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Looking for a competent ABX tool for Windows

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fas42

fas42

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It was interesting for me, because people glibly accepted that foobar ABX did what was implied by the naive use of it - use the foobar player to switch between 2 versions of a track, where and whatever they happened to be. But the software guy pulled the VW diesel consumption trick on the consumer - behind the scenes, play it to suit the software ...

ABX tests are not invalidated, but a poor implementation of one should be soundly given a whack ...
 

Blumlein 88

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It was interesting for me, because people glibly accepted that foobar ABX did what was implied by the naive use of it - use the foobar player to switch between 2 versions of a track, where and whatever they happened to be. But the software guy pulled the VW diesel consumption trick on the consumer - behind the scenes, play it to suit the software ...

ABX tests are not invalidated, but a poor implementation of one should be soundly given a whack ...
Let us know when you run across one of those. Foobar puts out the same bits in abx as in playback.
 
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fas42

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The ABX needs to play what you instruct to play, not a copy of the track, resampled, placed on an unknown place on a hard disk, and not keep running counters on the screen, telling you what it's doing - if these are the areas you're trying to test for differences then the tool is useless ...
 

Blumlein 88

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The ABX needs to play what you instruct to play, not a copy of the track, resampled, placed on an unknown place on a hard disk, and not keep running counters on the screen, telling you what it's doing - if these are the areas you're trying to test for differences then the tool is useless ...
Is this not deja vu? Haven't we been over this. The bits leaving whether in playback or ABX are the same. The clock is in the DAC. So the sound is the same.

Did we not fail to get from you any information that says the playback track is resampled beyond a gut feeling on your part?
 
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fas42

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Is this not deja vu? Haven't we been over this. The bits leaving whether in playback or ABX are the same. The clock is in the DAC. So the sound is the same.

Did we not fail to get from you any information that says the playback track is resampled beyond a gut feeling on your part?
Yes, we've been over this ... you're confusing identical digital with identical analogue, let's try a more extreme example to see if you can get the message: two identical DACs, fed the the same bits; with one I've got a chap with a hammer continually whacking the case of the component while the perfect data is being processed - are the analogue outputs 100% identical at all times? Too extreme? Okay, we'll use a softer hammer, hit it less hard, less often - when do the outputs perfectly match?

Your reading skills need to be upgraded - I specifically stated, in a post, that I located where the work files that the ABX uses were located, and used a utility to determine what the content format was.
 

Blumlein 88

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Yes, we've been over this ... you're confusing identical digital with identical analogue, let's try a more extreme example to see if you can get the message: two identical DACs, fed the the same bits; with one I've got a chap with a hammer continually whacking the case of the component while the perfect data is being processed - are the analogue outputs 100% identical at all times? Too extreme? Okay, we'll use a softer hammer, hit it less hard, less often - when do the outputs perfectly match?

Your reading skills need to be upgraded - I specifically stated, in a post, that I located where the work files that the ABX uses were located, and used a utility to determine what the content format was.
Well, I have not read every single post on the forum and don't recall that info on the utility.

Now as for the hammer whacking, yeah, by the time we are down to some trivial processor activity on a mostly isolated connection, the effect will be less than trivial.
 

FrantzM

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I apologize for the meanness of the following :

Perhaps the hammer wasn't hitting the components ... There was someone's head in its path :(
 

Sal1950

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I apologize for the meanness of the following :

Perhaps the hammer wasn't hitting the components ... There was someone's head in its path :(
Do you have a video of that? You know we require evidence at ASR :D
 

Fitzcaraldo215

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Incidentally, JRiver is in the process of implementing some sort of comparison tool in release 22 of their PC library/player. I know no details or whether it will be any good.
 
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fas42

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Well, I have not read every single post on the forum and don't recall that info on the utility.

Now as for the hammer whacking, yeah, by the time we are down to some trivial processor activity on a mostly isolated connection, the effect will be less than trivial.
The point of course being, that in the analogue world everything does have an effect - what then matters, and is controversial, is at what point is the variability inaudible - if the perceived quality always altered in a relatively linear manner with "improvements" then this would not be such a deal breaker. But the remarkable thing is that there is a transition point in audio playback - below the required quality it always just sounds like a hifi, and is easy to dismiss as such; above that quality then a sense of realness pervades everything, the speakers completely disappear as a source of the sound, etc, etc. This is why it is important to worry about every tiny aspect of the system, because one, or at least I, always is pushing to get a setup to that quality point.
 

Lacinato

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Hi -- sorry to resurrect this thread, but I develop the Lacinato ABX tool and only just came across this and wanted to correct it:

Is it perfect? No. It uses Java runtime and while it says it doesn't need a separate download, it asked me to do exactly that. The link at Oracle downloads version 1.7 and the tool wants 1.8. Good luck finding that version on Oracle site. But you can find it and once there the program runs without any installations. Simply double click on the .exe and it runs.

...you really don't need to download Java separately, and I'd recommend against it, as it's a pain to find the right version and get it set up, etc. The main downloads from the site (i.e. not the ".jar file only" download) all include a self-contained no-muss-no-fuss java runtime with them. You just download the .ZIP (or .TGZ) file, extract the contents of the archive (that's important -- many people "open" the archive folder and try to run the program from inside the archive without extracting first, which won't work and might give the impression that it can't find java, because it can't, because it hasn't been extracted), and then run the program.

There was also recently a problem with the Mac build which might have given the impression that java needed to be installed. A corrected version was recently uploaded.

Also, the version depicted above is 2.1 -- 2.37 is the current version -- interested parties can check it out.

Thanks, sorry to cause any bother.
 

amirm

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Hi Lacinato. Thank you for joining the forum and additional information. It has been a good few years since I tried your app so don't remember the details. I just downloaded the latest version and it indeed runs without further downloads.

I am pleased to see you develop this tool further as Foobar ABX plug-in is now quite horrible, designed more to generate negative results than to remove bias. Ironically, that has occurred due to bias of the developers not wanting people getting positive results in what they don't believe in!
 
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fas42

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Yes, Lacinato, thanks for contributing to the thread, and clarifying that! Like Amir, I'm pleased that there is some ongoing work being done - any refinements are always welcome!

Cheers!
 

Lacinato

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I just wasn't satisfied with the tools out there when trying to do my own ABX'ing, and it seemed weird that there was no satisfying tool available given how simple a thing it seems. I'm barely an application coder, but it seemed like a "real" programmer could create a great ABX tool in an afternoon. So, instead of complaining about it I decided to make one. I actually like the foobar plugin a lot, but I found the whole installation of foobar and figuring out how to get to the plugin going pretty cumbersome. If I wanted to suggest on a forum that someone ABX test some files, it was a real pain to explain, and the average non-technical musician couldn't be bothered. It's hard enough to convince people to ABX test files without extra roadblocks. :) Plus you had to describe three entirely different methods depending on mac/windows/linux, so the admonitions to "ABX test the files" were usually being ignored. Now we can say "ABX test it -- here's a link to software" and (bugs aside) users can download it and get to testing.

I also think that the audio community needs as much ABX testing as it can get for the sake of a deeper and truer understanding of our tools, given how profound confirmation bias is in audio. I like good audio, and I want the world to have more of it, so if my tool could in some small way help us make progress, that'd be great. At least one major plugin company is using it, which was awesome to learn!

Also, I wasn't aware of any shootout tools, so I wanted to implement that. It's also handy as a convenient "compare files to each other" tool -- i.e. not even for testing or blinding, but just switching between, say, a bunch of versions of a piece of music.

I made a javascript web version as well... i'm not aware of anyone using it, though, which is unfortunate, because it took like 3 times longer to make than the app. :) It is actually much more flexible in terms of shootouts: you can categorize files in a pseudo-database, associate images with files, etc. Maybe I should search around a little to see if anyone has incorporated it...

I would actually love it if a serious application coder would re-implement all the features in a native multi-platform app, support changing/testing multiple sample rates and ASIO/core audio/pulseaudio/whatever, clean up the GUI, support other file formats, etc. There is obviously room for improvement. It's beyond my skill set, unfortunately, and given the maybe $100 people have donated over like 5 years (i'm not complaining), I can't really justify taking the time to learn those skills or develop the app. I'm pretty satisfied with it as it is, though, honestly: it does the job. :)
 

amirm

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Great to see such high motivation for the cause. :) It is indeed very challenging to get anyone to do an ABX test. Even though I have done countless ones, I too have to be highly motivated to do it. When I was at Microsoft we had custom in-house tools for this. Having to use Foobar ABX was a step back but it was all that I knew about until I ran into yours. Not wanting to keep Java runtime active on my system was the reason for not using it post discovering it. Now that I have the self-contained version, I will use it more.

One issue with software tools is that a lot of interest in audio is comparing physical devices, not as much audio files. It is a shame that no one makes an ABX box anymore. Actually one company does but I think it was $1,000 or some such price which would put it out of the reach of many.

Thanks again and hope to have you around in other topics.
 

tomelex

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Lacinato, thanks for your efforts and did you say you had a link to your program
 
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