Stumbled across a scenario that I'd like your feedback / experience on. Brief background:
Looking for differences in DAC's. Used Wiim for streaming, optical out into splitter, optical into 2 dacs, each dac into same amp via different inputs. Volume conveniently appeared matched by ear. 3 DACs on test (each wildly different in price), so rotated around a couple of times. Had my wife connect the DACs so I did not know which input had which DAC.
I have done this routine 2 times now. First time was 3 weeks ago. I believed that generating an accurate analogue signal from a digital source could be quite hard to get right. When I did this scenario back then my expensive DAC won. On a side note it also won when I used a completely different amp/speaker combo (not detailed for brevity but one was amp /speaker, one was HP amp / headphones).
Fast forward 3 weeks, listening to you bunch and studying multiple graphs I am now of the understanding that DACs have pretty much been figured out. Tonight I repeated my tests. This time I hear no obvious difference between all 3 DACs.
In both scenarios I found the result I wanted.
Now I bet the answer is that it's not truly a blind test, and so be it,....but, What is peoples understanding around proving no difference when there actually is no difference? We seem to automatically accept these results.
Looking for differences in DAC's. Used Wiim for streaming, optical out into splitter, optical into 2 dacs, each dac into same amp via different inputs. Volume conveniently appeared matched by ear. 3 DACs on test (each wildly different in price), so rotated around a couple of times. Had my wife connect the DACs so I did not know which input had which DAC.
I have done this routine 2 times now. First time was 3 weeks ago. I believed that generating an accurate analogue signal from a digital source could be quite hard to get right. When I did this scenario back then my expensive DAC won. On a side note it also won when I used a completely different amp/speaker combo (not detailed for brevity but one was amp /speaker, one was HP amp / headphones).
Fast forward 3 weeks, listening to you bunch and studying multiple graphs I am now of the understanding that DACs have pretty much been figured out. Tonight I repeated my tests. This time I hear no obvious difference between all 3 DACs.
In both scenarios I found the result I wanted.
Now I bet the answer is that it's not truly a blind test, and so be it,....but, What is peoples understanding around proving no difference when there actually is no difference? We seem to automatically accept these results.