Archimago‘s 16/44 test

[marce]

5 hours ago, audiobomber said:

Probably would have been a better amp if he had.

What is high fidelity?

Signal in, larger signal out, only difference amplitude, nothing added, nothing taken away, just some added gain.The same rules apply to any signal being amplified. If an amp is voiced it is not hi-fi (I also like the presentation of horn speakers and have built a couple in the past as well as well as some TDL Studio 1M, that were nice near field, and then there was the KEF's 104/2's driven be Audiolab) if I had the room and money I would have numerous systems, because each sound slightly different and allows you to hear your music as if it was new... ENJOYMENT of the music. Audio is entertainment, to quote Nelson Pass. I like the sound of SET valve mono blocks through open baffle speakers, definitely not true hi-fi, I also had a more true hi-fi system, great for checking recordings.

[fas42]

23 hours ago, audiobomber said:

I completely disagree. It's important to know the qualities of the recording in order to judge sound quality. Should I assume my system is sibilant because of The Trinity Sessions? The recording is sibilant, it should sound that way.

 

The Trinity Sessions are disturbingly sibilant? Strange, I have never noticed that ...

 

Yes, the qualities of the recordings should come through - but they will always go on the positive side of the register. The better the rig, the more 'stressful' recordings will emerge effortlessly, and deliver a tremendous subjective punch ...

[fas42]

6 hours ago, marce said:

I like the sound of SET valve mono blocks through open baffle speakers, definitely not true hi-fi, I also had a more true hi-fi system, great for checking recordings.

 

Setups like the former will get key areas of the sound subjectively  'right', which is something that classic versions of the latter may struggle to achieve. The big trick is having all disturbing weaknesses inaudible - the more "technically correct" the system, the more likely that the remaining issues stand out like a sore thumb - actually hearing the recording, and only the recording, very, very rarely happens ...

[Archimago]

Part 3 out now boys... Listener results tabulated and graphed.

 

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/05/blind-test-results-part-3-do-digital.html

 

Gotta say, folks did pretty well! Many able to detect that the motherboard wasn't exactly "good" fidelity. And those who took and time and I believe had good gear did show preference to the cleaner sound of the Oppo UDP-205.

 

[Confused]

I have to say that I very much enjoyed the blind test, and it is fascinating to now be able to see the results.  Many thanks to @archimago for doing the hard work, good stuff. 

 

One thing that interests me is that my personal results are fairly typical for my demographic group, except for the Sony disc player, that I seamed to constantly place lower than the other devices, and indeed rank lower than other listeners.  Looking back through my notes, for most listening tests I placed "C" (the Oppo) top, with the "A" (the ASRock) either bottom or second to bottom.  My "outlier" result though was the Sony, which I very often found worse than the ASRock.  Looking at the measurements, I can see that the Sony is indeed the worse item with respect to jitter, but I note the comments that the Sony's jitter performance should not in theory cause any negative audible effects.  Could there be something else about the Sony that cause me to pick it last?  I can be quite specific about why the Sony troubled me during the blind listening, it was some kind of "digital hash" or artifacts / distortion in the treble / presence range frequencies.  I think I became a little obsessed with this particular aspect when listening, maybe a case of focusing too much on a small negative factor and so my attention deviated away from the rest.

 

So as an open question, is there anything in the Sony's measurements that might account for the presence hash / distortions that I seamed to be hearing?  This is an aspect of music reproduction that tends to trouble me in general, I think I am a little oversensitive to it, so it would be fascinating if I could correlate this to something objectively measurable.  Any ideas?

 

Of course, I may just be tone deaf, but I would prefer to think not as I did pick the Oppo as my number one choice.

[Ralf11]

Yes, Great Work - it just needs a statistician to work over the data a bit...

[mcgillroy]

10 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Yes, Great Work - it just needs a statistician to work over the data a bit...

Care to say where you find this lacking?

[Ralf11]

I'd get somebody to run an ANOVA on it, assuming there are enough samples in each cell