Nice! I don't have an appropriately high-quality setup to do digital captures of my vinyl so this isn't an option for me (yet).
One thing that I will certainly be doing is trying my various DACs in the digital chain. The vinyl chain will act as a "control", and allow me to assess each DAC in comparison with the vinyl "control". This may or may not tell me a lot about my various DACs (WM8740, CS4398 and ES9023, so far 🙂 ). It will also be interesting to use the vinyl setup as a "constant" or "point of reference" which I can use for comparison when I make modifications to the DAC chain itself (for example, build a dedicated power supply for the ES9023, etc.)
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Excuse me, this is NOT about ego...
My very old hypothesis is that "even if a person cannot differentiate sound differences, he may well be affected by the difference".
A wise designer who knows he has limitation in hearing, will let others to decide if there is difference or not, or better which one is preferable, preferably by potential customers.
You know what, for me, I believe I can hear differences in your files. But the surprise is, I wont do such blind test for my stuffs myself. Differences is easy to pick up, but knowing which one to prefer is much more difficult. It takes a different way than such blind test to know it.
No. The goal is zero, I repeat, zero colouring. Precision reproduction is good enough to allow a superb subjective experience to be had, but most times the "precision" is not good enough. No matter what the numbers say, 🙂 .
Digital is harder, most times, to lift to the required level, LP is easier - hence the preference by many for the LP.
"Analogue colouring" is always part of good CD sound, because it's always in the recording - duuuhh !! The job of the playback is not to mangle that aspect, but frequently it is - I call that distortion, because the waveform is not being reproduced well enough. And this has absolutely nothing to do with hot trebles, less hot midrange and all the rest of it - the FR is not part of the answer, if that is the only thing you concern yourself with then you're almost guaranteed to fail to achieve adequate quality ...
I don't really, either. The capture was done with my venerable Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, a decent, but not professional card.
Jay,
Once you wrap your head around the concept that you may have a preference (when sighted) without hearing a difference (when blind), all is well.
You may believe your preference is founded on some difference that the test obscures (good for you!), while the rest of us think you are hearing the effects of bias (yay for us).
Everyone goes home happy.
Once you wrap your head around the concept that you may have a preference (when sighted) without hearing a difference (when blind), all is well.
You may believe your preference is founded on some difference that the test obscures (good for you!), while the rest of us think you are hearing the effects of bias (yay for us).
Everyone goes home happy.
I have playback systems that use external DACs, which have no capture ability. All the sytems which I might use for capture have basic integrated audio in the MBs. Although I might have a SB 64 or SB Live in a pile of junk somewhere. 🙂
For me, the test totally removed my "digital" reservations, and I've proceeded to relegate my turntable and pre-amp to my office for use digitizing my hundreds of lp disk for access in my main system. Slowly...
Cogitech, if you can find one of your old cards, give the test a try... You may be able to hear the difference, and you may not.
Cogitech, if you can find one of your old cards, give the test a try... You may be able to hear the difference, and you may not.
Is that your conclusion?? From reading my post(s)?
So it is all about ego then? 😱
Jplesset,
Just checked. I have a Creative Labs CT4810 (" Vibra 128 PCI"). LOL
Maybe I'll play with it just for giggles. Although I suspect even my modern onboard audio system in my main workstation would be better.
I'm not really trying to solve anything here. Very happy with both analog and digital setups.
Just checked. I have a Creative Labs CT4810 (" Vibra 128 PCI"). LOL
Maybe I'll play with it just for giggles. Although I suspect even my modern onboard audio system in my main workstation would be better.
I'm not really trying to solve anything here. Very happy with both analog and digital setups.
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Jay, the only valid approach is to be able to register those differences as the presence of different flaws in the sound. Hopefully, one version will have minimal flaws, or fewer than the other, so that typically would be the "better" - unless a residual flaw in that one is so unpleasant that it still is preferable to keep listening to the other.
Will you do the same with your amplifier?
What is your amplifier? Have you done similar blind test with $3 "digital" amplifier from ebay?
I might just mention, again, what I find to be a very effective approach to assessing the quality of a completely unknown system, that I'm about to encounter. I think to myself, "This is going to be a superb system, it will do everything right, it will show up what I've heard to date and what I've done myself as being not up to scratch" - that is, I deliberately "bias" my expectations beforehand to be overly optimistic. Then I enter and try, at least momentarily, to maintain that thinking - normally, 😀, such a "manufactured" preconception falls off the cliff so fast, I get dizzy from the descent - then, I can start methodically noting where the problems are ... 🙂
Very easy BigE. Every actions, statements, has intention/motives. Find out this motive from the paragraphs (linguistically), if you cannot find it, then may be you can seek between the lines (psychologically), but before doing that may be it is better to ask, don't you agree?
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