The Church of Audio Subjectivism
Ten Commandments, here are the first five, will consider suggestions for the rest:
Thou shalt make very silly suggestions.
Thou shalt not test them.
Thou shalt ignore thy questioners.
Thou shalt gold plate thine ears.
Thou shalt covet thy neighbour's Class-A monoblock amplifier.
Ten Commandments, here are the first five, will consider suggestions for the rest:
Thou shalt make very silly suggestions.
Thou shalt not test them.
Thou shalt ignore thy questioners.
Thou shalt gold plate thine ears.
Thou shalt covet thy neighbour's Class-A monoblock amplifier.
The second 'five' should be contributions for the Church of Audio Objectivism (Archbishop: the Venerable, Right Reverend Doug Self). I'll leave other subjectivists to add beyond my first two coz I'm too lazy :
Thou shalt object to the posting of listening impressions on a public forum.
Thou shalt be sure to claim, more than once that what is heard is 'mere opinion' and not 'objective fact'.
Thou shalt object to the posting of listening impressions on a public forum.
Thou shalt be sure to claim, more than once that what is heard is 'mere opinion' and not 'objective fact'.
I should've listened to you guys...
My test is not exactly Erin's... I ripped a DIana Krall album that I know well. Ripped it with EAC, after drive configuration, both in safe mode and regular boot of Windoze 7 64 bit. Did fc in console window - files are the same.
This is where the test is different, I don't listen to streamed music in Windoze, so I copied the two ripped cd folders to my linux ubuntu listening machine (over the network, so any sector mapping/defrag issues that were in the Windoze version are now randomized when the files were created in linux (to a point)). I named the two folders differently so I could identify which was which. Did a linux cmp of the two songs I was going to choose, files are still the same.
I use mpd to stream my music and gmpc as the client. I created a new playlist and had my wife put the same song from each rip into the playlist (not telling me which one was which). Now I have two songs with the same exact title in the playlist, I can't tell from just looking at the playlist which one came from which folder.
I did the test for about 45 minutes. I played the whole song from the two files twice. Then spent the rest of the time playing snippets of songs, alternating the source file.
My result is that neither my system or my ears have enough resolution to tell them apart. They sounded exactly the same to me. I didn't touch the volume level, but tested the peak output of two files with a cheap sound pressure meter and it was exactly the same.
Since this is very subjective hobby, I'm not going to say that what Erin's claim is not possible (J. B. S. Haldane said the universe is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we can *imagine*). But my conclusion is that if in my system with my ears I can't tell the difference and to reach this state I have re-rip all of my music (which is a lot) in safe mode to not be able to hear a difference then for *me* it's not worth it.
Your mileage may vary... Thanks for an interesting thread.
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Please read my earlier post. He HAS agreed, I'll be setting this up for him. He may be wrong (I sincerely think he is), but he's willing to put his beliefs to the test. So I think you're being a bit unfair to him.
Why take this matter so seriously..... I can't be called an objectivist, my own system having probably a THD way above 10%. But seriously, in the war of subjectivity vs objectivity, aren't there fights much more worth fighting ?
(Come on... same file, same CRC.......
)
Thanks Sy, corrected the post, not only am I deaf but also ignorant...
No, it's that I'm an inveterate trivia geek.
I downloaded EAC and ripped a track in both safe mode and normal mode.
I used the first track of Beethoven symphony 6, Cond Ashkenazy, London 410 003-2. After I did the rip, fc /b thinks the two files are identical.
I can't hear any difference between them on playback, either listening with speakers, or on headphones.
I used the first track of Beethoven symphony 6, Cond Ashkenazy, London 410 003-2. After I did the rip, fc /b thinks the two files are identical.
I can't hear any difference between them on playback, either listening with speakers, or on headphones.
Maybe, I thought not, but I could have.
I thought you said that because he described the basis for his opinion it made it evidence. You may have meant something else..
jan
I saw this thread when it started and, especially after I realized that it didn't involve burning a CD in safe mode, I concluded that it probably wasn't worth discussing.
I haven't read most of this thread. Sorry if it's been settled already. But, since the replay was done from the computer, there are probably many reasons why two different playback sessions of even the same file could sound different, depending on the computer, what it was doing, and what other hardware was present. With two different files, there might also be differences in playback output due to how the file was broken up and placed into free sectors on the disk. We might think that with read-ahead buffering that wouldn't show any differences. But with computers, who knows? Maybe the disk had to jump around a lot more for one of the files, and the power rails sagged more, or at certain times that just happened to have some audible effect. That's just one perhaps-plausible example off the top of my head.
Except under strictly-controlled conditions (maybe doing the playback in safe mode?), I would be more surprised if two playback sessions were identical, whether from the same wav file or two identical wav files.
I see that Audio Diffmaker was suggested but don't see where the OP or anyone else had tried it, with the sound card outputs of the two identical files.
I haven't read most of this thread. Sorry if it's been settled already. But, since the replay was done from the computer, there are probably many reasons why two different playback sessions of even the same file could sound different, depending on the computer, what it was doing, and what other hardware was present. With two different files, there might also be differences in playback output due to how the file was broken up and placed into free sectors on the disk. We might think that with read-ahead buffering that wouldn't show any differences. But with computers, who knows? Maybe the disk had to jump around a lot more for one of the files, and the power rails sagged more, or at certain times that just happened to have some audible effect. That's just one perhaps-plausible example off the top of my head.
Except under strictly-controlled conditions (maybe doing the playback in safe mode?), I would be more surprised if two playback sessions were identical, whether from the same wav file or two identical wav files.
I see that Audio Diffmaker was suggested but don't see where the OP or anyone else had tried it, with the sound card outputs of the two identical files.
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