Very good last words!
OK everyone stop now so that I have the last word.
Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?
It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.” And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything? For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think.
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is.
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Hey partner, you are pretty wrong about both of those but especially the first one: 1. You have not told us about any listening tests you have passed of high-res vs CD. That NPR test has a headline about high-res audio but the test is actually CD vs 128k and 320kbps MP3. It kind of says so in the text:
To be sure, I analyzed the javascript/html and confirmed what I just said. Here are the file names for one of the tests:
Pretty clear, right? Keep in mind that a high-res vs CD test can NOT be done in a browser. The browser uses the standard audio pipeline in the operating system which in the case of Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS, resamples all audio to a fixed sample rate/bit depth. By default this is 48 kHz. I know because my team at Microsoft wrote the audio stack. And I have done a ton of testing showing the limitation of default playback on phones. To play high-res audio intact, you need to use a dedicated audio player and of course a device capable of producing better response than CD. Your phone running the above test in a browser is NOT capable of doing this. So no way, no how you have run a test of high-res vs CD that you have shared with us. If there is another test, then by all means, post it so we can examine it. 2. I have most definitely pass double blind tests of high-res vs CD. Unlike you, I have the documentation to prove it. I post that earlier in the thread but you must have missed. Here it is anyway. Note that these are public challenges put forward for the public to run with the assumption that no one can. First is Archimago (a great blogger) who created a clever test. He took a high-res file, brought its bit depth down to 16 and then converted it back to 24 bits with some countermeasures added to it. This made it impossible to tell the files by analyzing them using computer software. I passed this test:
Notice how I ran a lot more than the 6 trials that you ran in the MP3 test as to get probability of guessing down to 0.0%, not the usual 5%. I not only passed this test, but I created a video on how I managed to do that. It required knowledge of signal processing of what you lose when going from 24 bit to 16 bit, and of course, training required to be able to hear such small differences. Here is the video which again, I post earlier: In there, I show results of other difficult double blind tests I have passed -- again with appropriate documentation. As a bonus, here is another public test created by my friend, Mark Waldrep of AIX records. The challenge was put on AVS Forum and I managed to pass it while no audiophile dared to even try:
So please don't imply you can pass such tests and I can't. Facts speak clearly state otherwise.
Right back at you my friend..... |
Imagine if this were a watch forum and someone went to extreme lengths showing you how your brand of watch is way overpriced for what it does and that a cheaper one is much more accurate and he had the graphs to prove it! Toss in some sycophants posting links to reviews of watches, ridiculing what they had to say about them and a few straddling the fence playing both sides against the middle. This thread has sucked the joy out of listening for listenings sake which, I think, was the purpose of it, or it was highjacked for that purpose. This is beyond silly. No wonder many online reviewers and the zines that use them no longer take comments. Some reviewers have even taken hiatus for the constant abuse they get, like the base of a political party that harasses and threatens the livelihoods of those who oppose them. It’s not that far a thing to say we’re now burning audio witches. All the best, |
"So you are saying that you learn nothing from measurements of these two speakers?"
Yeah they have different frequency response charts by your methods. I would avoid looking at that before listening so I know I don’t have a bias. And flat FR is sometimes boring. Virtually useless and perhaps harmful for deciding which sounds better. Maybe I like resonances at those fregs. |
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