Correct.
A data, however misleading, can be useful for one and useless for others. Experience and intelligence will have a role here.
Other kind of experiences, yes. For example, it is the first time or the only experience I FEEL that player A sounds different? Do I have experience listening to this kind of differences, critically? Does the difference sounds familiar?
We need a lot more than that. If we want to write a thesis.
Such is data. Useful for some, useless for others...
If you want something that is ALSO useful for you, follow my suggestion:
Set your Windows as "bit-perfect" as possible. Play the same file through different players, record the output. Let those who have good ears to (1) Prove that there is audible differences (2) Describe the sound characteristics of each files (3) Based on the sound character, suggest which one is which.
No. Sorry. I do not have the time or patience any more to deal with Windows. I stopped using it for audio ~15 years ago.
I do know, however, that modern versions of Windows have the capacity for bit-perfect audio playback and many software players for Windows can and do work with it. ASIO is there if all else fails. I also know that they will all sound identical when configured appropriately. If they don't, then one or more is not bit-perfect.
(Again, this holds true for lossless formats only. Switch to a lossy compression algorithm and all bets are off. It has been demonstrated that there are very real decoding differences between different CODECs decoding lossy formats.)
Last edited:
That sentence doesn't make any sense.
epistemology 101: the practicalities of falsifiability are defined inside and in reference to a particular epistemological field (the "technical realm" in this case, feel free to substitute a particular scientific discipline to this deliberately vague expression).
Exactly the usual figurative use of the word as in
A: "I think I heard something."
B: "You're just dreaming, there's nothing here."
More irrelevant banter. Nothing more than a common mistake from a native French speaker. Replace any occurence of "we" by "one".
Yep, that's true in my understanding too - perception is a process of creation using inferences with built-in biasses.
Sounds fine to me. So why the disagreement with what I've said? Seems to me that your perceptual processes are applying something (based on past experiences or expectations) to distort the meaning you're getting from seeing my words on your screen.
Incidentally an excellent presentation outlining how our visual perception works was given earlier this year in a TED talk by Donald Hoffman (Prof of Cognitive Science, U.C.Irvine), the link to that is here - Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? | TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript | TED.com
Ah I see we're back to (or perhaps just never got away from) your mangling of what Frank has written into a form which suits your particular perceptual biases. To wit inserting 'I think' where Frank himself didn't use those words.
He didn't need to. Anyone having nothing more to offer than sighted subjective listening is always saying "I think I heard this or that" in practice.
You don't need a Psycholog to understand Psychology. Psychology students READ books written by more experienced and intelligent people, Psycholog or not. If you are intelligent, you can write books for them to learn. But not all knowledge (specially Psychology) can be transferred through reading books.
Because of this:
My point is that 'opinion' and 'experience' can not be clearly separated, since opinions are products of memories and imaginings.
Yes and no... what constitutes "data" ? In this particular case of subjective sighted listening, how do I know that I actually have data on hand ? That's why validation is necessary.
I agree of course that experience and intelligence can fill in a lot of gaps and put unreliable data into proper context, but when it comes to linking what I hear to a particular electronical phenomenon, I need hard data, even if I'm just doing troubleshooting and not writing a thesis. This validation can in itself be the discovery of a technical defect... but this defect must be established by another mean than just listening, otherwise one is stuck in a unreliable loop.
Why not ? Gimme a few days to take the desktop out of storage (I'm currently moving from France to Belgium).
@Killingbeans - You've lost me as to why you think opinion and experience are not distinct (qualitatively different) things.
I'm not accepting it at all. I am providing "benefit of the doubt". I have played audio from many different PCs and have never found a shred of evidence that different software players create more or less internal PC interference.
This is grasping at straws. My hardware is rather pedestrian and the power supply configuration of both the PC and the USB/DAC chain would be considered wholly sub-optimal or even inadequate by most "audiophiles". Configured as it is, it is "the perfect storm", opening the door for PC "interference" to infiltrate my DAC and mess things up.
Yet my tests have shown that cranking the system up to maximum CPU, cache and RAM utilization has absolutely no audible effect.
So then you're sticking by your claim that 'all the interference will be the same' when the only thing that changes is the piece of software playing the audio?
Seems like you're arguing backwards from 'no change in sound was heard' to 'no change in interference was present'. Have I got that correct? Or did you have another way to quantify the interference levels?
So you're claiming then that no other hardware could possibly be worse off than yours for interference - that yours is undeniably the worst case, no possible exceptions?
@cogitech: go back to post 1036 for an absolutely worst case situation. If indeed foobar is accessing the cd rom in burst, analog noise artifacts wouldn't be surprising in a laptop.
Nothing to do with how media players process digital flow however and the main complaint seems to be the noise made by the cd drive itself...
Nothing to do with how media players process digital flow however and the main complaint seems to be the noise made by the cd drive itself...
Using a laptop as a music server or cd player is not really a good idea if you want the best quality, laptops are a convenience. I use an i7 based laptop for my work and it is outgunned by an i5 desktop... It does seem like a bit pointless.
The other thing is why is there so much hostility to using DBT and BT to confirm ones perceptions?
The other thing is why is there so much hostility to using DBT and BT to confirm ones perceptions?
Because they interact with each other. Opinions can give a different experience, and experiences can form a different opinion. The whole point of a blind test is to minimize the interaction.
In computing we have "data" and we have "information" terminologies.
When you hear that player A is different with player B, then you will try to describe the differences. Then you relate this difference characteristics with your other experience and knowledge. For example, player A has more "smooth" sound. Then you relate that with the principle of dithering. Then you try to listen for noises in quiet passage... Then you check how the player option setting has been setup regarding to dithering...
Or player A has more "realistic" sound. Then you learn from past experience and your knowledge regarding audio encoding, that there seems to be more information in a certain frequency bandwidth. But this means that more bits are required. Then you will check if a decoding software is "changing" resolution (bitrate)...
Or if you hear that there is difference (whatever it is), you know that there must be something "wrong". Then you can check your computer settings (until you are sure that there is nothing influential there)... Or may be you have an interest regarding how good a certain decoding software has been written? You can compare the outputs of several decoding software...
So....
From listening alone I know that my computer is not "bit-perfect". Sorry to use this vague terminology. Where the problem lies, is not something easy to find... But if I were paid to find it, I will find it... It wont be difficult, just boring and time consuming...
You will ask, how could I know that my computer is not "perfect" without hard evidence? Coz I trust my ears more than you trust yours or mine... I simply notice how the same file sound different in different computers (both using Windows XP)...
Hehehe... in what ways do you think people are different??
If the various software players and OS are optimally configured, then for all intents and purposes the interference in the system will be "the same". Will there be infinitesimal differences? Perhaps. Will they be audible? Based on my experiments involving extreme differences in system activity; NO.
If there is some infinitesimal change in interference, which does not result in audible changes to the sound, then the conclusion is obvious.
Reducing the argument to the absolute lowest common denominator is futile. Frank's example approaches this scenario, but I can think of worse. I have no interest in a race to the bottom. If the objective is to argue the merits (or lack thereof) of digital audio based on a worst-case scenario, then I am not surprised at all by much of the commentary here.
Last edited:
Yes. I saw that. It all comes back to configuration. One application is either improperly configured or not intended to be used in such a way. The user is responsible to configure and/or use the software as intended.
Nothing to do with how media players process digital flow however and the main complaint seems to be the noise made by the cd drive itself...
Yes. Mechanical noise of the CD-ROM drive, and also electrical fluctuations I suppose. It is an isolated example of how most people don't listen to digital audio and therefore the claimed "difference in sound of player software" becomes a generalization based on a very specific set of sub-optimal circumstances.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.