😀. Oh my, did you ever post in the wrong thread. How many people have actually responded to your post? I'm thinking maybe one. You are likely better starting a thread in the "tools and equipment" area. This thread is for obsessive-compulsive argument about philosophical positions that have been raging for no apparent purpose for decades.
I believe you. Over the last 40 years I only made three upgrades and think they improved the sound. I didn't do it by ads but by a lot of listening and bringing components home for tryout. Ah the days of bricks and mortar shops. The stuff is listed below. I don't envision any changes. The Audible Illusions M3A was probably the best upgrade I made.
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Just better resolution of the samples. It's all relative..... like electronics reproducing an acoustic event is too.
I hear you, brother. I don't know what most of the things in your list are, but that's OK. I also don't often change or upgrade, though in the past decade I have built a pair of powered speakers, a preamp, and two phono preamps. Also restored and modified an old turntable. I love the DIY stuff, couldn't care less about so-called High-End audio!
Edit: In reply to henrylrjr
Edit: In reply to henrylrjr
I never designed drum machines or digital reverbs. I was a bench repair tech. If I had been an engineer at that time I would have likely been too busy, or too blinded to think up mods for the gear.
All the mods basically boiled down to DAC and ADC circuit tweaks. Very similar to CD player mods, POOGIE....
If you say a drum machine isn't HiFi then you have to say a CD player isn't HiFi either. look inside of each and they use many of the same parts and function blocks.
It's interesting how people think that there is this big divide between electronic music and digital HiFi playback. It is largely the same beast.
But that was in the 90's for me. Now I am an analog guy all the way. I cleansed myself of the digital kool-aid 7 years ago. AAA all the way!
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Then I am even more impressed, having spent some time toiling in the same field a long time ago, though strictly analog (not quite true but long story). So I am still a bit confused, were you describing a "by ear" repair procedure for these units? Was there not a service manual that indicated normal operating parameters? Or have I misunderstood you again?
So you were a repair tech but you were modding the units. So you were modding the drum machines etc. You were subjectively tuning them so they sounded good to you, and you had specific criteria that you used to do that.
I never said a drum machine isn't HiFi, though I guess I implied it. What I said and intended to imply is that I used to play drums, and I have never heard a drum machine that sounds like a drum (or a cymbal) in free air. This may say more about my experience with drum machines than anything else. But I know what drums sound like.
Basically just looking for cleaner separation of the harmonics in the sound, snappier transient attack and cleaner decay of the tail of the sound into the noise floor. The same as for any sound.
I know what drums sound like too. 🙂 My father was a session drummer here in Los Angeles. You can see him playing on the youtube. He is the drummer with curly hair and intent focus on the documentary Gabor Szabo Rising.
Interesting how the bias is against HiFi applications toward reproducing a fully electronic sound. A DAC is a DAC. A cleaner sounding DAC is a cleaner DAC no matter what it spits out.
Tis is one way for private fun in diy. 🙂
But it is not "reference" way, or technical way to improve audio gears. A lot of knowledge can save a lot of time, lost for random "trying".
IMHO, there is no "open mind" to trying "green bannanas" for improving sound, or such esoteric ideas, knowing tachnology of components is much easier way..
Yes. It is easy to open your mind so wide that your brain falls out. Can be seen here sometimes 😉
Jan
Yes, but...your earlier exposé cannot be seen as an argument against ABX-testing; it is an argument in favor of training testers.
After all, after the noise (tone burried in noise) had become audible through training, I am sure that same noise would also have become discernible in a properly conducted blind test.
Much of the misunderstanding in our group of friends may come from the fact, that poorly trained testers will perform poorly in ABX-testing, and will not be able to discern differences that are obvious to the trained listener. This is often used as an argument against ABX-testing, and it is partly correct, since no tester will be perfectly trained. This can lead to false negatives, were no audible difference is perceived, whereas one does exist in reality.
The sort of listening you and John advocate is actually training; training your ears to hear minute differences. This is a sighted, iterative process. I am convinced that through such process of self-training, differences will come to light that might not have been picked up in ABX-testing. However, this process is prone to false positives, where audible differences are perceived which are not really there.
In order to do it right and to weed out false positives, this process of training should therefore subsequently be verified through ABX-testing. However, for all sorts of reasons, this last step is often difficult or even impossible. Given this deplorable limitation, what is best?
Personally, I find false negatives more dangerous than false positives. The latter can only increase cost, perhaps, but will do no harm. The former, however, will bite your left ear off when, through an act of self-training, you suddenly become aware of an issue that from then on will be there, all the time, because you have learned to recognize it.
For me, all of this is moot, because I trust machines to be far better at providing data on sound quality than my ears. In that sense, all my tests are sighted 🙂
Yes, agreed.
How are subjects trained/screened for suitability ?.
One problem I have with BLT's as I understand them is that the average score is seen as the result, but what about the say two subjects who consistently score 100%.
This is the real result and shows that some people can differentiate the change perfectly reliably.
My next question would be which variant do the 100%ers prefer, and importantly why/how ?.
As I understand it, BLT's are merely a tool for manufacturers to pronounce a potential product as being 'good enough' to satisfy the intended market ....IOW as cheap as possible but good enough performance to match the opposition/satisfy the target demographic.
Once that decision is made and the product is released the 'rubber hits the road'.
Sighted testing will fool some listeners/test subjects but not all, and this false assertion is brought up ad nauseum around here.
I am quite the opposite...I have had so many thousands of pieces of gear that I have no attachment to over over my bench that I do not care whatsoever about the visuals....performance talks and BS walks, and it usually takes me only the first few notes of any familiar tune to grab the sonic 'fingerprint' of the DUT.....the rest of the tune is usually confirmation of the initial findings.
Claiming that all 'competently designed' amplifiers (or other gear) sound the same is fantasy.
Dan.
That's rather a comic book version of sensory testing. Perhaps some reading of the actual literature might disabuse you of some of the inaccurate notions you're carrying around.
If I were to make an 80:20 suggestion, my first would be to disabuse yourself of the notion that there is one single format and protocol that is somehow going to cover testing all possible hypotheses. The very first thing I discussed in my layman article was starting with the fundamental, "What is the specific hypothesis I want to test?" and indeed, that is step one for ANY valid experiment, sensory or otherwise.
If I were to make an 80:20 suggestion, my first would be to disabuse yourself of the notion that there is one single format and protocol that is somehow going to cover testing all possible hypotheses. The very first thing I discussed in my layman article was starting with the fundamental, "What is the specific hypothesis I want to test?" and indeed, that is step one for ANY valid experiment, sensory or otherwise.
Yet no one has ever managed to prove otherwise. of course we are still arguing over the definition of 'competently designed'.
At least he has a list.
The ones with such an open mind, that zerospinal fluid drips from their ventriculars, commonly do not have a list to share.
Oh Brother, where art thou (Frank)
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SY, you must be aware that I am well aware of your article, so you comment is likely aimed at Max. Let me set out the steps in my logic so you may be specific if you were to find fault in it.
1) ABX will lead to false negatives, because no tester is trained to be sensitive to all relevant differences;
2) iterative open testing will lead to false positives, because eye trumps ear;
3) ABX-ing is not always practical or possible;
3) it is better to have false positives than false negatives when the aim is to maximize sound quality;
4) the reverse is true when it comes to production costs;
5) Peter Walker was right and listening is only good for relaxing after a day of measuring the heck out of a piece of equipment.
1) ABX will lead to false negatives, because no tester is trained to be sensitive to all relevant differences;
2) iterative open testing will lead to false positives, because eye trumps ear;
3) ABX-ing is not always practical or possible;
3) it is better to have false positives than false negatives when the aim is to maximize sound quality;
4) the reverse is true when it comes to production costs;
5) Peter Walker was right and listening is only good for relaxing after a day of measuring the heck out of a piece of equipment.
Really ???? You really need to get out more and talk to more people.
People can tell the difference in sound between a Levinson, Krell and a Kensonic Accuphase. They are nor great, hardly stunning, but they are there and can be heard in blind testing, where the majority of votes got to unit A rather than B, without knowing which is which. Better yet, odd but accurate comments sometimes come up; in the said test, one subject said "B is a bit more true to life, but A is livlier and while not as good in details, it carries the tune better and ends up being more life-like." It turned out that A was the Krell and B was the Levinson.
It seems there are far too many people in this hobby (to me, perhaps a profession to others) who assume that because they can't hear a difference nobody can or there is no difference. Couldn't be further from the truth. Sadly, this includes far too many otherwise competent engineers. Especially true in cases when a medium priced item outshines a wildly expensive one (not often, but it does happen).
Which after so many decades and so many awards we have come to expect from John so we taje it as a given. May I remind you that this topic is called "JOHN CURL'S Blowtorch Preamplifier"? Didn't see the topic referred to your anything.
1. ABX is one out of many possible test formats.
2. If by "open testing" you mean peeking and no controls, yes.
3. See my response to #1.
3 redux. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is never better to have false positives when making claims. Honest practitioners will qualify their claims if the quality of the data is less than rigorous.
4. Often true. I can think of some exceptions.
5. Peter Walker did more to advance hifi than any other single individual I can think of with the exception of Alan Blumlein. When he talked, intelligent people listened.
Yes, my comment was aimed at Dan, not you.
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