So, Scott, you may simply be unable to detect the "tire pressure" given the "car" you are driving?
I'll freely admit the finest systems I've heard were no where near any measure of "accuracy", frankly they were carefully tuned to the taste of the owner usually by a fairly random process. One offshoot is that this process puts lots of really nice gear up on the used market. Do you really think you need DBT to tell the difference between Magnepans and a full range horn?
You continue to use examples of verifiable physical facts and who can or can't sense them without an instrument to verify, and yes they all yield to sufficiently sophisticated instrumentation. Then the extrapolation to Bybee's, brilliant pebbles, myrtle cable lifters, CD de-magnetizers, etc. is just thrown in for good measure. I don't care one jot if someone's threshold for frequency response deviation is .5dB or .1dB I do care if the difference is claimed to be the ground side electron sink.
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Start with questions that are dishonest and senseless and you can't expect sensible and useful answers.
You do understand that clock jitter is orders of magnitude lower than audible thresholds? This assumes, of course, engineered units, i.e., not the very cheapest throwaways nor the fashion audio units designed by people with little grasp of actual electronics.
How is there dishonesty, as you claim??
Feel free to frame the concept in a manner that you consider "honest".
Frankly, I think SY, that you're just uncomfortable when it comes time to "come with the goods" - unless it is some form of narrow focus upon technical minutia. Then ur right there, johnny-on-the-spot.
So, I'll ask you - again - as part of this whole question, why does anyone today work on reducing "distortion" in amplifiers, or opamps for that matter, IF it's inaudible??
Is it just an engineering exercise?
For the benefit of the marketing department to boost sales?
or in the words of Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia:
"...please don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you've got nothing new to say..."
Feel free to frame the concept in a manner that you consider "honest".
Frankly, I think SY, that you're just uncomfortable when it comes time to "come with the goods" - unless it is some form of narrow focus upon technical minutia. Then ur right there, johnny-on-the-spot.
So, I'll ask you - again - as part of this whole question, why does anyone today work on reducing "distortion" in amplifiers, or opamps for that matter, IF it's inaudible??
Is it just an engineering exercise?
For the benefit of the marketing department to boost sales?
or in the words of Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia:
"...please don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you've got nothing new to say..."
And, SY, the opamp companies need "new products" to sell?
That's it in your opinion??
So, let's get concrete.
Perhaps you can rattle off say 6 to 10 power amplifiers in the 100watt class +/-, that in
your view are audibly "equivalent"? Commercial products would be easiest to consider, but I'm open to DIY circuits as well, as a separate category.
Also, while ur at it, perhaps you'd like to publicly (or privately) point to what you think is are some "blameless" (to borrow Doug Self's term, since it seems apropos) DAC at low cost, available today?
That's it in your opinion??
So, let's get concrete.
Perhaps you can rattle off say 6 to 10 power amplifiers in the 100watt class +/-, that in
your view are audibly "equivalent"? Commercial products would be easiest to consider, but I'm open to DIY circuits as well, as a separate category.
Also, while ur at it, perhaps you'd like to publicly (or privately) point to what you think is are some "blameless" (to borrow Doug Self's term, since it seems apropos) DAC at low cost, available today?
The audio market drives op-amp design.
I don't care what some folks might say this is a misconception. May they rest in peace but if you heard what Bob Pease and Jim Williams said in private about audiophiles you would have a different opinion.Clearly the distortion issue is moot, folks love their Cary's and Wavac's. As for DAC's it's easy to point to highly regarded ones that measure pathologically bad for any number of specifications.
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The audio market drives op-amp design.
Don't laugh, that's a full 0.01% of your business!
What Bob Pease or Jim Williams said is rather irrelevant. I can imagine.
What I say about some "audiophiles" in private might be found to be "less than complimentary."
How does that matter?
Smearing others does not raise the level of discussion.
It does not answer the outstanding question(s).
And nobody learns anything other than that over trained and over educated people (in all sorts of fields) seem to be insecure and act superior?
So, Scott, why does AD design, (spend $$$), prototype, and produce new ultra-low distortion opamps, IF the old ones are 'good enough'? What applications are the main markets for these devices? Where's the "market" for high res audio DAC chips?? Not in cell phones, or is it? Is my new cell phone hi-res capable?? I don't know.
Why do so many people think that they hear differences when they "roll" opamps in the output of a DAC board?? Probably because they like to 'play' and 'think that they made a difference'?? Because there is no difference?
As a professional inside the AD company, what's your understandings?
What I say about some "audiophiles" in private might be found to be "less than complimentary."
How does that matter?
Smearing others does not raise the level of discussion.
It does not answer the outstanding question(s).
And nobody learns anything other than that over trained and over educated people (in all sorts of fields) seem to be insecure and act superior?
So, Scott, why does AD design, (spend $$$), prototype, and produce new ultra-low distortion opamps, IF the old ones are 'good enough'? What applications are the main markets for these devices? Where's the "market" for high res audio DAC chips?? Not in cell phones, or is it? Is my new cell phone hi-res capable?? I don't know.
Why do so many people think that they hear differences when they "roll" opamps in the output of a DAC board?? Probably because they like to 'play' and 'think that they made a difference'?? Because there is no difference?
As a professional inside the AD company, what's your understandings?
Jeez bear you have to be kidding it's a big world out there, let's see PET, CT, MRI, blood oxygen, non-invasive glucose monitoring, etc. You know things peoples lives depend on.
Hi-end audio in cell phones is a huge market, and yes I couldn't hear a difference in most cases. There was one place that put a resistor in series with the earbuds to boost bass (sound familiar). You got the op-amp rollers down pat, again no difference to me but the customer is always right. Sighted listening only, too much to lose.
Most new amplifiers are based on die shrinking, lower cost, lower supplies, and lower power the performance was nailed years ago thanks to high speed processes and lots of evil feedback.
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The major markets for any of these companies are not audio.
I asked a different question.
And, what is your answer on the list of amps & DACs that according to your expertise and training that you can attest to?
Or, more avoidance and hand waving, along with condescending remarks about what someone else ought to do?
It occurs as an artifact of data conversion. It's already on a lot of CDs you may own. If a purely analog system, then there is no source of jitter. Maybe I'm not quite clear on what you are asking? What does it sound like?
When I designed Microsemi "filterless" class D amps into a portable product, the folks at the company were pleased. But they were almost apologetic over dinner one night, telling me that even with sales around a million the business was not that important to them.
The still-more-marginal stuff was developing instrumentation for astronomy, a wholly-negligible market. However reps and others were fascinated by the field sometimes, so one got a free sample here and there.
When Fairchild was a very different company they were making image sensors for a while. They were quite expensive, but the cost structure was a curious one. If you wanted to buy the chip by itself, it was more money that buying it with evaluation electronics. Of course many electronisher-scientists thought they could do much better than some eval board, so they would be disdainful of the company's stuff. However, the company knew well that the time of their knowledgeable staff would be drained by folks calling and asking why their chips didn't work right, when it would turn out almost always to be the fault of the custom electronics. I seem to recall the costs were 7500USD for the chip alone, 5000 for the chip plus eval board.
The still-more-marginal stuff was developing instrumentation for astronomy, a wholly-negligible market. However reps and others were fascinated by the field sometimes, so one got a free sample here and there.
When Fairchild was a very different company they were making image sensors for a while. They were quite expensive, but the cost structure was a curious one. If you wanted to buy the chip by itself, it was more money that buying it with evaluation electronics. Of course many electronisher-scientists thought they could do much better than some eval board, so they would be disdainful of the company's stuff. However, the company knew well that the time of their knowledgeable staff would be drained by folks calling and asking why their chips didn't work right, when it would turn out almost always to be the fault of the custom electronics. I seem to recall the costs were 7500USD for the chip alone, 5000 for the chip plus eval board.
It´s an interesting question, because it clearly depends on the specific difference you would testing for. If you´d use an equilizer to level out frequency deviations (which are not technology dependend) and use lets say casual/normal listening level at ~83 - 85dB, in a normal room.
Why do you think no controlled listening test would be needed?
Maybe bear is just wondering about the fact that so many can be adamant to declare "impossible to hear a difference" while it is otoh so difficult to express those numbers that ensure "the no difference feature" .
Of course the question is sort of a trick but it´s nevertheless worth to think about it.
I wholehartedy support that but attacking an unscientific (or unproven) explanation is different from denying a perceiveable difference.
We've got a rather decent number of folks who are on here who actually do design, some design and manufacture, some consultants, etc., who do work in the audio field.
They've been rather silent on this reasonably basic set of questions.
It would be interesting to know if they all agree that in essence all opamps "sound" the same (properly utilized, of course) and that all power amps below some distortion threshold(s) are sonically indistinguishable, and that all DACs with low distortion are similarly indestinguishable. Or not?
Then we can move onto things that humans perceive that are in no way shape or manner covered by any known parameter, that a significant percentage of audio listeners report the perception of.
So far my basic Sony CD player and reciever/integrated amp appears to sound indistinguishable from ANYTHING more expensive, according to the current respondants?
I think that is what has been suggested.
_-_-
PS. this plays back to the basic premise of the thread, John Curl's Blowtorch Preamplifier - which represents the physical, mechanical and electrical optimization of a circuit design. Why? Why attempt it, just for bragging rights and cosmetics? Only for that? And charging money (and going through a lot of effort, don't forget that part!)
Perhaps we can get past the starting line...
They've been rather silent on this reasonably basic set of questions.
It would be interesting to know if they all agree that in essence all opamps "sound" the same (properly utilized, of course) and that all power amps below some distortion threshold(s) are sonically indistinguishable, and that all DACs with low distortion are similarly indestinguishable. Or not?
Then we can move onto things that humans perceive that are in no way shape or manner covered by any known parameter, that a significant percentage of audio listeners report the perception of.
So far my basic Sony CD player and reciever/integrated amp appears to sound indistinguishable from ANYTHING more expensive, according to the current respondants?
I think that is what has been suggested.
_-_-
PS. this plays back to the basic premise of the thread, John Curl's Blowtorch Preamplifier - which represents the physical, mechanical and electrical optimization of a circuit design. Why? Why attempt it, just for bragging rights and cosmetics? Only for that? And charging money (and going through a lot of effort, don't forget that part!)
Perhaps we can get past the starting line...
My quick list which might have been qualified as a set of things detectable with A/B comparisons was indeed incomplete, as for loudspeakers the directivity index is of great importance. In the case of Maggies and horns, unless the listener's head is in a vise, no amount of EQ to flatten on-axis response will render the loudspeakers indistinguishable.
There can be jitter in analogue systems... I've seen bad jitter in badly implemented direct drive TTs.
I doubt there is audible jitter on any CDs I own (though I don't listen to CDs) - but it would be very hard to show if there was, as if it is there it is earlier in the recording system than the CD... Unless you mean poor CD drives?
No DAC system I have ever seen, or designed, has jitter in the analogue output that would be audible. I daresay there are some very bad designs out there, possibly as others have said in expensive designs.
Hence I asked where in the artist (source may be digital or analogue) to listener chain you think audible jitter would be best looked for?
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