Everything sounds the same

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On 9/19/2018 at 2:25 AM, firedog said:

If I come onto  a food forum and ask for directions about how to fry chicken, it's rude to start lecturing me about why I should be a vegetarian. Do egos have to be so big and unrestrained online that that isn't obvious? That debate shouldn't be in that thread. 

This is exactly how it starts — why are you lecturing him about why he should be a vegetarian?

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3 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

  In that case, he isn't the only one, as there have been quite a few verified findings in other areas of the Forum that people like yourself refuse to accept because they haven't been submitted to, and verified by your Technical Committees.

 

Why do you care if he or anyone agrees that claims are “verified”. Clearly your own bar for verification is different from other people’s. Understand that certain claims go against other data that other people consider to be highly verified! At the very very least you need to understand your own observations are different than other people’s — what gives your own claims primacy?

 

For some people this is a hobby and the consequence of being wrong is having a bad sound day. For others it’s a profession, and the consequence of being wrong is being thrown out of their house and being forced to go in the government doll where it exists! Presented with such a choice I have little trouble betting on the side of Maxwell  Vastly better bet than on Belichick on any Sunday!

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27 minutes ago, mansr said:

Would you take seriously a "scientist" investigating, say, telekinesis?

 

?

 

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/comment-page-4/

 

I think she can switch branes with her brain:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lisa_randall-theories-of-the-brane-lisa-randall

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Superdad said:

As it turned out, all 4 of them chose the same variant as their favorite, yet the ranked the other 3 slightly differently.  

While the reports by my clients were rather passionate, good luck finding measurement correlations between any of these parts.  

 

I have zero doubt that the differences are easily measurable e.g. looking at nonlinearities and 1/f noise patterns -- the problem isn't that measurements can't show differences, rather as you say, no one has correlated the measurements to listening pleasure.

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7 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

She speaks of "extra dimensions of space."  That is what my wife is always looking for in her crammed-full clothes closet! 

 

https://www.amazon.com/This-Idea-Brilliant-Overlooked-Underappreciated/dp/0062698214

 

See you can apply high energy physics to bedroom remodeling -- practical  

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30 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Then there is the "science" of Creationism. Whereby the scientific method is turned on it's ear. In normal science a phenomenon is observed and science works to explain that phenomenon with rational results through experimentation.

 

Creationism isn't science because the hypothesis isn't disprovable. In normal science a phenomenon is observed and they a hypothesis is generated and experiments are designed to disprove the hypothesis. Observations alone don't constitute science regardless of the statistics e.g "everybody knows"

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39 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

I'm all for that!  But a lot of people here prefer to deny that any audio phenomenon that can be observed with the ear is valid for study.

 

Sure a lot crackpot ideas were put forth by astronomers before they had the instruments to properly observe and measure, but an awful lot of correct science was conducted back then as well--based on observed phenomenon.  Same with medicine.

 

 

Ohhh ... no. The reason that homeopathy was a good thing back in the 1700s was that it was the least dangerous type of "medicine". George Washington, no less, was killed through being bled medically, not on the battlefield. Astronomers were largely lost until they applied mathematics to their observations. The essential flip side of science is the use of observations to develop theories that make successful predictions.

 

Michelangelo's contributions to modern medicine are largely unrecognized but he was one of, if not the, first to accurately draw human anatomy http://theartinscience.blogspot.com/2010/09/michelangelo-secret-scientist.html, Galileo brought the beginnings of mathematical rigour to astronomy that allowed Newton (and colleagues) to introduce the beginnings of modern science https://www.jstor.org/stable/27825986?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents -- before these three science did not exist regardless of man's observations.

 

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16 minutes ago, elcorso said:

I do not see any of these petulants EE listing the products created by them that have helped to better listen to music.

 

On the other hand, listening to music is an art and a pleasure, never a test of applied electronics ... But if you want to torture yourself with that, it's up to you.

Interesting that those who favor the photography hobby do not share the disdain of optics.

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1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

OK, more literal : Of course they can. But this is different from attributing value to it. So a capacitor will show "noise". It may even show a pattern. But that doesn't mean that we can see whether it will sound better or not. For that we need to know quite a lot more. And btw, preferably it sounds still OK after 2 months of being in use. So it is also related to the ambient heat, etc. etc. etc. Nothing much new.

But what it comes down to is that we thus must measure "systems" as such. And now we are in trouble ... (kind of).

 

 

Depends on what the claims are.

 

Is the capacitor being marketed as “low noise”? Is it? Low ESR? Is it?

 

The “Stradivarius” violin isn’t marketed with any specific technical claims that I know of, so SQ rules. Many audio products are marketed with technical (or pseudo-technical) claims and that’s a huge difference. Eg “phase coherent”, “24 bit linear” etc etc etc etc.

 

If the marketing didn’t introduce technical terms, these debates would substantially go away.

 

My impression isn’t that people don’t value SQ, rather are offended by unsubstantiated technical claims.

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10 hours ago, Superdad said:

Right.  And yet both Galileo and Newton were considered heretics at the time.  I think you are supporting my point.    The pioneers are the ones that end up with arrows in their backs.

 

Newton was hardly considered heretic though he became very eccentric later on n life. He was certainly a character though but held very prominent positions. His contributions to science cannot be overstated. 

 

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is considered the father of Empiricism but served as Lord Chancellor of England and was knighted. From his work the Royal Society was formed which Sir Isaac Newton served as President — so hardly a heretic!

 

They and other scientists such as Benjamin Franklin were held in high esteem that translated into politics.

 

 

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2 hours ago, davide256 said:

And so it goes on ... electronics degrees trying to make what goes on inside the human head for hearing conform to what they know how to measure outside the head.

Huh? Butterfly.

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11 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

not for HE audio, - most certainly....

Oh no! I have a CPU on my desk that’s explicitly designed for high end — in fact it’s coded in VHDL (Very High Definition Language) — balanced Class A!

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2 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

IME, - claims by HE audio manufacturers through their marketing copy are much more substantiated than other corporate socialist luxury goods manufacturers.

Certainly and I’d never paint all manuf with the same brush. DIYAudio is filled with real technical discussions among HE engineers and where marketing fluff isn’t tolerated. Like all industries there are good and bad ...

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1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Sorry, the brain's pattern identification mechanisms do not work in this nice, neat way.  Otherwise instruments, which are far more sensitive to small differences, would inevitably be better at pattern identification.  For example, instruments can detect things far smaller or further away than our eyes can see, but we are better at recognizing faces. 

 

These are two different levels of the "stack"

 

Consider:

1) an image sensor

2) a software program that operates on an image file

 

Facial recognition is typically implemented in a software program e.g. facebook, which has no access to the original image sensor.

 

In any case that's how it works in the brain. The retina is the sensor, the cortex performs high level pattern recognition.

 

Quote

 

Ignoring rather than detecting differences may also be key to pattern recognition, as with recognizing a disguised person or recognizing that two different instruments in two different recordings are both violins, or both Telecasters.

 

Right. The pattern recognizer is a classifier, which groups disparate signals together into classes aka patterns.

 

Regarding electronic signals, an oscilloscope allows you to visualize an electronic signal as a graph. Although the scope may also contain software to manipulate, transform and apply statistics to the signal, such software is not exhaustive.

 

Consider a 10 Gsps scope which realistically might be require to capture a high speed digital audio signal (and 50 Gsps+ scopes exist). Such a scope can product an overwhelming amount of data for an audio track. Such data indeed captures any reasonable difference in a digital audio signal yet the analysis/pattern recognition to analyze such data just isn't there compared with the brain.

 

Now also consider the amount of raw data produced by e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope and then consider the application of truly "big data" statistics and analysis software in modern science... yes Astrostatistics is a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrostatistics which goes waay beyond the telescope itself.

 

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30 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Do you actually believe that? or are you just waxing contrariness in order to create controversy? While I fundamentally agree that concrete, measurable data is needed to explain why certain things sound the way that they do, I also know that some things that can be measured make no difference to the sound of an audio component, and some things that can be heard are simply not represented by the measurements. For instance, you have two amplifiers that measure, identically. They have the same power, the same frequency response and both have vanishing levels of distortion. On paper, there should be no discernible difference between the two amps, yet listening shows that they sound distinctly different from one another. How do you measure that?

 

No, the problem isn't measuring differences, rather in knowing what differences are meaningful -- knowing what is meaningful.

 

For example, looking at a very low level, each amplifier, certainly different brands, but even each amplifier of the same brand, will have very subtle electrical differences. All components have nonlinearities and shot/flicker noise patterns. On paper every amplifier has its own measurable pattern. Such differences are employed in forensic analysis but doesn't mean that he devices will have audible differences.

 

Think about two perfect mirrors: the surface pattern will have microscopic differences. Two "perfect" diamonds -- easily distinguished under a microscope, etc.

 

Let's say I have two indistinguishable recordings and cut and splice them in various places -- forensic analysis will unequivocally determine that the recording has been edited yet audibly flawless...

 

Amplifiers -- any two resistors from the same batch will have slightly different values, as will capacitors and all components etc.

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2 hours ago, Abtr said:

Anyway, I would argue that any audible difference between (quality) audio components results from different distortion of the analogue output relative to the input signal. Some distortion may be euphonically pleasing but it remains distortion. So for high fidelity sound your best bet would be to go for components that introduce the least measured overall analogue distortion in a sound system.

Reasonable overall except that “overall analogue distortion” may not be as meaningful as more specific measures.

 

That’s a complaint of many if not most people who feel that measurements don’t predict SQ. 

 

For example, though, my Nelson Pass amps aren’t advertised as having the lowest possible “overall” distortion. and there are many many factors in play.

 

Thought or actual experiment: can you distinguish a pure sine wave at 20 kHz from a square wave? 16 kHz? 10 kHz ... etc etc

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1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

My Pass amps sound great also, but I know they are not as accurate as some of the cheaper, more conventional designs, and measurably so. The rub is between accuracy/lowest distortion and personal preference, as I think is usually the case on these fora. 

 

Nothing wrong with personal preference, or the "illusion of being there"

 

As NP says, this is for enjoyment, not kidney dialysis.

 

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

What's the point of this experiment? A square wave is a collection of a fundamental and infinite (in theory) number of odd harmonics. Are you asking if harmonics above certain fundamental frequency are audible? 

 

Uggg... don't want to get too much into it here, but the idea is that even harmonics are much more pleasing than odd, and in some cases NP puts pots into the amps to allow SQ to be tuned ... in any case I don't strive for lowest overall distortion and don't feel that single measurement says it all, there are lots of other measurements that can be factored in as well. My choice.

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19 minutes ago, mansr said:

That was a long time ago. These days 5% or better is the norm. Even 1% resistors are so cheap that it hardly matters.

 

Right, but even at 0.01% which for SMD is easy, our ability to measure differences surpasses. As you say, our electronic sensors have the ability to measure which far far surpasses our cochlea's ability, just as our digital imaging sensors far exceed our retina's ability to measure ... but the knowledge or interest in analyzing the raw data is not there so we get THD. THD alone does not exactly predict SQ.

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1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Absolutely! That's why I've had these Pass amps for the last 20 years, even though I had a number of other amps pass through my system in the meantime.

 

 

Oh, that I believe. I do plan to add some harmonics generator to my listening evaluation software. Symmetric vs asymmetric transfer functions. I've been looking for some papers and reports documenting specific transfer function approximations, for example, for an SET amp, a class B solid state, etc. Doing this just for fun, of course.

 

NP just mentioned that one of the differences in three of his amplifiers that all use Semisouth transistors is the amount of negative second harmonic:

 

J2 least, SIT-3, SIT-1 most

 

So he clearly knows what measurements correlate to his artistic creations  

What makes him unique is that he is willing to share, rather than BS...

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For everyone's consideration, particularly given the importance of certain types of measurements on SQ:

http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_h2.pdf

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43 minutes ago, sandyk said:

Perhaps you should ask that question in another area of the forum, perhaps even start a Poll ?

 

Our 230VAC 50HZ systems appear to be far less susceptible to such problems, although I note that even a few Au. members use Isolation Transformers.

 

All your files have problems with noise though that we don't have ?

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1 minute ago, sandyk said:

WILL have added noise due to  TX and  RX degradation via the Internet as well as added noise from your own PC, which in any event, you claim to be able to correct anyway with your methodology.

 

Nope, all my internet downloads go fiber into my NAS. No degradation. Perhaps the Australian photons are all jittery? They probably spin backwards ?

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2 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

you're on fire today!

Yeah, my Win10 NAA (Minix) only gets to DSD256 over 5G Wifi, and my Topping DX7s won't do direct DSD at all with my Espressobin/linux NAA ... arrggghhhh ... the Espressobin is smooth as butter at DSD512 with the iFi iDSD Micro though ...

 

I'm creating the highest EMI environment possible to test out a new USB isolation technique...

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11 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

will it be Tempest certified?

 

Better, will use quantum entanglement communications: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-achieved-direct-counterfactual-quantum-communication-for-the-first-time

 

The only problem is that it works perfectly when you aren't listening ... ?‍♂️

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5 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

My personal interpretation : the degree to which a digital signal complies to the necessary headroom in order to error-free transfer zeroes for zereos and ones for ones.

IOW the eye opening.

 

Sorry for my English (this is not easy at all).

 

 

Not just your personal interpretation! Matching the eye pattern is specified in the networking standards (at least as if 10Gbe circa 2001) which also mandate maximum end to end jitter in the pS range. 

 

The SI needs in modern networks are crazy: https://dl.cdn-anritsu.com/en-en/test-measurement/files/Technical-Notes/White-Paper/AnritsuExtremeDataRatesWhitepaper.pdf

 

The bit error rate needs to be less that 1:10^12 to be compliant and even then there is error correction.

 

in any case noise from the magnetic platter just doesn’t make it across the network — not my pronouncements, not my proclamations — this has been measured time and time again — there is an entire internet of reading that “verifies” this. 

 

In any case forget SQ, my networking and storage system is comprised of high quality commercial & professional parts that is designed to work and works very well.

My own storage, network & servers were built by me, and I’ve been very open about how to do this.

 

I also optimize my audio area with heavy iron transformers, linear power and very well recognized components. 

 

The system in my own house is very expensive yet I provide tips and techniques for budget constrained audiophiles to get great sound at an affordable price — any budget!