DAC blind test: NO audible difference whatsoever

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#587
JonBocani said:
Of course, after witnessing 3 tests that leans toward the same kind of results, i forged some opinions. How wouldn't that be?
The market, the hobby, is filled with illusions. We took for given audible differences when they were different only on paper (at best)...
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Come on, JonBocani, at least be honest here.

You believe that high end audio is a complete sham, based on mumbo jumbo and trickery, foisted on naïve, wealthy boobs eager to spend thousands on lies;

Amplifiers, cables, digital formats, drive units, complete speakers, etc., all sound the same, or can be made to sound the same with a twist of the old DSP knobs;

Audiophiles “massively” and/or “vastly” overestimate their hearing capabilities;

Even your defence, quoted above, shows that you don’t believe differences are audible – they are “illusions”.

True or not?

If true, then it is hard to take you seriously when you undertake a new “test”. Your biases are clear and you re-use an approach that has been widely criticized for rarely showing audible differences.

It strains credulity when you begin the thread with something like:

“This time I really, REALLY think my ABX testing will reveal audible differences!”.

The capper is the entirely predictable climax:

“I am shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that this time the ABX revealed NO audible differences!”

Followed by promises to improve the “statistical” validity of the “test” by increasing the number of subjects.

Then, mentions of future ABX tests, with another, “This time it will be different….”.

It’s a little like The Penguin vowing that THIS TIME he will get Batman. Everyone, including The Penguin, knows that he won’t.

I worry a little that the next “test” might be rejiggered so that forced results reveal audible differences – I sure hope not.
 
#588
Sounds like a load of self indulgent waffle to me. Blind ABX testing seems to be the most blunt tool ever invented for sound quality checking.
It was used to "Prove" that there is no difference between 44.1 CD and compressed MP3.
That says it all to me.
 
#590
DF96 said:
How do you know when your other equipment is good enough for testing DACs? Or, to put it another way, how do you know when a DAC is good enough for testing other equipment?

You seem to be trying to argue it both ways. Even low end DACs are so good that only the very best ancillary equipment can distinguish them from high end DACs (if true, this of course means that for almost everyone there is no need to buy a high end DAC). High end DACs are "far from ideal".
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as said before, you dont test a $3000 dac with a $10 amp or speakers, as opposed to what the OP did
 
#592
DF96 said:
How do you know when your other equipment is good enough for testing DACs? Or, to put it another way, how do you know when a DAC is good enough for testing other equipment?
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This is actually the logic that should be applied to every ABX test but not to the equipment - to the whole test.

ABX tests need to have hidden controls within them which shows that this run of trials is good enough to be able to differentiate the differences in the hidden controls. If this isn't included it is the equivalent of presenting measurements using a tool which nobody knows the sensitivity of - -is it accurate or is it off by a mm or a km, nobody knows?

If such controls were included in these tests, it would answer a lot of the unknowns about each test including the question you just posed about the sensitivity of the other equipment but also about the participants & the test setup. As it stands the results require faith which is not an objective approach to measuring anything.
 
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#593
mmerrill99 said:
ABX tests need to have hidden controls within them which shows that this run of trials is good enough to be able to differentiate the differences in the hidden controls. If this isn't included it is the equivalent of presenting measurements using a tool which nobody knows the sensitivity of - -is it accurate or is it off by a mm or a km, nobody knows?
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Reading the work of Kunchur on temporal resolution of human hearing. There are mulriple papers, he backed up his results with multiple studies. Key is the efforts he had to go to ensure his ABX tests were valid… and they show the strangth of ABX, when it shows a difference, you know there is a difference.

dave
 
#594
Dave Moulton said (here)
Listeners asked to identify the difference between two versions of the same recorded excerpt will have real trouble, at first, hearing that one version is 3 dB louder than the other. Once they are told and shown that such a difference exists, they find it “obvious.”
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Unclear what he is claiming here. Did the listeners not hear the 3dB difference, or simply not report it? When asked a question which seems too simple, people will often assume that they have misunderstood the question and so try to answer a more difficult question which might be implied by the simpler question. Ask a class of maths graduates what is 2+3 and only the bolder ones will offer 5 as the answer; the rest will be wondering which number system is being used, does '+' have its usual meaning etc.

Now I am one of the awkward squad, so if I was played two extracts 3dB apart and asked to state the difference I might say 'levels' - but I might try to listen for some other difference, assuming that the tester was being sloppy on levels for some reason.

mmerrill99 said:
I'm sure in your head you have won that debate hands down - I can hear your mental fanfare from here
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I can hear the fanfare too. The emperor is arguing about the meaning of "clothes" again. Having boasted about his fine clothes, all we have seen thus far is his underpants. The rest of his attire seems to be elusive. Is it so hard to admit that you may have exaggerated the academic support for what you have claimed? Is it so hard to confirm or deny any commercial involvement in audio?

kinsei said:
as said before, you dont test a $3000 dac with a $10 amp or speakers, as opposed to what the OP did
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Sorry, I hadn't noticed that his speakers were that cheap. Thank you for drawing my attention to it. Can you test a $30 DAC with $10 speakers?
 
#595
mmerrill99 said:
ABX tests need to have hidden controls within them which shows that this run of trials is good enough to be able to differentiate the differences in the hidden controls. If this isn't included it is the equivalent of presenting measurements using a tool which nobody knows the sensitivity of - -is it accurate or is it off by a mm or a km, nobody knows?
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I think I said in an earlier post that this test was one data point. That means:
1. it is not merely an anecdote - yet many people are happy to base their decisions on anecdote alone
2. it is not yet a full set of calibrated tests - as some people are demanding

There have been claims in this thread that all ABX tests are useless because they will always find a null result. Now you are saying that calibrated tests can be useful, if I understand you correctly. Yet when I suggested repeating a test with a known parameter adjusted (to achieve calibration) you dismissed this. It seems to me that the goalposts keep shifting.
 
#598
DF96 said:
There have been claims in this thread that all ABX tests are useless because they will always find a null result. Now you are saying that calibrated tests can be useful, if I understand you correctly.
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I'm glad to see mmerrill99's debate tactics evolving. Just a few months ago he was arguing just as vehemently against all blind tests on another forum. His commercial agenda and interests are obvious and well documented, even if he refuses to admit to them when asked.
 
#599
raymondj said:
33 pages of replies, advice, personal views and opinion.... Wow.

Sometime more than 25 years ago I tried to sell a well designed UK DAC, simply because audio was a passion and because I believed in its superior sound. I thought lots of people would hear the dacs sonic superiority and magazine HFNRR had given it a fine review. It was expensive at the time and the only real competition was Arcam, Pink Triangle and DPA form the UK, Monarchy and Audio Alchemy spring to mind from across the pond. Because of its expense, I tried to do home dems that allowed potential customers to listen to it it at home for several days to get a handle on its performance.

I didn't sell one, and during one demonstration the DPA little bit Mk? dac at maybe half or a third of the cost sounded to my ears pretty much the equal of the dac I was trying to sell, a fact which I couldn't really argue and had to agree with the customer. The customer had a well put together system with good synergy with his existing dac. Further, the dac I was trying to sell went through a few filter subtle filter iterations over the months, which were probably less than 1dB variations towards the last octave, maybe some midrange dip for subtle voicing. I mis-wired one of these filter mods and was unhappy with the resulting sound so it had to go back for some checks.Two wires were swapped which effected the earthing of the filter stage. On the AP test set my mistake had worsened the linearity below 30dB's Full scale signal levels.

Consequently, taking the point that the majority of dacs now have very similar numbers to at least -100 dBs levels I am not surprised by the current outcome of your testing.
Could I detect the difference in your tests, I doubt it. Could I detect the differences here in my own system maybe?
Raspberry Pi and add on HAT dacs with suitable streaming software offer more than competent, sometimes stunning audio for very little outlay, less than a Friday night down the pub?

Finally, if you deduce that I was a crap salesman you may have a point....
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Can I ask what you called the DAC? Did it ever see the light of day?
 
#600
pkane said:
I'm glad to see mmerrill99's debate tactics evolving. Just a few months ago he was arguing just as vehemently against all blind tests on another forum. His commercial agenda and interests are obvious and well documented, even if he refuses to admit to them when asked.
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Let's not make any personal attacks spanning over other forums! Leave that to PMs or find the mods deleting your posts...

Mods?
 
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