A rant ...

[Jimster480]

The guy thinks there are trillions of people, LOL!
He also thinks that writing things in UPPERCASE makes them true......

 

[Sal1950]

This made sense to my belly..,

What's that nasty lookin pile of gray/brown stuff on the right of the meat?

 

[Wombat]

I'm always impressed by the uncanny ability of some people who can write till the cows come home but say absolutely nothing of value.

Rhetoric and unsupported opinion, usually. Also be aware of those who very confidently express nonsense. What one can accept is dependant on credible knowledge and understanding of a topic rather than mere opinions from ignorance. Humility re one's knowledge and understanding of a position is required.

Einstein: " If you can't explain it briefly' you don't know it enough"!
(or have a problem with cognition and/or language expression - my add, not Einstein.

Opportunists work on the ' bullshit baffles the consumer brains' principle.

 

[Wombat]

Great post.

This made sense to my belly..,

View attachment 11067

Beautifully cooked beef and KETCHUP?

 

[Wombat]

Interesting knife and fork setting.

That would have you banned from English Society.

 

[Wombat]

What's that nasty lookin pile of gray/brown stuff on the right of the meat?

Leftover gourmet Schiit.

 

[Thomas savage]

What's that nasty lookin pile of gray/brown stuff on the right of the meat?

Chopped liver ( liver patè)

Very nice with the rye bread and some of that raw onion..

 

[Thomas savage]

Interesting knife and fork setting.

That would have you banned from English Society.

I was undercover .

 

[Thomas savage]

The guy thinks there are trillions of people, LOL!
He also thinks that writing things in UPPERCASE makes them true......

#FACT

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

It looks like a desperate attempt to cling to a belief system that can not withstand scientific scrutiny.

This. He’s railing against anything that might challenge what he wants to believe. He’d rather define an alternate reality than risk being wrong.

 

[March Audio]

I've just a similar run-in with some on the other Forum I participate in, HiFiWigWam.

My position is that how something makes you feel has nothing whatsoever to do with what the equipment does and how it does it. Audio Equipment is a tool, it's no different to a washing machine or a chisel. An amplifier doesn't know or care if it's passing a signal consisting of sublime music, raucous Rap, test tones, white noise or anything. It will just output a controlled version of its input. Ditto a loudspeaker, it will output longitudinal pressure variations in the air corresponding to the voltage at its input. It doesn't have emotions, emotional connections, musicality, it's a box that does more or less as it's told.

It seems that whatever the hobby, people attach their own emotional baggage to what they're buying. How many petrol-heads will ever say their car is a box on wheels that gets them to the supermarket? What car manufacturer will ever market their cars that way? It's all touchy-feely, emotional connections bullshit.

As a recent contributor, I found I like this forum because it doesn't treat HiFi kit emotionally, just as bits of kit which do stuff more or less well.

I hope that continues.

It just doesn't give me the 30 page circular argument threads I get elsewhere.

S

Indeed. Audio is engineering. Nothing more. Its is either done well or not. This is objectively measureable. Dacs in reality sound and measure very similar, and when they dont there is a measureable reason why. Im sure people do hear Schitt dacs as sounding different. Thats because they do due to all the distortion. Problem is that some interpret that distortion as good sound quality

 

[svart-hvitt]

Indeed. Audio is engineering. Nothing more. Its is either done well or not. This is objectively measureable. Dacs in reality sound and measure very similar, and when they dont there is a measureable reason why. Im sure people do hear Schitt dacs as sounding different. Thats because they do due to all the distortion. Problem is that some interpret that distortion as good sound quality

You wrote:

«Audio is engineering.Nothing more.»

You are wrong. Add psychoacoustics and you’re closer to «truth».

Geddes explained some years ago how he in his younger days met his own limitations when thinking only in terms of engineering. His limits were broken and his perspective was broadened out when he added psychology, psychoacoustics to his weltanschauung.

 

[March Audio]

You wrote:

«Audio is engineering.Nothing more.»

You are wrong. Add psychoacoustics and you’re closer to «truth».

Geddes explained some years ago how he met his own limitations when thinking only in terms of engineering. His limits were broken and his perspective was broadened out when he added psychology, psychoacoustics to his weltanschauung.

I disagree. Accurate reproduction of the recorded signal is engineering. Otherwise you are agreeing with the premise of the quote in the OP, which is essentially that anything goes.

General psychology has nothing to do with it. In fact bringing any individuals mental abberations into the equation is a recipee for disaster. Just look at all the biased uncontrolled opinions about hifi that abound on fora. Psychoacoustics however is effectively the engineering of acoustic perception. Quantifiable, objective and far more consistent than might be implied by the "psycho" label.

 

[garbulky]

I'm here listening to Radio Swiss Jazz, an internet radio station that streams original jazz recordings and commercially released tracks, both with no further processing. Streamimg is at 128k MP3, and it sounds most acceptable.

My own listening tests have shown that I can hear the difference up to 192kMP3, BUT ONLY AS AN AB COMPARISON WITH THE ORIGINAL. Without that AB comparison, 128k sounds perfectly fine. Some 12 years ago, when I put our local radio station onto the internet, many if not most people were still on dialups so I set it to 32kbps, WMA and it was surprisingly acceptable, much better than AM radio, if not up to FM levels.

My conclusion is that Fraunhoffer et al have done a pretty good job on these codecs, so when somebody comes on a forum and says that 320kbps AAC is unacceptable, or they can hear the difference between flac and WAV, I express my incredulity, just to get back the usual, I can hear it, and I trust my ears, and no I don't do blind tests because they're too stressful.

S

I agree that mp3's have a lot to give. I hear a lot of times, why get a DAC, it's just an mp3. But there's still gains to be had even if you are using mp3's. Now 32kbps wma - no. That's pretty obvious there. I've also tried 64 kbps wma still pretty raw sounding. It's much harder to hear a difference between 192 and 320 kbps mp3's. And harder to differentiate 320 kbps from wav.

I used the Gungnir multibit and it was one of the only dacs I tried that actually did show a difference between mp3's and wav. There is a (subtle) haze on the mp3's. The haze obscured things like ambient information. I'd never heard it make itself that obvious till then. Keep in mind that I didn't run any DBT tests or level matched tests in this. This was my listening impressions. So take it for what that's worth.

So mp3's have more to give than what one expects. But they do have their limits imo.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I disagree. Accurate reproduction of the recorded signal is engineering. Otherwise you are agreeing with the premise of the quote in the OP, which is essentially that anything goes.

General psychology has nothing to do with it. In fact bringing any individuals mental abberations into the equation is a recipee for disaster. Just look at all the biased uncontrolled opinions about hifi that abound on fora. Psychoacoustics however is effectively the engineering of acoustic perception. Quantifiable, objective and far more consistent than might be implied by the "psycho" label.

We may be talking past each other. But take a look at this interview with a humble Geddes. He explains why his marriage and coworking with a woman of a different background (he was a harder science guy, she a softer science girl) was beneficial to their work in audio.

Well worth a read!

https://www.dagogo.com/an-interview-with-dr-earl-geddes-of-gedlee-llc/

 

[Sal1950]

Im sure people do hear Schitt dacs as sounding different. Thats because they do due to all the distortion. Problem is that some interpret that distortion as good sound quality

Very similar to vinyl reproduction, no?

Add psychoacoustics and you’re closer to «truth».

Psycho-acoustics, is that the Norman Bates / WBF wing of High Fidelity research?

 

[Sal1950]

Chopped liver ( liver patè)

MY GOD MAN, you eat that, what are you a cave man.
Round these parts we call that bait.

 

[Jimster480]

I agree that mp3's have a lot to give. I hear a lot of times, why get a DAC, it's just an mp3. But there's still gains to be had even if you are using mp3's. Now 32kbps wma - no. That's pretty obvious there. I've also tried 64 kbps wma still pretty raw sounding. It's much harder to hear a difference between 192 and 320 kbps mp3's. And harder to differentiate 320 kbps from wav.

I used the Gungnir multibit and it was one of the only dacs I tried that actually did show a difference between mp3's and wav. There is a (subtle) haze on the mp3's. The haze obscured things like ambient information. I'd never heard it make itself that obvious till then. Keep in mind that I didn't run any DBT tests or level matched tests in this. This was my listening impressions. So take it for what that's worth.

So mp3's have more to give than what one expects. But they do have their limits imo.

Duno it really depends on the song. Considering the poor accuracy of Schiit DAC's its a wonder how you could tell 32kbps wma from 320kbps OGG VBR or FLAC xD
But overall some songs sound better than others on different formats.

 

[garbulky]

Duno it really depends on the song. Considering the poor accuracy of Schiit DAC's its a wonder how you could tell 32kbps wma from 320kbps OGG VBR or FLAC xD
But overall some songs sound better than others on different formats.

I never used those low bit rates with the Gungnir MB. I do wonder what the actual impact of the -90 db performance actually has to do with my listening. I'm not too worried about it. Though from a measurement standpoint, it is dissapointing that DS DACs appear to easily outperform the Schiit MB DACs in linearity.

(note these are my subjective impressions).
I mainly use an Emotiva DC-1 which I think sounds really nice too. I thought there was more room ambience detail with the DC-1. So it wasn't necessarily a "detail" thing that the Gungnir won. However, it was able to portray individual instruments in a more stable manner in the soundstage. But it was the Schiit that was able to show the difference (for me) between mp3 and wav. It really was quite nice when I used it. In my opinion, the way it did sound was unlike other DACs I'd heard which was DS DACs for the most part in the way it portrayed the soundstage. I also tried it with some of my own recordings that were done in stereo in my own room uncompressed. It was pretty remarkable at how well it reproduced it imo.
I wish they would produce a cheap multibit ADC so the entire chain can be multibit just to see if there is an audible difference.

I would be interested in seeing if the Ygdrassil can win me over. Right now the Yggy's biggest drawback is its lack of a remote for living room use. I can't expect my family to decipher those heiroglyphics on its front panel!

 

[Jimster480]

I never used those low bit rates with the Gungnir MB. I do wonder what the actual impact of the -90 db performance actually has to do with my listening. I'm not too worried about it. Though from a measurement standpoint, it is dissapointing that DS DACs appear to easily outperform the Schiit MB DACs in linearity.

(note these are my subjective impressions).
I mainly use an Emotiva DC-1 which I think sounds really nice too. I thought there was more room ambience detail with the DC-1. So it wasn't necessarily a "detail" thing that the Gungnir won. However, it was able to portray individual instruments in a more stable manner in the soundstage. But it was the Schiit that was able to show the difference (for me) between mp3 and wav. It really was quite nice when I used it. In my opinion, the way it did sound was unlike other DACs I'd heard which was DS DACs for the most part in the way it portrayed the soundstage. I also tried it with some of my own recordings that were done in stereo in my own room uncompressed. It was pretty remarkable at how well it reproduced it imo.
I wish they would produce a cheap multibit ADC so the entire chain can be multibit just to see if there is an audible difference.

I would be interested in seeing if the Ygdrassil can win me over. Right now the Yggy's biggest drawback is its lack of a remote for living room use. I can't expect my family to decipher those heiroglyphics on its front panel!

Soundstage usually sounds wider if frequencies past 2k are recessed. I just experienced this with the Apex pinnacle 2 that my friend got on a loaner to audition... its a 12k tube amp. They brought it over my house this week and we plugged it into my DX7. In listening to Arkham Knights "This is a Test", we could clearly hear a fake soundstage in a song that doesn't aim to have one.
When listening to the same song through my A30, O2 or DX7 directly the song sounds as it should. So the rolloff made the soundstage artificially "larger", meaning that depending on the kind of music you listen to it might sound "better" even if it is distorting the music.

Your Multibit DAC cannot have more detail vs a well built DS DAC. They both decode the same data, just that the DS DAC runs at many times higher clockspeed to get the same work done with less physical resources.
For someone like me who has studied computer processor architecture as a hobby for my whole life, its easy for me to understand a given workload vs clockspeed vs time.