At a quick look, I don't see a test protocol defined there.
It's your hypothesis - so you should provide the test protocol - even if you copy it from somewhere appropriate - and post it here, or in a new thread so we can all evaluate.
So many questions.....however I don't think there's any need to sit on the fence about bringing back something that wasn't recorded. I'm happy to clear that one up for you
Please, exaggerations are not helpful. I have very slight tinnitus, but not a problem if I listen to a system at an appropriate volume level.
In addition, I make no claim whatsoever as to hearing how something sounded a month ago, much less even one year. Doesn't matter. I can still hear distortion pretty well in the frequency range I can still hear, and I find my perception of that correlates quite well with what much younger skilled listeners describe hearing in that same frequency range.
---------------------------
What seems to happen a lot in this thread is that people who have decided they already know quite well what people can or cannot hear simply ignore any evidence offered as de-confirming for their beliefs. Instead they feel they know any evidence offered as de-confirming a priori has to be wrong somehow or some way. The only question, if there is one to bother with, is to find what the exact fault in the proffered evidence is. The foregoing reaction to de-confirming evidence is well known from cognitive psychology research. The exact same behaviors occur when any kind of firmly held beliefs are challenged. People can be just as silly and illogical trying to protect cherished beliefs as they can be silly and illogical making claims about the sound of wooden speaker cables. That goes for people on both sides of issue, by the way. All the more so when the nature of the discussion is more one of debate rather than scientific inquiry.
I've had tinnitus for a few years now. What do you mean by appropriate level? To overcome it to a degree or not aggravate it or...?
That's good to hear, and we certainly do adjust. I find it rather disingenuous when people claim the views of those with impaired hearing should be dismissed until they get a hearing test. It seems to me to show a fundamental misunderstanding of how we hear
For me, tinnitus doesn't bother me unless I listen too loud, which is something that I find aggravates the symptoms. Fortunately, there is a window where sound is loud enough to overcome my hearing loss, but not so loud as to produce ear fatigue and or cause a flare-up of tinnitus symptoms.
+1
Last edited:
The one place where "grandpas with tinnitus" is inarguably a limitation is in hearing the top registers. You cannot compensate in-brain for things you're straight up not hearing because the hardware has degraded too far. Similarly, that doesn't mean younger folk that haven't operated too much heavy machinery or gone to too many rock concerts are automatically better listeners, just that one's bandwidth has to be respected.
Which makes a lot of claims rather specious, especially surrounding effects that are most manifest in higher frequencies (e.g. DAC reconstruction filters, jitter, wide-bandwidth source material, etc). This is even *more* problematic when said effects are sitting in the weeds.
Which makes a lot of claims rather specious, especially surrounding effects that are most manifest in higher frequencies (e.g. DAC reconstruction filters, jitter, wide-bandwidth source material, etc). This is even *more* problematic when said effects are sitting in the weeds.
If you notice, the child is the one who clearly registers the mastery of the player, who is playing a priceless strad for free in a DC subway.
The musician was playing a sold out performance later in the week for $400 a head or thereabouts.
He made something like $11 in loose change.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...6d46da-4331-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZeSZFYCNRw
Just in case anyone still had any faith in the general public to shed.
If I had to wager, childre are likely the only ones who are capable to hear the minute details in this discussion, if there’s anyone. Unfortunately they usually don’t have 14k to spend on a DAC, or if they did they’d spend the money on a bounce house or a theme park sized water slide instead.
A bunch of old farts with tinnitus? No way Jose.
I am not sure that is not unreasonable. To me that is a huge assumption and one I am not sure that holds. Look at how many people come on asking where they can get training for becoming a better listener. To me it is like saying that opticians would be expected to have better vision.
The extreme cases though are very vocal on here, you must admit. And whilst people are emboldened by the anonymity of the internet there comes a problem filtering fact from fiction. If there is no remote test that allows people to demonstrate if they can or cannot hear something we might as well just give up kick back and enjoy the music as nothing good will come from any discussion on here. I personally have no axe to grind wrt Foobar, but I also reserve the right to not trust any full sighted reports on audibility.
when the difference between the new and the strads was around 100x if the Strad is good value then the modern creations are 'cheap'@billshurv,
"couldn´t tell a strad from a cheapy" means i think being unable to distinguish, but that wasn´t the outcome of these experiments done by Fritz et al.
Afair "telling them apart" was no problem but choosing one of the participating "strads" as favourites was a problem.
Btw, "cheap" was none of the participating instruments ...
. And note this was just in response to the quote taken from a PhD these saying
. I personally think that was a daft statement to put in a thesis, but that's just me.
Ok I don't recognise myself in the bolded comment. I don't remember saying that and if I did am embarrassed with myself for doing so.
To discuss that little social experiment in pretty much any context beyond the difficulty by which the average, stressed, and overworked individual has to "stop and smell the roses" is pretty ridiculous. It makes for a nice sound bite, but come on, trying to conflate that with anything audio is absurd.
Agreed that higher registers are gone.
Don't agree claims are therefore specious, some effects of dac behavior are audible at lower frequencies whether or not we know the exactly mechanism(s) for that.
I would like to remind people that I read here that it was off-putting to people who do not hear small distortions to be called deaf, such as in, "Sorry you are so deaf!"
By the same token, it is just as off-putting to be told what amounts to, "Sorry you are hallucinating crazy!"
I describe what I hear, I describe taking steps to avoid over reliance on sighted listening, and so on. If someone wants to come out here where there is a good system and be in the same room at the same time, then we can see who hears what. In the meantime, I think people should refrain from what amounts to insulting insinuations, even if they are phrased to slip by the forum rules.
It's easy to describe everything as "it may make a difference, whether or not we know the exact mechanisms for that." -- We can say this about any infinite number of perceptions that may or may not be real. It's exactly the same thing you'll read from a website peddling homeopathy products similarly far fetched things. If I understand what you're trying to say, it's that there may be measurable effects, but they haven't been studied enough to illuminate them. That also inherently means the effect in question is really really really small. Again, makes audibility problematic.
Mark, you're perhaps the most outspoken on this thread about DACs, but my comment was much further reaching than you. The amount of stuff on this site about reclocking and reconstruction filters/oversampling is quite substantial, and almost all the playing around is done without measurements and the comparisons in "upgrades" are before/after modification (with at least a couple hour spread for the most industrious of solderers). That's problematic, triply so when it's a couple degrees of phase tilt at 20 kHz or essentially zero jitter to even closer to essentially zero jitter. It's incredibly hard to NOT be incredulous to those claims, and that doesn't mean you or anyone is crazy.
Maybe it's just me, but I've tempered my view that things are outright impossible/inaudible (within reason, I'm sorry the whole nitrogen modification hulabaloo from Bybee is past my ability to say "maybe"), but there are so many claims made that do not pass the smell test that influence other members to take inordinate steps in their builds/designs/etc. And then it becomes a "must have" feature given the power of suggestion and the fact that we humans are social creatures, while no one stops and asks the very legitimate question, "does this really matter?" The answer is likely "no", but no one goes against an "Emperor's new clothes" situation. We have a lot of folk that write as if they're an authority on a topic when all they have is strongly formed opinions, and a huge percentage of the population on this very site doesn't have the background to discern the difference between mechanism and personal opinion/impression.
Mark, you're perhaps the most outspoken on this thread about DACs, but my comment was much further reaching than you. The amount of stuff on this site about reclocking and reconstruction filters/oversampling is quite substantial, and almost all the playing around is done without measurements and the comparisons in "upgrades" are before/after modification (with at least a couple hour spread for the most industrious of solderers). That's problematic, triply so when it's a couple degrees of phase tilt at 20 kHz or essentially zero jitter to even closer to essentially zero jitter. It's incredibly hard to NOT be incredulous to those claims, and that doesn't mean you or anyone is crazy.
Maybe it's just me, but I've tempered my view that things are outright impossible/inaudible (within reason, I'm sorry the whole nitrogen modification hulabaloo from Bybee is past my ability to say "maybe"), but there are so many claims made that do not pass the smell test that influence other members to take inordinate steps in their builds/designs/etc. And then it becomes a "must have" feature given the power of suggestion and the fact that we humans are social creatures, while no one stops and asks the very legitimate question, "does this really matter?" The answer is likely "no", but no one goes against an "Emperor's new clothes" situation. We have a lot of folk that write as if they're an authority on a topic when all they have is strongly formed opinions, and a huge percentage of the population on this very site doesn't have the background to discern the difference between mechanism and personal opinion/impression.
I distinctly remember Bill making a comment with respect to large claimed differences and speculating that foobar ABX might be sufficient.
I see, i should have expressed myself better ; what i meant was, that if you belong to the group that have better listening abilities _and_ is interested in better audio reproduction quality then it more likely to find you in a special interest group like diyaudio.
Can´t dispute that, but wanted to point out that imo the "extremity" isn´t the problem. I follow these discussions since the mid 1980s and the argumentation pattern have been more or less the same. The basis for stating the nonaudibility of some effects is and was always the thresholds of hearing and while neglecting the probability nature of these so-called thresholds (which are in fact anything else than thresholds
) everything allegedly violating the threshold rule was considered as being "extreme" .The important part would be the "can or cannot hear something" because that is reduced to the "cannot" if only negative results are accepted.
So, does it make sense (from an objective viewpoint) to demand controlled "blind" tests if only negative results are accepted?
when the difference between the new and the strads was around 100x if the Strad is good value then the modern creations are 'cheap'
Can´t dispute that too, but the main point was that "distinguishability" between "strad" and "modern" was indeed given in these experiments, but the superiority of every "strad" (inevitable if the mythos would be true) was contradicted by the results.
My apologizes; it wasn´t related to your post and should have been in the "PMA" paragraph above in my post , i obviously made a mistake when editing and merging the answers.
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.