The problem with subjective impressions

[sandyk]

3 hours ago, Archimago said:

The only way the above issue can be addressed is with blind-testing. Unless one can do that effectively, I believe it is essentially impossible not to be affected by these biases. The problem of course is that most subjective reviewers do not do this. And often will fight against those who suggest controlled listening tests. And even ban discussions, IMO of the most important procedural factor to add value to listening tests!

 Thanks for the good laugh .

 In my experience, the hard line Objective side will only accept the results of a series of correctly performed  Blind Tests when the results go the way they expect them to.

[sandyk]

2 hours ago, Summit said:

 

We all know subjective impressions has its disadvantage. I started this thread to discuss how subjective impressions (although that) can be made better and more objective in the sense that the reviewed gear somehow can be categorized in how big the SQ difference is in relative terms and in the grand scheme of things.

 

Yes I believe most audiophiles and music lovers will tell it like they hear it.

 A problem here, is that when an improvement,(or a degradation) is first noted, that the differences heard initially may be quite marked, but when revisited later, the differences although still remaining, are likely to be only minor, not HUGE differences .

[sandyk]

11 minutes ago, crenca said:

That said, it would be nice if more folks would go this far with the controversial and nonsensical stuff such as voodoo encodings and digital cables...

 

Many members do not agree with you in this area, and furthermore you are highly unlikely to be ever able to disprove what they report hearing using current measurement techniques.

[sandyk]

1 minute ago, Ralf11 said:

Many many qualified members do not agree with you in this area

 

 As this is mainly a Subjective based forum, as evidenced by the name of the forum, and supported by paid advertisements from members of the Hi Fi industry, the % of suitably qualified members is almost certainly a small minority of the total membership and readers of the forum.

[sandyk]

5 minutes ago, crenca said:

Rather than let this thread get sidetracked by the Radical Subjectivists, I hope the OP and others will keep it on track.

 As is usually the case, blame everybody except yourself.

Note also that this IS a Subjective thread that was started by a member from the Subjective side, who almost certainly didn't wish to hear the usual demands for DBT testing every time somebody reports hearing a difference after an equipment modification or change of equipment.

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, esldude said:

I think all of those are so good other than amps and speakers there isn't much difference.  Saying so isn't good business.  I think consumers fancy themselves to be reviewers or have their abilities.  Like a mystic group where you wish to ascend into the ranks of the worthy ear inner circle.  Yet they lack the exposure to much outstanding gear or notable gear.  Combined with the fact there actually is little difference in gear other than amps and speakers, and I think the whole industry went off in left field.  

 

If it weren't about business, magazines wouldn't subjectively review anything except transducers.  If a component other than speakers has a sound it is a failure of design.  

 Dennis

 You really need to get out and hear  more equipment of different types at other friend's houses. I have heard gear way in excess of my ability to afford, in fact, systems costing >$100K, that sounded way better than most people hear especially at a typical Hi Fi show.

[sandyk]

8 hours ago, STC said:

By listening objectively. Like how you would use a microphone to measure the frequency response of a loudspeaker. Listen to the same track at predetermined level with each changes. 

 

The affordable microphones that most members are likely to use are NOT capable of accurately measuring the frequency response of speakers, especially in the area above 15KHZ, and this should be left to the experts . Hobbyist measurements are normally a guide ONLY.  These microphone  limitations are clearly revealed in many recordings on CD where we know that many instruments have harmonics to well past 20kHz, yet there is often very little information shown in spectrograms above 19kHz, which is way short of CD's limitations .

[sandyk]

9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

a competent rig can deliver a highly satisfying rendering of some ancient recording, which is guaranteed to have nothing over 10k, if that

 So can a reasonable quality AM Radio .

Perhaps you are living in the past too much and are unable to appreciate the very high quality of many modern recordings ?

[sandyk]

5 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The AM radio is merely overlaying the recording with its own set of distortions -

 

But it still sounds better than a typical laptop with miniscule speakers !

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, STC said:

The person who invented the musical instruments with harmonics extending above 20kHz didn’t hear them nor aware of its existence

 That's absolute twaddle. There is evidence that primitive man was able to hear things like the snapping of a twig etc. with it's upper harmonics, which gave him a warning of intruders etc.

Even a sneeze has frequencies extending to 40kHz . Roll off a proper recording of one at 20kHz and see if it sounds the same.

 

How do you think they obtained the measurements in the attached ?

 

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm

 

 The attached is the Spectrum Analysis of a 24/192 .wav file. Barry's microphones are -1dB at 40kHz.

This is genuine musical content to >50kHz.

[sandyk]

19 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

The presence of musical harmonics above 20kHz does not mean that people can hear them.

 I will put it another way.

There is evidence that people can hear the ABSENCE of musical harmonics above 20kHz when they are removed from the recording.

 That's why several Music sites, including Soundkeeper Records  provide Format Comparison pages.

 I get it that people like yourself are more likely to believe High Res is BS, yet there are many members that love their high res LPCM, SACD  and DSD recordings.

 

See also https://www.stereophile.com/content/hi-rez-audio-distinguished-blind-testing

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html

[sandyk]

2 hours ago, tmtomh said:

And the Boyk article you link to says that ultrasonic can pose problems or issue for equipment and equipment designers.

 

 Not for competent Electronics designers these days , it won't .

IIRC, one of Miska's favourite Power Amplifiers had a  bandwidth of 1MHZ !

 My own DIY Class A Preamplifier is only -3dB at 1.5MHZ

[sandyk]

24 minutes ago, esldude said:

Other than speakers, and speaker/amp combinations, I don't think subjective impressions have any place anymore unless a device is bent from accurate pretty badly. 

 

 There can be marked audible differences between DACs, Preamps, and even different classes of power amplifiers in a well set up listening room with carefully positioned high quality speakers.

[sandyk]

28 minutes ago, esldude said:

Beyond that get over your precious self.  Interconnects don't effing matter, unless they are a broken design, and one has to try hard to break them.  If you are hearing really significant differences in IC's, it is a virtual certainty you are being deluded. See my signature for why that isn't an insult.  Learn why it is so, and quit fooling yourself.  

 

Yes, we know Dennis, if people like yourself are unable to measure any differences, then there can't possibly be any.

 The last paragraph would have to be among the most arrogant posts addressed to Subjective members that you have yet posted in this forum, and I am surprised to see such a post after a previous post where I gave quite a few technical reasons why this sometimes may be the case, and you did not rebut what I posted. 

 

Perhaps you need to listen to some of the systems from other members in your general area.

[sandyk]

42 minutes ago, semente said:

 

I am convinced that the reason why some people (myself included) are able to distinguish between 44.1 and higher sample rates is not because of the ultrasonic content but because the filtering is operating within the audible range.

 

Try high-passing one of the recordings you've mentioned at 22kHz and reproduce the result at normal listening levels over a NOS DAC and let us know if you can hear anything.

I gave up on NOS DACs for more  modern designs years ago as they are more suitable for High Res material.

With my old DSD1792 based X-DAC V3 used with my PC, but not in my main system, everything is upsampled internally to 192 K.

TBH, with almost all 16/44.1 material I find the HF detail a little " soft" sounding in comparison with the high res . version, EXCEPT in one particular case only, where E.E. John Dyson has taken the original 16/44.1 file, corrected it, and placed it in a 24/88.2 container.

Even when John has correctly down sampled this to 16/44.1 again it still appears to retain the " high res" advantage.

 This also appears to be part of what MQA is doing,(sharpening) but John's S/W is capable of a far greater improvement to poorly decoded material while needing no changes to existing DACs to sound in many cases like GENUINE high res material.  I believe that John's technology is capable of blowing MQA right out of the water !

 

I don't doubt that some of the reason for the preference for high res is the more relaxed filtering, but in the case of the X-DAC V3 this doesn't seem to apply, even when doing format comparisons. I also passed the test that FrederickV virtually coerced  me into, where I had no problems selecting the genuine 24/96 version and describing the differences that I heard when using the X-DAC V3 with ATH M70x headphones.

[sandyk]

3 hours ago, John Dyson said:

If I had the subjectivist religion, we'd still be clueless about the corruption of DolbyA compression leakage into the comsumer material, where as designed, DolbyA was NEVER EVER intended to end up in consumer hands.

 John

 That's not quite fair , in my case, as well as quite a few others in Au. ,we complained to HMV Records at Homebush in  Sydney, by letter (which they ignored) about the excessive brightness with some CD releases, especially with compilations. We just didn't realise until you pointed it out , that it wasn't from using perhaps similar  EQ as Vinyl, but it was a Dolby A problem.

Quote

yet the objectivists didn't have the tools to recognize what the problem was with digital sound. 

 

You are correct about that, even the highly qualified Editor of Electronics Australia magazine ( the late Neville Williams) who did mention the problem.

 

Kind Regards

Alex

 P.S.

Not all those who make Subjective reports are completely clueless technically. Many come from a technical background, not necessarily to E.E. qualifications though, but in some cases a broader, but  less in depth background.

[sandyk]

28 minutes ago, STC said:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2014/12/result-archimagos-lp-needle-drop-blind.html?m=1

 

 And all that from the fatally flawed use of Stereo recording and Playback according to some.

 Perhaps they should have used SQ encoded records with a Parabolic/Shibata Stylus instead ?

 

 

Been there, done that !

[sandyk]

26 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Now, we have 'loudness wars' with only a little pushback -- geesh loudness-wars started at full force in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and now has become totally mad.  They have created some reallly ingenious compressors and signal processors where the development SHOULD have been towards FIXING THE ACTUAL PROBLEM -- which was the latent compression that persisted since the middle 1980s.

That was the main reason that I originally purchased Graham Wilkinson's See DeClip Duo Pro S/W,  However,  as more ingenious (Evil?) compressors became available it became less effective with most modern releases.

Quote

Something like, maybe the problem will be solved by 0.0001% distortion instead of 0.001% distortion, or +-0.01dB freq response instead of +-0.05dB...  (+-0.1dB in the 100-10k range can be very noticeable.)

 

Yes, but try telling that to most of your fellow suitably qualified members .

[sandyk]

5 minutes ago, Kimo said:

Sorry for confusion, but you got it, the response.  

 

I have to believe this is pretty easy to hear on most systems.  I could pop in the tube amp tomorrow for comparison.

 Perhaps Frank could UL his rip of that 1985 track for a few interested members via say Dropbox and a PM ?

[sandyk]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I leave things like headphone amps, preamps, and DACs on all the time, if it is practical to do so.

George

 If you need to do that then the products are poorly designed. 

Well engineered products should reach optimum performance within 15 minutes or so after switch on unless they haven't been used for some time.

 

Regards

Alex

[sandyk]

20 minutes ago, Allan F said:

but also that running music through it continually achieves optimum performance

 

I would love to see John Swenson come up with a good explanation for that, other than it helps to achieve thermal equilibrium quicker.

 Some earlier amplifiers etc. needed time to reach thermal equilibrium, but these days there are suitable techniques to help compensate for the warming up cycle, such as inbuilt Bias diodes in some Power Transistors etc.

[sandyk]

52 minutes ago, mansr said:

Agreed.

 

Disagreed. Long-term changes (e.g. electrolytic caps drying out) won't be undone by any duration of operation.

 

That is not my experience with electros such as used in the John Linsley Hood PSU add-on capacitance multiplier section where they have around 600mV across them.

[sandyk]

I wasn't talking about dead components. I was talking about electros that didn't have a huge number of hours on them, and in fact, many of the constructors of the JLH PCBs, of which >800 were supplied worldwide, found that initially when using 2 x parallel 4,700uF in the capacitance multiplier area,that the transistor powering them often became quite warm in the first 24 hours or so, and it was better to form them using a bench PSU before use. This wasn't a problem when using 2 x 2,200uF though.

NUMEROUS constructors reported that the sound quality went through cycles initially, where with around about around 30 hours on the PCB it sounded like something was very wrong. After approx. 72 hours of use they appear to have fully stabilised.

 

 Many have also found that NOS electros that haven't been used also benefit from a period of time on a Bench PSU or a device called ä "Cap Rack" before installation.

[sandyk]

55 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

what we need is a  DAC manufacturer to design an in-built system which compensates for neural accommodation

 

 What the forum needs is an inbuilt filter to automatically remove your inane and non wanted comments that add nothing of value to the threads.

[sandyk]

21 minutes ago, Allan F said:

As you know, the forum already has an option to hide a user's posts (except when quoted by another user).

Allan

 We have been through this before. The problem is where certain members occasionally do have something quite worthwhile to contribute in a particular thread .

 There are some subjects where Ralf11 IS well informed.

Regards

Alex