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Audibility of SINAD differences?

RNRGAGNE

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I guess this is a question for Amir.
I’m curious if there’s a correlation between a specific amount of SINAD performance and an audible difference between the amps?

Don’t know if I phrased that right but would an amp within a SINAD of 70 sound audibly different than one of 100 or would an 80 sound different?
 
This crops up quite often. Amir started a thread on this:
 
You can test your own ability to hear distortion, and how big it must get before you can hear it with music using the Klippel listening tests.

You might be surprised how poor you are at detecting it. The vast majority of people taking those tests can't detect distortion below about -45dB. The average is around -20dB.

My view is that once distortion gets lower than around -80dB and below then almost no-one will hear a difference between devices operating correctly within their limits of power. For those who can, the difference will be so slight and difficult to detect, as to be not worth losing sleep over.

Be careful with a pure SINAD based assessment. It is possible to have a good SINAD score but perform badly elsewhere - such as multi-tone or IMD.
 
I’m more curious than intending to put it this knowledge to practical use.
I figured out my personal limits to audible differences a long time ago .. that and how confirmation bias affected me.. lol.
 
You can test your own ability to hear distortion, and how big it must get before you can hear it with music using the Klippel listening tests.

You might be surprised how poor you are at detecting it. The vast majority of people taking those tests can't detect distortion below about -45dB. The average is around -20dB.

My view is that once distortion gets lower than around -80dB and below then almost no-one will hear a difference between devices operating correctly within their limits of power. For those who can, the difference will be so slight and difficult to detect, as to be not worth losing sleep over.

Be careful with a pure SINAD based assessment. It is possible to have a good SINAD score but perform badly elsewhere - such as multi-tone or IMD.
Words of wisdom. 90 is a great limit. Sure you can buy 120 now but 90 is far better than anyone can hear. Well, except those with the hearing of God himself. Those two people on Earth know who they are and they are not on ASR. They are busy doing subjectivist review on YouTube! LOL
 
Words of wisdom. 90 is a great limit. Sure you can buy 120 now but 90 is far better than anyone can hear. Well, except those with the hearing of God himself. Those two people on Earth know who they are and they are not on ASR. They are busy doing subjectivist review on YouTube! LOL
SINAD is useful as a relative yardstick. But don't forget that's it's a combination of distortion (which none of us are great at detecting) and noise, which we are all much more sensitive to. I tend to ignore the SINAD number and instead look at the noise behaviour.
 
I can understand the idea of having a single number as an index and use it as some kind of indicator of quality, but it should not be taken as the be-all and end-all truth regarding sound quality.

Not only is the given single SINAD value a combination of two distinct phenomenons (THD and N), but it also represents just one data point measured at 1 KHz and 5W (when we are talking about amplifiers). In practice SINAD is neither constant across the frequency range nor across the power range. Furthermore, the spectrum of THD components is not revealed by SINAD. All these things do matter, especially if the single number SINAD is close to what You can reasonably assume as the level of detectability when listening music, which imho is in most cases around 50 - 60 dB. If the measured SINAD is way above 80 dB, the various components can be assumed to be ok, but I still like to have a closer look at them.
 
Q to the measurement experts - would you buy this amp at $250 these days? Genuinely curious if you see flaws.

Signal/Noise Ratio (A-weighted) ≥90dB
Channel Separation
1kHz ≥75dB
10kHz ≥65dB
Channel Balance 0 ±0.3dB
Frequency Response (20Hz - 20kHz) 0dB to -0.3dB
Total Harmonic Distortion ≤0.005%
Maximum input level 5V
IMD (SMPTE) 0.02%
IMD (CCIF) 0.003%

I am asking because this has been requested by some ASR users and I have a spare one I could send to ASR to verify?
 
Last edited:
I guess this is a question for Amir.
I’m curious if there’s a correlation between a specific amount of SINAD performance and an audible difference between the amps?

Don’t know if I phrased that right but would an amp within a SINAD of 70 sound audibly different than one of 100 or would an 80 sound different?

Not necessarily. For amplifiers, there can be frequency response differences into different loads, and of course the total power before clipping. SINAD is a good guesstimate of sound, but you can also record the output from different amplifiers with real music and then try to null them to understand differences that might exist.


I just posted some comparisons of a simple all in one desktop PC, a notebook, and a dedicated streamer device. Even though the SINAD on the notebook is 80 dB for a 1 kHz test tone compared to the 116 dB of the WiiM Ultra, the actual recordings null out to -80 dBr which means you really won’t be able to hear a difference.

 
Q to the measurement experts - would you buy this amp at $250 these days? Genuinely curious if you see flaws.

Signal/Noise Ratio (A-weighted) ≥90dB
Channel Separation
1kHz ≥75dB
10kHz ≥65dB
Channel Balance 0 ±0.3dB
Frequency Response (20Hz - 20kHz) 0dB to -0.3dB
Total Harmonic Distortion ≤0.005%
Maximum input level 5V
IMD (SMPTE) 0.02%
IMD (CCIF) 0.003%

I am asking because this has been requested by some ASR users and I have a spare one I could send to ASR to verify?

What is max power output, that is a very key figure for an amplifier.

Distortion and noise figures need to specify an output level. 90 dB(A) at 1 W in to 8 ohm isn't bad, 90 dB(A) at 200 W in to 8 ohm is pretty terrible and audibly noisy.

Michael
 
What is max power output, that is a very key figure for an amplifier.

Distortion and noise figures need to specify an output level. 90 dB(A) at 1 W in to 8 ohm isn't bad, 90 dB(A) at 200 W in to 8 ohm is pretty terrible and audibly noisy.

Michael
Indeed it is - great question. It has a sub out port. It is a 2014 edition NAD D3020. Power is 30W upwards depending on speakers. Supposedly very stable.

Personally I have never been a fan that several measurements are taken at maximum output power. It gives way to the current trend of mostly unusable power while keeping a certain low noise floor - which is pretty unusable in real world situations. I'd prefer measurements to be related to SPL, but we know that is impossible given the wide array of possible speaker load characteristics out there.
 
Indeed it is - great question. It has a sub out port. It is a 2014 edition NAD D3020. Power is 30W upwards depending on speakers. Supposedly very stable.

I had one of these in my second system powering Totem Rainmakers a while back.. small room near field set up.
I’d pay $250 for it, sounded great to these ears. No idea how it would measure, nothing about it would make me want or have to know lol…
 
I had one of these in my second system powering Totem Rainmakers a while back.. small room near field set up.
I’d pay $250 for it, sounded great to these ears. No idea how it would measure, nothing about it would make me want or have to know lol…
NAD measurements seem to stand up to testing. Other than the power (which may be immaterial to many home users, especially those with smaller rooms), i'd conclude the numbers are actually impressive... irrespective of cost, actually.
 
I guess this is a question for Amir.
I’m curious if there’s a correlation between a specific amount of SINAD performance and an audible difference between the amps?

Don’t know if I phrased that right but would an amp within a SINAD of 70 sound audibly different than one of 100 or would an 80 sound different?
As SINAD tests only one aspect of distortion the audibility can be quite different for different SINAD performance levels.
It would be nice to have a new metric that with using psycho-acoustics makes a better estimator of audibility of the distortion.
Something like x dB's below the audibility threshold when played a SPL level y. Lets call it ASINAD?
 
At least 14 bits of multitone that's about 85db SINAD? Good enough for me..
 
This always becomes a long discussion. Other than transducers, it just isn't an issue except with broken designs. Low noise, low distortion is a dime a dozen.

Kind of funny it became more of a concern once it really is not one.
 
https://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/ Here's a test from Klippel. Test yourself and post your results.

It is incredibly difficult to hear distortion even at -60 dB when listening to music. If you choose Le(x), it introduces distortion to signal similar to intermodulation distortion which makes the test easier. It's also worth noting that distortion is generally easier to detect with test tones than with music. This is because with test tones, distortion products are less subject to auditory masking, as long as the tones are distant to each other in frequencies.

Audibility of distortion is overrated by many people.
 
https://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/ Here's a test from Klippel. Test yourself and post your results.

It is incredibly difficult to hear distortion even at -60 dB when listening to music. If you choose Le(x), it introduces distortion to signal similar to intermodulation distortion which makes the test easier. It's also worth noting that distortion is generally easier to detect with test tones than with music. This is because with test tones, distortion products are less subject to auditory masking, as long as the tones are distant to each other in frequencies.

Audibility of distortion is overrated by many people.
Especially in the bass region. Many tests show 100% distortion under 40Hz is inaudible.
 
Be careful with a pure SINAD based assessment. It is possible to have a good SINAD score but perform badly elsewhere - such as multi-tone or IMD.
I've always wondered: by now there's a decent amount of rather complete measurements (so SINAD and IMD etc) on ASR and other sites. Did anyone perhaps already take this dataset and try to quantify these relationships? I.e. the correlation between SINAD and the other measurements for instance. Would allow to get an estimate of SINAD vs chance to perform badly elsewhere. Doesn't mean there can't be outliers, but then again the chance for those could be quantified.

My wild guess would be that starting at a certain threshold for SINAD, all the other measurements would also be fine. Not necessarily because some kind of fixed physical relationship between them, but raher because manufacturers striving for a very good SINAD also take care of multi-tone and IMD etc.
 
For amplifiers my feeling is that plenty of power and current reserve makes the biggest difference to how a system sounds assuming that the IMD isn’t too high and frequency response is not load dependent. SINAD is probably not a big factor.
 
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