I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

[SY]

If long personal and professional experience consigns me to gasbag status, where do I get my T-shirt?

Amazon.

"Blind and level-matched" has zero to do with switching time. Not that it hasn't been said a few hundred times, but if a guy as smart as you still hasn't understood that, perhaps it needed to be said again.

[Steve Dunlap]

edit: I'm speaking of power amps. Preamps are a whole 'nother issue.

Interesting. Why do you believe this to be the case?

[Jakob2]

Originally posted by SY

<snip>
Before the rocks start flying, anyone who hasn't done a level-matched blind comparison and will still opine is a pitiful gasbag who shouldn't be taken seriously.

edit: I'm speaking of power amps. Preamps are a whole 'nother issue.

From a logical point of view, wouldn´t relying on blind tests without sufficient positiv controls also qualify for the "gasbag category" ?

@ rdf,

human beings are different; while i truly don´t like for example the ABX protocol, it seems that others are able to reach incredible sensitivity levels with that procedure, see for example the description by Paul Frindle in his AES Convention Paper.

The bottom line is to ensure by positive controls that listeners were not "half deaf" under test condition (better say, to make sure that they reach the highest thinkable sensitivity level for the task).

To avoid certain unusual conditions in a test situation may shorten the learning curve, but after an extended training period normally most listeners will be able to adopt even to these unusual conditions, but the experimentator has to test this by using positive controls.

[SY]

From a logical point of view, wouldn´t relying on blind tests without sufficient positiv controls also qualify for the "gasbag category" ?

No. The guy claiming to have a perpetual motion machine is in a different position than the guy who says that energy is conserved.

[SY]

Originally posted by Steve Dunlap


Interesting. Why do you believe this to be the case?

Briefly, noise, distortion, RIAA conformance, overload, and overload recovery.

[Key]

I would disagree about the fast A/Bing thing just from a personal perspective. Again I made very small hard to distinguish manipulations to photos for a living. I have been experimenting and mixing music for much longer and this involves the same sort of manipulation. The senses have the ability to sort of settle in, adjust, or acclimate to the differences making them near impossible to spot otherwise.

For instance different people calibrate CRT and LCD monitors so that pure white is at very very different values. There is warm white - which looks similar to the headlights on a car that look yellow. There is sort of a medium white - the more white looking headlights. And there is also cool white or native white point - those god awful blue headlights that blind you. Now without A/Bing your mind actually settles in and adjusts to these differences making all three seem white relative to the other colors in the spectrum but they are all measurably different. It's hard for you to even see that one is a little yellow and one is a little blue without A/Bing but then the contrast makes the differences very obvious.

So what type of details does A/Bing obscure now? I haven't heard one tangible argument or real thing that it actually obscures. Just people making claims that it does with no explanation of what it is masking or hiding.

[Steve Dunlap]

Originally posted by SY


Briefly, noise, distortion, RIAA conformance, overload, and overload recovery.

So, if they measured the same, they would sound the same?

[SY]

Originally posted by Steve Dunlap



So, if they measured the same, they would sound the same?

Depends on what you mean by "measure the same." Simple frequency response, distortion, and gain? No. Add in noise, overload recovery, headroom, microphonics, and stability and you'll be hard-pressed to tell them apart strictly by ear.

Overload is still the Achilles' Heel of many phono stages, and it often shows up in unexpected ways (especially with noisy records and popular cartridges with astounding ultrasonic resonances).

[BudP]

Scott,

Why don't you bring your kit to the BAF?

What is a BAF? No, seriously. I assume it is an Audio Festival?

I just am not very familiar with any of the audio get together activities, not much of a group joining person I guess.

The kit you speak of, I assume you mean the pens and paint for driver modification? If so, might not be good in a large group setting, just because of how time constrained hand EnABLing actually is. And, if I was working on drivers I have no experience with, I would need some very quiet time to explore them for resonance zones and a computer to provide me with appropriately sized patterns, so I actually placed the EnABL patterns in a useful position. As DLR pointed out, this is a very driver specific process, same general event for all drivers, but the devil is right there awaiting a detail.

For baffle control, that could be done in a group setting event. I would only need to know peripheral dimensions for the baffle and have a simple hand calculator, a paper cutter and appropriate material to use for application of the patterns. We haven't yet looked for resonance zones on baffles, so that will not be an issue, yet.

If BAF is out of WA state I would need plane fare as I am quite pinched financially, since transformers have been in recession since the second quarter of 2007 and still are not flourishing.

Bud

[Steve Dunlap]

So, if you could not measure ANY difference, they will sound exactly the same, weather tube or solid state. Right?