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#41
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
I think you're overlooking something. In most scientific DBT tests, the purpose of the test is not to form some consensus of opinion, but is, rather, to ascertain facts that might be otherwise hidden by false positives, placebo effect, etc. This differs from audio DBTs how? For instance, drug tests are not looking for an opinion about the efficacy of the drug they are looking for real physical results from that drug. In a similar fashion, audio DBTs are looking for a real physical effect on human perceptions. Control subjects with the condition that the drug is supposed to treat are given placebos, other subjects are given the drug under test. The purpose is to find out if the drug is effective and this is ascertained by physicians examining the subjects. Audiophiles tell us that they don't need an attending physician to know whether they are hearing a difference. I'll check the room for an attending physican the next time I visit a high end audio store. Maybe things have changed... ;-) Of course the subjects don't know which group they're in and neither do their attending physicians. But the fact is that the test is not looking for anybody's opinions, it's looking for improvements in a medical condition. Either the drugs improve the patients' condition or they don't. The subjects merely have to let the drugs work (or not). Right, and either the audiophile's "new clothes" make a difference, or they don't. In an audio DBT, the subject is asked for his/her opinion Not an opinion, just simply whether they hear a difference. and is mentally participating. Mentally particpating doesn't seem to invalidate sighted comparisons at the high fi store or some friend's house. Quite a different thing. At some level everything's different, so what? Every one that I ever looked at had the crossover notch, It's easy to see on the oscilloscope with a sine wave test tone. By the time Dynaco "fixed" the ST-120, most of the audiophiles that I knew (including myself) had moved-on. The very early Dyna's that were tested by Audio magazine and High Fidelity magazine in 1966-67 lacked these alleged obvious faults. They wouldn't have mentioned it even if they had noticed it. I see a a reviewer saying that all reviewers are liars or at least forcably bend the truth in ways that are detrimental to their readers. Strange. I'm saying nothing of the kind, please don't undertake to put words in my mouth. If memory serves many of these reviews showed technical tests that would have demonstrated the alleged notch distortion, had it existed. There are two types of "buff" publications: The first type owes it's first allegiance to its advertisers. The second type owes its first allegiance to its readers. The only ones that owes their first allegiance to the listeners are the ones that don't depend on equipment loans from dealers and manufacturers and don't carry any ads. Stereo Review and High-Fidelity were both the first type. As is Stereophile and Absolute Sound. That's why the second type (Stereophile and The Absolute Sound) were founded. But, they both sold out to their equipment vendors, one way or the other. For a long time neither of the latter two carried any advertising at all. I remember more than once, either harry Pearson or Gordon Holt coming right out and saying that such-and-such was a piece of s__t. It's been a long time since I've seen that! Of course, today, SR and HF are long gone, and now Stereophile and TAS are THE mainstream US hi-fi publications and both are owned by different people than those who started them and their editorial policies are much different. ound and Vision still has a competitive subscriber base. Since both carry advertising now, I cannot say for sure that they too haven't become the first type that I outlined above. The hidden agenda all along was that even if they didn't carry ads, they were dependent on vendor loans. Those magazines were a direct PR outlet for the industry. Not necessarily a problem as long as they are constrained by the truth. By definition, it is a big problem. Have you ever seen a PR release for a product that extolled that product's mediocrity? Of course not. To my knowledge, Dynaco never released any PR information or any specifications which stated that "Our new ST-120 runs in hard class 'B' and has a new feature called 'crossover notch distortion' which we think improves the sound." AFAIK, those are audiophile myths. I'm still awaiting hard evidence. And neither SR or HF would EVER report anything that might put an advertiser's (or possible advertisers') products in a bad light. HF, initially, had a policy that they wouldn't publish the reviews of any piece of equipment that didn't meet the manufacturer's specs. Later, they changed their policy to simply not mentioning any shortfalls in performance that they encountered (it was mostly this policy, according to Gordon Holt, that caused him to quit HF and eventually found Stereophile).. Then there was Julian Hirsch. Mr. Hirsch, who "reviewed" equipment for Stereo Review for more than 30 years, apparently never met an audio component that he didn't like. Wrong. It was well known that they received a lot of equipment for which they never published reviews, for one reason or the other. They simply followed the polite rule that if they couldn't say something good, they published nothing. His tag line, which summed-up almost every review he ever wrote: "Of course, the (name and model of unit under test goes here) like all modern (preamps, amplifiers, receivers, CD players, tuners, you name it) has no sound of it's own...", became somewhat of a audiophile joke for years. We found that the joke was on the audiophiles - the characteristic sounds that they staked their billfolds on mysteriously went away when they couldn't see what they were listening to. His reviews were so uncritical that they weren't worth reading by anybody except the manufacturer, their PR firm, and their dealers. Sez a lot of high enders who have no doubt been mislead by their prejudices over the year. Maybe, maybe not (see above), but I doubt it. The era when most audio circuits are good enough to be truly transparent isn't that old. I'd say this has only been true for the last 8-10 years. I don't know what reliable basis you have for making that claim. The reliable basis is that without the computer-based design tools employed by modern circuit designers, it was difficult to make amplifying circuits perfect. There is no need to make amplifying circuits perfect. We did DBTs that showed that the circuit diagrams in the 1968 RCA transistor manual produced sonically transparent power amps. Many designers tried to *improve* on their sonics, and some of us even invested in those stories, but they just weren't true. Each had its own character, which reflected the tastes of its designer(s). A hypothesis that has failed virtually every DBT that was done to support it. Nowdays, most amps converge on being extremely neutral and do so because the tools allow them to do that easily. Since 1968, if not earlier. |
#42
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
"Scott" wrote in message
So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs are inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Playback chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 It is always far better for people who believe in the non-existence or rarity of sonically transparent audio gear to do the testing and obtain peer review for their papers. Where are the peer reviewed articles that support your many claims about puported new technology super turntables, arms and cartrdiges, Scott? |
#43
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:14:10 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message I think you're overlooking something. In most scientific DBT tests, the purpose of the test is not to form some consensus of opinion, but is, rather, to ascertain facts that might be otherwise hidden by false positives, placebo effect, etc. This differs from audio DBTs how? For instance, drug tests are not looking for an opinion about the efficacy of the drug they are looking for real physical results from that drug. In a similar fashion, audio DBTs are looking for a real physical effect on human perceptions. Exactly! The human perception part is the rub here. Unlike drug effects, human perception is mercurial and dependent on many things that have nothing to do with the actual performance of the equipment. Control subjects with the condition that the drug is supposed to treat are given placebos, other subjects are given the drug under test. The purpose is to find out if the drug is effective and this is ascertained by physicians examining the subjects. Audiophiles tell us that they don't need an attending physician to know whether they are hearing a difference. I'll check the room for an attending physican the next time I visit a high end audio store. Maybe things have changed... ;-) Of course the subjects don't know which group they're in and neither do their attending physicians. But the fact is that the test is not looking for anybody's opinions, it's looking for improvements in a medical condition. Either the drugs improve the patients' condition or they don't. The subjects merely have to let the drugs work (or not). Right, and either the audiophile's "new clothes" make a difference, or they don't. Not so. Either the audiophiles hear a statistically significant difference or they don't. If they do, that's a positive result. If they don't, it COULD be that there is no difference between the test units, or it could be that for reasons other than the equipment, they give a negative result. Remember, the old scientific axiom: Absence of evidence does NOT, in and of itself, indicate evidence of absence. In an audio DBT, the subject is asked for his/her opinion Not an opinion, just simply whether they hear a difference. ER, that would be an opinion. and is mentally participating. Mentally particpating doesn't seem to invalidate sighted comparisons at the high fi store or some friend's house. I never said that it does. Quite a different thing. At some level everything's different, so what? Thank you. Now the only question remains is the difference significant enough to quibble over? I say, in most cases, no. Others may disagree. Every one that I ever looked at had the crossover notch, It's easy to see on the oscilloscope with a sine wave test tone. By the time Dynaco "fixed" the ST-120, most of the audiophiles that I knew (including myself) had moved-on. The very early Dyna's that were tested by Audio magazine and High Fidelity magazine in 1966-67 lacked these alleged obvious faults. They wouldn't have mentioned it even if they had noticed it. I see a a reviewer saying that all reviewers are liars or at least forcably bend the truth in ways that are detrimental to their readers. Strange. I'm saying nothing of the kind, please don't undertake to put words in my mouth. If memory serves many of these reviews showed technical tests that would have demonstrated the alleged notch distortion, had it existed. There are two types of "buff" publications: The first type owes it's first allegiance to its advertisers. The second type owes its first allegiance to its readers. The only ones that owes their first allegiance to the listeners are the ones that don't depend on equipment loans from dealers and manufacturers and don't carry any ads. That's not really true. Or at least it didn't use to be true. Don't know about Stereophile and TAS today. Years ago, manufacturers loaned these publications equipment and if they weren't good, these publications said so! Stereo Review and High-Fidelity were both the first type. As is Stereophile and Absolute Sound. Now, maybe. But they weren't when they started That's why the second type (Stereophile and The Absolute Sound) were founded. But, they both sold out to their equipment vendors, one way or the other. For a long time neither of the latter two carried any advertising at all. I remember more than once, either harry Pearson or Gordon Holt coming right out and saying that such-and-such was a piece of s__t. It's been a long time since I've seen that! Agreed, but irrelevant to the point - which you seem to have wandered away from. Of course, today, SR and HF are long gone, and now Stereophile and TAS are THE mainstream US hi-fi publications and both are owned by different people than those who started them and their editorial policies are much different. Sound and Vision still has a competitive subscriber base. Since both carry advertising now, I cannot say for sure that they too haven't become the first type that I outlined above. The hidden agenda all along was that even if they didn't carry ads, they were dependent on vendor loans. But they didn't care whether or not they got them. Lots of vendors woauldn't loan equipment top either. Guess what? Their equipment went un-reviewed. Those magazines were a direct PR outlet for the industry. Not necessarily a problem as long as they are constrained by the truth. By definition, it is a big problem. Have you ever seen a PR release for a product that extolled that product's mediocrity? Of course not. To my knowledge, Dynaco never released any PR information or any specifications which stated that "Our new ST-120 runs in hard class 'B' and has a new feature called 'crossover notch distortion' which we think improves the sound." AFAIK, those are audiophile myths. I'm still awaiting hard evidence. And neither SR or HF would EVER report anything that might put an advertiser's (or possible advertisers') products in a bad light. HF, initially, had a policy that they wouldn't publish the reviews of any piece of equipment that didn't meet the manufacturer's specs. Later, they changed their policy to simply not mentioning any shortfalls in performance that they encountered (it was mostly this policy, according to Gordon Holt, that caused him to quit HF and eventually found Stereophile).. Then there was Julian Hirsch. Mr. Hirsch, who "reviewed" equipment for Stereo Review for more than 30 years, apparently never met an audio component that he didn't like. Wrong. It was well known that they received a lot of equipment for which they never published reviews, for one reason or the other. They simply followed the polite rule that if they couldn't say something good, they published nothing. Which is different from what I said, how? If you only review equipment that you like and don't review equipment that you don't like , or that isn't very good, is it not going to be perceived by the reader that you never reviewed a piece of equipment that you didn't like? That should be obvious. His tag line, which summed-up almost every review he ever wrote: "Of course, the (name and model of unit under test goes here) like all modern (preamps, amplifiers, receivers, CD players, tuners, you name it) has no sound of it's own...", became somewhat of a audiophile joke for years. We found that the joke was on the audiophiles - the characteristic sounds that they staked their billfolds on mysteriously went away when they couldn't see what they were listening to. Not true at all and only somewhat true today. His reviews were so uncritical that they weren't worth reading by anybody except the manufacturer, their PR firm, and their dealers. Sez a lot of high enders who have no doubt been mislead by their prejudices over the year. Maybe, maybe not (see above), but I doubt it. The era when most audio circuits are good enough to be truly transparent isn't that old. I'd say this has only been true for the last 8-10 years. I don't know what reliable basis you have for making that claim. The reliable basis is that without the computer-based design tools employed by modern circuit designers, it was difficult to make amplifying circuits perfect. There is no need to make amplifying circuits perfect. We did DBTs that showed that the circuit diagrams in the 1968 RCA transistor manual produced sonically transparent power amps. Permit me to doubt those results. Many designers tried to *improve* on their sonics, and some of us even invested in those stories, but they just weren't true. Each had its own character, which reflected the tastes of its designer(s). A hypothesis that has failed virtually every DBT that was done to support it. Nowdays, most amps converge on being extremely neutral and do so because the tools allow them to do that easily. Since 1968, if not earlier. That's either complete balderdash or you and I have VASTLY different criteria for neutrality and transparency. I suspect the latter. |
#44
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Mar 29, 1:14=A0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Scott" wrote in message So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs are inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Playbac= k chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Au= dio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 Hey! Not bad! A piece of evidence that can be added to the bare boned body of evidence in all things audiophilia. doesn't really support any of your assertions on amplifier sound though. But props for having something. It =A0is always far better for people who believe in the non-existence or rarity of sonically transparent audio gear to do the testing and obtain p= eer review for their papers. No not really. It's best for scientists who are diciplined enough to know that they must play devil's advocate to their own prejudices if they know those prejudices to do these sorts of tests. It isn't which side of the fence one sits on that counts but their self awareness and self dicipline. Where are the peer reviewed articles that support your many claims about puported new technology super turntables, arms and cartrdiges, Scott? There are no studies I know of on the subject. IOW science, real science hasn't weighed in on the subject. I didn't wave the science flag when I made my assertions about vinyl cutting and playback technology. Let us know if you come up with any peer reviewed studies on amplifier transparency. When you do you can let that science flag fly high. Let's see what kind of meaningful body of evidence you can drum up. |
#45
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:10 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Mar 29, 1:14=A0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs are inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Playbac= k chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Au= dio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 Hey! Not bad! A piece of evidence that can be added to the bare boned body of evidence in all things audiophilia. doesn't really support any of your assertions on amplifier sound though. But props for having something. Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL out. He's posted this particular URL at least five times in the last month or so. It's an interesting study, and seems well designed, but it's one of those instances where "if you accept the premise..." The premise being whether or not DBTs work for audio the way the work for other types of products and propositions. |
#46
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL ou=
t. |
#47
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Mar 30, 3:55=A0am, Audio Empire wrote:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:10 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Mar 29, 1:14=3DA0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs are inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Play= bac=3D k chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution= Au=3D dio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 Hey! Not bad! A piece of evidence that can be added to the bare boned body of evidence in all things audiophilia. doesn't really support any of your assertions on amplifier sound though. But props for having something. Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL ou= t. |
#48
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
"Scott" wrote in message
Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Your first error is the false assertion that any paper that is not peer-reviewed is scientifically invalid. Your second error is ignoring the fact that as thin as scientific support for a critical view of audiophile myths may be, its infinitely more than the scientific support for audiophile myths. Not something one can stand on when waving the proverbial science flag in defense of a particular subjective opinion on the audibility of things. No scientist worth their salt would make any definitive claims as have been made based on this body of evidence. Yet another error. In fact modern audio technology as we know it is entirely based on the existing body of scientific evidence. High end audio wisdom if applied to recent audio or video advances would result in products that are completely impractical. For example, you can pay under $10 for a 4 meter HDMI cable that provides you with a perfect digital video, network and audio signal. If you prefer high end audio "science" you can pay $229 for a Monster "1000HD Ultimate High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet" that delivers the identical same bits. |
#49
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:06:35 -0700, Peter Wieck wrote
(in article ): Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL ou= t. He's posted this particular URL at least five times in the last month or = so. It's an interesting study, and seems well designed, but it's one of those instances where "if you accept the premise..." =A0The premise being wheth= er or not DBTs work for audio the way the work for other types of products and propositions. William of Occam would have that figured out in a hummingbird heartbeat. Either it does or it does not. Which requires a more complex explanation? That it does or that it does not? That it does not seems to require a great deal of esoteric explanation as well as solid, repeatable reasons not yet in evidence. That it does is more-or-less self-evident as it seems to have done in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future. Now, please give some clear, cogent and specific reasons why this should not be so. And such reasons should withstand rigorous testing, of course. I am no great fan of DBT as the full-and-final explanation of anything audio - as I believe that such tests are far too short to prove the full spectrum of how audio systems, parts or pieces interact with different individuals over time. What sounds good in a test setting over a few hours may not at home over a few days/weeks/months (nor is that necessarily due to the quality of the equipment either). But it is an excellent way to screen whether something does actually make a difference. No more. But very often that is enough. And very often fatal to closely held beliefs and other forms of revealed religion. Sadly. There's no doubt in my mind that DBT testing removes sighted and expectational bias from the equation. The test participants simply do not know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any given point. Beyond that, we seem to be taking the results of those tests on faith. It seems to be taken for granted that if there is a difference between the sound of two components, that these differences will be immediately apparent at the switch point. I.E., one second you are listening to component A, the next, component B. Since humans have such a poor aural memory (what we remember about a sound seems to be our impressions of the sound which we take note of as we listen, not the sound itself), Any difference between the sound of the two components should be the most noticeable at that point. Now, I know that this works fine for speakers - they all sound so different that those differences stick-out like a ham at a Sader, as they say. I suspect that differences between phono-cartridges would be a similar deal, even though I've never heard a DBT of phono-cartridges. Perhaps analog tape recorders would exhibit similar results, I don't know. It's when we get to modern amps, preamps, CD-players and DACs that I start to get uneasy with the process. All of these devices exhibit ruler-flat frequency response and vanishingly low distortion these days, so that eliminates two very important variables in the human auditory perception pantheon. The two things that we most readily notice, frequency response aberrations and high amounts of harmonic and IM distortion are removed from the equation. So, what's left? Some say that there are types of distortion that we can't easily measure, but to which the ear is sensitive. These include, transient intermodulation or slew-induced distortion (after Otala), dielectric absorption distortion (after Jung) etc. But these are controversial. Many audio experts maintain that they don't exist, and in either case, whether you believe them to be a factor, or not, they are both addressed in most modern amp designs. That leaves noise, which again is vanishingly low in modern analog devices. You read reviews of amps that allude to textures in the top octaves, such as this device lends a sandpaper-like quality to the reproduction of strings, while this other device is more liquid, smoother sounding in the same region. But what could account for these differences? noise modulation? Some kind of heretofore undiscovered distortion? This doesn't seem reasonable, and even if these differences do exist, would they be obvious at the switch point in a DBT, or would they go unnoticed, giving rise to the result that there is statistically no difference between the two devices? Would this result in a difference that might only show itself in long-term listening? These are questions that I find unsettling in the DBT vs long-term listening debate. And this brings up one last question. If the differences are so subtle that DBTs cannot uncover them, are they worth obsessing over? That's a question that every audio enthusiast is going to have to answer for themselves - once the DBT issue is put to rest, once and for all, of course. |
#50
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:40:59 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Mar 30, 3:55=A0am, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:10 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Mar 29, 1:14=3DA0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs are inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Play= bac=3D k chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution= Au=3D dio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 Hey! Not bad! A piece of evidence that can be added to the bare boned body of evidence in all things audiophilia. doesn't really support any of your assertions on amplifier sound though. But props for having something. Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL ou= t. He's posted this particular URL at least five times in the last month or = so. It's an interesting study, and seems well designed, but it's one of those instances where "if you accept the premise..." =A0The premise being wheth= er or not DBTs work for audio the way the work for other types of products and propositions Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Not something one can stand on when waving the proverbial science flag in defense of a particular subjective opinion on the audibility of things. No scientist worth their salt would make any definitive claims as have been made based on this body of evidence. One may as well claim there are in fact pink flying elephants on neptune since the evidence has yet to show otherwise. To be fair to Arny, the problem here is not that the evidence is thin on the ground, it's that FREE evidence on the web is thin on the ground. Most AES papers are only available from the AES web site and they cost money. If one is an AES member they cost $5 to download each, if one is NOT an AES member, these research papers cost $20 each to download. The Meyer/Moran paper to which Arny keeps referring is one of the few that's available to download for free (but not from the AES) and, of course, it supports Arny's position on this issue which doesn't hurt his argument at all. 8^) |
#51
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:21:40 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Scott" wrote in message Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Your first error is the false assertion that any paper that is not peer-reviewed is scientifically invalid. Your second error is ignoring the fact that as thin as scientific support for a critical view of audiophile myths may be, its infinitely more than the scientific support for audiophile myths. Not something one can stand on when waving the proverbial science flag in defense of a particular subjective opinion on the audibility of things. No scientist worth their salt would make any definitive claims as have been made based on this body of evidence. Yet another error. In fact modern audio technology as we know it is entirely based on the existing body of scientific evidence. High end audio wisdom if applied to recent audio or video advances would result in products that are completely impractical. For example, you can pay under $10 for a 4 meter HDMI cable that provides you with a perfect digital video, network and audio signal. If you prefer high end audio "science" you can pay $229 for a Monster "1000HD Ultimate High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet" that delivers the identical same bits. Can't argue that last bit, Arny. we are of a single mind on that subject, anyway. I know where to get HDMI cables cheap that are not only as good as the expensive ones, they are IDENTICAL (as in from the same assembly line) to some of the expensive ones. One of my favorite examples is the 1 meter "premium" Toslink Cable that Audio Advisor sells for $55. The identical cable, down to the last detail (the machined aluminum ferrules on each end) is available from a web-based cable store for 1/10th that price! I buy all of my cables from this on-line source, and they are all excellent quality. I especially like their audio interconnects. Well made using high-quality materials and incredibly inexpensive (you couldn't make one this cheaply). |
#52
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Mar 30, 10:21=A0am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Scott" wrote in message Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the =A0world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Your first error is the false assertion that any paper that is not peer-reviewed is scientifically invalid. I never said it was "invalid" so your error is misattributing an assertion to me. here is what I quoted on the subject with the link. http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/...te/project/29/ "There is a system called peer review that is used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. The peer review process subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public. More than one million scientific research papers are published in scientific journals worldwide every year. Despite its extensive use and recognition among scientists in assessing the plausibility of research claims, in the rest of society very little is known about the existence of the peer-review process or what it involves. Sense About Science believes that peer review is an essential arbiter of scientific quality and that information about the status of research results is as important as the findings themselves. We have a very serious commitment to popularising an understanding of how scientific quality is assessed." Basically if it isn't peer reviewed it's anecdotal or junk. It may or may not be valid. It's not something to stand on while waving the science flag. Your second error is ignoring the fact that as thin as scientific support for a critical view of audiophile myths may be, its infinitely more than = the scientific support for audiophile myths. This would be an error in math on your part not any sort of error on my part. I do like the fact that you play your prejudices by calling the things in question myths. At least we can see where your biases are. The *fact* is there is anecdotal evidence going both ways. anyone with a basic understanding of probabilities would see that there is no "infinite" odds as to which is more likely to be true should there ever be any meaningful scientifically valid body of evidence to shed a light on the subject. Not something one can stand on when waving the proverbial science flag in defense of a particular subjective opinion on the audibility of things. No scientist worth their salt would make any definitive claims as have been made based on this body of evidence. Yet another error. No this is quite true.Scientists are far more cautious with their conclusions even when they have a body of evidence that is an order several magnitudes more substantial than the body of evidence pertaining to the things we are talking about here. Just read the conclusions of any mainstream scientific study and you will see the sort of tempured conclusions real scientists draw from very careful studies that are far better conducted than the sort of DBTs audio objectivists tend to hang their hats on. |
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New vs Vintage
"Scott" wrote in message
On Mar 30, 10:21 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Your first error is the false assertion that any paper that is not peer-reviewed is scientifically invalid. I never said it was "invalid" You implied it about as clearly as you could. here is what I quoted on the subject with the link. http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/...te/project/29/ "There is a system called peer review that is used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. The peer review process subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public. So let's cut to the chase Scott. Where is there even one peer-reviewed paper that supports your oft-repeated audiophile myths? Where is there even one peer-reviewed paper that shows that LP playback equipment technical performance has advanced substantially since say 1985? Where is the peer reviewed paper to support your past claim that digitial audio sounds like something is missing because of the space between the samples? What about your claims that LP-generated audible distortion has a high probability of being euphonic? Where is the peer reviewed paper showing that 44/16 PCM is insufficient to transparently capture audio signals? |
#54
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New vs Vintage
Please note the interpolations. Please forgive the cynicism
expressed. [ Please attribute your quotations. --dsr ] William of Occam would have that figured out in a hummingbird heartbeat. Either it does or it does not. Which requires a more complex explanation? That it does or that it does not? Exactly the same answer. Either it does or it does not. Despite what one may or may not be told. That one is told a phenomenon exists does not make it so. Not even a little bit. That one is told something does not exist does not make that so either. But it is an excellent way to screen whether something does actually ma= ke a difference. No more. But very often that is enough. And very often fatal to closely held beliefs and other forms of revealed religion. Sadly. There's no doubt in my mind that DBT testing removes sighted and expectational bias from the equation. The test participants simply do not know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any g= iven point. Beyond that, we seem to be taking the results of those tests on fa= ith. Faith is not part of the equation. Using the term "faith" requires that one does not believe the test ab initio - see "closely held belief and other forms of revealed religion" above. Either one trusts ones ears or one does not. And if one trusts ones ears, faith is not part of the equation. If one does not, then one is as a lamb on the altar ready for slaughter - no further discussion required. It seems to be taken for granted that if there is a difference between th= e sound of two components, that these differences will be immediately appar= ent at the switch point. I would posit that the 'immediately' needs to be defined. Some fairly subtle things may take more than a very few seconds of switching back and forth. Shortly, certainly. And level matching is absolutely critical for this test to be valid. I.E., one second you are listening to component A, the next, component B. Since humans have such a poor aural memory (what we remember about a sound seems to be our impressions of the sound which we = take note of as we listen, not the sound itself), Any difference between the s= ound of the two components should be the most noticeable at that point. Now, I know that this works fine for speakers - they all sound so different that those differences stick-out like a ham at a Sader, as they say. I suspect that differences between phono-cartridges would be a similar deal, even though I've never heard a DBT of phono-cartridges. Been there - yes, they do. Perhaps analog tape recorders would exhibit similar results, I don't know. Yes, they do. It's when we get to modern amps, preamps, CD-players and DACs that I star= t to get uneasy with the process. Why? Either you hear something that you can predict and identify with greater than 50:50 odds, or you do not. If you do not, then there is no difference - to you. And at that time. All of these devices exhibit ruler-flat =A0 frequency response and vanishingly low distortion these days, so that eliminates two very important variables in the human auditory perception pantheon. The two things that we most readily notice, frequency response aberrations and high amounts of harmonic and IM distortion are removed fr= om the equation. So, what's left? Some say that there are types of distortio= n that we can't easily measure, but to which the ear is sensitive. Either you will hear it or you will not. One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. With a few basic mods, it became a (barely) reasonable unit. Measurements are not necessarily the final issue. What one hears is the issue. And I betcha that even you with a severe head-cold wearing ear-muffs could pick an early- version Dynaco from _any_ other amp in a DBT nine times in ten. These include, transient intermodulation or slew-induced distortion (after Otal= a), dielectric absorption distortion (after Jung) etc. But these are controversial. Many audio experts maintain that they don't exist, and in either case, whether you believe them to be a factor, or not, they are bo= th addressed in most modern amp designs. That leaves noise, which again is vanishingly low in modern analog devices. You read reviews of amps that allude to textures in the top octaves, such= as this device lends a sandpaper-like quality to the reproduction of strings= , while this other device is more liquid, smoother sounding in the same reg= ion. I read a lot of blather created by writers who have to justify their paychecks. I do not read information based on an opinion supported by observable facts. I also note that these same writers are bat-sh*t terrified of DBT as it would pretty much wipe out their species if adopted. And so will do all-and-everything-they-can to debunk it. But what could account for these differences? noise modulation? =A0Some k= ind of heretofore undiscovered distortion? This doesn't seem reasonable, and eve= n if these differences do exist, would they be obvious at the switch point in = a DBT, or would they go unnoticed, giving rise to the result that there is statistically no difference between the two devices? Yep. exactly that. And the problem with that would be? Would this result in a difference that might only show itself in long-term listening? Perhaps. Even possibly likely. And for any number of reasons. These are questions that I find unsettling in the DBT vs long-term listening debate= .. And this brings up one last question. If the differences are so subtle th= at DBTs cannot uncover them, are they worth obsessing over? Of course not. Obsession is the realm of closely held beliefs and revealed religion. That's a question that every audio enthusiast is going to have to answer for themselves - o= nce the DBT issue is put to rest, once and for all, of course. Not really. If only audio enthusiasts would stick to what their ears tell them, enjoy what their ears tell them and behave only based on what their ears tell them then the concept of DBT or not-DBT is entirely irrelevant - unless one is attempting to write doctrine and tenets of faith. But keep in mind that entire industries are based on the concept that these differences *necessarily* even when inaudible. exist. Further that they are necessary issues for discussion. Keep in mind that Parmedis got to *Ex nihilo, nihil fit* even before Occam. DBT will ferret out differences. Some more quickly than others. But it will ferret them out. It WILL NOT tell you which is better, worse or more indifferent than the other. Only that there is (are) (a) difference(s). DBT is a means to screen. End of Validity. What you experience at home over the long term is not relevant to what DBT can tell you. THAT is based on what your ears tell you. No more. No less. And DBT was never meant to be anything more than a detailer of differences-if-any - more so - those differences-if-any audible (or not) to the target testers. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
#55
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New vs Vintage
* It may have been the liquor talking, but
Audio Empire wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:06:35 -0700, Peter Wieck wrote (in article ): Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL ou= t. He's posted this particular URL at least five times in the last month or = so. It's an interesting study, and seems well designed, but it's one of those instances where "if you accept the premise..." =A0The premise being wheth= er or not DBTs work for audio the way the work for other types of products and propositions. William of Occam would have that figured out in a hummingbird heartbeat. Either it does or it does not. Which requires a more complex explanation? That it does or that it does not? That it does not seems to require a great deal of esoteric explanation as well as solid, repeatable reasons not yet in evidence. That it does is more-or-less self-evident as it seems to have done in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future. Now, please give some clear, cogent and specific reasons why this should not be so. And such reasons should withstand rigorous testing, of course. I am no great fan of DBT as the full-and-final explanation of anything audio - as I believe that such tests are far too short to prove the full spectrum of how audio systems, parts or pieces interact with different individuals over time. What sounds good in a test setting over a few hours may not at home over a few days/weeks/months (nor is that necessarily due to the quality of the equipment either). But it is an excellent way to screen whether something does actually make a difference. No more. But very often that is enough. And very often fatal to closely held beliefs and other forms of revealed religion. Sadly. There's no doubt in my mind that DBT testing removes sighted and expectational bias from the equation. The test participants simply do not know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any given point. Beyond that, we seem to be taking the results of those tests on faith. It seems to be taken for granted that if there is a difference between the sound of two components, that these differences will be immediately apparent at the switch point. I.E., one second you are listening to component A, the next, component B. Since humans have such a poor aural memory (what we remember about a sound seems to be our impressions of the sound which we take note of as we listen, not the sound itself), Any difference between the sound of the two components should be the most noticeable at that point. Now, I know that this works fine for speakers - they all sound so different that those differences stick-out like a ham at a Sader, as they say. I suspect that differences between phono-cartridges would be a similar deal, even though I've never heard a DBT of phono-cartridges. Perhaps analog tape recorders would exhibit similar results, I don't know. It's when we get to modern amps, preamps, CD-players and DACs that I start to get uneasy with the process. All of these devices exhibit ruler-flat frequency response and vanishingly low distortion these days, so that eliminates two very important variables in the human auditory perception pantheon. The two things that we most readily notice, frequency response aberrations and high amounts of harmonic and IM distortion are removed from the equation. So, what's left? Some say that there are types of distortion that we can't easily measure, but to which the ear is sensitive. These include, transient intermodulation or slew-induced distortion (after Otala), dielectric absorption distortion (after Jung) etc. But these are controversial. Many audio experts maintain that they don't exist, and in either case, whether you believe them to be a factor, or not, they are both addressed in most modern amp designs. That leaves noise, which again is vanishingly low in modern analog devices. You read reviews of amps that allude to textures in the top octaves, such as this device lends a sandpaper-like quality to the reproduction of strings, while this other device is more liquid, smoother sounding in the same region. But what could account for these differences? noise modulation? Some kind of heretofore undiscovered distortion? This doesn't seem reasonable, and even if these differences do exist, would they be obvious at the switch point in a DBT, or would they go unnoticed, giving rise to the result that there is statistically no difference between the two devices? Would this result in a difference that might only show itself in long-term listening? These are questions that I find unsettling in the DBT vs long-term listening debate. And this brings up one last question. If the differences are so subtle that DBTs cannot uncover them, are they worth obsessing over? That's a question that every audio enthusiast is going to have to answer for themselves - once the DBT issue is put to rest, once and for all, of course. Business concept: DBT site Popular models of amps, speakers and other components are pitted against each other in controlled DBT's. Income from adverts, subscription-only section with additional DBT's, subscription newsletter... *R* *H* -- Powered by Linux |/ 2.6.32.26-175 Fedora 12 "No spyware. No viruses. No nags." |/ 2.6.31.12-0.2 OpenSUSE 11.2 http://www.jamendo.com |/Mutt 1.5.21 slrn 0.9.9p1 Irssi 0.8.15 "Preach the gospel always; when necessary use words." St. Francis |
#56
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New vs Vintage
On Mar 30, 3:29=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
To be fair to Arny, the problem here is not that the evidence is thin on = the ground, it's that FREE evidence on the web is thin on the ground. Uh, no, the problem is NOT that subjectivist audiophiles who can afford $20,000 systems cannot afford $20 journal articles. The problem is that audio subjectivism requires a profound level of scientific illiteracy in order to remain coherent. It's only possible to argue, over and over again, that "evidence is thin on the ground" if your basic posture is one of willful ignorance. The only place the evidence is thin is inside the heads of people who don't want to know. The scientific case against the general audibility of differences between cables/amps/DACs is based on a century and a half of psychoacoustic research into the limits of human hearing perception. We have a pretty good idea of the magnitudes of differences that are and are not discernible. And we know that the differences between audio components other than transducers generally do not exceed those levels. (We also know what the common exceptions are.) As a general rule, nobody publishes DBTs of audio components in scholarly journals because the findings don't ever tell us anything we didn't already know, and such journals are not looking for old news. Arny keeps posting the same article because it's the rare exception, and one can understand why the editors might have found it interesting. (I'll bet it's gotten more hits than anything else they've published in years.) But I don't think you'll find an article in JAES--or even an AES conference paper--comparing consumer CD players. What scientist would bother? DBTs of audio components are useful tools for testing differences when you aren't sure they're audible, and are especially useful if you really want to prove to the skeptics that you heard a difference, which is why objectivists always demand them of subjectivists. But they aren't the basis of the case, and they aren't the way real scientists have answered the question. bob |
#57
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New vs Vintage
On Mar 30, 12:29=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:40:59 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Mar 30, 3:55=3DA0am, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:10 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Mar 29, 1:14=3D3DA0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs a= re inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Pl= ay=3D bac=3D3D k chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resoluti= on=3D =A0Au=3D3D dio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 Hey! Not bad! A piece of evidence that can be added to the bare boned body of evidence in all things audiophilia. doesn't really support an= y of your assertions on amplifier sound though. But props for having something. Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL= ou=3D t. He's posted this particular URL at least five times in the last month = or =3D so. It's an interesting study, and seems well designed, but it's one of th= ose instances where "if you accept the premise..." =3DA0The premise being = wheth=3D er or not DBTs work for audio the way the work for other types of products a= nd propositions Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the =A0world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Not somethin= g one can stand on when waving the proverbial science flag in defense of a particular subjective opinion on the audibility of things. No scientist worth their salt would make any definitive claims as have been made based on this body of evidence. One may as well claim there are in fact pink flying elephants on neptune since the evidence has yet to show otherwise. To be fair to Arny, the problem here is not that the evidence is thin on = the ground, it's that FREE evidence on the web is thin on the ground. Most AE= S papers are only available from the AES web site and they cost money. If o= ne is an AES member they cost $5 to download each, if one is NOT an AES memb= er, these research papers cost $20 each to download. The Meyer/Moran paper to which Arny keeps referring is one of the few that's available to download= for free (but not from the AES) and, of course, it supports Arny's position o= n this issue which doesn't hurt his argument at all. 8^)- Hide quoted text = - I'm not being unfair at all. Even with the AESJ (which honestly is a pretty light weight peer reviewed journal in the world of science) there are no papers that offer DBTs of amplifiers, or preamplifiers or many of the other things that are so often debated here. Audiophiles will believe what they will about the subject. It does not matter really. But "real science" has not weighed in on the subject. At least not the world of peer reviewed scientific studies. Who knows what proprietary data exists in the confines of private industry. |
#58
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New vs Vintage
On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:54:08 -0700, Peter Wieck wrote
(in article ): snip All of these devices exhibit ruler-flat =A0 frequency response and vanishingly low distortion these days, so that eliminates two very important variables in the human auditory perception pantheon. The two things that we most readily notice, frequency response aberrations and high amounts of harmonic and IM distortion are removed fr= om the equation. So, what's left? Some say that there are types of distortio= n that we can't easily measure, but to which the ear is sensitive. Either you will hear it or you will not. One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. With a few basic mods, it became a (barely) reasonable unit. Measurements are not necessarily the final issue. What one hears is the issue. And I betcha that even you with a severe head-cold wearing ear-muffs could pick an early- version Dynaco from _any_ other amp in a DBT nine times in ten. ... Well, finally someone who really KNOWS. Tell that to Mr. Kruger who believes that the ST-120 was "totally transparent" and sounds just like any modern amplifier (which is to say it has no "sound at all). Where were you when we were discussing this amp a few days ago? 8^) These include, transient intermodulation or slew-induced distortion (after Otal= a), dielectric absorption distortion (after Jung) etc. But these are controversial. Many audio experts maintain that they don't exist, and in either case, whether you believe them to be a factor, or not, they are bo= th addressed in most modern amp designs. That leaves noise, which again is vanishingly low in modern analog devices. You read reviews of amps that allude to textures in the top octaves, such= as this device lends a sandpaper-like quality to the reproduction of strings= , while this other device is more liquid, smoother sounding in the same reg= ion. I read a lot of blather created by writers who have to justify their paychecks. I do not read information based on an opinion supported by observable facts. I also note that these same writers are bat-sh*t terrified of DBT as it would pretty much wipe out their species if adopted. And so will do all-and-everything-they-can to debunk it. I neither endorse nor debunk such conclusions. I merely stated them as a prelude to asking the question "if these differences do, indeed, exist, to what could we attribute them?" But what could account for these differences? noise modulation? =A0Some k= ind of heretofore undiscovered distortion? This doesn't seem reasonable, and eve= n if these differences do exist, would they be obvious at the switch point in = a DBT, or would they go unnoticed, giving rise to the result that there is statistically no difference between the two devices? Yep. exactly that. And the problem with that would be? The problem is that in such a case, the DBT would have told us NOTHING about the amps in question. Would this result in a difference that might only show itself in long-term listening? Perhaps. Even possibly likely. And for any number of reasons. Exactly. These are questions that I find unsettling in the DBT vs long-term listening debate= . And this brings up one last question. If the differences are so subtle th= at DBTs cannot uncover them, are they worth obsessing over? Of course not. Obsession is the realm of closely held beliefs and revealed religion. But religion, in any guise, is a very personal thing. Each person must decide for him or herself what to believe. That goes for the religious aspect of audio as well as the religious aspects of a supreme being. That's a question that every audio enthusiast is going to have to answer for themselves - o= nce the DBT issue is put to rest, once and for all, of course. Not really. If only audio enthusiasts would stick to what their ears tell them, enjoy what their ears tell them and behave only based on what their ears tell them then the concept of DBT or not-DBT is entirely irrelevant - unless one is attempting to write doctrine and tenets of faith. Yes, and some most assuredly are doing just that! But keep in mind that entire industries are based on the concept that these differences *necessarily* even when inaudible. exist. Further that they are necessary issues for discussion. Keep in mind that Parmedis got to *Ex nihilo, nihil fit* even before Occam. DBT will ferret out differences. Some more quickly than others. But it will ferret them out. It WILL NOT tell you which is better, worse or more indifferent than the other. Only that there is (are) (a) difference(s). DBT is a means to screen. End of Validity. That is very true, and I don't think anyone is arguing against that. What you experience at home over the long term is not relevant to what DBT can tell you. THAT is based on what your ears tell you. No more. No less. And DBT was never meant to be anything more than a detailer of differences-if-any - more so - those differences-if-any audible (or not) to the target testers. Absolutely. But will DBTs show that no differences exist where their ARE differences. That's what I'm wondering. |
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New vs Vintage
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
There's no doubt in my mind that DBT testing removes sighted and expectational bias from the equation. The test participants simply do not know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any given point. The fact that the participants know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any given point makes sighted evaluations exceedingly questionable. The true situation that in the past 30+ years of struggling with the problem of listening tests, we still really do not have any viable alternatives other than sighted or double blind. The sighted tests are obviously greviouisly flawed, so we are *stuck* with doing DBTs until we come up with something better. Beyond that, we seem to be taking the results of those tests on faith. I think you're speaking for yourself. There seems to be some problem with intellectually and emotionally connecting with DBTs. It seems to be taken for granted that if there is a difference between the sound of two components, that these differences will be immediately apparent at the switch point. How many times do I have to deny that by both assertion and example? I.E., one second you are listening to component A, the next, component B. So what is the alternative? People have done tests with cross-fades. No special joy. You're not telling the whole story or even just the true story. Even when instantaneous switching is used, listeners are offered as many switch points as they think they need. There is no need to make a decision immediately after a switch point. The listener can audition as many switch points as he wishes before reaching a conclusion. This is specifically how I do my own DBTs - I switch back and forth looking for the switch points where the differences are as clear as possible for me. I base each conclusion (trial) on auditioning many comparisons. Since humans have such a poor aural memory (what we remember about a sound seems to be our impressions of the sound which we take note of as we listen, not the sound itself), This is very true, but it impacts *any* reasonble listening test. Sighted evaluations *solve* the aural memory problem by simply revealing the desired answer at every point in the evaluation. That's no solution at all! Any difference between the sound of the two components should be the most noticeable at that point. The fact of the matter is that many audible differences are not most noticable at any particular point. Finding these points is part of the skill of making listening comparisons. It is well known that often, by managing the music and how the listener times his comparisons, a test can be biased to have either a null outcome or the most sensitive outcome possible. This is sometimes apparent even in sighted evaluations. There's no need to judge sighted evaluations by just sound quality, so many of the problems that are inherent in reliable listening comparisons are masked. Now, I know that this works fine for speakers - they all sound so different that those differences stick-out like a ham at a Sader, as they say. I suspect that differences between phono-cartridges would be a similar deal, even though I've never heard a DBT of phono-cartridges. Yes speakers are relatively easy to discern, as Harman's years of public reports of loudspeaker listening tests have shown many. We showed over 30 years ago that phono cartridges are often harder to separate by means of just listening, and sometimes they are impossible to separate. Perhaps analog tape recorders would exhibit similar results, I don't know. Over 10 years ago my friend Dave Carlstrom, who happens to be a world-class analog tape recorder technican showed that the effects of even just one generation on the best analog machines ever built can be detected. It's when we get to modern amps, preamps, CD-players and DACs that I start to get uneasy with the process. All that has been settled for decades by many experimenters. We showed over 20 years ago in the Stereo Review CD player and amplfier DBTs that most CD players and most SS amplfiiers are impossible to detect. Equipment performance has improved just a little since then. I revisited those tests about a decade ago and was unable to obtain more positive results by upgrading music choice and listener training. All of these devices exhibit ruler-flat frequency response and vanishingly low distortion these days, so that eliminates two very important variables in the human auditory perception pantheon. IOW what we know about their technology supports the outcomes of our listening tests. The two things that we most readily notice, frequency response aberrations and high amounts of harmonic and IM distortion are removed from the equation. So, what's left? Some say that there are types of distortion that we can't easily measure, but to which the ear is sensitive. That's a hypothesis whose advocates have already had over 30 years to provide scientific evidence to support. Can we all say "no show"? These include, transient intermodulation or slew-induced distortion (after Otala), That was quickly identified as a special case of nonlinear distortion over 30 years ago. High frequency twin tone IM tests are probably the most sensitive way to detect the underlying problem. dielectric absorption distortion (after Jung) etc. Dielectric absorbtion is easy to dismiss on the grounds that it is a very subtle effect and also that its consequences have simply never be reliably detected in a good listening test. It was the fabrication of a publicity-hungry tech writer who rode it into a nice job with a semiconductor manufactuer. But these are controversial. Worse than that, they are dismissed for lack of relevancy to the problem of listening to reproduced music. Many audio experts maintain that they don't exist, and in either case, whether you believe them to be a factor, or not, they are both addressed in most modern amp designs. That leaves noise, which again is vanishingly low in modern analog devices. Agreed. You read reviews of amps that allude to textures in the top octaves, such as this device lends a sandpaper-like quality to the reproduction of strings, while this other device is more liquid, smoother sounding in the same region. IOW poetry, not proper technical reports. But what could account for these differences? Listener bias, plain and simple. noise modulation? Listener bias, plain and simple. Some kind of heretofore undiscovered distortion? Listener bias, plain and simple. This doesn't seem reasonable, and even if these differences do exist, would they be obvious at the switch point in a DBT, or would they go unnoticed, giving rise to the result that there is statistically no difference between the two devices? Its the old question - how many years do you search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Lost Ark, or the Holy Grail? Would this result in a difference that might only show itself in long-term listening? Long term listening tests are now well understood. You yourself explained how and why they desensitize listeners in your post, above. These are questions that I find unsettling in the DBT vs long-term listening debate. I suspect that its all about your long-cherished beliefs. BTW those are beliefs that I held 40 years ago, but they got incinerated by a lot of careful listening starting about 35 years ago. And this brings up one last question. If the differences are so subtle that DBTs cannot uncover them, are they worth obsessing over? In general, of course not. That's a question that every audio enthusiast is going to have to answer for themselves - once the DBT issue is put to rest, once and for all, of course. The DBT issue won't be resolved for every audiophile until hopes stops springing eternal, and until there's no more money to be made by convincing people to suspend disbelief. |
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On Mar 31, 6:58=A0am, Audio Empire wrote:
Absolutely. But will DBTs show that no differences exist where their ARE differences. =A0That's what I'm wondering. DBT will only ferret out audible differences to *that* audience at *that* moment during *that* test. There may be many inaudible differences that will not be revealed by DBT. And any long-term effects from otherwise undiscernable differences may not be revealed during a short-term test. So what? DBT was never designed to do any more than compare items under mostly entirely artificial conditions over a very short period of time. As a process it cannot, nor was it ever meant to determine what you like, dictate what you should (or should not) hear nor much of anything else. Are you able to tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi? Both are highly sugared brown, fizzy soft drinks that are far more alike than not. Yet billions are spent on differentiation. Audio electronics are far more similar than Coke and Pepsi - so the effort at differentiation becomes much more strident and includes far less humor or cleverness but much more bitterness. As is also stated of Academia: The battles are so vicious because the stakes are so small. Imagine a world where all this blather just went away - and individuals purchased and listened to only what they liked based only on what they heard? Entire industries (albeit mostly small ones) would crumble and die overnight - starting with the interconnect industry. It would not be pretty, but it would be well-deserved. Aside and personal: I am grateful each and every day for all this blather. It provides a near-infinite source of discarded/used/vintage equipment at almost laughable prices for me to play with. Aside II: The Dynaco ST-120 had some very real design flaws when it first escaped. But at under one watt and with a fairly neutral input signal it tested OK. Stress it even slightly and the flaws became obvious. It took Dynaco two iterations to correct the most audible flaws and a switchover of the both driver and output transistors to make it both passible and stable. But keep in mind it was quite the thing in its day - a (relatively) cheap (then) high-power amp that did not require an 18-wheeler to transport. I happen to keep an ST-120, full modifications, of course. Not a bad little amp for testing components as they come off the bench. Not what I would put on the front line, however. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
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"Peter Wieck" wrote in message
Either you will hear it or you will not. Are you sure about that? One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. Where is the reliable evidence supporting this generally unsupported audiophile myth? |
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On Mar 30, 6:14=A0pm, bob wrote:
On Mar 30, 3:29=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote: To be fair to Arny, the problem here is not that the evidence is thin o= n the ground, it's that FREE evidence on the web is thin on the ground. Uh, no, the problem is NOT that subjectivist audiophiles who can afford $20,000 systems cannot afford $20 journal articles. The problem is that audio subjectivism requires a profound level of scientific illiteracy in order to remain coherent. It's only possible to argue, over and over again, that "evidence is thin on the ground" if your basic posture is one of willful ignorance. The only place the evidence is thin is inside the heads of people who don't want to know. The scientific case against the general audibility of differences between cables/amps/DACs is based on a century and a half of psychoacoustic research into the limits of human hearing perception. We have a pretty good idea of the magnitudes of differences that are and are not discernible. And we know that the differences between audio components other than transducers generally do not exceed those levels. (We also know what the common exceptions are.) As a general rule, nobody publishes DBTs of audio components in scholarly journals because the findings don't ever tell us anything we didn't already know, and such journals are not looking for old news. Arny keeps posting the same article because it's the rare exception, and one can understand why the editors might have found it interesting. (I'll bet it's gotten more hits than anything else they've published in years.) But I don't think you'll find an article in JAES--or even an AES conference paper--comparing consumer CD players. What scientist would bother? DBTs of audio components are useful tools for testing differences when you aren't sure they're audible, and are especially useful if you really want to prove to the skeptics that you heard a difference, which is why objectivists always demand them of subjectivists. But they aren't the basis of the case, and they aren't the way real scientists have answered the question. If this is all true then it should be quite trivial to cite this vast body of peer reviewed studies that support "the scientific case against the general audibility of differences amps" Please cite the specific studies and show how they prove the assertion. Please help me with my "willful scientific ignorance." Without it this is just more scientific flag waving with no real science behind it. Talk is cheap. Show me the goods. Hard to call my alleged "ignorance" willful if you are forth coming with citations of the studies that will set me straight. |
#63
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New vs Vintage
On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:09:03 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Mar 30, 12:29=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:40:59 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Mar 30, 3:55=3DA0am, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:10 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Mar 29, 1:14=3D3DA0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message So please Arny, show us the peer reviewed published studies that support your assertions on audibility and inaudibility of various electronics in the audio chain. Those would relate to negative hypothesis. Here is a recent peer reviewed paper that shows that DACs and ADCs a= re inaudible when introduced into a so-called "High-Resolution Audio Pl= ay=3D bac=3D3D k chain": "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resoluti= on=3D =A0Au=3D3D dio Playback." Authors: Meyer, E. Brad; Moran, David R. Affiliation: Boston Audio Society, Lincoln, MA, USA JAES Volume 55 Issue 9 pp. 775-779; September 2007 Hey! Not bad! A piece of evidence that can be added to the bare boned body of evidence in all things audiophilia. doesn't really support an= y of your assertions on amplifier sound though. But props for having something. Every time Arny gets in a DBT-related argument here, he trots this URL= ou=3D t. He's posted this particular URL at least five times in the last month = or =3D so. It's an interesting study, and seems well designed, but it's one of th= ose instances where "if you accept the premise..." =3DA0The premise being = wheth=3D er or not DBTs work for audio the way the work for other types of products a= nd propositions Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the =A0world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Not somethin= g one can stand on when waving the proverbial science flag in defense of a particular subjective opinion on the audibility of things. No scientist worth their salt would make any definitive claims as have been made based on this body of evidence. One may as well claim there are in fact pink flying elephants on neptune since the evidence has yet to show otherwise. To be fair to Arny, the problem here is not that the evidence is thin on = the ground, it's that FREE evidence on the web is thin on the ground. Most AE= S papers are only available from the AES web site and they cost money. If o= ne is an AES member they cost $5 to download each, if one is NOT an AES memb= er, these research papers cost $20 each to download. The Meyer/Moran paper to which Arny keeps referring is one of the few that's available to download= for free (but not from the AES) and, of course, it supports Arny's position o= n this issue which doesn't hurt his argument at all. 8^)- Hide quoted text = - I'm not being unfair at all. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intimate that YOU were being unfair. I'm saying that since I'm the one who brought up the fact that Arny has posted this same URL numerous times, that *I* was the one who needed back-off a bit and acknowledge that Arny has posted the URL because the number of AES studies that are readily available on the internet are far and few between and it's not any shortcoming on Arny's part that he keeps posting the same one. Even with the AESJ (which honestly is a pretty light weight peer reviewed journal in the world of science) there are no papers that offer DBTs of amplifiers, or preamplifiers or many of the other things that are so often debated here. Audiophiles will believe what they will about the subject. It does not matter really. But "real science" has not weighed in on the subject. At least not the world of peer reviewed scientific studies. Who knows what proprietary data exists in the confines of private industry. Honestly, it's probably not a high priority in the scientific world. DBTs are difficult set-up correctly and a single test doesn't really mean anything statistically, you have to do many. This costs money and research grants for this kind of, let's face it, frivolous pursuit are probably not forthcoming. |
#64
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New vs Vintage
"Scott" wrote in message
I'm not being unfair at all. Even with the AESJ (which honestly is a pretty light weight peer reviewed journal in the world of science) there are no papers that offer DBTs of amplifiers, or preamplifiers or many of the other things that are so often debated here. The reason is pretty obvious. Neither Consumer's Union nor the AES are confused about the fact that they are completely different organizations. The AES (as well as the ASA and IEEEE) are concerned with general principles and findings that would apply to large classes of audio products, not comparisons of very narrow implementations of those principles. Audiophiles will believe what they will about the subject. The web has made it far easier to spike audiophile myths and make that information generally available. It does not matter really. Some of us would hope that we might help save music lovers a ton of money that might otherwise be spent on products with no reliable sonic value whatsoever. But "real science" has not weighed in on the subject. Except it has, and only a tiny minority of true believers continue believe in the face of considerably contrary evidence. At least not the world of peer reviewed scientific studies. I see Scott that you still aren't answering questions about peer-reviewed scientific studies justifying your personal investments in *questionable* audio panaceas. Who knows what proprietary data exists in the confines of private industry. We know that in general the purveyers of audio gear whose functional principles are myth and legend don't do experiments that result in reliable data. They just spin 21st century fairy tales and take their money where they can still get it. Bedini Ultra-Super Clarifiers with a scoop of ice cream and a cherry, anybody? ;-) |
#65
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bob wrote:
Uh, no, the problem is NOT that subjectivist audiophiles who can afford $20,000 systems cannot afford $20 journal articles. The problem is that audio subjectivism requires a profound level of scientific illiteracy in order to remain coherent. Not exactly on topic but not exactly unrelated: I've a very wealthy friend who loves music but doesn't have a particularly good ear. He bought a very expensive system with tube power amp and tube preamp and huge speakers. I have no idea what he paid but it was certainly a bundle. He invited me in to listen to a piece I hadn't heard before and I immediately felt awful he spent so much money for such awful sounding equipment. I spotted sonic problems straightaway but I didn't want to upset him so I asked if he would mind letting me tweak the controls a bit as I'm hearing some things I don't quite like. I found the loudness was set on and his tone controls were askew. I found the speaker cables were reversed in polarity from one speaker to the next! He had the speakers themselves directly on a hardwood floor and some large paintings hanging on the wall behind the speakers. I suggested we get some solid stands and get the speakers off the resonant floor and moving them away from the pictures which were being rattled. The difference in clarity was night and day even turning the loudness off, setting the tone to flat and fixing the speaker cable polarity. We had another boost when the stands arrived. Here's a person with no audio knowledge who trusted whomever sold him some very expensive gear and didn't visit his home to install it properly. As far as my friend knew before I arrived, all was well. He would have suffered along with the poor quality sound and assumed it was worth price paid. |
#66
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New vs Vintage
On Mar 30, 1:12=A0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Scott" wrote in message On Mar 30, 10:21 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Your first error is the false assertion that any paper that is not peer-reviewed is scientifically invalid. I never said it was "invalid" You implied it about as clearly as you could. No Arny not only did I not say it. I made it clear that is not what I said. And still you continue to hang your hat on this misrepresentation of my position. I am not going to argue with you about what i said since it is clear and has been posted twice and I am not going to argue with you about what I meant. I am the authority over what I meant. You don't get to change that. I did not say nor did I imply that it was "invalid." =A0here is what I quoted on the subject with the link. http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/...te/project/29/ "There is a system called peer review that is used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. The peer review process subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public. So let's cut to the chase Scott. I already did cut to the chase Arny and I am done with your misrepresentations of it. If you did not understand what was meant by the quote on peer review and how it relates to the constant inapropriate flag waving by the so called objectivists then that is on you. I can not make you understand it. But I am done arguing with you about what I meant by it. Where is there even one peer-reviewed paper that supports your oft-repeated audiophile myths? 1. the question is too vague and obviosuly prejudicial. This has already been pointed out. 2. There is no body of evidence on the matter that either supports or conflicts with many of the things you are prejucially calling audiophile myths including the idea that there is such a thing as amplifiers with a distinctive sonic signature. This has also been pointed out. 3. The fact that there is this lack of such evidence that would be considered anything more than junk and/or anecdotal simply supports my assertion that the science flag waving is way out of line for anyone with an understanding and respect for real science. You can posture and try to use misdirection all you want. It won't change that reality. Where is there even one peer-reviewed paper that shows that LP playback equipment technical performance has advanced substantially since say 1985= ? Why do you continue to try to use this misdirection Arny? I have already addressed this issue. I never waved the science flag. You did. The onus is on you to support your assertions with science or put away your science flag. I never waved the science flag on the subject of vinyl cutting and playback. I am done addressing this red herring as well. [Snip tyhe rest of the red herrings] If you want to assert that your positions are scientifically valid you have to show us the science. pointing to a lack of evidence on these subjects does not help your case Arny. It actually supports mine, that being that science hasn't weighed in on these matters in any meaningful way and that we are dealing with differing opinions neither of which have much of any real science behind them. Please stop asking me to show you the sicence that clearly isn't there since I have not misrepresented the scientific validity of my opinions. Only one of us is standing on the sicence soap box Arny and that is you. So you are the one with the burden of showing us the science upon which you allgedly stand. |
#67
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On Mar 31, 9:56=A0am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Peter Wieck" wrote in message Either you will hear it or you will not. Are you sure about that? One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. Where is the reliable evidence supporting this generally unsupported audiophile myth? Arnie: As I suggested to Audio Empire - I bet even you with a raging head- cold wearing ear-muffs could pick a first-issue unmodified ST-120 out of a crowd 9 times out of 10. Between the power-supply sag, the driver current sag over a very few watts and the tendency for it to oscillate at just above audio frequencies when driven by more than about 1/2V of input - it sounded like glass in a blender. At less than one watt output and with a very bland input - say Gregorian Chant - it sounded quite nice. But the original had serious design/execution flaws. They were eventually corrected - but the were also very real. Either you will hear it or you will not is a tautology - therefore true in all cases. I did not state either a difference is there or it is not... There are always differences - just not necessarily audible. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
#68
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On Mar 31, 6:56=A0am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Scott" wrote in message I'm not being unfair at all. Even with the AESJ (which honestly is a pretty light weight peer reviewed journal in the world of science) there are no papers that offer DBTs of amplifiers, or preamplifiers or many of the other things that are so often debated here. The reason is pretty obvious. Neither Consumer's Union nor the AES are confused about the fact that they are completely different organizations. that is a nice bit or irrelevant information since I made no mention of any consumers union, The AES (as well as the ASA and IEEEE) are concerned with general princip= les and findings that would apply to large classes of audio products, not comparisons of very narrow implementations of those principles. You are not really in any position to be speaking for the AES. Audiophiles will believe what they will about the subject. The web has made it far easier to spike audiophile myths and make that information generally available. And yet when called on it you offer one paper from the AES. Just one.Given that the web has made this task so much easier I would expect a great deal more substance from you. It does not matter really. Some of us would hope that we might help save music lovers a ton of money that might otherwise be spent on products with no reliable sonic value whatsoever. Sorry but I sincerely doubt this is about saving people from themselves. I am quite confident that these debates are ego based. But "real science" has not weighed in on the subject. Except it has, and only a tiny minority of true believers continue believ= e in the face of considerably contrary evidence. Ah this evidence that no one can come up with despite, as you say, the web making it far easier to access. Looks like a whole lot of posturing to me. All these posts so far and one AES paper on one aspect of audio. That's it. Not one peer reviewed paper on amplifier sound or any of the other issues you call audiophile myths. I am going to make a prediction right here and right now. You won't come up with any peer reviewed scientific evidence that will support any of your opinions on amplifier sound. Call me psychic ;-) At least not the world of peer reviewed scientific studies. I see Scott that you still aren't answering questions about peer-reviewed scientific studies justifying your personal investments in *questionable* audio panaceas. That is ironic Arny. Given you were the one waving the science flag and has come up with nothing to support your opinions on the same subjects. |
#69
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On Mar 31, 6:58=A0am, Kulin Remailer wrote:
bob wrote: Uh, no, the problem is NOT that subjectivist audiophiles who can afford $20,000 systems cannot afford $20 journal articles. The problem is that audio subjectivism requires a profound level of scientific illiteracy in order to remain coherent. Not exactly on topic but not exactly unrelated: I've a very wealthy friend who loves music but doesn't have a particularl= y good ear. He bought a very expensive system with tube power amp and tube preamp and huge speakers. I have no idea what he paid but it was certainl= y a bundle. He invited me in to listen to a piece I hadn't heard before and I immediately felt awful he spent so much money for such awful sounding equipment. I spotted sonic problems straightaway but I didn't want to ups= et him so I asked if he would mind letting me tweak the controls a bit as I'= m hearing some things I don't quite like. I found the loudness was set on a= nd his tone controls were askew. I found the speaker cables were reversed in polarity from one speaker to the next! He had the speakers themselves directly on a hardwood floor and some large paintings hanging on the wall behind the speakers. I suggested we get some solid stands and get the speakers off the resonant floor and moving them away from the pictures wh= ich were being rattled. The difference in clarity was night and day even turn= ing the loudness off, setting the tone to flat and fixing the speaker cable polarity. We had another boost when the stands arrived. Here's a person w= ith no audio knowledge who trusted whomever sold him some very expensive gear and didn't visit his home to install it properly. As far as my friend kne= w before I arrived, all was well. He would have suffered along with the poo= r quality sound and assumed it was worth price paid. What decade did this happen? I can't think of any tube gear that has been built in the past forty years that would have a loudness button and tone controls. Not sure it is fair to represent the equipment per se as "awful sounding." If any equipment, no matter how good it is, is poorly set up it will sound bad. You can't blame the tubes on bad sound if the speakers were wired out of phase. Nor can you blame the dealer for the user's misuse of the equipment unless the dealer had been explicitely invited to set it up. Also I'd like to know what the equipment was. If the preamp were tubed and had a loudness button and tone controls I can't think of anything *new* that matches that description. If the dealer (or dealers, you haven't even made it clear that all the equipment was purchased at one place) is selling vintage equipment it's not really the same thing as selling new stuff which is often but not always supported with home visits for set up. |
#70
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On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:55:55 -0700, Peter Wieck wrote
(in article ): On Mar 31, 6:58=A0am, Audio Empire wrote: Absolutely. But will DBTs show that no differences exist where their ARE differences. =A0That's what I'm wondering. DBT will only ferret out audible differences to *that* audience at *that* moment during *that* test. Of course, but that's not the question. The REAL question is if a DBT returns a null result, is it because their are no differences or because the listening group found no differences? You know, most people aren't trained listeners like most audiophiles. audio enthusiasts train temselves to listen for minutia that the average person neither cares about nor listens for. An analogous example of this kind of "selective attention to detail" that I am talking about can be found in a friend of mine. He's a classic film buff who worked in the industry for years. He hates modern film/TV making because they use so much of what he calls "non-stabilized hand-held camera work" (meaning that the camera is not locked-down for the shot nor is the operator using a steady-cam). He won't watch any movie of TV show that he says uses it. Me? I don't notice it unless it's pointed out to me, and even then I don't particularly care. I'm watching the story unfold, not watching the cinema technique. I suspect that many listeners are the same way. This minutia that audio types obsess and agonize over is simply not noticed by by most people. They just listen to the music. This lack of critical facility when it comes to the technical side of music reproduction is manifest in the acceptance of low bit-rate MP3. Most listeners don't notice (or care) that these MP3s don't sound very good - and they make up the bulk of music listeners in the world today. There may be many inaudible differences that will not be revealed by DBT. And any long-term effects from otherwise undiscernable differences may not be revealed during a short-term test. So what? DBT was never designed to do any more than compare items under mostly entirely artificial conditions over a very short period of time. As a process it cannot, nor was it ever meant to determine what you like, dictate what you should (or should not) hear nor much of anything else. That's sort of my point. The absence of evidence (in this case a DBT null result) is not evidence of absence. Are you able to tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi? Both are highly sugared brown, fizzy soft drinks that are far more alike than not. Yet billions are spent on differentiation. You bet I can tell! They taste NOTHING alike. I love Coke, it's delicious (to me), but I can't even drink a Pepsi. Many times I've ordered a Coke in a restaurant and been unknowingly served Pepsi. I would always do a spit-take on the Pepsi and say to the waiter: "This is Pepsi, I ordered Coke" and got the response: "Yes sir, we serve only Pepsi products." I have NEVER been wrong. OTOH, I don't drink soft drinks at all any more (haven't had a Coke in 3 years) so I don't know if I could still tell the difference, but Pepsi always had a salty after-taste to me that was unmistakeable and Coke lacked. Audio electronics are far more similar than Coke and Pepsi - so the effort at differentiation becomes much more strident and includes far less humor or cleverness but much more bitterness. As is also stated of Academia: The battles are so vicious because the stakes are so small. I don't disagree with that assessment at all. I have heard differences in amps as a result of a DBT but just a few minutes with either amp in question, and those differences are quickly forgotten because they weren't important in the first place. This wasn't always the case, but it is now. Anytime I hear an audio enthusiast say that they don't like the sound of this new amplifier or prefer the sound of that one, I look at them with jaundiced eye, and the term "anal retentive personality" comes to mind. Every modern amp that I've auditioned sounds just fine under normal listening conditions, and that included the super-cheap $200 Behringer A-500! (just leave the volume controls on the front panel at maximum!). Imagine a world where all this blather just went away - and individuals purchased and listened to only what they liked based only on what they heard? Entire industries (albeit mostly small ones) would crumble and die overnight - starting with the interconnect industry. It would not be pretty, but it would be well-deserved. Amen, brother! Aside and personal: I am grateful each and every day for all this blather. It provides a near-infinite source of discarded/used/vintage equipment at almost laughable prices for me to play with. Yep, that's true Aside II: The Dynaco ST-120 had some very real design flaws when it first escaped. But at under one watt and with a fairly neutral input signal it tested OK. Stress it even slightly and the flaws became obvious. It took Dynaco two iterations to correct the most audible flaws and a switchover of the both driver and output transistors to make it both passible and stable. But keep in mind it was quite the thing in its day - a (relatively) cheap (then) high-power amp that did not require an 18-wheeler to transport. Yes, I had one, but in those days, what we then called "the transistor sound" was said to be a good thing. Of course the "transistor sound" turned out to be all kinds of distortion, including oodles of odd-order harmonic and slew-induced distortion. I happen to keep an ST-120, full modifications, of course. Not a bad little amp for testing components as they come off the bench. Not what I would put on the front line, however. Well, I dumped my early example when I heard a used Citation II against it. I sold the ST-120 to a buddy who just wanted the power and didn't care about it's sonic shortfalls and bought the Citation. I was a much happier young listener after that. |
#71
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On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:56:03 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Peter Wieck" wrote in message Either you will hear it or you will not. Are you sure about that? One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. Where is the reliable evidence supporting this generally unsupported audiophile myth? Just about everybody (except, apparently, you) who ever owned one. That consensus of opinion is reliable enough to me. I know what I heard then, and I know what I hear now. Last year I heard an ST-120 A/B'd against a new Audio Research 220 W/channel tube amp in a DBT (just for laughs). We got the laughs all right. The ST-120 sounded DREADFUL, and more than that, it sounded just like I remember is sounding! |
#72
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On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:52:46 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message There's no doubt in my mind that DBT testing removes sighted and expectational bias from the equation. The test participants simply do not know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any given point. The fact that the participants know which of the two units being compared they are listening to at any given point makes sighted evaluations exceedingly questionable. The true situation that in the past 30+ years of struggling with the problem of listening tests, we still really do not have any viable alternatives other than sighted or double blind. The sighted tests are obviously greviouisly flawed, so we are *stuck* with doing DBTs until we come up with something better. Beyond that, we seem to be taking the results of those tests on faith. I think you're speaking for yourself. There seems to be some problem with intellectually and emotionally connecting with DBTs. It seems to be taken for granted that if there is a difference between the sound of two components, that these differences will be immediately apparent at the switch point. How many times do I have to deny that by both assertion and example? I.E., one second you are listening to component A, the next, component B. So what is the alternative? People have done tests with cross-fades. No special joy. You're not telling the whole story or even just the true story. Even when instantaneous switching is used, listeners are offered as many switch points as they think they need. There is no need to make a decision immediately after a switch point. The listener can audition as many switch points as he wishes before reaching a conclusion. This is specifically how I do my own DBTs - I switch back and forth looking for the switch points where the differences are as clear as possible for me. I base each conclusion (trial) on auditioning many comparisons. Since humans have such a poor aural memory (what we remember about a sound seems to be our impressions of the sound which we take note of as we listen, not the sound itself), This is very true, but it impacts *any* reasonble listening test. Sighted evaluations *solve* the aural memory problem by simply revealing the desired answer at every point in the evaluation. That's no solution at all! Any difference between the sound of the two components should be the most noticeable at that point. The fact of the matter is that many audible differences are not most noticable at any particular point. Finding these points is part of the skill of making listening comparisons. It is well known that often, by managing the music and how the listener times his comparisons, a test can be biased to have either a null outcome or the most sensitive outcome possible. This is sometimes apparent even in sighted evaluations. There's no need to judge sighted evaluations by just sound quality, so many of the problems that are inherent in reliable listening comparisons are masked. Now, I know that this works fine for speakers - they all sound so different that those differences stick-out like a ham at a Sader, as they say. I suspect that differences between phono-cartridges would be a similar deal, even though I've never heard a DBT of phono-cartridges. Yes speakers are relatively easy to discern, as Harman's years of public reports of loudspeaker listening tests have shown many. We showed over 30 years ago that phono cartridges are often harder to separate by means of just listening, and sometimes they are impossible to separate. Perhaps analog tape recorders would exhibit similar results, I don't know. Over 10 years ago my friend Dave Carlstrom, who happens to be a world-class analog tape recorder technican showed that the effects of even just one generation on the best analog machines ever built can be detected. It's when we get to modern amps, preamps, CD-players and DACs that I start to get uneasy with the process. All that has been settled for decades by many experimenters. We showed over 20 years ago in the Stereo Review CD player and amplfier DBTs that most CD players and most SS amplfiiers are impossible to detect. Equipment performance has improved just a little since then. I revisited those tests about a decade ago and was unable to obtain more positive results by upgrading music choice and listener training. All of these devices exhibit ruler-flat frequency response and vanishingly low distortion these days, so that eliminates two very important variables in the human auditory perception pantheon. IOW what we know about their technology supports the outcomes of our listening tests. The two things that we most readily notice, frequency response aberrations and high amounts of harmonic and IM distortion are removed from the equation. So, what's left? Some say that there are types of distortion that we can't easily measure, but to which the ear is sensitive. That's a hypothesis whose advocates have already had over 30 years to provide scientific evidence to support. Can we all say "no show"? These include, transient intermodulation or slew-induced distortion (after Otala), That was quickly identified as a special case of nonlinear distortion over 30 years ago. High frequency twin tone IM tests are probably the most sensitive way to detect the underlying problem. dielectric absorption distortion (after Jung) etc. Dielectric absorbtion is easy to dismiss on the grounds that it is a very subtle effect and also that its consequences have simply never be reliably detected in a good listening test. It was the fabrication of a publicity-hungry tech writer who rode it into a nice job with a semiconductor manufactuer. But these are controversial. Worse than that, they are dismissed for lack of relevancy to the problem of listening to reproduced music. Many audio experts maintain that they don't exist, and in either case, whether you believe them to be a factor, or not, they are both addressed in most modern amp designs. That leaves noise, which again is vanishingly low in modern analog devices. Agreed. You read reviews of amps that allude to textures in the top octaves, such as this device lends a sandpaper-like quality to the reproduction of strings, while this other device is more liquid, smoother sounding in the same region. IOW poetry, not proper technical reports. But what could account for these differences? Listener bias, plain and simple. noise modulation? Listener bias, plain and simple. Some kind of heretofore undiscovered distortion? Listener bias, plain and simple. This doesn't seem reasonable, and even if these differences do exist, would they be obvious at the switch point in a DBT, or would they go unnoticed, giving rise to the result that there is statistically no difference between the two devices? Its the old question - how many years do you search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Lost Ark, or the Holy Grail? Would this result in a difference that might only show itself in long-term listening? Long term listening tests are now well understood. You yourself explained how and why they desensitize listeners in your post, above. These are questions that I find unsettling in the DBT vs long-term listening debate. I suspect that its all about your long-cherished beliefs. BTW those are beliefs that I held 40 years ago, but they got incinerated by a lot of careful listening starting about 35 years ago. And this brings up one last question. If the differences are so subtle that DBTs cannot uncover them, are they worth obsessing over? In general, of course not. That's a question that every audio enthusiast is going to have to answer for themselves - once the DBT issue is put to rest, once and for all, of course. The DBT issue won't be resolved for every audiophile until hopes stops springing eternal, and until there's no more money to be made by convincing people to suspend disbelief. Arny, a small criticism, if you will allow it. Most of your comments above were made prematurely. IOW, if you'd have finished reading the section before responding, you would have found most of your responses to be either redundant or irrelevant to the conversation. For instance, when I asked the rhetorical question, "But what could account for these differences?" you answered it With "Listener bias, plain and simple." yet I wasn't going there. I was headed toward the fact that these differences aren't reasonable in the light of the specifications of most modern amplifiers. You eliminate frequency response aberrations, you eliminate noise, you reduce distortion to indiscernible levels, and what's left? Not much, if anything. Also, please cite your opinions as opinions and not facts. Your kind of certitude, while backed by a lot of experience, certainly shows the strength of your convictions, but it is just that: evidence of your belief in your opinions. |
#73
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New vs Vintage
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 08:07:38 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Mar 30, 1:12=A0pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message On Mar 30, 10:21 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Scott" wrote in message Which merely points to the fact that the body of scientifically valid evidence in the world of audiophilia is painfully thin. Your first error is the false assertion that any paper that is not peer-reviewed is scientifically invalid. I never said it was "invalid" You implied it about as clearly as you could. No Arny not only did I not say it. I made it clear that is not what I said. And still you continue to hang your hat on this misrepresentation of my position. I am not going to argue with you about what i said since it is clear and has been posted twice and I am not going to argue with you about what I meant. I am the authority over what I meant. You don't get to change that. I did not say nor did I imply that it was "invalid." =A0here is what I quoted on the subject with the link. http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/...te/project/29/ "There is a system called peer review that is used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. The peer review process subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public. So let's cut to the chase Scott. I already did cut to the chase Arny and I am done with your misrepresentations of it. If you did not understand what was meant by the quote on peer review and how it relates to the constant inapropriate flag waving by the so called objectivists then that is on you. I can not make you understand it. But I am done arguing with you about what I meant by it. Where is there even one peer-reviewed paper that supports your oft-repeated audiophile myths? 1. the question is too vague and obviosuly prejudicial. This has already been pointed out. 2. There is no body of evidence on the matter that either supports or conflicts with many of the things you are prejucially calling audiophile myths including the idea that there is such a thing as amplifiers with a distinctive sonic signature. This has also been pointed out. 3. The fact that there is this lack of such evidence that would be considered anything more than junk and/or anecdotal simply supports my assertion that the science flag waving is way out of line for anyone with an understanding and respect for real science. You can posture and try to use misdirection all you want. It won't change that reality. Where is there even one peer-reviewed paper that shows that LP playback equipment technical performance has advanced substantially since say 1985= ? Why do you continue to try to use this misdirection Arny? I have already addressed this issue. I never waved the science flag. You did. The onus is on you to support your assertions with science or put away your science flag. I never waved the science flag on the subject of vinyl cutting and playback. I am done addressing this red herring as well. [Snip tyhe rest of the red herrings] If you want to assert that your positions are scientifically valid you have to show us the science. pointing to a lack of evidence on these subjects does not help your case Arny. It actually supports mine, that being that science hasn't weighed in on these matters in any meaningful way and that we are dealing with differing opinions neither of which have much of any real science behind them. Please stop asking me to show you the sicence that clearly isn't there since I have not misrepresented the scientific validity of my opinions. Only one of us is standing on the sicence soap box Arny and that is you. So you are the one with the burden of showing us the science upon which you allgedly stand. Another way to put this, I think, is that while Arny believes that since there is no evidence of peer-reviewed support for what he calls "audiophile myths", it means that no evidence HAS or CAN be found supporting those propositions, while many of the rest of us takes that lack of evidence to mean simply that serious science hasn't "tackled" the issue (nor are they likely to do so). You can't find evidence if you don't look for it. Now, If Arny wishes to fund a peer-reviewed university study on Audiophile Mythology, I'm sure he could find someone to step forward and tackle the issue, but I'm equally sure that aside from that eventuality, funding from the usual sources is going to be hard to come by. |
#74
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New vs Vintage
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:58:43 -0700, Kulin Remailer wrote
(in article ): bob wrote: Uh, no, the problem is NOT that subjectivist audiophiles who can afford $20,000 systems cannot afford $20 journal articles. The problem is that audio subjectivism requires a profound level of scientific illiteracy in order to remain coherent. Not exactly on topic but not exactly unrelated: I've a very wealthy friend who loves music but doesn't have a particularly good ear. He bought a very expensive system with tube power amp and tube preamp and huge speakers. I have no idea what he paid but it was certainly a bundle. He invited me in to listen to a piece I hadn't heard before and I immediately felt awful he spent so much money for such awful sounding equipment. I spotted sonic problems straightaway but I didn't want to upset him so I asked if he would mind letting me tweak the controls a bit as I'm hearing some things I don't quite like. I found the loudness was set on and his tone controls were askew. I found the speaker cables were reversed in polarity from one speaker to the next! He had the speakers themselves directly on a hardwood floor and some large paintings hanging on the wall behind the speakers. I suggested we get some solid stands and get the speakers off the resonant floor and moving them away from the pictures which were being rattled. The difference in clarity was night and day even turning the loudness off, setting the tone to flat and fixing the speaker cable polarity. We had another boost when the stands arrived. Here's a person with no audio knowledge who trusted whomever sold him some very expensive gear and didn't visit his home to install it properly. As far as my friend knew before I arrived, all was well. He would have suffered along with the poor quality sound and assumed it was worth price paid. This type of person is often the type who participate in DBTs as well, rank laymen. People like him and college students who were weened on MP3s and ear-buds are the average "listener". I wouldn't take a null result from these people with anything but a grain of salt for all the tea in Ceylon. |
#75
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 08:22:27 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Mar 31, 6:58=A0am, Kulin Remailer wrote: bob wrote: Uh, no, the problem is NOT that subjectivist audiophiles who can afford $20,000 systems cannot afford $20 journal articles. The problem is that audio subjectivism requires a profound level of scientific illiteracy in order to remain coherent. Not exactly on topic but not exactly unrelated: I've a very wealthy friend who loves music but doesn't have a particularl= y good ear. He bought a very expensive system with tube power amp and tube preamp and huge speakers. I have no idea what he paid but it was certainl= y a bundle. He invited me in to listen to a piece I hadn't heard before and I immediately felt awful he spent so much money for such awful sounding equipment. I spotted sonic problems straightaway but I didn't want to ups= et him so I asked if he would mind letting me tweak the controls a bit as I'= m hearing some things I don't quite like. I found the loudness was set on a= nd his tone controls were askew. I found the speaker cables were reversed in polarity from one speaker to the next! He had the speakers themselves directly on a hardwood floor and some large paintings hanging on the wall behind the speakers. I suggested we get some solid stands and get the speakers off the resonant floor and moving them away from the pictures wh= ich were being rattled. The difference in clarity was night and day even turn= ing the loudness off, setting the tone to flat and fixing the speaker cable polarity. We had another boost when the stands arrived. Here's a person w= ith no audio knowledge who trusted whomever sold him some very expensive gear and didn't visit his home to install it properly. As far as my friend kne= w before I arrived, all was well. He would have suffered along with the poo= r quality sound and assumed it was worth price paid. What decade did this happen? I can't think of any tube gear that has been built in the past forty years that would have a loudness button and tone controls. Not sure it is fair to represent the equipment per se as "awful sounding." If any equipment, no matter how good it is, is poorly set up it will sound bad. You can't blame the tubes on bad sound if the speakers were wired out of phase. Nor can you blame the dealer for the user's misuse of the equipment unless the dealer had been explicitely invited to set it up. Also I'd like to know what the equipment was. If the preamp were tubed and had a loudness button and tone controls I can't think of anything *new* that matches that description. If the dealer (or dealers, you haven't even made it clear that all the equipment was purchased at one place) is selling vintage equipment it's not really the same thing as selling new stuff which is often but not always supported with home visits for set up. Still, though, his conclusions about the listening acumen of the average person are valid. This guy was listening to, apparently, lousy sound and didn't notice it. He obviously was NOT a (self) trained audio enthusiast and just doesn't know what to listen for. Or perhaps he just doesn't care. But I find that most audio laymen are in this category. They don't know what it's supposed to sound like, because to them an audio system is just an appliance, like their TV or their refrigerator or their car. The rich tend to buy more expensive appliances than we average working stiffs, but that doesn't mean that they either appreciate it or even know how to use it. How many times have you seen some rich guy in an expensive Porsche who obviously has no concept about how to drive it? Why would an audio system in such a person's hands be any different? |
#76
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:56:44 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Scott" wrote in message snip Some of us would hope that we might help save music lovers a ton of money that might otherwise be spent on products with no reliable sonic value whatsoever. But "real science" has not weighed in on the subject. Except it has, and only a tiny minority of true believers continue believe in the face of considerably contrary evidence. Arny, the people in this world who care about sound AT ALL are a tiny minority! At least not the world of peer reviewed scientific studies. I see Scott that you still aren't answering questions about peer-reviewed scientific studies justifying your personal investments in *questionable* audio panaceas. Who knows what proprietary data exists in the confines of private industry. We know that in general the purveyers of audio gear whose functional principles are myth and legend don't do experiments that result in reliable data. They just spin 21st century fairy tales and take their money where they can still get it. I asked Nelson Pass that question at the Burning Amp Festival in SF a few months ago. His answers might surprise you. His research into semiconductor devices alone is quite sophisticated. And he does do DBTs. Bedini Ultra-Super Clarifiers with a scoop of ice cream and a cherry, anybody? ;-) Well, there is audio mythology and there is audio mythology and there are certain things that do fall into that category, for sure (expensive speaker cables the diameter of a baby's leg, high-priced interconnects, "active" cables, expensive power cords, myrtlewood blocks to set on top of your equipment, ceramic lifts to raise your $500/ft speaker cables off of the floor, green pens to absorb the stray laser light bouncing around inside your CDs, etc) and that's unfortunate. |
#77
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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New vs Vintage
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
... "Audio Empire" wrote in message snip The true situation that in the past 30+ years of struggling with the problem of listening tests, we still really do not have any viable alternatives other than sighted or double blind. The sighted tests are obviously greviouisly flawed, so we are *stuck* with doing DBTs until we come up with something better. snip The Oohashi test published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neurophysiology a few years ago, and brought to the attention of this and other groups by me, included a double-blind test that took pains to put the listener in a frame of mind/body similar to listening to music at home. The listening results, which were statistically significant supposedly inaudible stimulus, were then correlated with actual physiological phenomenon via very sophisticated neurological monitoring. Yet despite all this, Arny and his online kinfolk disparaged the validity of the test and the results, and apparently judging by the quote above, still fail even to recognize that this published exception proves his conclusion "no viable alternatives" to be wrong. As a follow-up to the above controversy, I showed in theoretical form how a test could be devised using sample sizes and approaches borrowed from double-blind food testing that would do the same thing (in fact, bore substantial ressemblance in some ways to the Oohashi approach, but on a larger scale). Again, rather than spurring some serious thinking and back-and-forth on the merits of the approach, the approach was met with denial and redicule. One must question how serious those who decry the lack of "science" really are. Their approach strikes me as just as "religous" as their supposed antagonists, the dreaded "audiophile". |
#78
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New vs Vintage
"Peter Wieck" wrote in message
On Mar 31, 6:58 am, Audio Empire wrote: Absolutely. But will DBTs show that no differences exist where their ARE differences. That's what I'm wondering. DBT will only ferret out audible differences to *that* audience at *that* moment during *that* test. The error here is the apparent claim that only DBTs have this problem. In fact *any* listening test has this problem. The probable reason why people seem to be so unaware of how this problem affects sighted evaluations is that they are being distracted from developing reliable insightful critical judgements by the well-known problem with false positives in sighted evaluations. There may be many inaudible differences that will not be revealed by DBT. For pretty obvious reasons we can absoultely guarantee that no listening test, blind or otherwise, will reveal inaudible differences. If a difference is inaudible, how would *any* listening test reveal it? And any long-term effects from otherwise undiscernable differences may not be revealed during a short-term test. At this point we know for sure that long term listening evaluations only serve to obscure the audibility of subtle audible differences due to how human memory for subtle differences works. It is very time-sensitive. So what? If you realize the great potential that a listening test has to fail to detect audible problems due to the timing issues first raised, in this post, suddenly test equipment-based evaluations can have a lot of charm. DBT was never designed to do any more than compare items under mostly entirely artificial conditions over a very short period of time. In fact any evaluation of audio components is inhrently artificial. Nobody ever listens to two different components and switches between them when they are listening for pure pleasure. People normally don't think about how the equipment sounds when they are listening for pleasure. (We may be dealing with a person who is driven by their personal agenda to ascribe these common problem to just DBTs.) As a process it cannot, nor was it ever meant to determine what you like, dictate what you should (or should not) hear nor much of anything else. The fact of the matter is that listening tests don't, can't, and were never intended to dictate anything to us. They are just a means for developing information that goes into a more complex decision-making process. Are you able to tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi? I've done pretty well on ABX tests of that kind. Both are highly sugared brown, fizzy soft drinks that are far more alike than not. Yeah, but the contents of the products are vastly different. Coke is a little more bitter and has a tad of a citrus flavor. Yet billions are spent on differentiation. I'll bet money that analytical chemical analysis can tell the difference in a heartbeat. Audio electronics are far more similar than Coke and Pepsi Agreed. As has been pointed out there are scamsters out there that try to sell identical audio components for vastly higher prices. |
#79
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New vs Vintage
"Peter Wieck" wrote in message
On Mar 31, 9:56 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Peter Wieck" wrote in message Either you will hear it or you will not. Are you sure about that? One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. Where is the reliable evidence supporting this generally unsupported audiophile myth? Arnie: As I suggested to Audio Empire - I bet even you with a raging head- cold wearing ear-muffs could pick a first-issue unmodified ST-120 out of a crowd 9 times out of 10. That's an assertion, not proof or even reliable evidence. Between the power-supply sag, You may not be aware of it, but the power supplies of virtually every power amp sags. the driver current sag over a very few watts Measurements? Circuit analysis? and the tendency for it to oscillate at just above audio frequencies when driven by more than about 1/2V of input Measurements? Circuit analysis? it sounded like glass in a blender. This sounds like a situation that should yield positve results from just about any DBT. Where are they? |
#80
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New vs Vintage
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:56:03 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote (in article ): "Peter Wieck" wrote in message Either you will hear it or you will not. Are you sure about that? One of my favorite examples is an early Dynaco ST-120 using the 2N3055 output transistors. Great measurements, sounded like glass-in-a-blender. Where is the reliable evidence supporting this generally unsupported audiophile myth? Just about everybody (except, apparently, you) who ever owned one. People said similar things about the CDP 101, but tests on several samples of them also come up empty. There are subtle audible differences, but nothing that can honestly be called "glass-in-a-blender". That consensus of opinion is reliable enough to me. I'm looking for reliable technical evidence, not the results of a public opinion survey, BTW, where is that public opinion survey? ;-) I know what I heard then, and I know what I hear now. Last year I heard an ST-120 A/B'd against a new Audio Research 220 W/channel tube amp in a DBT (just for laughs). We got the laughs all right. The ST-120 sounded DREADFUL, and more than that, it sounded just like I remember is sounding! Got any bench tests showing that both power amps met origional vendor specs? I know for sure that my ST-120 does so. |
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