Or Tinky Winky 😉
Seriously folks, any thoughts on the files. Can you hear anything differences at all ?
Its a serious test and we have to have the courage of our convictions. I'll say one thing... imo it shows what a terrific job Doug did with that tone control stage.
Anyhow, does passing the signal through what amounts to 14 opamps in total add or detract anything, one opamp compared to the other.
This is how I did it: I picked clip1 and clip2 and ABX them. I started from the beginning of the files, moving to the end to find the perfect segment to hear differences. Too few options, I had to rely on one "variable of quality" only. So I didn't check other variables, only that "one"...
Then I pick the winner between the two (clip1/clip2) and ABX it with clip3 and so on until I found the winner and the runner up. Please note that I only ABX on that small segment for that one "variable of quality" only...
There is a problem here, because we have to list all the strengths and weakness, or to check all the "variables of quality" before deciding which one is the best or our preference. So before I claim the winner, I need to check at least one other variable of quality...
I picked one other variable, where I just play the song and listened to it as background music, where I could perceive fatigue and overall musicality. But I only compared the winner and the runner up. To my surprised, the winner is too fatiguing! And the runner up was something that I want to hear as my music... (I listened both files 3 times to decide that one file is more musical or less fatiguing than the other).
I think the one that was so good at that "one variable" is the bad one. That's because fatigue is an important variable for me.
Do you want to know what that "one variable of quality" is? There is The Voice Kids in local TV. One of the juries always talk about "feel" in music. She said, you can learn all the techniques in singing but you cannot learn the "feel". That "feel" exists more obviously when Norah sing "In fields (where the yellow grass grows knee-high)". At the end of the word "fields" there should be a soulful "bending" (in our language we call it "cengkok"; there must be musical term for that if you know about vocal/singing). In audio file, this is usually related with micro detail and no error with rhythm.
Which one do you want to know? Openly on the forum? I can listen more if more accuracy is needed. My computer at office and the headphone is much better than what I have here right now (bad sounding laptop and Nokia earplug)
harmonic patterns and psyacoustics i suppose is a starting point.
listening fatigue is a good metric , blood pressure too.
listening fatigue is a good metric , blood pressure too.
I have not sat on the sofa yet and drilled down to the file fine differences, but a walk through the lounge room tells me that your recording is way inferior to my Flac version...ie the two pass throughs with tone boost/cut are anything but transparent and rudely so..... overall clarity and depth imaging is killed, not that there was much of either to start with.
I suggest you repeat your test with tone controls flat, and one pass through only.
I would also ensure that when you save your edited files that dithering is not enabled.
This NJ record really is a POS....the distortions and processing render it quite useless as a test track.
Dan.
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Mooly, would you mind saying what kind of DAC and ADC you used for this? (I haven't listened yet, but I will). Thanks.
Sorry Dan, but I have to say the same excuses roll out time and time again with these listening sessions 🙂
Can't tell on that, not dynamic enough, compressed, distorted, clipping...... should have used this, don't like that music.
Its true 😉
I listened through twice and only the Blodwin had something that bothered me but I'm not sure without further listening. The other 4 sounded identical to me. It's true this is a fairly poor recording so why don't you solicit suggestions? There are things like some Ry Cooder, the Waterlily Acoustics Lable, maybe Jay could recommend something, no AC/DC though please.
I agree too you are adding to many variables, try 10 op-amps in a row flat.
.
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The player is a recapped early Philips with twin TDA1540 DAC's, the DAC is whatever is used on the Realtek soundcard on the PC. I've no details on that, sorry.
What I will say is that whatever the set up adds or detracts from the original is constant for all swaps of the opamp. That's the whole point of not having an original file to compare against... not that that would necessarily sound any different. What you have are all 'originals', differing only in the opamp.
The opamps don't know what is happening to the signal before and after them.
Also remember this is the low impedance version of the tone control and so some of those opamps are way outside the comfort zone. That should show up as added distortion... but is it audible ?
Hi Mooly.
I do hear differences from the sunroom, I have not listened from the sofa yet.
All that distortion/effects in the recording just drives me out of the room and that's with my 'clean' Flac version......I have never understood the commercial success of that album.
Dan.
Understood, but if enough additional distortion gets added to the test path, it might have some masking effect on more subtle differences. That being said, I did look at the files in Reaper, line them up to the exact sample, and I can see some differences in places. To what extent they might audible, I don't know.
The other thing I was thinking was that I have some good percussion samples. I might be able to put together some drum and cymbal samples that are very good quality. Since many people find that differences are often easiest to hear at HF, cymbals might make a more revealing test signal than some song or other, unless perhaps you have a very clean recording with good cymbals. Perhaps something by Steely Dan? They usually went for a nice sound. Edit: Their Aja album has a good reputation among recording engineers.
But that's like, what, 22 dB better distortion characteristics! The veil is totally removed. 😎
(This was the point that I tried to make earlier, small absolute differences are small, which got translated to "they're all the same" by some folks)
Mark,
My feeling on what so many say about the top octave of so many recordings is so affected by the crappy dome tweeters that are in so many speaker systems. Don't get me started on the majority of titanium domes as they usually drive me out of the room. So how can so many have such adamant positions when the speaker systems they are listening to are so flawed in that upper octave? I wish I still had a pair of speakers that I sold, they had the best top end of anything I have ever heard or built but I am just not going to reproduce those at this time as just the top two drivers would cost $10K for those drivers. It is so hard to objectively listen to many opinions as the playback systems are so flawed. Now someone saying they are listening to the sound of the files the Mooly just posted on a laptop computer using cheap earbuds is the ultimate offense, how can that tell you anything at all? No different than me trying to use the Beats sound in my HP laptop for critical listening, totally insane if I thought that was any kind of reference.
My feeling on what so many say about the top octave of so many recordings is so affected by the crappy dome tweeters that are in so many speaker systems. Don't get me started on the majority of titanium domes as they usually drive me out of the room. So how can so many have such adamant positions when the speaker systems they are listening to are so flawed in that upper octave? I wish I still had a pair of speakers that I sold, they had the best top end of anything I have ever heard or built but I am just not going to reproduce those at this time as just the top two drivers would cost $10K for those drivers. It is so hard to objectively listen to many opinions as the playback systems are so flawed. Now someone saying they are listening to the sound of the files the Mooly just posted on a laptop computer using cheap earbuds is the ultimate offense, how can that tell you anything at all? No different than me trying to use the Beats sound in my HP laptop for critical listening, totally insane if I thought that was any kind of reference.
Haha. We often hear people saying that we need high quality system in order to perceive small differences... Is that true? Yes, that's true. But there are things that many people don't know:
(1) The difference is very small.
(2) The difference is not in the perceived sound quality, but in that we have more variables (or metrics) of quality when using better system. There are things that we can never hear in a cheap systems. This will allow a bigger chance to listen to more variables. For example, with a good system in stereo, we can listen for the soundstage, the location of the drum and the singer. Some times you can hear as if the singer is sitting on top of the drum 😀 (no focus or pin-point imaging).
But in our case here, the sources are very bad. How can a good system show the goodness if it doesn't exist in the source? But yes, a good system will help.
Yes, I know what you mean. However, in fact the silk dome tweeters in my NS-10s sound awful, and the frequency response is far from smooth. Yet, the nature of their distortion is different than what digital does to cymbals. Bad digital cymbals defiantly make what comes out of the NS-10s sound even worse. Especially, in the very near field no more than a foot away from the speaker. As I get farther away, room reflections and HF air loss effects make the subtleties harder to hear. But, usually those things are still quite hearable with some Etymotic earbuds plugged directly in the the DAC-1 headphone output. I do have some other DACs, such as a swiss army knife box, a Tascam US-144MKII, which is pretty smeary by comparison. Not as easy to hear all the details coming out of that, unlike the case with the NS-10 tweeters (given the different type of distortion they produce). However, the Tascam box sounds fine to most people who have nothing better to compare it to. When I do let them compare, of course they all can hear a difference. Where they differ is in how much money they would be willing to spend to get the improvement.
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Have you ever had specific feeling about TL072 before?
Unfortunately there's no voting. If there were one, like I said yesterday, the 4562 would be the winner...
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Very cool but I don't know him. My dad probably knew him or at least knew of him. He had a small group of real friends. But his group of associates was big. So big that once he hurt his back in a car accident and was in the hospital for a week. I was 19 at the time, and doing my own thing but living at home. All know is I haven't seen him for two days. Not really that unusual. But here comes this call: "Hi, it's dad. I'm laid up in the hospital for about a week. I fine, it's just my back. Don't come and visit, AND DON'T TELL ANYONE I'M HERE! If you do, so many people will call it will drive you crazy."😀
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