John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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I admire your energy to even bother...

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Exactly.

Apparently it is totally fine to accuse Bill of being deaf if he doesn’t hear what’s in this “test”. Don’t get an attitude, though, or the pitchforks come out.

I believe Dan also said his system might not be good enough, which is rich coming from a guy who created these files on some low-end garbage grade Tascam sound card and does not appear to know how to match levels.
 
Exactly.

Apparently it is totally fine to accuse Bill of being deaf if he doesn’t hear what’s in this “test”. Don’t get an attitude, though, or the pitchforks come out.

I believe Dan also said his system might not be good enough, which is rich coming from a guy who created these files on some low-end garbage grade Tascam sound card and does not appear to know how to match levels.
Asinus asinum fricat.

It may be difficult to know who is deaf or not, but in any case, no harm in knowing who is benevolent and respectful of others and who is not.
 
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In doing some reading I came across this term which I have not encountered before & it is what I believe is being disturbed by noise floor modulation - Perceptual Attack Time (PAT) - it is "defined as the time a tone's moment of attack or most salient metrical feature is perceived relative to its physical onset."

It makes sense to me that my experience of what I am theorising is noise floor modulation (NFM) causes a perceptual loss of dynamics & a less interesting listen. On the the other side, removal or reduction of NFM results in a soundstage with perceptually more solidity. Both of these aspects are related to the timing of the perceptual start of sounds


"The perceptual attack time of musical tones."


Wiki
 
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Since we're speculating without data, I'll vote for: I doubt age-related high-frequency loss will change the perception of the attack of a low frequency sound. There are 2 main reasons for age-related hearing changes, and insertion of a low-pass filter in the ear is not one of them :) The dominant reason is loud-noise induced loss of hair cells (the mechanical-to-neural transducer in the inner ear) that are sensitive to high frequencies. That does not change the attack appearing to the HCs sensitive to lower frequencies. The second reason, loss of both elasticity and stiffness in all connective tissues in the body (look in the mirror, if you're old like me), could, perhaps, but I'd have to look into that more... I suspect not.
Sorry I missed this earlier, I think there might have been a delay in it appearing.
Is that how hair cells work, aren't they tuned to specific frequencies, wouldn't the attack if it was sharp enough leave the lower frequency hair cell standing whilst the higher frequency ones reacted (if they were undamaged)?
 
Sorry I missed this earlier, I think there might have been a delay in it appearing.
Is that how hair cells work, aren't they tuned to specific frequencies, wouldn't the attack if it was sharp enough leave the lower frequency hair cell standing whilst the higher frequency ones reacted (if they were undamaged)?

I missed it too
I believe you are mixing up frequency with timing, Scott - attack risetime is about timing, not frequency, therefore no HF is involved in the bass note pluck example we are discussing
 
Non-repetitive waveforms have a wide (theoretically infinite), continuous spectrum.
There can be a significant amount of HF content. See section 3.1.2 here. 3. Spectra

I'm not sure what your point is?
I stated that a bass note can have a fast risetime/attack & HF hearing loss is unlikely to effect the perception of this attack portion of the sound. I still can't see what I'm missing, if I'm missing anything?
 
See there you go again, wrecking it all by loading us with preconceptions and seeding doubt if we can't hear anything. Great sales pitch but blown any chance of ears only before you start.
Preconceptions and seeding doubt ?.....no just plain and simple ordinary facts Bill, 01 wav files are originals, 02 files are loopback recordings using an ancient usb soundcard.....if there was zero audible difference between them I would be amazed. This is not a test, this is not about changes in frequency response, distortion etc but it is all about imaging.

I put it to you that everybody should/must be able to hear and describe the differences, and if not the system and/or hearing and/or learned listening skill level is defective, plain and simple. Bill, give the tracks a listen....if you dare lol.

Dan.
 
Some have found subjectively that improving just the HF makes the bass sound better.
This is not at all new, but I first heard about it years ago from Mike Moffat.

You are expanding into another area to what I said which is strictly related to a question asked about how HF hearing loss affects the perception of the attack of sounds.

Anyway, I think we understand one another
 
By what mechanism & can you describe the perceived degradation?
Well, this is subjective. But with non-repetitive waveforms like music, it isn't too surprising when one aspect seems to interact with another. In the case of Mike's Theta preamp, improving the HF also caused the perceived bass to be clearer and deeper, even though the measured bass was (of course) unchanged. A sine wave has one frequency, but a single pulse sine of only a few cycles has a continuous, wide spectrum, with a sinc function envelope.
 
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Goodman is glitch free (except for some hard clipping) but with a rather large gain mismatch (L channel again) on the order of 1% (0.1dB). Unless you fix those basic issues and use some playback/rec hardware with decent S/N-ration I wont bother to do listening tests.
The soundcard had a fall a week ago, perhaps something has drifted. Prior, both channels were within 0.1dB window after 9 loopback generations of -1dB 400Hz sinewave signal, I will fine check loopback gain. I am finding that many/most tracks that are normalised to -0.1dB cause loopback overloads so the 01 - Original files are attenuated (-2dB) 24bit versions of the source files which are of variable provenance....16bit Flac, MP3, Youtube grabs etc. I can't do better than 44k/48k sampling and -80dB noise floor for now, so be it, the 02 modifications are to my ear advantageous and provide more accurate reconstruction/replay than the original. The 03 and 04 files bring deliberate 'sculpting' of the sound and to my ear are inaccurate but do have 'artistic merit'.
But I will propose a challenge for you: I will randomize two of your provided files (say, the correct 1st minute of Jump 2 & 3) and make sure you can't identify them with simple means, and will upload 4 files total. Then you tell us which ones of A, B, C, and D are Jump2 and which ones are Jump3. Deal?
This project is not about challenges. Anyway would I be looking for pairs or the odd one out ?....tell me which and I'll play along if I can send the same experiment back to you. First off we make it two copies of 01 and two copies of 02 in order for me to test your process, you should be able to pass my re-randomised send back of this test also. It would also be good if you were to describe the subjective differences that you hear between 01 and 02 files, we can compare/discuss. After that we can compare 02 file and say 03, I ought to be able to sort the two pairs, and you should be able to do so also. The next level is distinguishing 03 and 04 files, doable in my experience if you know what to consciously listen out for. Let's have some fun play. Dan.

I thought these were just various magnetic poultices applied to cables, on top of devices, etc.?
No and yes, more so putty form of BQP.
Dan.
 
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