• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Limitations of blind testing procedures

Status
Not open for further replies.

SoundAndMotion

Active Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
144
Likes
111
Location
Germany
My initial offer has always been $100 to charity of the claimants choosing.

No one to date taking up the offer is simply a hard data point even after back and forth about weaknesses and answering questions (such as offering a web cam on the burn in apparatus that could be checked on in real-time during the burn in process).

I don't think you are being fair W.R.T to 'hostile'. I'm openly critical of people that don't apply critical thinking to what they are actually saying, that will not consider the view point that burned in cabling is meaningless in the context of use = burn-in in the course of listening.

Yes really. It's data I'm after. Remember it could be 1 out of 1 answers or 1 out of 50.
Wow, I'm impressed by your responses and your dedication to finding data. But to be honest, it's a little scary: you're either crazy-rich or richly crazy. If your rich, cool. But $100/data point is quite a bit. For my current experiment, I'm using colleagues and coworkers, who just get their regular salary (I don't pay), but when I use the subject database (mostly students), my grant pays about $10/hour. In my current expt I get about 176 data points/hour.

It removes a variable.
Perhaps I'm picking nits. But removing sight from a listening test removes one or more variables. But removing sight from the McGurk Effect, a multisensory integration effect, destroys the multisensory nature of it, and therefore simply makes the whole thing go away.
 
Last edited:

Jinjuku

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 28, 2016
Messages
1,278
Likes
1,180
Wow, I'm impressed by your responses and your dedication to finding data. But to be honest, it's a little scary: you're either crazy-rich or richly crazy. If your rich, cool. But $100/data point is quite a bit.

The hundred is only given for outcome that matches their claim of audible superiority. So very much carrot.

Perhaps I'm picking nits. But removing sight from a listening test removes one or more variables. But removing sight from the McGurk Effect, a multisensory integration effect, destroys the multisensory nature of it, and therefore simply make the whole thing go away.

I know, I understand, and it makes my point. But the whole thing doesn't go away because you are still hearing what is actually being said to be fair.
 

krabapple

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Apr 15, 2016
Messages
3,169
Likes
3,717
Just to cut through the back and forth :), your experiment is not designed to get scientific data but rather show the fragility of conclusions audiophiles have reached over such things. It is valuable in that regard but it is obviously not how science is done.

'Valuable" seems an understatement here. A large $wath of the consumer home audio and recording sales businesses are predicated on those 'fragile conclusions'.

Jinjuku's experiments are actually more to the point than any number of academic DBTs I've seen written up over the years. Those papers rarely if ever document the beliefs the subjects have, and the claims they have made for their own prowess, *before* the test, nor tracked them *after* a negative DBT series. And we see over and over online that a positive academic result, no matter how marginal and despite being achieved under specialized conditions, will be taken by the typical audiophile blowhard as confirmation of *their* amazing abilities and claims.

So I say, testing the human limits of what *can* be heard is all very nice as science, but for real impact in our strange little hobby, subjecting actual self-professed audiophiles -- say , Michael Fremer -- to proper DBTs, would be vastly more influential ....not to mention, far more entertaining, than academic research. A pity we no longer have Tom Nousaine to lead the way there.
 

krabapple

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Apr 15, 2016
Messages
3,169
Likes
3,717
That's an interesting paper. Thanks for posting it. I finished reading it just now. Alas, it seems they did not have proper appreciation for how psychoacoustical lossy audio compression works. Briefly, a lot of the distortion is dynamic and varies millisecond to millisecond. The codec jumps from transparency to loss of fidelity in each "frame" of audio. Static tools like they presented to testers cannot be aimed this way. Nor would a blind test where the testers don't know what needs fixing allows them to do that.

They did get decent results in collapse of stereo separation which exists in MP3 (but not in other lossy codecs). But even that inference was light.

Using secondary effects like they tested changes the dynamics of the test (for the better given the "fun" comment from one of the testers) but I think it makes the task far more difficult. A trained listener could have nailed a lot of the comparisons with statistical significance.

But no one, including you, would be able to consistently identify a properly encoded 256 kbps .mp3 (and why 256 in this paper and not 320 kbps?) as lossy audio 'just like that' -- immediately upon hearing -- as audiophiles and certain audio engineers claim, over and over, to be able to do.

Let's be clear: there were *no statistically significant findings* in the comparisons reported in this paper (authored by Mssrs . Martin, King, Woszczyk, Massenburg, and DeFrancisco). Now, is that going to stop George Massenburg from proselytizing against MP3 using extremely misleading 'difference extraction' demonstrations? I would bet not.
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
There seems to be an awful lot of scientific listening test-based stuff going on. So what are the outstanding successes of scientific audiophile listening tests over the years? What insights have they given us?

- Lossy compression would appear to be an area that only a listening test could confirm was working - but it is of little interest to actual audiophiles. (It is, however, of interest to telecoms engineers).

- Famously, listening tests have been used to confirm that speakers sound better the closer they resemble a transducer with uniform dispersion against frequency. But would anyone have expected a different result? (As shown earlier, KEF were aware of this in the 1970s - pre Toole/Harman?).

- Listening tests may have contributed to the original standards for CD - or maybe it was just based on what was technically possible at the time, plus established research into the frequency range of the ear, and because someone wanted to fit Beethoven's Ninth onto one.

- Stereophonic reproduction was based on a theory, but the sound quality also had an immediate appeal to anyone who heard it, plus it was a marketing dream. Were scientific listening tests necessary to work out how to do it? Or were recording techniques developed over time by individuals using trial-and-error?

Anything else? The way it seems to me, listening tests have contributed little to the current state of the art in hi fi, whose progress is simply towards objective 'linearity' in all areas. I don't think there are any surprises waiting to be found; there is no special form of universally-beautiful distortion or selective crosstalk that a scientist administering a DBT is going to stumble upon. (They may find that a bunch of audiophiles prefer distortion or crosstalk in a particular test - with "statistical significance"! - but this is a failure of the concept of the preference-based listening test which, because it involves aesthetic judgement, is equivalent to "Which guitar effect do you like?" disguised as a scientific experiment).

Sure, people listening to intermediate technology over the years have helped its evolution - maybe someone in a white coat decided that an elliptical stylus sounded better than a spherical one or, more likely, they just worked it out and measured it. People may have spotted that crossover distortion made push-pull amps sound bad, but if that happened it was really just a failure of simple, objective measurements and design. Vinyl sounded better than shellac, but they didn't need a scientist and a room full of audiophiles to confirm it.

Most listening tests now seem to be being performed in order to debunk pathetic audiophile superstitions and voodoo - why bother?

What are the real innovations that only a scientific DB listening test could have found?
 

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
But no one, including you, would be able to consistently identify a properly encoded 256 kbps .mp3 (and why 256 in this paper and not 320 kbps?) as lossy audio 'just like that' -- immediately upon hearing -- as audiophiles and certain audio engineers claim, over and over, to be able to do.

Let's be clear: there were *no statistically significant findings* in the comparisons reported in this paper (authored by Mssrs . Martin, King, Woszczyk, Massenburg, and DeFrancisco). Now, is that going to stop George Massenburg from proselytizing against MP3 using extremely misleading 'difference extraction' demonstrations? I would bet not.

You are talking advanced formal listening testing by audiophiles. The ones that really get me are the repeated wife in the kitchen cooking up supper heard a difference, and the dog perked up with the change in sound. The change is always veils lifted, more silent background, smoother and tighter bass. If the difference were .1% for each time it was claimed by now subwoofers would crack the earth's crust, and the silent background would suck the released magma into a black hole.
 

Fitzcaraldo215

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 4, 2016
Messages
1,440
Likes
632
There seems to be an awful lot of scientific listening test-based stuff going on. So what are the outstanding successes of scientific audiophile listening tests over the years? What insights have they given us?

- Lossy compression would appear to be an area that only a listening test could confirm was working - but it is of little interest to actual audiophiles. (It is, however, of interest to telecoms engineers).

- Famously, listening tests have been used to confirm that speakers sound better the closer they resemble a transducer with uniform dispersion against frequency. But would anyone have expected a different result? (As shown earlier, KEF were aware of this in the 1970s - pre Toole/Harman?).

- Listening tests may have contributed to the original standards for CD - or maybe it was just based on what was technically possible at the time, plus established research into the frequency range of the ear, and because someone wanted to fit Beethoven's Ninth onto one.

- Stereophonic reproduction was based on a theory, but the sound quality also had an immediate appeal to anyone who heard it, plus it was a marketing dream. Were scientific listening tests necessary to work out how to do it? Or were recording techniques developed over time by individuals using trial-and-error?

Anything else? The way it seems to me, listening tests have contributed little to the current state of the art in hi fi, whose progress is simply towards objective 'linearity' in all areas. I don't think there are any surprises waiting to be found; there is no special form of universally-beautiful distortion or selective crosstalk that a scientist administering a DBT is going to stumble upon. (They may find that a bunch of audiophiles prefer distortion or crosstalk in a particular test - with "statistical significance"! - but this is a failure of the concept of the preference-based listening test which, because it involves aesthetic judgement, is equivalent to "Which guitar effect do you like?" disguised as a scientific experiment).

Sure, people listening to intermediate technology over the years have helped its evolution - maybe someone in a white coat decided that an elliptical stylus sounded better than a spherical one or, more likely, they just worked it out and measured it. People may have spotted that crossover distortion made push-pull amps sound bad, but if that happened it was really just a failure of simple, objective measurements and design. Vinyl sounded better than shellac, but they didn't need a scientist and a room full of audiophiles to confirm it.

Most listening tests now seem to be being performed in order to debunk pathetic audiophile superstitions and voodoo - why bother?

What are the real innovations that only a scientific DB listening test could have found?

Hmm. Interesting points. My gut is I think DB listening tests mainly have been used to confirm most theories or specific designs, rather than having been used to develop new directions.

It seems to me that there are only two broad areas for empirical objectivism: first, measurements via instruments and, second, listening via controlled DBTs. I doubt many product developers would use the latter in the early stages, and would use DBTs only in the the late stages for confirmation. Measurements are much more economical and much more simply done than testing to levels of statistical significance with numerous human subjects through numerous trials.

The other issue is measurements alone do not tell the whole story of what listeners will perceive or prefer. Sometimes there are surprises, like flat measured frequency response in-room is not preferred. There are others.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,609
Location
Central Fl
The change is always veils lifted, more silent background, smoother and tighter bass.
You left out the elimination of noise. You know that magical noise that no one can measure but they can hear that it was reduced or eliminated in any case.
 

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
There seems to be an awful lot of scientific listening test-based stuff going on. So what are the outstanding successes of scientific audiophile listening tests over the years? What insights have they given us?

- Lossy compression would appear to be an area that only a listening test could confirm was working - but it is of little interest to actual audiophiles. (It is, however, of interest to telecoms engineers).

- Famously, listening tests have been used to confirm that speakers sound better the closer they resemble a transducer with uniform dispersion against frequency. But would anyone have expected a different result? (As shown earlier, KEF were aware of this in the 1970s - pre Toole/Harman?).

- Listening tests may have contributed to the original standards for CD - or maybe it was just based on what was technically possible at the time, plus established research into the frequency range of the ear, and because someone wanted to fit Beethoven's Ninth onto one.

- Stereophonic reproduction was based on a theory, but the sound quality also had an immediate appeal to anyone who heard it, plus it was a marketing dream. Were scientific listening tests necessary to work out how to do it? Or were recording techniques developed over time by individuals using trial-and-error?

Anything else? The way it seems to me, listening tests have contributed little to the current state of the art in hi fi, whose progress is simply towards objective 'linearity' in all areas. I don't think there are any surprises waiting to be found; there is no special form of universally-beautiful distortion or selective crosstalk that a scientist administering a DBT is going to stumble upon. (They may find that a bunch of audiophiles prefer distortion or crosstalk in a particular test - with "statistical significance"! - but this is a failure of the concept of the preference-based listening test which, because it involves aesthetic judgement, is equivalent to "Which guitar effect do you like?" disguised as a scientific experiment).

Sure, people listening to intermediate technology over the years have helped its evolution - maybe someone in a white coat decided that an elliptical stylus sounded better than a spherical one or, more likely, they just worked it out and measured it. People may have spotted that crossover distortion made push-pull amps sound bad, but if that happened it was really just a failure of simple, objective measurements and design. Vinyl sounded better than shellac, but they didn't need a scientist and a room full of audiophiles to confirm it.

Most listening tests now seem to be being performed in order to debunk pathetic audiophile superstitions and voodoo - why bother?

What are the real innovations that only a scientific DB listening test could have found?

I think you have some good points here. Clearly some scientific testing of some sorts worked out the basics of human hearing response, distortion detection and a few other things. Beyond those yes it has just been newer better more linear tech making what comes out of the speakers closer to what the mic picked up. And the mic has been picking up better too. The goal was clear long ago. Marketing trumpeted each advance and figure out how to make it work.

I do think it is important to remember when ABX testing outside of research became a thing with the audio consumers. David Clark brought to the attention of an audio club, and it eventually spread. It coincided with a time when some odd birds (aka audiophiles, new term for a branch of hifi listeners) were claiming to hear things that didn't seem technically likely. Before then most advances were real improvements and could be heard and no one questioned them. Then when people are saying high distortion tube amps and wire and other things sound better and measure worse or capacitor types sound different it didn't fit with the general technical wisdom of how those worked. So if people are saying they hear something you can find no technical or measurable reason to believe what is left? Well the ABX idea was borrowed from academia to see if it were real what people were hearing. The general history of those tests has been pretty always results that don't support the claims. Overwhelmingly so.

Another interesting aspect is the continual quest for higher accuracy, wider bandwidth, flatter response, less noise and lowered distortion. The mono LP was measurably much better than its predecessor the 78. Hearing one it was clear which had better sound. I think the addition of stereo to the LP was the audio equivalent of HDTV. No question it added a big benefit to enjoyment (doubled the market for all gear too win-win). It wasn't quite flat beyond reproach or noiseless or of optimum fidelity. I think RTR was better, but it was too expensive. Nor were speakers of the time or amps though good ones were getting there. Still for a generation at least technical improvements in amps, and arms and other parts enlarged the performance envelope of stereo LP. It got near at its finest the edge of the human hearing envelope.

Now with CD, at least after the initial few years, you had something that should match or fully exceed the human hearing envelope. Speakers still had a way to go and do until this day though they are slowly improving. Amps and preamps were almost there or were. Now they are. It is during this time when you get more and more of this cranky holistic audiophool crap that lots of people believed. It is then that ABX became a topic among regular audio folks. It is the time when Stereo Review and Audio vanished and a couple of crazy little expensive magazines that rarely published took over the world with subjective reviewing. Essentially when improvements in performance began to reach or exceed human hearing ability. Yet more than ever people hear that everything matters. Not long after that you had SACD and currently HI Resolution recordings. Pretty much no penetration in the market and it isn't even clear they sound any different if from the same source.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,609
Location
Central Fl
Essentially when improvements in performance began to reach or exceed human hearing ability. Yet more than ever people hear that everything matters.
Dead on target overview of the High Fidelity market over the last 75-something years.
Sad that we've gone from a time that having a good HiFi in the living room was considered very Kool, today where we're mainly considered strange folk. LOL
 
Last edited:

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,609
Location
Central Fl

hvbias

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
574
Likes
411
Location
US
I don't know. I tried out the version that used to be online. Got to silver level pretty easily. Gold took a bit of doing. I think some of the Harman training is still online.

Now I hardly think I am ready to be a tonmeister.

I plan to give the Harman a try, IIRC it was Amir or someone else that said it was pretty tough. In the past what I'd do is use acoustic albums then fiddle around with the parametric EQ (broad Q at first then narrow it) in a DAW and see if I could guess the frequencies that I had changed.

Just found this from the 1970s. KEF certainly seem to have been thinking about the importance of off-axis sound with the 105.

View attachment 6019

Nice detective work! I am not entirely surprised that it was by KEF, they put a decent amount of engineering behind their speakers.

That wouldnt happen to be AVI, would it? ;) Sounds like them. Those are the monitors I happen to have at the moment (DM10). In the near-field, they are the best and most natural sounding speakers I've ever heard. Honestly. Their claim is that waveguides etc color the sound in a very slight way, and I think they might have a point. If so, you can have a trade-off between off-axis behavior and distortion.

But in the far-field, I've heard speakers which behave better than the DM10s. And there's no doubt that a speaker with the DM10 sound and better off-axis behavior would be an even better speaker! And that's the kind of speaker I'm hoping to find.

It was ATC. Based off the reply I got and looking at their speakers, I think they put some thought into the off axis, like marrying the dome midrange waveguide to the woofer to narrow the polar pattern at the lower limit for the midrange driver.
 

DonH56

Master Contributor
Technical Expert
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 15, 2016
Messages
7,835
Likes
16,498
Location
Monument, CO
:eek::eek::eek: Not me, if only. LOL

Yah. My older son, new to the workforce and struggling with $40k in student loans, can't understand how anyone has $1k for speakers let alone $10k or $100k. There's a reason for the numerous threads on places like AVS asking for the cheapest this or that. When I jumped back into things a few years ago after some time away I was surprised by the prices for midrange products and shocked by where the high-end stuff had gone (pairs of speakers more than the cost of my house, yeesh). And most of the highlighted reviews I see in magazines and online seem to focus on gear well out of range of the average middle incomer, along with a healthy dose of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) elitism fed to those who cannot afford such gear. Very discouraging. Glad to see Amir tackling it head-on with real data on inexpensive DACs.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,609
Location
Central Fl
Glad to see Amir tackling it head-on with real data on inexpensive DACs.
Yes, this site and a couple others have been a breath of fresh air in a audio media world full of audiophoolishness.
The real truth is that for everything behind the speakers, this is a "golden age" for music lovers. Todays technology has brought us components that for just a few dollars will put you within a eyelash of the very best money can buy.
Things get very gray when you get into speakers where so many factors like personal preference, room size, listening habits, etc, beyond pricing into play.

And don't forget to get the "Recommended Components" fuses to replace all those in your rig. :confused:o_O:p
 

dallasjustice

Major Contributor
Joined
Feb 28, 2016
Messages
1,270
Likes
907
Location
Dallas, Texas
I don't doubt that blind tests are the best we can do. But I think subjectivist may have unwittingly stumbled upon a truth which blind tests can never fully resolve.

After reading Daniel Kahneman, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that all humans fall to the same/similar psychological misperceptions about the external world. There's seems little hope of overcoming these innate human flaws. The best we can do is simply be aware that they exist.

The limitation to blind testing is applicability to real world sited listening. IOW, we don't normally listen to our systems blind. We are forced to know all the gear in the chain. In such a case, how can we ever trust our own conclusions about gear? In the case of DSP, it is much easier to blind evaluate filters. But gear will always bedevil our perceptions.

I think measurements and blind testing can inform us, but it can never be the final answer to home music enjoyment. We have ourselves to blame.
 

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
I don't doubt that blind tests are the best we can do. But I think subjectivist may have unwittingly stumbled upon a truth which blind tests can never fully resolve.

After reading Daniel Kahneman, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that all humans fall to the same/similar psychological misperceptions about the external world. There's seems little hope of overcoming these innate human flaws. The best we can do is simply be aware that they exist.

The limitation to blind testing is applicability to real world sited listening. IOW, we don't normally listen to our systems blind. We are forced to know all the gear in the chain. In such a case, how can we ever trust our own conclusions about gear? In the case of DSP, it is much easier to blind evaluate filters. But gear will always bedevil our perceptions.

I think measurements and blind testing can inform us, but it can never be the final answer to home music enjoyment. We have ourselves to blame.

Yes, you are on the right track. IMO.

What I dislike is the false technical reasons this gear sounds better when in fact it doesn't sound different or may sound worse(making it different) and it therefore requires a cost of $20k for this DAC stack. Or the idea this neat old glowing tube system sounds superior in ways modern gear cannot approach when in fact it is colored though beautifully so and again you don't need $20k for this effect.

Now we don't all want something similar to lower end pro gear that performs well, gets the job done and is not BestBuy cheap, but not bank account draining expensive. Even there you find some overblown technical explanations and some appealing styling. The point being it would be okay to charge something more for highly attractive gear with the same stuff inside (assuming it really performs) and/or with creature comforts or other real usability features. I think publications could do more to educate against the placebo marketing except they are dependent upon it for ad money. They may be helping kill the golden goose in the process.

I can buy a plastic chair for $10 or pay hundreds for something more attractive, maybe more comfortable and more durable. You don't have to convince me of some mystical crap about how the expensive chair technically in some picky way outperforms the cheap chair. I can sit in both and not fall to the floor. The existence of one doesn't mean the other shouldn't be there.
 

RayDunzl

Grand Contributor
Central Scrutinizer
Joined
Mar 9, 2016
Messages
13,204
Likes
16,986
Location
Riverview FL
Off-axis, at moderate levels, and after forgetting which is playing, I don't notice (with AcourateDRC to balance things out a bit) whether I'm listening to the Krell/MartinLogan or the active JBL.

I have to look, and go "Oh."

Either is equally enjoyable and to my leaden ears, equivalent...
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
What I dislike is the false technical reasons this gear sounds better when in fact it doesn't sound different or may sound worse(making it different) and it therefore requires a cost of $20k for this DAC stack.
But how far do you take it? Common sense says that the headphone output of an iPad or a $80 USB DAC (Creative Soundblaster, say) sounds identical to the $20k DAC. How many audiophiles would simply use the iPad output? Not many, I'd wager. What they would do would be to rationalise that if they spend $2k on a DAC, it will get them "90% of the way there", and then they'll congratulate themselves on saving the $18k, rather than weeping over the $2k they just effectively burned. Me, I'd use the iPad (if I wasn't using a $100 multichannel DAC for my active system).
 

Blumlein 88

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Messages
20,524
Likes
37,057
But how far do you take it? Common sense says that the headphone output of an iPad or a $80 USB DAC (Creative Soundblaster, say) sounds identical to the $20k DAC. How many audiophiles would simply use the iPad output? Not many, I'd wager. What they would do would be to rationalise that if they spend $2k on a DAC, it will get them "90% of the way there", and then they'll congratulate themselves on saving the $18k, rather than weeping over the $2k they just effectively burned. Me, I'd use the iPad (if I wasn't using a $100 multichannel DAC for my active system).

Well by being rational we can figure out how far it makes sense to take it. Now people who rationalize that is another thing altogether. So if we put together metrics for a transparent DAC, and we know what is sufficient, then we can see what meets those criteria. Anything more is not for performance. That doesn't mean there aren't other good reasons. That is why I am interested in Amir's reviews of budget DACs. He has crossed a couple of really cheap ones off the list for serious audiophiles. I have presented one that fails a bit. I am of course hoping he finds some that are sufficient for little money. I know of some for $350 to $500 that do the trick. Spending more is not for performance.

Keep getting that message out, let people hear it and in time maybe most of those other products aren't the status symbols they seem currently. People can spend money as they wish, but I feel high end audio has become a case where a significant portion of the money in that market goes for things of no consequence. One result is harm to working products that move things forward.

So for instance I right now have one DAC that cost me $350 I would not be ashamed of dropping into any system. There are some DACs for around $1 k and maybe $2k that I might consider purchasing for other reasons. Beyond that I don't know. We need to get the point across that $2k doesn't get you 90% of the way there, it gets you all the way there.

I do remember Wilson demoing their second most expensive speaker at a big high fi show in 2004 to much accolades. They revealed the last day the actual source for it all was a then current iPod. Lots of motivations and effects one could examine there. I think the main worthy one is with modern digital gear the place to spend the money is the place that can really make the difference and that is speakers.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom