Placement of resistors in signal path.

... it might be worth posting your question on the Audio Asylum general forum where you can discuss the sound of products without needing to get into building. It's a subject that gets a lot of people irritated here.
...

No, please don't send people away and turn DIYA into some sort of ASR! 🙂
There're only a handful of guys who get "irritated", and irritate others. The ignore list is your best friend.
 
But you have no proof but anecdote. I believe these differences are both inaudible and unimportant in any audio. There, just as much proof as you have. Only I'm not trying to sell myself as the high priest of audio.

But anecdotes ARE the reality! Real life, you know?

Here's some more: after John (Curl) told me about the pot business half a century ago, I ordered some Swiss-made Contrelec pots, with gold wipers; I didn't even have to listen to them, the wiper current and/or contact rectification were measurable. Yes, Bill, even with the gears way back then: we're talking about 0.x to 0.0x% THD/IMD. Anyway, the Contrelecs were only rated to 1000 cycles, surely because of the gold wiper.

Fast forward to 2022, I was listening to Emmylou Harris on my Jecklin (RIP) Float earspeakers, and noticed some quite annoying "grits" (THD+IMD) whenever the background vocals kick in. Strangely, the grits are not so annoying with other artists, like her friend Linda Ronstadt. Was it a common practice in Nashville to clip the background vocals? No, it was the speaker/headphone switch inside the Float! Now all is fine after I replaced it with a better one. Again, contact rectification.

Lastly, I'd like you to consider qualifying your remarks, like "I believe these differences are both inaudible and unimportant in any audio, within the resolving capabilities of my brain/ears/gears"
 
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All later diyaudio threads about audibility follow the same path. Heated discussion about something off topic. And Markw4 repeating one or more of these that are somehow supposed to prove his remarkable capability to hear beyond measurements:
1. ESS marketing slides about "noise floor modulation" (https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/placement-of-resistors-in-signal-path.384534/post-6980892)
2. Samuel Groner's measurement of ES9018 IMD hump (https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/placement-of-resistors-in-signal-path.384534/post-6981607)
3. How he passed PMA's ultimate opamp distortion AXB hearing test with ease (this is still missing)
 
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Being able to hear pathological faults is not the same as Mark using a speaker demonstration to claim that very low levels of DAC jitter are audible or others claiming things that are below the brownian motion noise of the air in the room. 40 year old switch contacts needing replacing is nothing new.
 
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It doesn't support Markw4's postulate in any way.

Bill, Maybe you are missing the bigger picture. Lars and Purifi have made more than one claim. There is the one we have been discussing here. One was about the audibility of hysteresis distortion, which they talked about in interviews. Another was about Lars development team hearing something that lay listeners couldn't, and Lars expressing a belief that people could be trained to hear it.

In the big picture I think there is some level of commonality those things and what I am interested in. Perhaps the biggest commonality of all things is not about the physics or the what fraction of the population may be able to hear this or that thing. Its about people, engineers in particular in this case, forming pretty firm conclusions with insufficient evidence. When I came to this forum and stuff I have read at ASR treats limits of audibility as hard limits. People seem surprised that masking theory is also an approximation. And so on...

One of the best explanations of how people form beliefs is the one at: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/02...ays.&text=Comment:,marvel, but a fallible one.

There is more about beliefs of course.
EDIT: Its too complicated to get into that more in one post so I'll stop here.
 
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There one other thing that comes to mind at the moment: Whenever phase is shifted, complex waveforms change shape. The fact that they did in this case is therefore proof of nothing. That people listened to some files and found them to sound different can be dismissed as merely anecdotal, a product suggestion, etc. Nothing has been shown that stands up to scientific standards of evidence. Same arguments I hear so often, yet I think people are pretty sure what they heard was real.

Having said that, no doubt there will be attempts at explanations for why this case is special. The signal is so big, etc. Not the same thing small signals or noises. However, those would be excuses. What really matters to the human mind is that YOU heard it, and so you believe it.
Some background info: https://rb.gy/thjuqi
 
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Another was about Lars development team hearing something that lay listeners couldn't, and Lars expressing a belief that people could be trained to hear it.
I fail to see why would I want to ‘learn or train’ how to spot distortion below normal audibility levels. That’s exactly what Markw4 is doing. IIRC, his comment was that he can determine distortion by observing some side effects that inaudible distortion produces.

When young, I had this audio obsession and was using music to listen to the equipment. That was plainly wrong as is method described above.
Now, after long detoxication pause I returned to this hobby, but now I’m using equipment to listen to the music. Big difference. 🤣
 
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One was about the audibility of hysteresis distortion, which they talked about in interviews. Another was about Lars development team hearing something that lay listeners couldn't, and Lars expressing a belief that people could be trained to hear it.
I think you are twisting Lars' words here. I did try and warn him not to give you things to quote but cat out of the bag now.

Its about people, engineers in particular in this case, forming pretty firm conclusions with insufficient evidence. When I came to this forum and stuff I have read at ASR treats limits of audibility as hard limits. People seem surprised that masking theory is also an approximation. And so on...
Who are these people and where is their suprise? And can you list the cases of Engineers forming firm conclusions with insufficient evidence?

ASR is one man's fiefdom. I personally ignore it.
 
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The ignore list is your best friend.
Yeah, just bury the head in the sand and continue on with the marketing ploy.
forming pretty firm conclusions with insufficient evidence.
That sounds familiar, on this very thread.
That people listened to some files and found them to sound different can be dismissed as merely anecdotal, a product suggestion, etc.
That happens when the listening method is undisclosed.
 
I fail to see why would I want to ‘learn or train’ how to spot distortion below normal audibility levels...
Maybe it wouldn't be right for you.

However if you were commenting on what is right for me then you may also fail to understand why ESS would train their executive team to hear noise floor modulation in dacs, or why lrisbo would bother to listen to small little imperfections in loudspeakers he is developing. Do you imagine that necessarily ruins ability to enjoy music the next day?

In my case diyaudio is remains a hobby, but I had to start learning how to listen for a job some decades ago. Figured if other guys could learn how then so could I. Doesn't keep me from enjoying music. That said, sound quality of satellite radio in the car seems a bit of a bummer.

EDIT: Another possible reason to consider might be that some people have been ridiculed and told they were hallucinating in this very forum because for whatever reason they could hear smaller imperfections than average. If we can teach a few skeptical people to hear something they insist can only be inaudible, then maybe they will learn something about more than just audio, maybe they will learn something about not being so quick to misjudge others.
 
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However if you were commenting on what is right for me then you may also fail to understand why ESS would train their executive team to hear noise floor modulation in dacs, or why lrisbo would bother to listen to small little imperfections in loudspeakers he is developing.
You seem to blindly believe any claims that support your own opinions. Of course ESS, Purify or any other company would want their potential customers to believe that their staff is trained to hear things their competitors miss. But unless they have fact-based evidence to support these claims they may just as well be hearing imperfections in their own products missing in their competitors's products.
 
Another possible reason to consider might be that some people have been ridiculed and told they were hallucinating in this very forum because for whatever reason they could hear smaller imperfections than average.
Let's stick to the topic. Please explain what imperfections OP might be hearing with different I2S series resistors and what resistor characteristics might be causing these imperfections.