Yes, I noticed the emergence of budget Amps so moving forward can reevaluate but what about speakers? anything similarly priced like these budget amps?
With speakers you do get what you pay for but actually in terms of detail not so much. And you can always use headphones. Use some Sennheisser HD600 and are you really going to be able to better the detail those offer? Not really. In any case cheap DACs bring just as much detail as more expensive DACs these days. You can see that in the measurements (yes if the distortion is vanishingly low then the detail will be very high. That's how it works. If the detail is lower the audio signal is being distorted).
Of course we know how power cord woks, but we don't know some details. Possibly in a combination of different metals, possibly in the insulation material and its capacitance or etc... Please give an answer to post 842 about cars.
Marcel, what does one have to listening to in order for inter-overs to be a considerable annoyance for normal music listening? I mean, what kind of music is made in such a way that more than 1% of time is spent above -3dB at e.g. 11kHz - do they even happen at lower frequencies?
Not my claissical records anyway. But for sure, I dont want any to happen!!! 🙂
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We know all details that matter. Seriously, watch this video on loudspeaker cables. The guy is an electrical engineer. He knows how to measure cables. He knows that insulation materials do not matter at audio frequencies. He's worked with much higher frequency signals:
What about your psychological effects? Or do you think you are immune from them?
Disagree. I have HD600, Audeze LCD-X, etc. The Audeze definitely have better detail.
Some context here: the cheap SMSL DAC didn’t do too well compared to the more expensive Topping DAC in listening tests as posted earlier. Both measured very well with vanishing low distortion. Any ideas?
I recently upgraded to Pearl Sibelius speakers. The details alone amazed those who listened here. No bad an investment, maybe will be even better details with the likes of more expensive Linn or ProACs. Hopefully one day we get much cheaper Chinese ones ..
Practically zero when you use a digital volume control and that volume control is done before the first digital filtering operation.
Without digital volume control or with, for example, the digital volume control built into the SRC4392 asynchronous sample rate converter, which is placed at the end of the digital signal chain, many recordings will cause intersample overshoots.
It depends very much on the recording how often intersample overshoots occur. Some have none at all, like they should. Benchmark Media found an otherwise pretty good Steely Dan recording with intersample overshoots on every beat on a hi-hat, if I remember well. I would expect them not to occur often on most classical music.
I don't know whether it is audible on music. If I knew for sure that it is audible for people with very good hearing listening to music recordings with many intersample overshoots, I would have voted 'Yes' rather than 'Not sure'.
Frequency response can often affect our perception of detail. This is a big topic of discussion in the headphone community these days. Certain frequency peaks can "bring out the detail".
Of course psychological effects are a big factor, but it's complete nonsense to claim that everyone in this thread wants to ignore that. Why do you think the echo test of Ken Newton and me was blind, for example?
In fact, a few pages ago, there was a whole discussion about how a suitable blind test should be organized. Unfortunately it is not easy or cheap to do it properly. As you are blocking one of the key contributors, maybe the discussion was hard to follow for you.
By the way, Mark has repeatedly remarked that people who don't believe in audible differences are also subject to psychological effects.
I don't know understand you come to that conclusion. DACs regularly clip on music, which they should not do in my opinion.
To check whether it is audible on music requires an extensive double-blind test with carefully selected music and carefully selected listeners, which test no one has done as far as I know. It would not surprise me if it were audible on some recordings, but I simply don't know as no one has done that test.
How do these supposed psychological effects impact e.g an ABx test? Are you (or Markw4) suggesting that people who don't believe in audible differences somehow fool themselves into getting worse results?
It is well known that for untrained listeners ABX has a false negative bias. Also, often proper training is not employed.
For people who expect to hear no difference, maybe they will hear what they expect even if there is some slight audible difference they tend not to notice. For gross audible differences, that should more likely come through despite expectation to the contrary.
Also, IME there is some evidence that naive listeners can be trained to notice things their brains would normally discard as useless information. Its can be much like how the brain discards low level room sound information when trying to listen to someone talking at a low volume level.
For people who expect to hear no difference, maybe they will hear what they expect even if there is some slight audible difference they tend not to notice. For gross audible differences, that should more likely come through despite expectation to the contrary.
Also, IME there is some evidence that naive listeners can be trained to notice things their brains would normally discard as useless information. Its can be much like how the brain discards low level room sound information when trying to listen to someone talking at a low volume level.
IME people who believe in audible differences rarely take ABx tests (or are brave enough to publish the results).
Mark can remark what he likes. He's the only person I've muted on this forum and it was for good reason.
I have never said I "don't believe in audible differences" btw.
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