new thread taking my results and then adding his analysis, then perhaps we should do that?

 

Mani.

[sandyk]

36 minutes ago, esldude said:

If so, yes the first two runs were less than optimum, and the third one would have been the way to do it.  You have a fresh reference that way. 

 

 Dennis

 Yes, ideally you need some kind of reference. After quite a few repetitions, everything starts to sound the same.

 

Years ago, a friend had me perform a test with 3 x 20 pairs of  comparison files with the order changed randomly with a computer program he wrote.  He had taken my files and made up 3 new folders on a USB memory stick after shuffling them around between 2  HDDs on his PC, but none of his copies sounded as good as I remembered them sounding.

I then inserted a fresh copy of the better sounding tracks into each of the pairs as a reference, (a total of 3 tracks) which then helped me to home in on which of the original tracks had been my original preferred copy.

I had a falling out with my friend (DIY Audio member Greg Erskine) however, when I insisted that NONE of his tracks sounded as good as the new reference track.

 

Alex

 

 

[sandyk]

39 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

Absolutely - he has the digital stream captured in real time during the A/B/X. He's probably analysing it right now :-)

 

Mani.

 Mani

 The results of the digital stream analysis, provided that the checksums were identical, will show no differences.

Alex

[mansr]

6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

The results of the digital stream analysis, provided that the checksums were identical, will show no differences.

Of course not, but we must still verify that they are indeed identical.

[manisandher]

Hi Alex, apologies we didn't get around to using any of the files you sent to me a while ago. We were a bit 'done in' by the end of the A/B/X.

 

4 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 The results of the digital stream analysis, provided that the checksums were identical, will show no differences.

 

I don't think talking about 'checksums' is appropriate here. We didn't use two different files that had identical checksums, but rather a single file played back in (what I believe to be, but to be verified by Mans) two different bit-identical ways.

 

(I see Mans got there before me.)

 

Mani.

[sandyk]

1 minute ago, manisandher said:

Hi Alex, apologies we didn't get around to using any of the files you sent to me a while ago. We were a bit 'done in' by the end of the A/B/X.

 

 

I don't think talking about 'checksums' is appropriate here. We didn't use two different files that had identical checksums, but rather a single file played back in (what I believe to be, but to be verified by Mans) two different bit-identical ways.

 

(I see Mans got there before me.)

 

Mani.

Mani

 All that I am saying here is that Mansr will be wasting his time attempting further analysis of these files after he satisfies himself that they are identical.

As you both got along so well , perhaps you should organise a further session with Mansr under more relaxed conditions ?

You always seem to run out of time with these kinds of things, where you also need to have some relaxation time with refreshments.

Alex

[fas42]

15 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Dennis

 Yes, ideally you need some kind of reference. After quite a few repetitions, everything starts to sound the same.

 

Years ago, a friend had me perform a test with 3 x 20 pairs of  comparison files with the order changed randomly with a computer program he wrote.  He had taken my files and made up 3 new folders on a USB memory stick after shuffling them around between 2  HDDs on his PC, but none of his copies sounded as good as I remembered them sounding.

I then inserted a fresh copy of the better sounding tracks into each of the pairs as a reference, (a total of 3 tracks) which then helped me to home in on which of the original tracks had been my original preferred copy.

I had a falling out with my friend (DIY Audio member Greg Erskine) however, when I insisted that NONE of his tracks sounded as good as the new reference track.

 

Alex

 

 

 

The mind does play tricks on one ...

 

The brain is far too agile, adaptive - and "fills in the gaps" with great ease. Which is not the same thing as not being aware of what's better, especially when no special attention is being paid to what's going on. A powerful tool is the annoyance factor - something nominally sounds OK, but the longer you listen the more irritable you become - the music is bugging you, but you can't really say why. This is because the replay is close enough so that the brain then "fills the gaps" - but it gets fed up with doing this, and sends out signals to your conscious mind, "Hey! Enough, okay!!" ...

[mansr]

6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

All that I am saying here is that Mansr will be wasting his time attempting further analysis of these files after he satisfies himself that they are identical.

There are also analogue captures.

[sandyk]

3 minutes ago, mansr said:

There are also analogue captures.

 Now that sounds interesting. What equipment did you use to do this ? 

I sometimes wish that I still had my original Nakamichi tape deck.

[esldude]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

There are also analogue captures.

At some point later on, might be interesting if you could allow us to download all your analog captures if the bit perfect digital captures check out. 

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, manisandher said:

All I know is that the two settings give bit-identical replay... but sound different.

 Which is what I have been insisting for many years. How they were generated is beside the point. It doesn't matter whether the perceived audible differences were generated by Software manipulation or Hardware changes.

Mani, Peter, and others have previously verified in this forum that the latter is also possible.

 

Dennis

 How do you propose to make available the Analogue captures without first converting them to digital again, where it is almost 100% certain that there will no longer be any audible differences ?

Alex

[mansr]

By analogue captures I obviously meant digitised captures of the analogue output from the DAC.

[esldude]

10 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Dennis

 How do you propose to make available the Analogue captures without first converting them to digital again, where it is almost 100% certain that there will no longer be any audible differences ?

Alex

I assume he used his Tascam to send the analog signal thru the ADC.  I didn't take it to mean he captured using an analog process like reel tape.