Oh, I am so old school
What is true High Fidelity Audio Upgrade if you use ears ?
Seriously don't judge if you don't know ....try first
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I found out what may be the cause. My ears are not shaped that they will hold on the earbuds like Apple EarPods... maybe that explains some things.
... or Max visited you in a sleep pouring gloop in your ears, ought to check that out first!
Perhaps with enough of the right discussions, the naysayers might start to pay attention.
Perhaps part of the problem is that the standard theory adherents have never learned to listen, part of which is learning/understanding what to listen for.
My absolute hearing is of course degraded compared to when I was young, however through hearing countless examples of gear and systems, mentoring and practice I have learned to develop highly discriminating listening skills.
Repetitious (sighted) AB fine difference comparison experiments further hone these listening skills.
Absolute hearing acuity is not of critical importance, but knowing what 'natural' sound is, and identifying sounds/products that 'don't belong' is of critical importance.
Living away from dense urban areas and calibrating ones hearing to nature sounds is very useful I find.
Another 'trick' is to simultaneously listen to nature sounds and reproduced sounds...when the characters/signatures of the two sound sources match, then you have good sound.
I much listen to spoken word radio...AM or FM or streaming.
Spoken word is a very telling source signal, and any minute changes in the timbre at the replay end are abundantly apparent.
Dynamic behaviors and dynamics behaviors are in large part what is described as timbre.
Timbre is an interesting subject in itself, enough so that the English HiFi press came up with the acronym PRaT - "Pace Rythm and Timing".
On first inspection this might seem an April's fool's day pisstake or a 'new' marketing term.
Digging deeper, the term has merit and is attempting to describe differences between systems that are not readily attributable to FR and distortions.
Multiple stage and individual component time dependent, amplitude dependent and noise dependent behaviors constructively/multiplicitive and destructively/damping interact and set up overall system dynamic behaviors.
This process can set up resonances with time and signal driven variable attack, sustain and decay behaviors which translates to toe tapping realism, excitement, irritation....or boredom, all described as PRaT.
Excess noise is a big part of what influences timbre and PRaT, the trick is predictably controlling and thereby subjectively reducing the spectrum/dynamics of the system intrinsic excess noise.
Dan.
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Ohrenschmalz - everything sounds better in German. Quantumschmalz has a ring to it. Certainly less disturbing than connectors called Eichmann Bullets.
Um, you might want to back down a little unless you start showing one yourself. The kinds of experiments needed to put us in the ballpark of some of the claims here are huge. Bigger than many phase 3 drug trials, where the effect size is larger than stuff here.
This post deserves the "Most Gaseous Award", awarded by Mr. Curl itself.
I've had Doctors and Nurses remark about how clean my ears are.
Though admittedly I'm nearly fanatical about keeping my ears clean.
Well Dan, since we can't avoid these people, it might be next best to ignore them. For you and me: I did speak to Jack Bybee in detail this week about improving digital reproduction. Jack has recently purchased an OPPO 205, and he and an engineering colleague of mine modified it as much as they could.
Jack told me that initially, he was disappointed in the sound of the 205, but as he added several of his quantum tweaks, it got better and better, finally giving sound comparable to the Vendetta Research phono playback that he uses as well. He found that the biggest change was adding more of his new wooden cased devices that he mounts on the inside cover of the OPPO. I have one of these devices installed in my OPPO 105, and it did an amazing improvement, but not directly comparable as my phono reproduction that is similar to Jack's.
While this approach is actually cheaper than buying even more exotic digital hardware, that might actually be better than the stock OPPO, I am concerned that this is leading to not putting the most effort into the actual engineering of the circuitry, and instead just adding a 'fix' for improving the effective sound quality. I suspect that you too are faced with the same dilemma. If your 'fix' seems to improve things markedly, why bother for better engineering of the primary devices? However, I think this is short-sighted and we have to continue with improving both methods of sonic improvement to the best of our abilities. I have seen this in the past, as well, with line cords, etc, making such an improvement that time and money got more invested in the cables, and the primary electronics was left about the same, and I feel this can inhibit optimum improvement of audio reproduction.
Jack told me that initially, he was disappointed in the sound of the 205, but as he added several of his quantum tweaks, it got better and better, finally giving sound comparable to the Vendetta Research phono playback that he uses as well. He found that the biggest change was adding more of his new wooden cased devices that he mounts on the inside cover of the OPPO. I have one of these devices installed in my OPPO 105, and it did an amazing improvement, but not directly comparable as my phono reproduction that is similar to Jack's.
While this approach is actually cheaper than buying even more exotic digital hardware, that might actually be better than the stock OPPO, I am concerned that this is leading to not putting the most effort into the actual engineering of the circuitry, and instead just adding a 'fix' for improving the effective sound quality. I suspect that you too are faced with the same dilemma. If your 'fix' seems to improve things markedly, why bother for better engineering of the primary devices? However, I think this is short-sighted and we have to continue with improving both methods of sonic improvement to the best of our abilities. I have seen this in the past, as well, with line cords, etc, making such an improvement that time and money got more invested in the cables, and the primary electronics was left about the same, and I feel this can inhibit optimum improvement of audio reproduction.
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