I wonder how many who claim super hearing actually have it, and how many who think there hearing is average actually have golden ears....
Now I know the GEB's will claim they know they have the best instrumentation known to man flapping on either side of there head, but...
A few years ago I was involved with some subjective testing of some comms equipment, all double blind. The interesting thing was that all the participants had to have a full and thorough hearing test, including frequency response. No one was excluded as they were after as wide a range of hearing abilities as possible plus as many victims as possible to get the best statistical data out of what was a subjective set of listening tests. One thing I did learn from one of the audiologists was that those quite a few who do believe they have super human hearing, don't have and those normal people often have hearing that is far better than they expected. What the GEB often have though is belief in there hearing abilities, that precludes the necessity of any further investigation as to what is changing the sound. Gosh some can even determine where the interference is coming from in there system without the tools the poor objectives have to cart around.
Now I know the GEB's will claim they know they have the best instrumentation known to man flapping on either side of there head, but...
A few years ago I was involved with some subjective testing of some comms equipment, all double blind. The interesting thing was that all the participants had to have a full and thorough hearing test, including frequency response. No one was excluded as they were after as wide a range of hearing abilities as possible plus as many victims as possible to get the best statistical data out of what was a subjective set of listening tests. One thing I did learn from one of the audiologists was that those quite a few who do believe they have super human hearing, don't have and those normal people often have hearing that is far better than they expected. What the GEB often have though is belief in there hearing abilities, that precludes the necessity of any further investigation as to what is changing the sound. Gosh some can even determine where the interference is coming from in there system without the tools the poor objectives have to cart around.
Err, Campfire ...
I will give both a shot and report ............
Only just got to this... thanks. You have a pm and links.
No problem, I appreciate the comments. In what sort of way "poorer", anything specific ?
Sorry, only have had a quick listen so far, but a combination of lack of warm up time and perhaps the intrinsic nature of the tracks made, in particular made the Genesis tracks diabolical during the moments of peak energy - my ears gave up, and it largely came across as a blurred mess, too much distortion, during the most dynamic moments.
Marce, the key might be in abilities to concentrate on sound/music and to find differences, rather than frequency limit and absolute sensitivity. Do not forget that hearing is a sensor + processor, engineering approach usually evaluates the sensor only in terms like frequency range and threshold of hearing at defined frequency, and forgets completely about the processor - brains.
Would you say that impression came across equally in both tracks of any of the musical selections, for example Epsilon and Zeta both sounding poor to you this time around ?
I've only done one round of listening, it was a very casual first go, just to give me a general sense of what the sound was like. In the softer parts of the track there were clear differences in the sense one was more "musical" than the other, sorry, can't say which was which at this moment. But when the crescendos came the sound loaded up badly, it was a case of worser, or worser.
Note, this had nothing to do with the playback level, I was constantly cutting the volume back and back from what I would normally use, to make it a little less unpleasant ...
Note, this had nothing to do with the playback level, I was constantly cutting the volume back and back from what I would normally use, to make it a little less unpleasant ...
That was 40 years ago.
One of the reasons the LM308A made a great T/C amplifier was because the self heating was low (~uA supply current) and the chip was laid out to reduce some of these problems. As a result the drift was also very good and there were no open loop gain modulations to anywhere near the extent Solomon indicated - I'm talking late 70's here.
Solomons paper (which is a great document BTW) simply highlighted a problem which the semi undustry was in the process of solving, and as far as I know this has not been an issue for decades now.
You have beautifully supported my previous point about competencies. That is completely true and why actual ears-only listening is the ONLY way to determine if someone can hear what they think/claim they can hear, since the brain/processor now becomes part of the equation. No ears-only, you're just playing make-believe. And engineers very, very rarely will know how to do this unless they collaborate with specialists in sensory evaluation. For those in the audio fashion business, who would rather make excuses or ad hoc objections than gather honest data, well..."It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Something I've said many times and will say again: Trust your ears, not that lying brain of yours.
Depends on what you're testing. For example, if I believe that a Teflon dielectric capacitor in a coupling position gives a clearer and more incisive sound than a polycarbonate capacitor on certain source material, then there's no "reference" needed- I just need to be able to distinguish one from the other using only my ears (no peeking). If I can do that, then the choice becomes a matter of taste, assuming that both versions are audible in a bypass test. If one version can be heard when switched in and out and the other not, the "inaudible" version has higher fidelity. If that's my goal, I'm done.
If I can't distinguish one from the other by ear alone, then the difference was not in the sound, it was in the way my "processor" handled the sensory input with the knowledge of which was which and all the preconceptions and unconscious biases associated with my "processor." Any explanations of the difference in sound then need to be psychological, not electronic, at least if I'm not selling something or religiously invested in a belief in those differences.
edit: for the case of boxes of gain not intended to alter the signal, the reference is the input signal.
If I can't distinguish one from the other by ear alone, then the difference was not in the sound, it was in the way my "processor" handled the sensory input with the knowledge of which was which and all the preconceptions and unconscious biases associated with my "processor." Any explanations of the difference in sound then need to be psychological, not electronic, at least if I'm not selling something or religiously invested in a belief in those differences.
edit: for the case of boxes of gain not intended to alter the signal, the reference is the input signal.
You mean the measurements from the excerpted app note you posted? Where he showed that 40 year old designs run with the load they were designed for showed no issue? And that later opamps were even better?
Maybe so but as I said the noise floor unblinds the test unless the cart dominates the noise. We have to stick with line stages only, less interesting.
I find that strange, but would add that you must trust what you hear. That is the whole point of tests like these. You mention one seems a bit more "musical" than the other. If you were able to pick the musical one out that would be great. Trust what you hear though.
The trouble with cheaper gear is that seemingly 'borderline' recordings will have all their negative attributes strongly emphasised - it will require major conditioning, and fine adjusting of the PC's environment to extract the best reproduction, to do this properly. As a parallel example, listening to a current, highly compressed pop recording on this machine would be heavy going, unless I went through this full ritual ...
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