alles gut! i just watched (and enjoyed) amir's video @
i now appreciate where the scientists are coming from, and their requirement for reproducible appreciation of "better", but it raises a greater angst for me
short of auditioning any potential new component, with rigorous set up of the necessary testing equipment and blinded switching (none of which i can easily manage, or even uneasily), where to from here to consider "upgrades" ? or why to bother
at risk of being stoned as a heretic for the suggestion, some components are a very (to my unblinded, non-scientific appraisal) definite step up : the switch from onboard sound to a decent external dac (yay! the khadas tone board before rebranding to tone 1), the resolution of headphones (audiotechnica ad700 < akg q701 < focal elear) - maybe i am fooling myself, but doing any blinded testing of headphones would seem impossible
i have often suggested the key to audio happiness is being pleased with what you have, and then make it your business to avoid exposure to anything that sounds better
so how to know (or actually achieve gnosis) of whether a new item is a better choice than what i currently possess ?
do the non-professional audioscientists have a method, or just randomly select anything and do the leg work with amir's techniques ? if they do, i salute their ocd as time and finances and patience to set up the bits is unlikely to eventuate in my universe
price vs. performance is one confounder (the khadas broke that idea); the sinad measure of dacs sorta simplifies comparison, but for every other component, maybe not so easy
thanks for some enlightenment, but on digesting amir's points, i am dissuaded from acquiring other equipment because there seems to be no reliable information in "opinion", and no particularly decipherable expectation of "my unique personal experience" in scientific monitoring - one subject's ability to achieve p< 0.05 has no bearing on what my results might be
and i am, after all is measured, lazy wrt the rigours involved in proving i like something i don't have if i like something i have quite a lot already
perhaps my energies are better spent designing and building little aeroplanes, and enjoying music with my existing hardware