Dirac > Audyssey XT32 ... Sure, Always?

[peng]

I've already noticed that. How you yourself write the whole of the placebo effect.

Thank you for your comments, but I can't take credit on this placebo effect, and other bias related thing. There are plenty of threads on various forums including our own ASR, and lots of members much more knowledgeable than I have posted on the topic.

I could hear the difference. But why.

I have a Sony BDP-5100 blu ray player and a Magnetar UDP blu ray player. I think the Sony was $109 new and the Magnetar (Oppo clone?) is $1600. For some reason I can hear a difference between them with the magnetar being the better player. I’m bypassing the DAC in both running HDMI to my AV10...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Even on speakers, that almost anyone can hear differences between them, even between very expensive ones, yet our respected Dr. Floyd had in the past stressed the importance of blind tests, and that if not done blind, he wouldn't care what people said about the differences they claimed they heard.

An Enticing Marketing Story, Theory Without Measurement?

Correct. This is why it is important for at least the mastering, if not the mixing, of recordings be done in spaces that approximate average domestic listening rooms. This sometimes happens, but not always. This is a component of the circle of confusion. Hello Dr. Toole, a question on this...

www.audiosciencereview.com

As I mentioned more than once on this thread, I won't debate with anyone on their claims, because there is no point, people hear or think they hear and there is no way to prove them right or wrong, so I would just respect their (including yours obviously) claims and assume they heard what they said they heard. I would continue to limit my comments on the need to try and remove bias based on my own belief, that's all.

 

[GSM58]

Thank you for your comments, but I can't take credit on this placebo effect, and other bias related thing. There are plenty of threads on various forums including our own ASR, and lots of members much more knowledgeable than I have posted on the topic.

I could hear the difference. But why.

I have a Sony BDP-5100 blu ray player and a Magnetar UDP blu ray player. I think the Sony was $109 new and the Magnetar (Oppo clone?) is $1600. For some reason I can hear a difference between them with the magnetar being the better player. I’m bypassing the DAC in both running HDMI to my AV10...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Even on speakers, that almost anyone can hear differences between them, even between very expensive ones, yet our respected Dr. Floyd had in the past stressed the importance of blind tests, and that if not done blind, he wouldn't care what people said about the differences they claimed they heard.

An Enticing Marketing Story, Theory Without Measurement?

Correct. This is why it is important for at least the mastering, if not the mixing, of recordings be done in spaces that approximate average domestic listening rooms. This sometimes happens, but not always. This is a component of the circle of confusion. Hello Dr. Toole, a question on this...

www.audiosciencereview.com

As I mentioned more than once on this thread, I won't debate with anyone on their claims, because there is no point, people hear or think they hear and there is no way to prove them right or wrong, so I would just respect their (including yours obviously) claims and assume they heard what they said they heard. I would continue to limit my comments on the need to try and remove bias based on my own belief, that's all.

I think the theories and studies about the equipment are very good and interesting.
I value the auditions too. After all, what counts is what you are hearing from a certain system.
I've heard a millionaire system playing badly and other great ones.
Entry system will always have its limitations, but not everyone is worried about it.
I always seek balance in my system. I'm very happy with what I got with Audyssey XT32 + App Editor. In the end, that's what matters.

 

[Oddball]

I do appreciate the results that double blind test conducted by researches have established - and I do believe in those. They are simply objective and I try to think of myself that I would fall in the "educated listener" group , if such distinction was made in the test. But perhaps not. But then in our everyday life and desire to upgrade, we are faced with logistics limitations and can't really do double blind.

A theoretical (and maybe not so theoretical) example. I have a piece of gear, say Marantz AV-10, and I want to upgrade. I would consider REW graphs but ultimately would not want to choose the pretties graph but would really want to decide by ear between the graphs that measure reasonably well. The options are not many, but could be Anthem AV-90, Trinnov 32, or Storm 24.

While I have seen some members on various forums ordering and returning multiple processors to do the above, I really don't have time to do that. Calibrating each of those would take me forever to get it where I think it would be comparable. Between the 3 above, I think 2-3 months with couple of hours spend a day as I am not ARC, Dirac ART or Optimizer expert, so would need to learn all that . If someone else (like dealer) would calibrate, it would not make me comfortable that these are really comparable to start with. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get units calibrated quite comparably as they feature different room correction systems. The best scenario is to calibrate each to the best of its capabilities and one's preferences.

Due to this limitation, best I could do is compare one of the competing processors to AV-10 at the time. And even that is questionable as in Europe return policies are not very flexible and dealers will give you demo max 2 or 3 days (with the security deposit mostly). So reality is that I could do a single blind test (i.e. knowing what I am listening to) but for someone to switch between two units while I don't know which one is playing. To start with, I do have 50-50 chance to pick what I want (crave/desire/etc. - could be validation for AV-10 or respect for e.g. Trinnov 32) to pick - which is not great. And since I spend significant time on calibration, I already have clues how to differentiate two units as they will likely have some kind of differences in calibration.

Furthermore, should one test with or without video (which apparently takes at least 50% of the attention span). In real life use, that would be the case so it might make sense to test with video. Also, if you have e.g. 9.4.6 system then it probably makes sense to test that level of performance. Bad news is that paying attention to 16 channels at the time (and video) will be difficult - so what exactly you will hear in terms of differences?

Lots of questions and not many answers. I picked probably the worst component for comparing. Speakers should be easier and other stuff you can just buy based off the reputable reviews and pretty pictures.

 

[GSM58]

I do appreciate the results that double blind test conducted by researches have established - and I do believe in those. They are simply objective and I try to think of myself that I would fall in the "educated listener" group , if such distinction was made in the test. But perhaps not. But then in our everyday life and desire to upgrade, we are faced with logistics limitations and can't really do double blind.

A theoretical (and maybe not so theoretical) example. I have a piece of gear, say Marantz AV-10, and I want to upgrade. I would consider REW graphs but ultimately would not want to choose the pretties graph but would really want to decide by ear between the graphs that measure reasonably well. The options are not many, but could be Anthem AV-90, Trinnov 32, or Storm 24.

While I have seen some members on various forums ordering and returning multiple processors to do the above, I really don't have time to do that. Calibrating each of those would take me forever to get it where I think it would be comparable. Between the 3 above, I think 2-3 months with couple of hours spend a day as I am not ARC, Dirac ART or Optimizer expert, so would need to learn all that . If someone else (like dealer) would calibrate, it would not make me comfortable that these are really comparable to start with. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get units calibrated quite comparably as they feature different room correction systems. The best scenario is to calibrate each to the best of its capabilities and one's preferences.

Due to this limitation, best I could do is compare one of the competing processors to AV-10 at the time. And even that is questionable as in Europe return policies are not very flexible and dealers will give you demo max 2 or 3 days (with the security deposit mostly). So reality is that I could do a single blind test (i.e. knowing what I am listening to) but for someone to switch between two units while I don't know which one is playing. To start with, I do have 50-50 chance to pick what I want (crave/desire/etc. - could be validation for AV-10 or respect for e.g. Trinnov 32) to pick - which is not great. And since I spend significant time on calibration, I already have clues how to differentiate two units as they will likely have some kind of differences in calibration.

Furthermore, should one test with or without video (which apparently takes at least 50% of the attention span). In real life use, that would be the case so it might make sense to test with video. Also, if you have e.g. 9.4.6 system then it probably makes sense to test that level of performance. Bad news is that paying attention to 16 channels at the time (and video) will be difficult - so what exactly you will hear in terms of differences?

Lots of questions and not many answers. I picked probably the worst component for comparing. Speakers should be easier and other stuff you can just buy based off the reputable reviews and pretty pictures.

Great post !

Yesterday I finished the acoustics of my room and today I did the Audyssey calibration through the App Editor. I performed the eight positions with the AVR microphone + tripod.
I am very impressed with the result obtained. When I listen in multichannel it gets surreal.
I did a test in Pure Direct and it was also spectacular. I've never had such a cool multichannel sound. This Denon A10H is out of the curve for both music and movies.

I hope it lasts about 20 years... kkkkk

 

[Oddball]

Great post !

Yesterday I finished the acoustics of my room and today I did the Audyssey calibration through the App Editor. I performed the eight positions with the AVR microphone + tripod.
I am very impressed with the result obtained. When I listen in multichannel it gets surreal.
I did a test in Pure Derect and it was also spectacular. I've never had such a cool multichannel sound. This Denon A10H is out of the curve for both music and movies.

I hope it lasts about 20 years... kkkkk

I hope people don't misread it - I was using quite extreme example.

It's easy to pick the best graph, but then will it really matter if you can't hear the difference? Optimizer capabilities are far beyond Audy based on the information available and some limited graphs, but then I don't have golden ears either.

I certainly hope you will be happy for long time to come .