Article: SOtM Launches sMB-Q370 Motherboard

[fas42]

6 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

And yes, there are many things in audio that "make no sense" from a measurement perspective, but that assumes we have identified everything that can be measured, are measuring it properly, and have identified an exact correlation between what we measure and what we hear. Just because we have some measurements doesn't mean we are measuring everything that is relevant.

 

 

The peculiar paralysis in the audio game, of people's ability to think, is quite intriguing - anyone who takes getting best sound seriously very quickly finds out that "dumb things!" matter; and then starts doing things to try and improve the situation. Which triggers the never ending river of snake oil and other products, which in turn triggers strong outbursts of anger from those who are deeply troubled by this "idiocy!!"

 

That the industry can't pull back, for one second, and properly evaluate all of this, leaves me bemused - I've been watching for decades now the excruciatingly slow building of an understanding that best SQ depends on 'getting everything right'; the excitement of having the latest bit of bling to play with seems to override, every time - and barely any progress in developing deeper understanding happens ...

[fas42]

55 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

To speculate that there's "something else" out there is fine but this cannot really be taken seriously unless there's some hint of what we're talking about. That's like saying "it's possible" that the Boogeyman lives under my bed. As adults I trust there's no need to be concerned, right?

 

Personally, I have never heard noise coming from my USB DACs that don't show up in the noise floor or audible distortions not showing up when measured.

 

When a system doesn't sound right I'm sure that it will always be possible to measure in some way the presence of anomalies. Which is a long, long way from what is actually done - in the real world of ongoing efforts to extract best sound from setups.

 

However, what really matters is where an individual is not happy with the SQ he's getting - and that he knows how, or can access some expertise, from somewhere, to sort things out ...

[fas42]

What happens with hearing is that it is sensitive to disturbing anomalies. Very sensitive. Once they register in our awareness, they don't disappear - which is why we have little tolerance for a system that may be very expensive, but which is getting some key aspects wrong. And why it is trivially easy most times to pick, sight unseen, whether sound coming from a room say is real, or reproduction by a hifi - the clues are most certainly there, but no-one tries to measure them ...

 

The clues that matter are produced by a system that is not working well enough - measuring for this is not done, 99.9% of the time - and hence no progress in understanding occurs. There is no mystery in any of this; just a bullheaded desire not to go beyond conventional thinking ... QED .

[fas42]

A motherboard designed to produce less noise in an audio chain is part of a solution. In the same way as a mains filter that audio components plug into, at the wall. Both are a means of improving upon the less than adequate engineering of nearly all audio gear. Yet in the bizarro world of audiophiles, one is a sensible precaution, but the other is money making snake oil ...

 

One day, audio gear won't need all these band-aids - but in the meantime I think it's reasonable to buy and use whatever gets the job done, for the individuals who are fussy about what they hear, .

[fas42]

The situation is remarkably simple ... any sort of electrical activity in the vicinity can generate electrical noise; that noise can make its way with the greatest of ease to where it becomes a nuisance; and most audio components are not engineered well enough to reject the impact of that noise, to below the level where its effect is audible - the more 'transparent' the replay chain, the worse the problem most likely will be.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

and the scientists will say this is hogwash. "That is all just guessing. Show me how this noise affects the circuits? Show me how this "can" happen", show me your proof that most audio components are not engineered to reject noise, and show how this is "most likely" with transparent components, whatever that means."

 

Don't attack me... I'm just playing devil's advocate because as I said, the debate is ongoing, endless, and I'm pretty sure... pointless.

 

 

 

The people who inhabit, say, the ASR forum want life to be simple - they don't want to think further than what easy, convenient measuring will show. So their solution is to vigorously attack people who are not happy with what the industry delivers.

 

Compare this to, say, the motoring industry - whose products are evaluated by car magazines, etc. To paraphrase the above, if  representatives of the industry responded, "This is all guessing. Show me how bad road surfaces affects the ride and handling of vehicles. Show me how this "can" happen", show me your proof that most cars aren't engineered to completely isolate the occupants from the vagaries of the road, and show me how this is "most likely" with high performance supercars, whatever that means." when they read some negativity about the behaviour of some products ... how would that go down?

 

Yes, the objectivists want to live in a bubble; if they babble the same shortsighted sentences over and over again, they hope that this will make the bad stuff go away ... unfortunately, it doesn't ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, bbosler said:

 

your analogy is flawed. It is very easy to show how road surfaces affect car handling. I have yet to see where anybody has shown that electrical noise generated in a server is affecting sound quality. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, maybe I missed it, but as far as I know nobody has proven that to be the case,  so if I am correct it is far from being the "remarkably simple" situation you described above. 

 

Does one engineer show another, differences in car handling by a series of test with nothing more than numbers to show for it; or does he carefully listen to what a test driver has to report, after taking it for a test run?

 

You do this, a step at a time ... you inflict severe electrical noise pollution on a playback chain, to the point where it is obviously affected; and make recordings outputs of the setup, with and without the degradation - if it is easily audible, then it must leave signatures in the waveform. Note what the patterns in the difference are; and then decrease the level of interference while monitoring whether the pattern in the losses remains, hopefully at lower levels - you're trying to detect where and how the audio is affected, when there is noise in the environment. A server being the cause of the noise, is as interesting and relevant as whether, say, a refrigerator is the culprit ...

 

Of course, this is a waste of time and effort - your real concern is to tame the interaction; if someone can hear a problem, then there is a problem - wouldn't it be lovely to go see a doctor, and him to tell you it's all in your imagination; and that cures you, every time, .

 

1 hour ago, bbosler said:

 

So even though it may be logical to assume that this noise would,   if you can't prove it we end up with the same endless,  pointless debate I've been reading since the advent of digital audio. 

 

 

 

Ain't no proof ever good enough, for those who are grimly determined to disbelieve ...

[fas42]

5 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

So you are saying if you hear it (if it is easily audible) you must be able to show it with a measurement (must leave signatures in the waveform)

 

Yes. Which is not the same thing as saying that the normal measurements will show it.

 

5 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

Can you not see how futile this discussion is ? (if you want to call it that)  That is the Audio Science Review position. If I can't  measure it you can't hear it. The other side says you obviously aren't measuring everything there is to measure because I hear it.

 

Only the extreme say, "Unless I can measure it, easily, then it doesn't exist!" ... there's a spectrum of attitudes at ASR - people there do say that less than ideally engineered components will allow flaws in the SQ; which sometimes may be difficult to measure. What that forum does react to, is blubbering, flowery nonsense about how fabulous some product or tweak is - when the reality is far, far more mundane ... moderation, in everything, gets one closer to what is actually there.

 

5 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

Feel free to state it another way, use another analogy, or propose another thought experiment, but you are wasting your time.

 

 

The world will get there in the end ... thinking in the video field is more open; it's accepted there that the eye can be fooled, but that you have to aim at very, very accurate visual representation of things before the mind will accept the illusion - glitches in what is presented to the eyesight are easily picked, especially by someone who is familiar with the technologies, etc. One may ask, why is it so difficult for the "scientific crowd" to accept that the same could be true for the ear ... there is a lot of ego involved, unfortunately, so it will take longer ...

[fas42]

24 minutes ago, Confused said:

Actually, it is much more the former than the latter. When car designers start to look at a new suspension system or chassis design this will initially be done using sophisticated simulation software, following this bespoke suspension test rigs will be used. So lots of engineers looking at nothing but numbers, and not a driver to be found.

 

We're well and truly off the beaten track now ... I was relating how objectivists may say, "Show me how this noise affects the circuits?" to a fictitious demand, in the car world, of "Show me how bad road surfaces affects the ride and handling of vehicles?" - the latter is considered trivially obvious; and audiophiles who has done simple experimenting with a decent rig can also demonstrate, to themselves, the connection of the former. The "Why is it so?" is nothing more than the fact that nothing is fully impervious to unwanted stimuli - what one is after is acceptable performance.

 

Yes, I'm sure current car design techniques get pretty fancy - but this evolved from very much hands on trial and error; which got the industry a long way down the road ...

 

24 minutes ago, Confused said:

 

I think this approach also translates to the world of audio. If people can hear differences, progress in design is much easier to make if this can be correlated to measured data.

 

In fairness, it think this is more or less what you were saying in the rest of your post.

 

I sure that someone will think up a test using, say, an Audio Precision analyser which will make what's going on obvious. But no-one yet has been motivated enough to do this - so, in the meantime, we wait ...

[fas42]

Where the DBL thing ... just ... doesn't ... work, is that many of the things that really matter are far, far too difficult to set up so that there can be smooth switching between states A and B - yes, if one wished to spend lots of money, and lots of time creating 'perfect' test situations, it would be possible - but no-one in the the hifi game is ever, ever going to do it ... .

 

Turns out that if you know what the standard of SQ can be like, if everything is "in alignment", then it becomes easy to assess the value of making changes - either you are now closer to that level, or you're not. Ditch everything that makes it worse, and if you've paid good money for something that has been of little benefit, then you might as well try and recover most of that expenditure, by selling it to someone who may get value.

 

Continuing the car theme, , many people evolve in audio by jumping from one manufacturer, and model of vehicle, to the next ... "I want to go fast at Nürburgring !! Right, I'll try BMW, hmm, no; Porche? Nah, didn't like the seats ... how about MB? Gee, doesn't make the right brmm, brmm noises ... ..." and so it goes on. Now, if someone is serious about getting a good experience at a circuit, they read up a bit, talk to a lot of people; work out the right value for money product to acquire - and only then does the "real work" begin. They consider every part of the vehicle, whether it's working for and against them; and consider myriads of potential upgrades and changes that may make it better - it's a journey, with the intention of extracting every last ounce of potential from what they have in front of them.

 

This is also a very effective approach with audio - one can achieve quite outstanding results, from something that is nominally not that special. The key is being able to evaluate whether you're making progress or not - this is what you have "to measure"; and at the moment one's ears are by far the best guide - the hard bit is that people get it wrong, often, when they get excited by some small variation - the car feels like it's going faster around one particular corner - but in the big picture they have in fact gone backwards ...

[fas42]

On 1/12/2022 at 5:27 AM, extracampine said:

I think saying that it is difficult to do is a cop-out. It would be easy, for example, to have a hifi setup with 2 source components, one with a standard mobo and one with this one. You could then easily switch source and listen for any differences. You would need a certain number of listeners ("n") to make the results statistically significant. 

 

If someone would set up a website, start doing this sort of thing and publishing the results, I think it would be very popular indeed!

 

What would happen if this were done, is as follows:

 

* A system, to get rid of the switching mechanism, would be duplicated: one with standard mobo; the other with the one discussed here. And it would turn out that the mobo variation does make an detectable difference, for a group of listeners; enough to be statistically valid.

 

* This would deeply disturb those of an objectivist bent; and at least one of those people  would assemble an matching rig - and measure, measure, measure. Leaving no stone unturned, he would unearth some anomaly, which he could link back to the mobo - perhaps, "The DAC that was used is poorly engineered; it reacts to a type of noise I can make this mobo produce!" - and be triumphant; he had demonstrated that the posted results were meaningless ...

 

* The objectivists would feel good, because their thinking had not been impacted; some of the subjectivists would despair - "Here we go again!!"

 

* And only a few individuals would realise, that this frantically digging objectivist had in fact demonstrated exactly what the other side always work with: that components always have flaws and weaknesses, and it's a balancing act, a journey, to assemble a combo of bits that overcome all the bottlenecks, to an acceptable degree.

 

* Nothing would be learnt. No progress would be made. And the world would keep turning ...

[fas42]

This is all as bizarre as people arguing that changing the microphone won't alter how a person sounds, in a recording . The linkages are well in place: different mobos have different spectrums of interference noise that they produce; and audio chains are notoriously under-engineered to reject this sort of noise - it's trivially obvious that there can be a cause and effect thing going on ...

 

But one clan have taken it on as an article of faith, That This Can't Happen!!! It's all pretty silly, this need to hang on to such a belief - and they call themselves, scientists,

[fas42]

Just so that this bit is not debated, https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/difference-between-hypothesis-and-theory-usage.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

You're making a very large assumption here....that the mobo variation makes a statistically significant detectable difference. I don't think that it would, but that is what the test would be set up to do. 

 

IME, everything you do in the electrical environment of a higher resolution setup makes an audible difference. For the simple reason that most designers and engineers assume that what they have done to avoid this, is "good enough". And this immediately unleashes the enormous tweaking, and snake oil industries we currently have ...

 

Whether a particular mobo does or doesn't is pretty irrelevant - it's just a grain of sand on the beach of all the things that can matter. I can alter how my current system sounds by making almost absurdly silly changes to how things are set up - and the reason for that is there is an extremely fine balance required for optimum SQ - disrupt that balance, and it's easy to hear the effect.

 

8 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

Second, you say "this would deeply disturb those of an objectivist bent". It wouldn't deeply disturb them - the whole point of a double blind trial is to provide objective evidence - where there is a difference, or not. And if someone can find out what is causing that difference, then that's a win-win isn't it! 

 

It's hard to do the DBT well enough to get meaningful results. And there is a powerful need in many objectivists to find any loophole which means they don't have think deeper about what's going on. And what's going on is exactly what scientists, etc, in any field which requires precision deal with daily - noise, interference makes their findings unreliable; they always have to be on the lookout for aberrations which render what they're trying to measure harder to get right. 

 

8 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

The fact remains, that when the results matter, this is how it is done. You can't argue with that. So if we really want to find out the answers, this is how, no matter how cumbersome to set up and how much certain audio manufacturers wouldn't like it. 

 

 

 

There have already been attempts to do this sort of thing more rigorously; and the backlash by those who, say, belong to the AES has been very strong. With the desire to push it under the carpet. When an attitude has built up over many decades, like this, it will take a great deal of effort to break it down  - no single experiment has got a hope of getting somewhere, no matter how well it's done ...

[fas42]

2 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

Well, that's your opinion and not what we were discussing here. We're talking about the objective stance, and double-blind controlled trials.

 

Changing the configuration of a system, any sort of system, audio or otherwise, in any sort of environment, is highly likely to alter its behaviour in some area. Which may be easy or hard to detect, using the human senses, or measuring devices. It seems only in the audio world is there a bizarre need to prove that this can happen, using such methods as DBTs - for items which don't meet the approval of those with an objectivist leaning.

 

2 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

It's just as relevant as any other component is. Indeed, it's $550 of relevance, which is a lot to some. And whether "all the things that can matter" actually do matter, well, you'd have to do some double blind controlled trials to see if they do.....

 

So, if you make a change to your system, in any area, and you think it sounds better, then you're shortchanging yourself unless you do a comprehensive DBT to confirm this?

 

2 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

Back to the "it's difficult" argument.... It's not prohibitively difficult - you just get 2 systems that are the same, except for the mobo, and compare them - in a controlled way in keeping with the trial protocol of course.

 

Yes, this would be the way; if one was genuinely interested in getting a significant result.

 

2 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. When we have the results of the trial, either they are statistically significant, or they are not. So we have an answer to our question either way.

 

 

Yes, all throughout history there have been backlashes to progress. When it was first suggested that our Earth is not at the centre of the universe, there was a backlash. So what?

 

The "So what?" is that progress in thinking, and real changes how things are done is severely hindered for long periods of time, unnecessarily. Historically, you wait for those who have "bad thinking" to drop dead - because movement occurs in the youngest generation, who are not handicapped by "set in concrete" ideas .

 

2 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

A single experiment will yield results on what it was designed to show, if done properly. That is all we are talking about here. If there are people with an "attitude" (presumably who don't understand scientific trials), that would be their problem. And of course, like in other fields, these trials would be repeated, and other trials would be done, to build up an "evidence base".

 

That's the theory ... the reality is, if there is strong inclination to disbelieve then the human condition guarantees that this will be a long, drawn out process, which will fizzle out regularly ...

[fas42]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

That's the theory ... the reality is, if there is strong inclination to disbelieve then the human condition guarantees that this will be a long, drawn out process, which will fizzle out regularly ...

 

A perfect example of this, happening currently, is "cold fusion" - whatever you wish to call it, there is something going on, which the majority of the "scientific" community wishes would just disappear from the scene. It takes a very brave experimenter to venture here; but enough meaningful results emerge, to keep those interested continuing to investigate ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, kumakuma said:

 

You've got things reversed. 

 

It is only in the audio world where there is a bizarre belief that the Sagan Standard ("extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence") doesn't apply.

 

So, you consider the concept that most audio systems are sensitive to electrical noise and interference an "extraordinary claim"?

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Certainly less extraordinary than your original claim:

 

 

Note, you left out the IME bit ... there will always be components engineered well enough so that they don't require that extra kid glove handling, to get the best from them; I just haven't come across them, so far .

[fas42]

10 hours ago, extracampine said:

But not necessarily likely to lead to reliable audible differences, hence the need for a DBT to answer that question properly.

 

 

What do you want to 'prove'? That a mobo that happens to generate lots of extra electrical noise, as compared to one that is less prone, may cause audible changes for a particular combination of audio components? Or that the mobo that is the subject of this will cause a change for any audio rig? Or that this mobo may cause a change is some setups?

 

The first objective is silly - it will always be possible to find a really noisy motherboard, that will impact some really badly implemented components. The second objective is also silly - there will always be systems that are good enough, as is, to reject the noise interference. So, what's the point of the third? Okay, we do some subjective testing, find an audio combo which reacts, positively, to the presence of that mobo - and then test that, under DBT conditions against a group of listeners - if a positive outcome of that test meets the standards of being valid ... what have we accomplished?

 

To me, this is all in the realm of, say, buying a car that won't break down over a really bad bit of road - we go to great lengths, in a scientific study, to find a car that doesn't break down ... now, is that meaningful in the grand scheme of things?

 

10 hours ago, extracampine said:

No, like I said, in any field where it actually matters (take developing medications as an example) there is a need to prove it can happen. It's not bizarre at all. And if you're looking at parting with hundreds or thousands of $ for audio equipment then it's not bizarre either that we would want to know if something is better or not. 

 

It's the "something is better" angle that's everything here - does it have to be better for absolutely everyone who may possibly consider buying it, or does it only have to be better for a few individuals?

 

If a medication 'works' for only 50% of those who try it, is that a product a scam, because so many people have wasted their money?

 

10 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

No, of course not. Individuals are free to do what they like with their own systems. The point is that the fact that you think it sounds better could quite possibly be due to placebo/expectation bias/etc - so other people can not make any conclusions from it. This is fine for you in your own home if you're not bothered about that - but when we're talking about the consumer market and expensive purchases, then many will want reliable information to guide them. 

 

Reliable information? In the audio world? ... You've got me rolling on the floor with that one ...

 

10 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

I'm not entirely sure on your point; you had said that there had been attempts to do this sort of thing already (DBT) and that the backlash from certain groups (e.g. AES) has been strong. I had countered by saying so what if there is a backlash, it's all in the name of progress. You seem to be agreeing with me on this one.

 

Yes, progress will happen ... what irks me is that the pace of such is so slow - luckily, the manufacturers of the raw ingredients of audio systems have not been standing still, in the meantime; meaning, that very low cost setups are vastly better in key areas than they were say 30 years ago.

[fas42]

11 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

Prove is not the correct word, as you can never prove something 100% - instead you can show something to be highly likely, with good statistical power and small confidence intervals. What exactly you want to show would be up to the person who designs the study. You could aim to show any of those things that you suggest. In terms of our discussion, your first suggestion would fit best - whether the motherboard causes any audible changes for a particular combination of audio components. You raise a good point - ideally you would conduct this study with a few different combinations of audio components, in case there is any spurious result. 

 

 

Note, the first consideration is that a, as yet not specified, MB which is particularly noisy can impact some combination of audio components; this would be verified by comparing another MB, most likely this one, in that same audio setup.

 

11 hours ago, extracampine said:

Well, I wouldn't be so sure. The concept of electrical "noise" is often spoken about on audio forums, yet the evidence seems to suggest that this doesn't audibly affect the SQ. A DBT like we were discussing would answer this question. 

 

Well, if you want to really explore this, take several units of a well designed, say, amplifier; leave one alone, and in the others remove various levels of all the the electrical parts which serve no purpose other than to attenuate the impact of noise - and run a DBT as to whether the standard, and degraded units all sound identical, having made sure that there is a lot of electrical noise present externally. If not detectable, advise all manufacturers to forget about including this in the manufacture; it reduces the profit margin having unnecessary bits inside .

 

11 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

Yes, very. If a (valid) study is done to find a car that doesn't break down, that would be meaningful. The chances of that car breaking down when you are driving it would be significantly less - but never zero, which links in to my point above about the word "prove".

 

The point here is that no-one questions the concept that a car can break down on a bad road, because of engineering not up to the task; so, why should less than best engineering of the parts that make up an audio system not cause audible anomalies?

 

11 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

Now you're talking about statistics and statistical power. This depends how certain you want to be on your results. The more people you include in the study, the more powerful it will be and the more valid the results will be. So, again similar to my point about the word "prove", it would highly unlikely be "better for absolutely everyone" - nothing ever is, that is an unrealistic goal. So for example, statistically it might be better for 95 out of 100 people, which is a vast majority when it comes to audio!

 

My point would be, that if it's better for a certain proportion, even if that's just 5 out of 100 people, then its existence is justified. That the other 95 won't benefit is irrelevant - if curious, they can trial it; and return it, or sell it to someone else who is curious. Which of course is exactly how the audio community works ... .

 

11 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

Well, medications don't just work or not work; it's not as simple as that. They increase or reduce the risk of things from happening. So you could, for example, be taking a medication to reduce your risk of heart attack (e.g. if you were obese and a smoker) - and it might reduce your risk from 70% to 50% - and you could still have a heart attack. But that doesn't mean that the medication hasn't worked; it has still reduced your risk. The question is how certain can we be that it reduces the risk from 70% to 50%. To draw an analogy with audio, if we can be highly certain that a component increases the SQ from 60% to 70%, say (to use some arbitrary measure of SQ) then that information is useful. 

 

And most tweaks, like this MB, are aimed to "reduce the risk" of sub-optimal SQ. If at least someone, most likely the manufacturer, can verify that the spectrum of electrical noise is significantly less for this unit, then we do have useful information. But consumers, and manufacturers, learn this is not how it's done in the audio world - hype is the name of the game, if you want to sell product.

 

11 hours ago, extracampine said:

 

 

Yes, isn't that the whole point of this discussion? We require more studies such as DBTs to obtain this reliable information!

 

 

You may well be right, I've not really looked into that. You'd have to do a DBT... 😂

 

Personally, I was way past anything like DBTs decades ago - either a system sounds 'right', or it doesn't. What the latter means is that one becomes irritated while listening; there is something disturbing in the sound which prevents one from being "in tune" with the music. The excuse many use is, "It's a bad recording!!" - this is an easy out, meaning that one doesn't explore further, to determine if there are, say, noise interference factors ... when you accept that such is possible, then you stand an excellent chance of extracting more, from any rig .

[fas42]

43 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Personally, I believe you never been in a properly DBT, as they are hard to do and setup.

 

True. I most likely would burn out doing it, since the ongoing repetition would cause me to lose interest, and end up giving any answer, just to get it over with. I have zero interest in having the enjoyment of listening to music reduced to a type of torture - so, I'll pass .

 

43 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

The phrase 'garbage in, garbage out' comes to mind. There are bad recordings, it happens. That is the way they wanted them to sound.

 

If someone recorded some music making with the intention of making it unpleasant to listen to, as I'm sure some have done - Amy Winehouse comes to mind, here ( that bloody song of hers came on the car radio, yesterday; I put up with it for about 30 seconds, and then I had to change stations ... ) - then, fair enough. So, I will filter it down, by excluding those very deliberately damaged ...

 

43 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

I don't think you understand that digital data is just digital data, whether it be music (which is very simple, btw) or mass spec/NMR data. Both the latter are more susceptible to noise than music is. Audiophiles think music is some special case, it is not.

 

 

And I don't think you appreciate that at some point on its journey to your ears that digitised music needs to become an analogue waveform - this is where the action is; throw a bit of noise into the converter, and/or any of the following stages - and dreary, lacklustre, plodding SQ emerges ... just ask any 'analogue' fan to explain what this is about, .

[fas42]

3 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

How are such recordings any different than bad recordings created through incompetence or subpar equipment?

 

Yes, good question ... why it seems to be is that deliberately 'damaged' recordings are done in a manner that synchronises with the content; the manipulation is reacting to the input in a predictable way, to alter the quality - a classic example of this is a distortion pedal for an electric guitar. By contrast, incompetence or subpar equipment is more an 'accidental' thing.

 

 

Why this matters is that the listening brain is able to separate sounds which are incidental to the content, somewhat random in nature, asynchronous to the flow of the music to a large degree - it 'knows' that those sounds don't belong, and can discard it. But when the 'damage' is strongly linked to the ebb and flow, that separation is much harder.

 

A live example: someone plays a violin, and it starts raining heavily, on a metal roof. S/N is compromised, but the tone and sense of the piece still works. But, OTOH, if the player deliberately misses a note, going too flat or sharp, every now and again - this would be disturbing to listen to, because the anomaly is too strongly tied to the note production.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

I could see this occurring in real life to some degree because the sounds would be coming from different places.

 

I think your opinion would change though if I recorded the violin and the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof separately and mixed these two down to a single recording.

 

This is precisely why it works for the listening brain, to have a playback working to the highest possible standard of accuracy. Yes, on a less than "good enough" rig those two sound elements would blur together; the sense of them occurring in "different spaces" would not be strong enough, because the clues are not clear enough. But play it on what I call a competent setup, and then it's trivially obvious that the violin and rain on the roof sounds are very distinct sound sources - this is where the Cocktail Party Effect kicks in; the listening mind is able to discard what it doesn't want to register.

 

Yes, it's coming from just two speakers - so why doesn't it mix? Well, consider a thought experiment; again in real life you listen to that violin, and rain on metal roof, but it only occurs in an adjacent room, with the sound of it coming to you via two separated, open doorways - would you be able to tell that the rain sounds are not connected to the violin, or not?

[fas42]

Most audiophiles who have evolved their systems through various standards of resolution are familiar with how this occurs - take a very busy recording, where there are multiple sound elements, which all contribute to the overall sense and 'picture' of what is being created. Starting from a low resolution setup, this all blends together, has an overall feel; but it's difficult to pinpoint what the individual instruments are doing at any particular moment. As the standard of the chain improves, the definition, the 'imaging' of each sound element is enhanced; you begin to 'see' each instrument operating within the soundscape, and can track what it's doing. At the top of the tree, the layering of what was recorded is completely exposed; it becomes effortless to focus on one specific sound - this is like the documentaries on how "famous recordings" were made, when someone associated with the production moves the volume sliders, to expose the contribution of a single track. Also, here, the acoustic of each sound element has its own identity, often unique compared to any others - contributing to the sense of layering of the sound.

 

A good recording of a stage production does this is a very dramatic, and impressive way - "The Phantom of the Opera" is an excellent example of this - this is so, vastly, vastly superior to listening to a live production, there's no comparison ... .

[fas42]

10 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

 

You take too many liberties to when you say, 'Most Audiophiles'. I don't think audiophiles think the way you do. If that were the case most of the high-end companies would have disappeared as we would be buying and modifying Edifier self-powered speakers like you have and claim it is nirvana (to you, they are - great - I am happy for you).

 

I think most audiophiles base it on experience and decide what they want form that - plain and simple,

 

Audiophiles are chasing satisfying sound. Unless they are equipment obsessed. Both are attracted to high-end companies, for different reasons ... QED .

 

My path is hard, for most people. And it's very frustrating, for me, at times - hence, not so attractive. But when it falls into place, magic happens . In 30 plus years I've only heard a half dozen or so, expensive rigs done in the normal way deliver that intense, immersive hit that capable replay can offer - my interest is evolving understanding so what value for money systems can do this, straight out of the box ...