It may not need a physical explanation. You read too much into an uncontrolled "experiment."
I suspect a lot of the claims about equipment burn-in are likely as not to be listener burn-in at work rather than changes in the gear.
There is a rough parallel with wine tasting. Few of us are disciplined enough to taste and spit it out, as the professional tasters do, so later presentations are apt to be in the presence of inebriation and seem to perform better. The other area is aeration/oxidation, when one is consuming the same wine and finds it improving as time goes on. Here I have little doubt that, usually, the effects of air exposure are beneficial, particularly with very young wines. My friend Toole is unconvinced. Once I brought a wine to dinner with one half of the bottle having been exposed to air (with a substantial exposed area in the decanter), the other rapidly transferred to a half-bottle and recorked. I did get him to admit that there was a discernible difference, but I'm not sure he thought the aerated wine tasted better. I think I had a slight preference for the aerated one, but of course I had a predilection to believe it better.
The electronics chain you describe works according to well-established science. That doesn't mean that its physical process is what causes your perceptions.
Yes, agreed about wine tasting and listener burn-in. But I still think that lots of professional recording and sound engineers are probably not all crazy or imagining things. Some probably are. Engineers and scientists have a long history of rejecting new ideas that contradict what they already decided they believe. Somebody even wrote a book about it, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. For example, Einstein was not taken seriously at first. A lot of respectable physicists had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting relativity. Same thing happened in psychology when Martin Seligman overturned Skinner's behaviorism. It took him 20 years and lots of back and forth arguments in professional journals. Change isn't easy, and its just as true when scientists and engineers are involved as it is with anyone else.
There are atoms and neurons in the brain, just one organ of many in the body. I believe bodies and brains are physical things that don't operate outside of physical reality, as best as we understand whatever that is. Physics is not a completely understood science, after all. We are still waiting for someone to figure out more about how gravity relates to other fundamental forces, for example.
But, for people who believe in souls and such, then I guess they could take the position that perceptions work by some kind of magic as opposed to a physical process. And maybe they would be right. Unfortunately, I have some doubts that they are right, but I can't prove it and won't try.
The thing I don't like about UcD is its variable frequency. This is a touchy subject to bring up with Hypex, who of course assures us that it is categorically not a problem (heterodyne artifacts in multichannel systems) if you simply buy their modules
I recently had the chance to look at some switching amplifiers in a high end system. They did indeed have filters to reduce heterodyne noise.
For a very practical large scale demonstration walk around the lower bowl at CenturyLink Field in Seattle. Some sections are served by heterodyne filters and other techniques. Others are not. The frequency response measured with dual FFT and pink noise is pretty much the same for all areas. Direct to reflected is about the same for the lower bowl. It is quite different for the upper most seating.
Now in the discussion about feedback the difference between global and local has been pretty much glossed over. Most of the so called open loop units have lots of local feedback in many if not all stages.
Finally there are measurable differences between off the shelf RCA style phono connectors of moderate cost and the super premium ones. However when Caig deodorant is applied after a few hours the difference in measurement drops below my measurement ability for at least a few days of the connectors left out of mating connectors.
I left the spell check change to deodorant in as it seemed appropriate.
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Mark: Why are you trying so hard to justify the result of a sighted (and therefore completely flawed) test? I assume you have Ethan Winer's audio myths workshop? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ
If not watch the first 5 minutes or so.
If not watch the first 5 minutes or so.
Because you talk about 'not being blown away'. I want my hifi to be accurate and transparent. Live acoustic music doesn't blow away, it just sounds 'real'.
Only time I have ever been 'blown away' was aged about 10 singing in king's college chapel in cambridge (when I could still sing). First time I had ever heard a 5+ second reverb in a space as the final chord died away.
Only time I have ever been 'blown away' was aged about 10 singing in king's college chapel in cambridge (when I could still sing). First time I had ever heard a 5+ second reverb in a space as the final chord died away.
It was a practical test to make a decision at the time. It was not for publication. I don't have to time or the interest to make a project out of it. However, I find myself in the camp of those who are happen (or happened to at the time) being good at hearing distortion. Just as those who have perfect pitch and those who are tone deaf, I believe there are variations in ability to hear distortion. I don't think that taken by itself is an unreasonable statement. However, there are probably many more people who think they can hear distortion well than actually can. This is probably similar to asking people about their driving. Obviously, some people are better drivers than others. But if you ask people, most people will tell you they are better than average drivers, which can't be true. Same with asking people about their looks. If you ask people about their looks on a scale of 1-10, very few people will say less than 5. Okay. So in our particular case, people who are scientifically oriented but not good at hearing distortion point to all the people who think they can hear better than they can, and conclude that all claims to such effect must be false. The only way to persuade someone otherwise is to let them see for themselves. So, if anybody wants to come over to my place we can try it. If you are an old man, please bring your kids with you because they can likely hear things you can't. See for yourself, if you want. If not, I will let the matter drop.
Incredibly simple piece and I still find it delightful and deeply moving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyBp9hrzDQE
You're still in a mood aren't you? Nit-picking words is for little girls.
I would be blown away by something that sounded "real". Transparency alone doesn't equal real to me. I've heard plenty of equipment that bled every bit of information there was to bleed, but that didn't mean it sounded real.
Unfortunately a great many of them have been listening at excessive levels for years and suffer from extensive hearing loss.
Correct. But do you deny there is any variation at all from person to person in ability to hear distortion? If you allow that there is probably some variation, then I ask you what is it? What are the numbers?
But obviously if you take the most outrageous claims and submit to blind testing of course they fail. Why would anybody expect otherwise?
I've been asking here for awhile now and nobody has said what age/gender/training/etc. have on ability to hear distortion? Nobody seems to know. Do you? If so, what is it?
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