[Audio Empire]

On Wed, 12 May 2010 06:28:21 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 11 May 2010 07:17:06 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Good ones aren't. Good speakers, especially, are quite expensive. For
instance, there is little decent in the way of speakers below about the
$1K
level (actually I only know of one really decent speaker below $1K and
that's
the Magnepan MMG at $599.

I certainly hear artifacts in lossy compression, but I wouldn't exactly
characterize them as a crackling noise, I would say that it's more like
a
buzzing bee-like distortion that rides the waveform. It's only audible
during
low level passages and during transitions between loud and soft passages
(and
vice versa) and then only on headphones and very loud speaker listening.
As
background music and in the car, lossy compression artifacts are lost in
the
ambient noise.

I find it ironic that the entirety of the previous comments could be put
into a vastly different perspective if unbiased listening techniques were
used by the writer.

I don't need a DBT to tell me what I hear.

Nobody does. A DBT can't possibly tell you what you hear.

The alternative to bias-controlled listening is to *hear* with your
prejudices fully engaged.

If you want to listen to the true quality of sound, then you must take
advantage of bias controlled tests.

When I'm trying to decide whether a difference makes any difference at all, I
agree. But speakers are a matter of taste (because none are perfect and
people pick and choose the characteristics of music that are important to
them and tend to focus on those). and therefore DBTs are pretty worthless for
comparing one speaker to another.

If you want to reinforce your prejudices, then avoid bias controlled tests.

I agree that bias controlled tests are the gold standard for finding out if
there are significant differences between components, but they can't tell me
which speakers are the most accurate (since all speakers are terribly flawed,
what would one use as the control?), nor can they tell me, ultimately, which
of all the speakers in a given price range that I like.