Again though, reading some peoples contributions I wonder why they have systems when listening to them is such torture, must have masochistic tendencies, music should be enjoyable and evict emotions, if it doesn't you listening to the system not the music.
I have worn out on my local forums what I am going to say here but I simply cannot resist.
When I fell in love with Pink Floyd there were no digital crossovers and room corrections systems , I had only one mono tape recorder that did cost 80USD. The first time I heard Massive attack was on a pseudo stereo Sanyo tape deck and I will never forget how my eyes opened wide and my heart started melting, everybody has a moment like this, I could not agree more that the only purpose of having a good system is to emotionally connect with music.
Human hearing though is more complicated than any part or design decision discussed here, the power of the brain is supernatural and the worst part is that the ear is the most complicated sense that by default has the info coming through being filtered rather aggressively by the brain, you can shut your eyes for example but there are no lids for the ears, the typical example I give to students is that a mother of a newborn can sleep close to the busiest street with an open window but even the minute movement of the baby has her up and checking if everything is OK. A good cardiologist is capable of hearing stuff that sounds like complete absurd yet to be later verified by a super duper ultrasound examination.
There are no golden ears as the microphone that the ear is is relatively invariable in design but there sure are musicians and professionals who are trained to detect quite small changes. I am not one of them but I have witnessed something like that, I have had the chance to meet one of the top five mastering engineers on the planet and he can sure change your perspective on what hearing is. In my quest for better sound what I am using to say yes or no is the voice. Simply because our ears are optimized to receive most info in the range between 1000-3000Hz, the ear canal has a resonance in that range, the tympanic membrane best transmits those vibrations, the nerves that take care of those signals are juicier and have better circulation and so on.
Of course it is not simple at all, for every cell on the ear there are 100 corresponding on the core where actually the info is being processed and there's much to be discovered yet, there goes info from almost any part of the body and it is not easy to ignore the fact that we are influenced by many factors. I like two videos very much, just to keep me on the sane side, these too plus a glass of dehydrated water
Try The McGurk Effect! - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing? - BBC Two - YouTube
Evelyn Glennie: How to truly listen - YouTube
The lady is deaf but yet she is the percussionist at a place where people rarely make mistakes
i give it as an example why some stuff with heavy low end is never convincing on headphones, the brain is not easy to be fooled...A rather long and boring post, I know, I hope it does not sound arrogant and make it sound that I know something extraordinary, I just hope people from both sides of the line( we do have a war going on here, don't we : ) to think about it.
I am on the side of the sound engineering. People who fall for magic tricks are happier though because they do hope they can avoid many years of education and experience and again education, they simply buy something from a magician who thought of something that thousands of smart people could not think of. Ignorance is bliss. Forever.
yes it's changed. because we tired to send boards out but most failed.
because the boards are too complicated to DIY.
if the boards could not work properly, DIY exists no more.
yes I do agree what theory tells, but as what you told in the reply, and what I asked for the abilities of our ears, nobody could answer.
current theory is not good enough in Audio industry, and I do agree so many tricks in HIFI, but not in studio equipments, what we are using as the reference. that's why free samples in the beginning of the post.
Nikola, youve just made me click my mental like button, Massive Attack on shitty tape! it blew my mind on a Sony walkman and it was this type of music that drove me to want to improve my system to resolve the layering and superb production. I tell you what 'Hymn of the Big Wheel' holds up very well as far as production goes. love love love Horrace!
Nonsense, you've had plenty of answers, at least as far as can be done with a vague and poorly-worded "question." You just didn't get an answer that will help your sales.
I don't need to sell here at all, our team has lots of customers, most are manufacturers. if u don't believe what I said, I think you should aware of buying players like this, we know most of the competitors in the world.
to the questions I asked, I have some answers that could support what we need to improve our products, and you never know what we did in the theory, like what Newton did in the last few years --- religion, do I need to post this ? just let it be, nothing related with this forum.
you are in the closed circuit of "science", what science should be is to believe, then find the reason.
hey look I like all sorts of music and of course there are things like the human voice and acoustic instruments that are familiar, but the space around them? sorry at that point youve lost me and you can only know those recordings through the systems you have heard them through, so the recording may not be completely honest either. it could easily be created from several recoprded tracks in different spaces, or even recorded or modeled 'space'
of course the space is evident, but as a measure of accuracy it is suspect unless you are familiar with the space, as in, you are inside it at that time, because remembering a space? hmm
agreed on making music and using it to measure the accuracy, easier to get properly hires when you control the production process too. I tend to use high quality sample CDs (the type used to make music, so just single samples, drum hits, cymbals etc) and Jazz, as well as throwing in some massive attack, which has some difficult voices, Horrace Andy's androgynous voice has great raspy texture as well as amazing range. I also use monitor headphones as a reference for tonality.
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maybe just your English, but Believing something and then chasing after proof that its true sounds like it could be vulnerable to some pretty serious tunnel vision and bias
Haha, nice to know I am not alone here
Almost 100% of their stuff has immediate effect on my brain and some of my friends cannot even understand why I am listening to them at all, that's what's great about it too. I even have a funny story about Pink Floyd and shitty tapes - for many years I was looking for an album of theirs that I had heard on a cousin's syste , I later realized that it was "Live at Pompey" but it sounded different because the belts of my cousin's deck were so lose that it was like a different album Still I have that in my head and I think of them as too different albums- the real one and "my cousin's" muahahaha, every single note is in my head. The Limbic system has no mercy By honest I mean not synth, not processed, a recording in which the engineer actually tried to deliver the original quality of the Alto voice, the Pipe Organ, and the Accordion (what piece am I thinking of?). Of course all acoustic music happens in a room (Outdoor concerts I suppose are the exception I don't think I have a recording like that.)
I remember reading about a test behind a screen of a cellist and a recording of him played through speakers (old Fried transmission line jobs, if memory serves). The test subjects said the speaker was very close, very good, but could always tell. I bet it had something to so with dispersion characteristics. Think of how a cello radiates sound, and how a speaker does (as many different patterns as there are designs).
Ah, the impossible dream!
In my experience it's not dispersion, but intensity of sound that's the problem. As an example, at the recent hifi show I went to there was some very expensive machinery there, but there was only one that reproduced intensity, in other words got the dynamic swing of transient peaks correct. The playing of real instruments has short bursts of intense sound constantly, a particular note or sound will feel as if it's drilling a hole, in a nice way, into your head; another term people use is that the sound is "pressurising" your hearing, it's something that's part of the way the ear/brain works.
So, if a system can't do that satisfactorily then it won't sound "real", and it does remain an impossible dream for that setup ...
Frank
No its buffered.
Jitter is only a problem at the last stage, the actual data for convertsion, being fed to the dac, and iuts only the clock, as this determines the point in time when the data is going to be converted.
What I would be interested in is what level of jitter causes distortion and how bad it gets as jitter levels increase, as I have seen people mention femto seconds (!) and very low values (single figures) pico seconds. I have done some research but its hard to determine any actual values as most discussion on jitter tend to get rather obtuse.
For those of us that dont listen to classical etc, ie electronic based music, the human voice and piano's provide good benchmarks.
Again though, reading some peoples contributions I wonder why they have systems when listening to them is such torture, must have masochistic tendencies, music should be enjoyable and evict emotions, if it dosn't you listening to the system not the music.
That's controversial. There are plenty people who consider the interface to be important, hence the use of, for example, the spdif schemes to send the clock back to the transport, asynchronous usb interfaces are another. All this would be pointless if a buffer were sufficient. I am not saying it is not possible to buffer an re-clock to render this irrelevant, it is just that I have heard the effect, for example, of a change of spdif cables connecting a DAC with supposedly good jitter rejection. The change was easily heard too, not particularly subtle.
Not really, no, it's just that the point of it isn't actual bottom line performance. It sells equipment and entertains audiophiles. Now if someone has done and detailed a true "ears only" test, that's a different story. Are you aware of any?
Well that is conjecture on your part. I am sure you could argue with Guido Tent that his intention is to trick audiophiles in order to sell equipment. I strongly suspect from his background, expertise and reputation that he might actually know what he is doing and is attacking a real as opposed to a perceived problem with the spdif scheme. Sometimes you have to evaluate a persons credibility as best you can from his background, what he has written, and whether it makes logical sense.I am not aware of an ears only test, but there again I have myself a number of years ago, with no "skin in the game"at all, heard the effect I described in my post. I wonder if my conclusions, drawn from experience are less scientific than your conjecture on motive?
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controversial, how? Because I have asked for a figure regarding jitter levels, which seems to be the new demon for some audiophiles?
As to clock mods some are well engineered, some are just pathetic, mainly DIY ones with long wires no concern over impedance matching etc etc, of course as these people use ears and not signal integrity simulation or measurements it does not matter because they hear an improvement every time. In the real world we treatt clocks as the delicate little darlings they are and route the clock signals first (except DDR memory) so they have to travel the shortest distance possible to avoid problems, they are also simulated so that if required the value of the series resistor can be worked out.
I dont know why I am not sucking money out of audiophiles for dodgy gear, oh I have a concience and believe in physics, as to this thread, was it to add credibility to an overpriced PC with audiophile marketing...
As to clock mods some are well engineered, some are just pathetic, mainly DIY ones with long wires no concern over impedance matching etc etc, of course as these people use ears and not signal integrity simulation or measurements it does not matter because they hear an improvement every time. In the real world we treatt clocks as the delicate little darlings they are and route the clock signals first (except DDR memory) so they have to travel the shortest distance possible to avoid problems, they are also simulated so that if required the value of the series resistor can be worked out.
I dont know why I am not sucking money out of audiophiles for dodgy gear, oh I have a concience and believe in physics, as to this thread, was it to add credibility to an overpriced PC with audiophile marketing...
some words in far old Chinese saying is hard to be translated into English.
like "draw a circuit on the ground and stay in the circuit like a prison"
people scare because they don't know, and always reject something that's never been proven, real truth is to believe then try to find a way out.
think of geocentric theory and heliocentric theory...
stop arguing and do whatever we think is right, ok?
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