OK - I was being polite. Let me say it a different way.
The performance of the A8 is audibly perfect with figures for noise and distortion well below what the human ear can detect. We don't have measurements for the A10 - but unless it you are claiming it performs significantly worse than the A8 - then we can assume it is equally audibly perfect.
There is not a cat in hells chance that you - or any other human on the planet - will be able to hear any difference between them if the comparison is properly controlled.
Level matched accurately to 0.1dB with a multimeter - all other gear the same - all DSP on both devices bypassed, same reconstruction filter selected, and blind such that you cannot know what is playing - even with subconscious cues from whoever is doing the switching for you, or (for example) noises from the switching mechanism. (normally that means double blind).
Welcome to the forum by the way.
It is an old thread, apologies for resurrecting.
I am very long reader of this forum, coming here for information more usable then flowery "reviews" from some other places.
I have background in engineering so hard data is important and interesting factor for me. But more and more I see this: Someone comes here with his opinion based on his experience. He says - "yes, I know what the blind test is and I performed it -and
in my system, in my listening environment - I hear the difference". Then comes self-proclaimed expert and protector of science and objectivity and with zealous fire says - "You are wrong because of science and engineering! of the one holy measurement!". That make me thinking: does this person knows anything about science and engineering or just like to tell others that they are wrong? Does this person ever designed, build and measured any device in
professional environment? Honestly, it sounds more like religion than science - especially when main contribution of this person is criticizing others and safeguarding "rules".
Why? because anyone who actually knows anything about practice of science and engineering of mass produced products knows:
- measuring the same product in different lab benches may bring meaningful differences.
- measuring many diffrent samples of mass produces products in the same lab bench may bring meaningful differences.
- one statistical sample of mass produced products does not have any scientifically value.
- not all mass produced devices are QA tested so certain variability of final products characteristics are expected.
- mass produced electronic parts has variability of characteristics both in range of samples and in the same sample depending on environment e.g temperature, magnetic field etc.
- There may be a difference in measurable outcomes between synthetic standardized test and real environment.
- And as for audibility threshold - person listen to his whole system and not this or other device in isolation - using multi-harmonics music and not clean test signals. And some inaudible characteristics may became audible under certain combination of multiple factors in a given system. It happen many times in science and technology - and it happens regularly in mass manufacturing. Thats why manufactures have many revisions of the same product during its lifecycle.
I have a lot of respect from job done by Amir and other people sharing their measurements here. The information they provide is priceless. But I cannot understand why this or other particular measurement is a holy source of true and any deviation is treated by same people as heresy. It is not scientific and not objective.
I am aware that it's my first post and I may be either ignored or deleted - especially when criticizing "Forum Donor". And I not going to follow on this topic, regardless of results. Usually I do not post on forums but this kind of behavior is more and more common here and it works against the great job of other people here.
Edited: typos and errors.
