Like most people that are willing to admit it, I do not have the answers, only an ever increasing amount of questions 🙂
I think it is fairly safe to assume though, that there are a lot of people out there with a great passion for this "hobby".
I just wish that the same passion would not cause them to resort to unnecessary personal attacks in attempting to get their point(s) across, it serves very little useful purpose and belittles the whole subject.
The question is when can you trust your own perceptions?
Cable enthusiasts obviously trust their perceptions when doing sighted tests but not when doing DBTs.
Cable enthusiasts obviously trust their perceptions when doing sighted tests but not when doing DBTs.
Hello SY!
I don't know who you're refering to when you mentioned "Russell" in your quote but, hearing that name reminded me of Roger Russell, the ex-McIntosh speaker designer, who like many other engineers also believes; speaker-wire all sounds the same provided the resistance is low enough. Here's Roger Russell's complete article on speaker-wire from his website: Speaker Wire
Well as luck would have it, Roger Russel lives about 30 mins away from my home, is a fellow member of the Central Florida Audio Society and is a friend of mine. Roger was supposed to attend the last get together at my home when we compared the Stealth Audio Sakra IC against all comers but, unfortunately his health prevented him from attending.
SY I'd be willing to bet if Roger was feeling good the day you administered the DBT at my home, he'd like to attend. I cannot help but feel Roger's presence would help give this test a lot more credence in the eyes of many audiophiles & engineers who might otherwise just shrug off the results. What do you think about this SY?
Thetubeguy1954
~Rational Subjectivism. It's An Acquired Taste!~
The discoverer of soliton waves (it's actually some very cool physics; I did some work on soliton charge transport in 1-dimensional conductors for my doctoral dissertation, trying to disprove it- I was totally wrong, of course!😀).
I would love to meet Roger Russell. I've read a lot of his stuff, agree with much of it, and respect the hell out of his accomplishments.
I don't know if I've been insulted or complimented.😀 I'm no "golden ear" and my HF extension is certainly age-limited, but I can tell the difference between live and recorded. And it ain't because of the wire- compared to the process of compressing a 3-D soundfield into two channels, then playing it back in a different space with two transducer sets with god-knows-what wavelaunch, all else is pretty much flea farts.
Have you NOT seen the constant urging and encouraging of TG recently to make sure he gets used to the test conditions?
We have been pushing these very points that you have constantly urged.
Howzabout being constructive (again, as you have been many times before) and help advise TG how he CAN get used to test conditions.
Ok, one last atempt or Jakob2 would think i do not know about other test methods.
In fact Prof. Hawsford, Dipl. Ing Bernd Theiß and me made the first scientific setup to my knowlage to compare 44KHz 16 Bit to 96KHz 24 Bit in the early 90th. We took the then new Nagra maschine and mastertapes from Chesky. In an extremely carefull blind test
( i do not remember the statistics but Mr.Theiss IS extremely carefull) we wated to try out if 96kHz gave better imaging. Using gaussian tones over an optimised speaker layout that was aso the theme of one AES paper there was no difference in immage precission or lokation. I do not know if that result was ever published but it could. It whould stand the test of time. Listening to the system in our free spare time just for fun reveiled much bigger differences and preferences but we found no scientific method to argue conclusive so we kept it anecdotal. That was my last time i participated in a double blind test of whatever setup. I say it again. It is not sensitive enough to reveal differences that get obvious after prolonged and privat listen. If that whould be the case then the english listening test of the 60th (remember: 0.1% distortion is inaudible, phase distortion is inaudibe etc.) whould have put that problem to rest. Visit me. I have a "flawless" system from the 60th. It´s just good enough for country music.
In fact Prof. Hawsford, Dipl. Ing Bernd Theiß and me made the first scientific setup to my knowlage to compare 44KHz 16 Bit to 96KHz 24 Bit in the early 90th. We took the then new Nagra maschine and mastertapes from Chesky. In an extremely carefull blind test
( i do not remember the statistics but Mr.Theiss IS extremely carefull) we wated to try out if 96kHz gave better imaging. Using gaussian tones over an optimised speaker layout that was aso the theme of one AES paper there was no difference in immage precission or lokation. I do not know if that result was ever published but it could. It whould stand the test of time. Listening to the system in our free spare time just for fun reveiled much bigger differences and preferences but we found no scientific method to argue conclusive so we kept it anecdotal. That was my last time i participated in a double blind test of whatever setup. I say it again. It is not sensitive enough to reveal differences that get obvious after prolonged and privat listen. If that whould be the case then the english listening test of the 60th (remember: 0.1% distortion is inaudible, phase distortion is inaudibe etc.) whould have put that problem to rest. Visit me. I have a "flawless" system from the 60th. It´s just good enough for country music.
Why do you assume that your uncontrolled impressions were correct and the blind ones were incorrect?
Reference? Sounds like an opportunity for a good technical exercise, I'm not that keen on DBT's.
$1000 for a 1 meter HDMI 😕
The majority of the test persons could not hear a difference even in a privat situation but some where extremely sensitive to tiny changes in that situation. That majority problem is one of the flaws of that setup. So i could say: yes ! the test had a correct output.
That is what big companies like BOSE or B&O do. They prove in sofisticated group tests that their goods are undistinquishable from the source input so have perfect fidelity.
Ok, then you say : assemble a group of sensitive listeners and repeat the test !
If it whould be that easy ! i know not a single person that has exactly my listening and know only maybe 10 persons world wide that have aproximately my taste. And i know a lot of people. For me it is more importand what a person says that i know and trust then any mechanical test you could ever design except one day a computer passes the Turing tests. We are humans but some find that uncomfotable and like precooked meals. Are you saying that Bocuse is a cheeter ? Put in a cromatograph or any other device his food has not more nutrition then a burger at Mc Donalds . So Mc Donalds whould pass a scietific test each day and then you can say: Any other quality does not bring benefit because the test results are perfect and all other meals that are more expensive are overpriced. I talk about Audio as an Art that needs Science only as a tool.
That is what big companies like BOSE or B&O do. They prove in sofisticated group tests that their goods are undistinquishable from the source input so have perfect fidelity.
Ok, then you say : assemble a group of sensitive listeners and repeat the test !
If it whould be that easy ! i know not a single person that has exactly my listening and know only maybe 10 persons world wide that have aproximately my taste. And i know a lot of people. For me it is more importand what a person says that i know and trust then any mechanical test you could ever design except one day a computer passes the Turing tests. We are humans but some find that uncomfotable and like precooked meals. Are you saying that Bocuse is a cheeter ? Put in a cromatograph or any other device his food has not more nutrition then a burger at Mc Donalds . So Mc Donalds whould pass a scietific test each day and then you can say: Any other quality does not bring benefit because the test results are perfect and all other meals that are more expensive are overpriced. I talk about Audio as an Art that needs Science only as a tool.
hi Scott ! go to : SONICSONLINE - Audioequipment Lautsprechersystems Schallwandlersysteme der Marktführer and then under:
"Technical Contribution" you can find my (old) work.
"Technical Contribution" you can find my (old) work.
No, but I will absolutely guarantee to be able to distinguish his food from McDonalds in a blind test. The analogy escapes me.
What insight do you get from peeking? How does that make your ears better? Why do the distinctions vanish when you cover up the labels?
Unfortunately the fun stuff was "omitted for clarity". The FR stuff is what we talk about all the time, known to be audible and no as yet undiscovered physics necessary.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/60401748@N00/3336680550
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What i wanted to say is that scientific prove tests that have statistic relevance are unsensitive to small differences that may be importand to a few that have better diferentiating abilities. A friend of mine is a Michelin Star cook and he made a burger for me. I swear that in a double blind test most people would prefer the Mc Donalds variety.
It contains smell and taste anhancers and is downright addictive. I have so much lust for a burger some time that i eat maybe 4 a year. Really natural sound can be quite unspectacular at first if you understand that analogy. It needs training and a lot of experience to see the finer elements of life and what you see than can be quite uncomfotabe. The truth is hard to swallow.
By the way, i test cables with a straight bypass test the way Davis Salz teached me.
Monoblocks 1cm to the speakers with a piece of copper against 3m loudspeaker cable.
Bill Waslo of Praxis made his Diff Maker that you can download for free from the web and i worked with him very succesfull on distortion isolation in the time domain. I can even isolate rubb and buzz in spaekers that totally escape harmonic or intermodulation tests with a special Inverse FFT. I realy adore a clean system !
To teach my ears hearing : i have my own band, i record, i produce, i compose, i sing and i play guitar, bass and percussion. i listen as often to my system as i can with my 16year old son that has hearing to 20kHz still. i test him and me regulary with headphones (AKG701 modified)
It contains smell and taste anhancers and is downright addictive. I have so much lust for a burger some time that i eat maybe 4 a year. Really natural sound can be quite unspectacular at first if you understand that analogy. It needs training and a lot of experience to see the finer elements of life and what you see than can be quite uncomfotabe. The truth is hard to swallow.
By the way, i test cables with a straight bypass test the way Davis Salz teached me.
Monoblocks 1cm to the speakers with a piece of copper against 3m loudspeaker cable.
Bill Waslo of Praxis made his Diff Maker that you can download for free from the web and i worked with him very succesfull on distortion isolation in the time domain. I can even isolate rubb and buzz in spaekers that totally escape harmonic or intermodulation tests with a special Inverse FFT. I realy adore a clean system !
To teach my ears hearing : i have my own band, i record, i produce, i compose, i sing and i play guitar, bass and percussion. i listen as often to my system as i can with my 16year old son that has hearing to 20kHz still. i test him and me regulary with headphones (AKG701 modified)
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