Sy,
The reason that I am not interested in establishing audibility limits is that my research concerns other areas. It is strictly directed at practical applications and at preferences of experienced (and modestly well off) listeners, however, i would like solid evidence that the extra cost is justified.
My ideal outcome would in each and every case be that no differences exists and I can use the cheapest and simplest solution and increase the profit.
Ciao T
The reason that I am not interested in establishing audibility limits is that my research concerns other areas. It is strictly directed at practical applications and at preferences of experienced (and modestly well off) listeners, however, i would like solid evidence that the extra cost is justified.
My ideal outcome would in each and every case be that no differences exists and I can use the cheapest and simplest solution and increase the profit.
Ciao T
That's not clear. High price equipment generally has an associated "story." The question then becomes, does the price increase exceed the cost increase, and by enough to cover the cost of money over the sales cycle? "Justification" for a business (any business, yours, mine, Joe Blow's) is measured in ROI.
The question is, threshold of audibility of what? Of an amplifier? or amplifier and speaker? Of all recording/reproduction equipment? Or of capacitor, wire, transistor, tube, transformer?
Before setting criteria of measurement we must define what we are going to measure.
If I decide to minimize something that sounds odd I always search for the function, try changing parameters to see if I can amplify/attenuate the effect. If I can attenuate the effect without amplifying something else it is perfect. If it amplifies something else it is fine as well, at least now I know the direction.
Before setting criteria of measurement we must define what we are going to measure.
If I decide to minimize something that sounds odd I always search for the function, try changing parameters to see if I can amplify/attenuate the effect. If I can attenuate the effect without amplifying something else it is perfect. If it amplifies something else it is fine as well, at least now I know the direction.
Dunno, that was Thorsten's phrase, not mine, so I'm not sure what he's talking about. I simply used "audibility" (not "threshold of audibility") to mean whether or not he could tell one brand of power supply caps from another by ear alone.
I was just looking at the measurements of AMR's DP-777 in the latest Stereophile and I can't help but compare them to those of the Weiss DAC-202 (published in the same magazine a couple of months ago).
Measured performance suggests the 202 is a clearly superior DAC.
Which part of the measurements, if any, could explain why AMR's approach to building a D/A converter might "sound better" than Weiss' to some listeners?
If we can't give a definitive answer, is it because we need more work on correlating measurements with sound quality or is it because we're measuring the wrong things?
In the latter case, do we need to reconsider the way we measure audio equipment or would it perhaps be more useful to turn our "measuring stick" to said listeners' auxiliary equipment, speakers, listening room etc.?
Measured performance suggests the 202 is a clearly superior DAC.
Which part of the measurements, if any, could explain why AMR's approach to building a D/A converter might "sound better" than Weiss' to some listeners?
If we can't give a definitive answer, is it because we need more work on correlating measurements with sound quality or is it because we're measuring the wrong things?
In the latter case, do we need to reconsider the way we measure audio equipment or would it perhaps be more useful to turn our "measuring stick" to said listeners' auxiliary equipment, speakers, listening room etc.?
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Oh, ABSOLUTELY, John.
There seems to be a drive present here to turn everything into sheer science, whether it merits such a serious approach or not. I am not in the least bit interested WHY silver wiring sound better to me than the copper wiring so long as I can reliably tell which is which in a blind test, which itself, no matter how faulty it may be in relation to the theory of it, has nevertheless yielded a hit rate od 39/40.
39/40 works out to a percentage error of just 2.5%. With a probability of being 97.5% correct, ANY insurance company in the world will agree to issue a policy on my ears. And we all know how careful those folks are, they check you out down to the color of your underpants.
All this reminds oh-so-STRONGLY of that old story:
When the first atronauts went to space, it was discovered that ball point pens will not operate at zero gravity. NASA immediately summoned all its staff on leave, cancelled some of its current projects and reallocated the resources, the current administration immediately passed a bill through congress and senate funding the project with $4 billion. 4 years later, they came out with a novel pen, costing $1,000 per unit, which works.
The Russians used a pencil.
I agree that Salas may be my cousin, but in Poland they used Latin alphabet.
My sincere apologies, I believed you to be of Russian origins. Which changes nothing in terms of kinsmanship, just the language.
In personal terms between you and me as theoretical cousins, it changes literally nothing, because the Serbian language has BOTH variations, Cyrrilic and Latin. Literally everybody knows and uses them both.
Yeesh, that old NASA story has long legs on the internet. That story gets bigger and better all the time and is not entirely true.
I believe it was Fisher of Fisher pens that bankrolled the project and came about from concerns about bits of pencil lead floating in the space capsule cabin. Someone can back me up on this as I have not time to spend further on it today.
Here ya go:
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
I believe it was Fisher of Fisher pens that bankrolled the project and came about from concerns about bits of pencil lead floating in the space capsule cabin. Someone can back me up on this as I have not time to spend further on it today.
Here ya go:
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
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Hah! You wish!
And to make it just that wee bit more complicated, long gone is the rule of thumb that if you pay more, you get more. These days, the only rule is that there is no rule, you have to test just about everything yourself, and not once, but every time you get a new batch.
I've seen some serious variances in batches from some supposedly big names. I've seen warranty periods of some big and expensive names go down from 2 years to 6 months. And I'm supposed to give my customer a 5 year warranty?
This is where I can only but defer to the Golden Ears. If I put my ear right next to my speakers I can just about hear a hiss from the amplifier. It's certainly not audible to me more than a couple of inches away, even when not playing any audio - I imagine even Brownian motion of the air molecules probably swamps it after that. The idea that when playing music at any SPL, that level of underlying noise or distortion, even if completely non-harmonic, would be perceivable is, to me, incredible. And -110dB is much quieter than that!
Bill Waslo's brilliant Sousa band demo is very enlightening in this regard.
Anyone remember the movie "The Ghostbusters"? The scene in which Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd are sitting on the steps of the university they have just been fired from and are discussiong their options, when Harold says something like:
"Well, we could try the private sector",
and Dan Aykroyd quickly answers:
"Oh no, not them, they want RESULTS!"
"Well, we could try the private sector",
and Dan Aykroyd quickly answers:
"Oh no, not them, they want RESULTS!"
One more similar story: during some international scientific conference they needed to calculate overnight percentage of land and ocean water on the Earth surface. Russian programmer printed globe strips on paper, took scissors, cut prints carefully, and weighted them. Soviet economy was very inertial: they could not give financing before planning. Plans were calculated for each 5 years, for the whole huge country, incuding education, resources, manufacturing, medicine, everything...
But they could give orders to do something "here and now", so engineers and scientists had to be creative in making results without resources.
Luna 2 was a Russian object that landed on the moon almost 10 years before the USA.
Give credit were credit is due. It was the GERMANS who put a man on the moon.
You didn't really think those guys are from Huntsville Alabama did you?
The pretzels and the funny shorts should have been your first clue.
Give credit were credit is due. It was the GERMANS who put a man on the moon.
You didn't really think those guys are from Huntsville Alabama did you?
The pretzels and the funny shorts should have been your first clue.
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