Well then consider the Sunshine Audio Challenge where they used a cheap Yamaha integrated up against a pair of $15,000 monoblocks. Or the similar Carver challenge with a $700 Carver against a $10,000+ tube reference amp.analog_sa said:
When I worked for the high-end dealer, we did comparisons with Audio Research amps against an Onkyo integrated amp where none of us could tell them apart in blind tests. I know a lot of you probably think all of our ears were bad, or something was wrong with the rest of the system, but until you've tried it yourself, don't be so quick to jump to such conclusions.
What we need here is for some of the more objective members of this forum to visit the homes of some of our more subjective golden eared members and help conduct some blind listening tests and publish the results here. Those of you who claim you can easily hear the difference can have your chance to do so!
Jeeeeez,
guys, do you "blind test" new girlfriends, "blind drive" new cars,
"blind taste" foods, wines and beers....???
For heavens sake, start listening for real and learn to trust your senses!
Some of these differences are so big it´s totally ridicolous to do blind tests. You who don´t realise that really hasn´t come far in this crazy hobby of ours
really, honestly.
Sometimes when I compare stuff, I hear only a small difference, small enough so I honestly can say that I sure could mix them up in a blind test. Most often differences are BIG.
And yes, I have done blind tests several times, and I´m very good at picking out the gear and tell them from eachother.
We have had several non audiophile womans that easily could tell the stuff apart as well.
CD-players, preamps, amps, cables, proffessional recording gear, headphone amps/drivers... I have NEVER found two components that sound the same.
/Peter
guys, do you "blind test" new girlfriends, "blind drive" new cars,
"blind taste" foods, wines and beers....???
For heavens sake, start listening for real and learn to trust your senses!
Some of these differences are so big it´s totally ridicolous to do blind tests. You who don´t realise that really hasn´t come far in this crazy hobby of ours
really, honestly.Sometimes when I compare stuff, I hear only a small difference, small enough so I honestly can say that I sure could mix them up in a blind test. Most often differences are BIG.
And yes, I have done blind tests several times, and I´m very good at picking out the gear and tell them from eachother.
We have had several non audiophile womans that easily could tell the stuff apart as well.
CD-players, preamps, amps, cables, proffessional recording gear, headphone amps/drivers... I have NEVER found two components that sound the same.
/Peter
RE:AMEN.
Hi,
I've never used those GA diodes anyway and if there's a reason why I should should pls. let me know.
Other than that, yes, every little detail has an impact or do you think otherwise?
Ted,
With all due respect: there is no such thing as the universal best diode just as there's no such thing as the universal best xformer or whatever.
There are however certain design criteria one can can adhere to, generalising is not one of them.
Hope that helps,
Hi,
I've never used those GA diodes anyway and if there's a reason why I should should pls. let me know.
Other than that, yes, every little detail has an impact or do you think otherwise?
Ted,
With all due respect: there is no such thing as the universal best diode just as there's no such thing as the universal best xformer or whatever.
There are however certain design criteria one can can adhere to, generalising is not one of them.
Hope that helps,
Well, in the case of wine, beer, and foods, yes- when I'm doing analytical work. No, when I'm having dinner. ANYONE doing work in the beverage or food industry does organoleptic testing blind.
I haven't tried this with girlfriends yet, mainly because my wife has an autographed 8x10 photo of Lorena Bobbitt prominently displayed.
Double Blind Drunk Testing...
The test setup was a Marantz CDP switchable driving the input of the Denon or protype amplifier, and the speakers were switchable between the output of the Denon or the output of the prototype amplifier.
Same throughput polarity, same cables, same everything.
This way the amplifiers could be instantly compared.
The prototype amplifier although not a complex design is an extremely good design employing a few interesting tricks, and is intended for studio or broadcast monitoring.
This amplifier is far superior to the Denon and I suspect also the Bryston that you mention.
Actually I would say that it is superior to pretty much any amp that I have heard.
The monitors are seriously expensive and seriously good speakers and intended for discriminating studio mixdowns.
The differences between the amplifiers were such that sighted or blind drunk, both of us could distinguish the differences easily.
Maybe an AES paper on hearing differences would be more fruitful than this stupid debate of sonic differences or non differences in amplifiers.
Load dependence, THD distortion, IMD distortion, Frequency response etc etc - these are all measurable, and hearable differences if your ears are up to the task.
All the Carver test proves is that you can make two amplifiers sound the same by eliminating any differences (by the nulling test), and then of course they are going to sound extremely similar, and then expect them to be difficult to distinguish - DUH.
Unaltered amplifiers are easy to distinguish in my experience.
There are two modes of listening in my books and they are - objectively listening for audible differences.
The other mode is to relax back on the couch and note how the in room music affects you down to your soul, and this subjectiveism is the final arbiter in my view.
Some amplifiers leave me cold, some bore the hell out of me, some make me tap my heels involuntarily, and some make me want to get up and dance.
Peter Daniel mentioned this early on in this thread.
If you cannot hear differences I suggest that there is something wrong with the test setup, and that includes one's hearing.
Eric.
Did you ever ask your wife or young children if they can hear differences ?.
SY said:
The test setup was a Marantz CDP switchable driving the input of the Denon or protype amplifier, and the speakers were switchable between the output of the Denon or the output of the prototype amplifier.
Same throughput polarity, same cables, same everything.
This way the amplifiers could be instantly compared.
The prototype amplifier although not a complex design is an extremely good design employing a few interesting tricks, and is intended for studio or broadcast monitoring.
This amplifier is far superior to the Denon and I suspect also the Bryston that you mention.
Actually I would say that it is superior to pretty much any amp that I have heard.
The monitors are seriously expensive and seriously good speakers and intended for discriminating studio mixdowns.
The differences between the amplifiers were such that sighted or blind drunk, both of us could distinguish the differences easily.
Maybe an AES paper on hearing differences would be more fruitful than this stupid debate of sonic differences or non differences in amplifiers.
Load dependence, THD distortion, IMD distortion, Frequency response etc etc - these are all measurable, and hearable differences if your ears are up to the task.
All the Carver test proves is that you can make two amplifiers sound the same by eliminating any differences (by the nulling test), and then of course they are going to sound extremely similar, and then expect them to be difficult to distinguish - DUH.
Unaltered amplifiers are easy to distinguish in my experience.
There are two modes of listening in my books and they are - objectively listening for audible differences.
The other mode is to relax back on the couch and note how the in room music affects you down to your soul, and this subjectiveism is the final arbiter in my view.
Some amplifiers leave me cold, some bore the hell out of me, some make me tap my heels involuntarily, and some make me want to get up and dance.
Peter Daniel mentioned this early on in this thread.
If you cannot hear differences I suggest that there is something wrong with the test setup, and that includes one's hearing.
Eric.
Did you ever ask your wife or young children if they can hear differences ?.
Re: Double Blind Drunk Testing...
Nothing surprising there. Just a simple level mismatch of a fraction of a decibel can bring about reliably detectable differences between two amplifiers under blind conditions.
What exactly did you do to level match the two amplifiers and how closely did you match them?
se
mrfeedback said:
Nothing surprising there. Just a simple level mismatch of a fraction of a decibel can bring about reliably detectable differences between two amplifiers under blind conditions.
What exactly did you do to level match the two amplifiers and how closely did you match them?
se
Take a breather--
A few years ago I read an article about improving fuel consumption in cars. One person bought a gadget that went on the fuel line and was supposed to improve the fuel consumption.
He found the car used less gas. Later he found a gadget to add to the ignition system that would again improve mileage. It also improved the performance of the engine. Eventually there were two more gadgets that he bought to improve the efficiency somemore. He now realised that each of the gadgets was supposed to increase efficiency from 10 to 20%. By now he should have had a huge improvement. So one day they measured out the gas and ran a measured course and checked the mileage. It was exactly the same as when he started the whole exercise.
While one cannot generalise about the results , every ' I think so' must be followed by a rigorous test to confirm that what 'you think is happening ' is what is really happening .
A few years ago I read an article about improving fuel consumption in cars. One person bought a gadget that went on the fuel line and was supposed to improve the fuel consumption.
He found the car used less gas. Later he found a gadget to add to the ignition system that would again improve mileage. It also improved the performance of the engine. Eventually there were two more gadgets that he bought to improve the efficiency somemore. He now realised that each of the gadgets was supposed to increase efficiency from 10 to 20%. By now he should have had a huge improvement. So one day they measured out the gas and ran a measured course and checked the mileage. It was exactly the same as when he started the whole exercise.
While one cannot generalise about the results , every ' I think so' must be followed by a rigorous test to confirm that what 'you think is happening ' is what is really happening .
There are all kinds of papers in JAES about hearing differences and design to accomodate what people hear. It makes up an overwhelming percentage of that journal's content. Perhaps you haven't seen a copy?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: setting up a valid listening test is a major chore for the experimenter. And what constitutes "valid" must reflect the nature of what one is testing. Not many people have the patience or equipment to do it right. That's why poorly controlled or sloppily set up tests may be enjoyable and give one a facile sense of doing experiments, but are at their core, useless.
For The Hearing Challenged...
We used an audio level meter to match in room sound levels at three frequencies.(0.1 dB resolution)
The differences were quite major to the trained ear.
Sy, you and Steve can argue all you guys like - these two amplifiers were clearly audibly different, and level was not the difference.
Midrange grunge and distortion was clearly evident in the Denon.
Note these speakers are AUS$20,000 serious monitors, and are entirely detailed and reveal exactly what they are being fed.
I suppose you are going to try to tell me that Multi-track tape, dat and cd sound the same too.
Ever spent any time in a studio mixdown environment ?.
When you get to hear those differences you never forget them.
I think you guys spend too much time reading papers and too little time listening to seriously good gear.
Frank can hear differences, I can hear differences and a whole heap of other guys can too - what's wrong with you two ?.
Also how come musos can instantly tell different cables etc apart ?
It is because they're hearing is trained to pickup on small sonic differences for that is their job.
You two guys must be joking - really.
Eric.
Why don't you just buy a Teac 4 in 1 and be content ?.
We used an audio level meter to match in room sound levels at three frequencies.(0.1 dB resolution)
The differences were quite major to the trained ear.
Sy, you and Steve can argue all you guys like - these two amplifiers were clearly audibly different, and level was not the difference.
Midrange grunge and distortion was clearly evident in the Denon.
Note these speakers are AUS$20,000 serious monitors, and are entirely detailed and reveal exactly what they are being fed.
I suppose you are going to try to tell me that Multi-track tape, dat and cd sound the same too.
Ever spent any time in a studio mixdown environment ?.
When you get to hear those differences you never forget them.
I think you guys spend too much time reading papers and too little time listening to seriously good gear.
Frank can hear differences, I can hear differences and a whole heap of other guys can too - what's wrong with you two ?.
Also how come musos can instantly tell different cables etc apart ?
It is because they're hearing is trained to pickup on small sonic differences for that is their job.
You two guys must be joking - really.
Eric.
Why don't you just buy a Teac 4 in 1 and be content ?.
Re: For The Hearing Challenged...
Great. Now how 'bout the rest of the answer? What exactly did you do to match the levels of the amps? I mean, the two amps didn't just happen to be matched within 0.1 dB by chance did they?
Also, did you match left and right channels separately or did you just do the matching with both channels driven simultaneously?
Finally, while the "resolution" of the meter was 0.1 dB, what was the actual tolerance of the measurement?
And the differences in most amateur tests are often audible even to untrained ears. That's because the ones conducting the tests aren't trained in conducting rigorous tests. It's trivially easy to conduct a test with positive results. It's actually much more difficult to conduct a test with a null result. That's because the more rigorous test more rigorously control for biases. Which is why there are so few rigorous tests being done.
Level is just one of a whole host of things which can produce false positives. Even the slightly different sound of the switch switching between one device and the other has produced false positives.
Again, less rigorous tests often result in positive results. And almost invariably, when those less rigorous tests are subject to greater scrutiny, flaws in the test procedure invariably turn up.
I spend far more time listening to seriously good gear than I do reading papers. What I don't do is make a lot of assumptions and based on those assumptions make objective claims.
Everybody and their dog "hears" differences. I "hear" differences. People "hear" differences even when there are no differences to actually hear. So what's the big deal about "hearing" differences?
What you fail to understand is that simply "hearing" differences means absolutely nothing in itself except for establishing one's own subjective preferences.
"Hearing" differences does not in itself establish actual audiblity.
How come non-musos (i.e. your typical "audiophile") also claim to instantly tell different cables apart?
And if musos are so adept at such things, why is it that the finest musos on the planet typically have the most mediocre stereo equipment?
Being a muso myself, and knowing many many other musos over the years, it's been my observation that musos tend to pick up more on the EXPRESSION of the music itself than the flyspeck details of sound.
Rather like audiophiles who merely use music to connect to their equipment rather than using their equipment to connect to the music.
*shrug*
se
mrfeedback said:
Great. Now how 'bout the rest of the answer? What exactly did you do to match the levels of the amps? I mean, the two amps didn't just happen to be matched within 0.1 dB by chance did they?
Also, did you match left and right channels separately or did you just do the matching with both channels driven simultaneously?
Finally, while the "resolution" of the meter was 0.1 dB, what was the actual tolerance of the measurement?
And the differences in most amateur tests are often audible even to untrained ears. That's because the ones conducting the tests aren't trained in conducting rigorous tests. It's trivially easy to conduct a test with positive results. It's actually much more difficult to conduct a test with a null result. That's because the more rigorous test more rigorously control for biases. Which is why there are so few rigorous tests being done.
Level is just one of a whole host of things which can produce false positives. Even the slightly different sound of the switch switching between one device and the other has produced false positives.
Again, less rigorous tests often result in positive results. And almost invariably, when those less rigorous tests are subject to greater scrutiny, flaws in the test procedure invariably turn up.
I spend far more time listening to seriously good gear than I do reading papers. What I don't do is make a lot of assumptions and based on those assumptions make objective claims.
Everybody and their dog "hears" differences. I "hear" differences. People "hear" differences even when there are no differences to actually hear. So what's the big deal about "hearing" differences?
What you fail to understand is that simply "hearing" differences means absolutely nothing in itself except for establishing one's own subjective preferences.
"Hearing" differences does not in itself establish actual audiblity.
How come non-musos (i.e. your typical "audiophile") also claim to instantly tell different cables apart?
And if musos are so adept at such things, why is it that the finest musos on the planet typically have the most mediocre stereo equipment?
Being a muso myself, and knowing many many other musos over the years, it's been my observation that musos tend to pick up more on the EXPRESSION of the music itself than the flyspeck details of sound.
Rather like audiophiles who merely use music to connect to their equipment rather than using their equipment to connect to the music.
*shrug*
se
Re: For The Hearing Challenged...
In post #618 mrfeedback said:
While above in post #630 mrfeedback said:
Gee, if mrfeedback can't remember what amplifier (Onkyo or Denon) he was listening to, perhaps other details of his test are equally fuzzy as well? Back in post #14 mrfeedback said:
The above post makes it sound like mrfeedback had not participated in and doesn't believe in blind testing. Yet "two weekends back", he was apparently involved in a blind test of amplifiers. Why didn't he bring the results up earlier when he started his many contributions to this thread?
I believe there are three basic categories of blind audio testing results as follows:
There are folks who try it and are surprised at how much they CANNOT hear once they don't know what they're listening to. Things they were sure they were hearing just disappear. The majority of people I know who try a decent blind test fit into this category. Some might be reluctant to talk about the results around serious audiophiles, however (they've learned they get called "deaf" and much worse--just as people have done to me in this thread).
There are folks who try a well run blind test and may think they're hearing differences. When you tally the results of a sufficient number of trials, you can decide if those differences were likely real or not. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.
There are folks (usually serious GoldenEars) who are so convinced everything they hear in non-blind listening is real, they will do just about anything to discredit blind tests that demonstrate anything different than their own beliefs (i.e. that might prove them wrong). These people usually will not participate in a carefully controlled test run by someone independent. If they do, they tend to blame the outcome on other factors and never participate in another independent blind test.
In post #618 mrfeedback said:
mrfeedback said:
While above in post #630 mrfeedback said:
mrfeedback said:
Gee, if mrfeedback can't remember what amplifier (Onkyo or Denon) he was listening to, perhaps other details of his test are equally fuzzy as well? Back in post #14 mrfeedback said:
mrfeedback said:
The above post makes it sound like mrfeedback had not participated in and doesn't believe in blind testing. Yet "two weekends back", he was apparently involved in a blind test of amplifiers. Why didn't he bring the results up earlier when he started his many contributions to this thread?
I believe there are three basic categories of blind audio testing results as follows:
There are folks who try it and are surprised at how much they CANNOT hear once they don't know what they're listening to. Things they were sure they were hearing just disappear. The majority of people I know who try a decent blind test fit into this category. Some might be reluctant to talk about the results around serious audiophiles, however (they've learned they get called "deaf" and much worse--just as people have done to me in this thread).
There are folks who try a well run blind test and may think they're hearing differences. When you tally the results of a sufficient number of trials, you can decide if those differences were likely real or not. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.
There are folks (usually serious GoldenEars) who are so convinced everything they hear in non-blind listening is real, they will do just about anything to discredit blind tests that demonstrate anything different than their own beliefs (i.e. that might prove them wrong). These people usually will not participate in a carefully controlled test run by someone independent. If they do, they tend to blame the outcome on other factors and never participate in another independent blind test.
Re: For The Hearing Challenged...
For level matching with sine waves, measure the voltage at the speakers. If you want to use a sound level meter, use pink noise and hopefully your level meter has a "slow" or "average" mode to smooth out the random bumps in the pink noise.
In addition to my concerns in the post above, note that using sine waves and an in-room level meter is a really bad way to match levels due to standing waves. Anyone who's ever tried to measure a sine wave in a room knows you can move the level meter a fraction of an inch and have the reading change by several db.mrfeedback said:
For level matching with sine waves, measure the voltage at the speakers. If you want to use a sound level meter, use pink noise and hopefully your level meter has a "slow" or "average" mode to smooth out the random bumps in the pink noise.
Re: Re: For The Hearing Challenged...
Well, from the perspective of the listener, they ARE real. Just as real as anything can be. So I can understand people being reluctant to consider any other eventuality than that the perception was due to actual audible stimulus.
But there's a whole body of irrefutable evidence that our subjective perceptions are not always due to actual audible stimulus. To deny this fact and dogmatically hold to the belief that all of one's subjective perceptions are entirely the result of actual audible stimulus is nothing more than a grossly over-inflated ego and makes a mockery of all logic and reason.
At this point, it simply becomes religion.
se
nw_avphile said:
Well, from the perspective of the listener, they ARE real. Just as real as anything can be. So I can understand people being reluctant to consider any other eventuality than that the perception was due to actual audible stimulus.
But there's a whole body of irrefutable evidence that our subjective perceptions are not always due to actual audible stimulus. To deny this fact and dogmatically hold to the belief that all of one's subjective perceptions are entirely the result of actual audible stimulus is nothing more than a grossly over-inflated ego and makes a mockery of all logic and reason.
At this point, it simply becomes religion.
se
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