Why would they do that ? There is no need to suspect a worldwide conspiracy. Competitors at this point (it was different when digital was in infancy) have nothing to offer but small improvements. But you cannot really sell that unless you're quite honest (some do though, see Benchmark's marketing for example).
Separate DACs were in fashion, then they went out of fashion, now they're back in fashion, why is that? Do you think I should upgrade from the DAC in my Marantz CD6004? Oh, it's a CD player, remember them? That's probably why, most people stream?
Good, but let me try to refine what you said. Saying we "subconsciously process information" is partly correct - our auditory perception processing is mostly autonomic & not conscious but there is certainly also a conscious aspect to it - we direct our focus to a finite number of elements within the soundfield & this sets up a feedback loop with our neurophysical hearing mechanism. "falsely discerning patterns when they are missing" is no different to all of our perceptions where illusions happen with all perceptions. Again, the point is that our perceptions are our interface to the world & it's long been known that accuracy of perceptions does not confer evolutionary advantage - otherwise, being the top dog, most evolved species we would have the eyes of eagles, the ears of moths (not bats - moths are more sensitive & accurate hearing - probably to avoid the bats), the nose of dogs, etc.
As I said earlier we are flawed & it's important to accept that fact. But within the restricted physical biological resources that we have to operate with we have optimised our perceptions to handle our interface with the world as concerns our survival requirements in that world.
Has anything in perceptual research been clearly established? Settled scientific facts tends to be the realm of the hard sciences & even then these established scientific facts can get overturned or significantly modified.
Yes there is a strand in perceptual research & papers written which show evidence that auditory perception uses techniques of statistical summary (audio patterning, profiling) & stores these in longer term memory. I can provide links to papers if requested.
But even without such research/papers, how do we explain the familiarity with & recognition of a familiar voice over a telephone & the hint of emotion in it? How do we explain that we can recognise the difference between rain falling on a tin roof & audience clapping hands - they are both random patterns of frequencies - much like pink noise. If you think about it, we learn new sounds by exposure to them - the military have done research into how experienced troops can recognize what guns are being used by the enemy based on the sound alone, mechanics once had the ability to diagnose an engine fault by the sound pattern it made, etc. These come from experience & comparing the profile of what's being heard with the stored sound profile.
As to your question about ABX testing my point is that we are not naturally capable of doing such a test because our auditory processing is not designed that way. Yes, we can train ourselves to overcome these obstacles & when a properly administered ABX test is run probably do justice to it but does that mean that casually organised ABX testing is anything more than performance art? It's certainly far from science which is OK as long as an attempt isn't made to give it the veneer of science which is what we see all too often
That's an interesting claim. How about, it is known that many or most genes code for multiple traits? It may not be possible to have the nose of a dog without having the rest or most of the rest of a dog along with it.
There are various are other problems with the line of reasoning, given that evolutionary advantage is complex and multifaceted. The rest of your post didn't need it anyway. Probably better to have skipped it.
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We should force pro reviewers to glue to the "Awesome" certified agreement !
A law man bring the dac to the Hifi magazine in a black box for the review ! The law man film it on YouTube from A to Z ! The best part would be the benchmark with an other black box on shelves! The Black Box from Jully issue may sound better than the Black Box of september issue !
Readers must pay the law man to know what is Inside the box (hifi reviewers will never know and as a consequence have less expensive dress & Watch) !
Price of your DAC will be of course the expensive price of the law man as the two dacs in the black boxes will be close in quality !
But you will be sure to have the best one !
Of course the law man is paid by AKM as well !
Henderson
(member of "Awesome team")
Edit : JB's posts have more sense imho than some posts asking from benchmarking two poor cheap DACs bought at EBay or Alibaba !
A law man bring the dac to the Hifi magazine in a black box for the review ! The law man film it on YouTube from A to Z ! The best part would be the benchmark with an other black box on shelves! The Black Box from Jully issue may sound better than the Black Box of september issue !
Readers must pay the law man to know what is Inside the box (hifi reviewers will never know and as a consequence have less expensive dress & Watch) !
Price of your DAC will be of course the expensive price of the law man as the two dacs in the black boxes will be close in quality !
But you will be sure to have the best one !
Of course the law man is paid by AKM as well !
Henderson
(member of "Awesome team")
Edit : JB's posts have more sense imho than some posts asking from benchmarking two poor cheap DACs bought at EBay or Alibaba !
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Maybe the phrase "it's long been" should have been left out, agreed.
Yes, let's not get into evolutionary genetics
Sure, even more reason for better hearing giving them a better chance of survival.
I don't remember which type of blind test was used.Doppler9000 said:
I am trying to establish principles. In this case, the principle is that two items are likely to be good enough if:
1. they are indistinguishable in a reasonable blind test
2. they are sufficiently different from each other that it is unlikely that they share a common error
I never said that. However, if you do not work in the audio industry then presumably you cannot be an audio snake oil salesman.
An astronaut is unlikely to be trying to sell something. It is well known that bankers cannot be trusted.
I take your point, there's been a little too much obsessing perhaps 😉 What do you suggest we do to try and help the poor confused guy?😱
to me there only 5 major components in every test system:
data stream -> dac -> pre/amp -> speakers -> ears (age)
every item must be documented for review in order for us to help
data stream -> dac -> pre/amp -> speakers -> ears (age)
every item must be documented for review in order for us to help
That is a reasonable/plausible approach, but unfortunately we don´t know if a test like this one reported by JonBoncani suffers from which effect/variable (or suffers from any ) because the according information is missing.
Otoh we know from past experiments that even quite large differencies can remain undetected under controlled conditions. Mmerrill99 already mentioned the various articles published about "inattentional blindness" and the more recent ones about "inattentional deafness" .
Furthermore it depends strongly on individual evaluation abilities and of course on individual concepts of importance. Missing to perceive the "gorilla" or the "electric guitar" is one thing; if you consider it as important is a different one.
It depends strongly on the conditions of any test. From my personal experience when conducting controlled listening tests with others i know that most often have difficulties to detect even quite obvious effects under test conditions which changes after training and getting used to the specific conditions.
Dave Moulton for example stated having noticed that "double blind test novices" even had problems at the beginning to detect level differences of up to 6dB .
I didn't read all the replies but I remember listening to a comparison of a Behringer A/D converter VS a much more expensive one in much the same manner. I listened through my headphones and while the difference was small, I could tell them apart and choose which one was which a statistically significant number of times. So making sweeping statements like there's no difference between a $30 and $3000 component...well.. it's not true. It's probably true in many instances and for various reasons. But it's not true across the board.
And by making statements like that, you are also indirectly saying that we're all nuts and spend money and time chasing something that doesn't exist. Which.. again.. there's some truth there do doubt, alot of it is in our heads. But no matter how much you tell me that my McCormack amp I had sounds just like my Rotel amp I had, I'll still walk away knowing that in truth it doesn't.
And by making statements like that, you are also indirectly saying that we're all nuts and spend money and time chasing something that doesn't exist. Which.. again.. there's some truth there do doubt, alot of it is in our heads. But no matter how much you tell me that my McCormack amp I had sounds just like my Rotel amp I had, I'll still walk away knowing that in truth it doesn't.
Have you done any research on the history of the ABX approach?
It seems you approve of it because it generates, predictably, the results you agree with.
Phew. For a second I thought you were going to judge the logic of what people say by their occupations. Thank god your biases aren't affecting your judgement.
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Is it also relevant to ask whether the differences between competent DACs are negligible when compared with the equipment used at the recording studio ? Even if you could hear s very small difference, the recording quality variances make it moot. Of course, if you shelled out $2k or more on a DAC and are feeling 'sore' then you'll disagree.